I’ve been asked a few times: how do I stay motivated to work on Squirrel Launcher? It can be a bit difficult to work on one project for several months at a time. So, how did I even finish Procedural Dungeons without burning out?

It’s not like I’ve never burned out. In fact, I’ve done it several times.

Here’s a list of most of the projects I’ve started and haven’t finished (roughly chronological):

1. A text adventure game (Q BASIC)
   1. I made world 1 and I was planning world 2 but never finished it
2. The March of the Undefeated Squirrel (Scratch)
   1. First iteration of the tank game – made a few screens and stopped because I was bored
3. The Kingdom-land (Scratch)
   1. 1v1 battle game - Spent several hours working on the main menu got to the actual game and stopped
4. Asteroid Wars (Scratch)
   1. Side scrolling space shooter – added enemies, they didn’t work and I gave up
5. Pong with Friends (Scratch)
   1. Multiplayer Pong game – didn’t even try to make the multiplayer part – ended up deleting the entire project and starting over, then I stopped
6. Survival (Scratch)
   1. Side scrolling survival game – got pretty far but eventually ran out of ideas and stopped
7. Squirrel Launcher 2.0 (Scratch)
   1. Supposed to be a sequel to the Scratch version of Squirrel Launcher. Was supposed to be a mix of platforming and flying segments. Got bored and stopped.
8. Stealth game (Unity)
   1. Was a 3D game. Started with 3D modeling. Gave up because learning Unity, C#, and Blender at the same time was too much work.
9. March of the Triumphant Squirrel (Scratch)
   1. Second iteration of the tank game – made most of the game and even released it but the story wasn’t finished
10. Tank Game Project 1.0 (Unity)
    1. Third iteration of the tank game – spent two and a half years developing – learned C# and Unity – made AI, a dialogue system, a mission system, a save file system, and a few levels – got bored of doing the same thing over and over again and stopped.
11. Tank Game Project 2.0 (Unity)
    1. Fourth iteration of the tank game – a multiplayer real-time-strategy game – multiplayer was way too hard to learn – got frustrated and gave up

As you can see, I have done my fair share of giving up on projects.

The main reasons I gave up were:

1. Boredom
2. Lack of Inspiration
3. Frustration

So, I will go through each of these reasons and tell you how I overcame them, so perhaps you don’t have to go through so many projects before you find one that sticks. These tips will mostly apply to game development, but I’m sure you could apply most of these to many different mediums of work.

Boredom

It is inevitable that you will eventually become bored when working on your project. The best thing you can do is fight it enough so that you keep going.

The main reason why I stopped Tank Game Project 1.0 was because of boredom. I kept adding and adding mechanics to the game, but I never really had a sense of direction. The majority of the time, I was just refining features. I just kept improving things like enemy AI and refining graphics and never really knew what to do next.

I’ll tell you right now: you will never be fully satisfied with your work.

You will want to constantly improve what you’ve done, but, it’s important to know when you need to stop and move on to something else. If you keep trying to improve your work, you will get bored and stop working on the project.

Let’s say you were working really hard on getting the perfect enemy AI. You’re spending hours and hours refining and tuning the parameters of your system. And you feel like you’re getting tired of the project and decide watch something on YouTube or play a game. That’s ok. You can do that. Don’t force yourself to work on a project when you don’t feel motivated. You will just get frustrated. I do that constantly; I go through phases of working for a week and then gaming for a week all the time. But when you feel like you want to work on the project again, consider working on something else; HOWEVER, make sure it’s still related to your project. Instead of coding the enemy AI, perhaps you should work on drawing sprites. Sprite work doesn’t require much focus, you can often work on it while you are watching something.

Whenever you are working on a project, you should have a to do list or at least a roadmap.

Here is an example of my to do list for Procedural Dungeons 1.0:

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Small things

• Spikes can get stuck when leaving and coming back in a room.
• Completing the quest with the NPC doesn’t actually complete the quest.
• add flavor dialogue and greetings
• Nerf gear saw
• Nerf time stats
• Nerf minor boss health
• Overlapped NPCs in grass area SEED: 1357837178
• Key continuity problems with multiple floors
• Themes on overworld should be done with multiple options for theme scale
• Nerf mushman attacks
• Improve Executioner Fight
• Fix tutorial issues with first dungeon
• Fix softlocking issues
• Fix loading screen freeze
• Bosses need to scale to T3 better
• Clear extra keys

Big things

• Nature theme boss
• Dungeon theme boss
• Castle entrance
• Multi-level dungeon support
  • Base
  • Stairs
  • Music adjustment
• T1 theme
• T2 theme
• T3 theme
• T1 mini boss
• T2 mini boss
• T3 final boss (Usurper)
• Save support in middle of castle
• Credits
• Opening Scene
• Closing Scene
• Google Play
• OST
• Trailer

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When I got bored of working on the castle boss AI, I decided to work on the OST or the cutscenes. You should cycle through your checklist. When you get stuck on one, move to another. This can help with both boredom and frustration.

Another way to alleviate boredom is to get inspired.

Lack of Inspiration

I have heard that some people are afraid to be alone in their own head. I personally, can’t live without my own thoughts. I need time away from music and games and even other people in order to come up with ideas for my games. Legitimately, I will run out of ideas and become lost unless I spend thirty minutes to an hour, at least once a week, alone in a dark room with nothing but and my own thoughts. Find your own time that you can just think. Go for a walk. Think about stuff while you’re driving or when you’re not busy at work or school. The time I’ve found that is best for me is right before bed, right after taking a shower. I spend time thinking about the work I have already done and what needs to be done. I remember my roadmap and think of “the next big feature” or “this is what I’m going to do tomorrow!”

Hold yourself accountable and actually do what comes to mind. You should see yourself coming up with a lot more ideas and even being more productive if you do this.

Frustration

Like boredom, frustration is inevitable, especially with something like programming. Frustration is part of the learning process. If you go and look at my failed projects list, you might notice that I started on Unity and C# before I was finished with Scratch. Believe it or not, I once thought that working in Unity was “too difficult.” Everything is hard when you are learning from scratch (pun intended). Scratch was so small and easy to understand and Unity was so big and impossible to understand. I had barely worked with text programming languages at that point aside from Q BASIC which was and old programming language that nobody used. I was frustrated with learning the syntax and constantly getting errors. So, I went back to Scratch for a while. I went back to Unity after a flash of inspiration to work on a new tank game with improved enemy AI. Scratch, being super limited, would have not really supported my ambitions so I had to switch.

Although Tank Game 1.0 was a failure, I did learn a ton of things about programming and Unity. It was while I was working on this project that I developed a true passion for game development and programming. I worked on and added anything that I thought of. Although progress was slow, I still learned a lot.

My advice to everyone is to pick smaller projects to work on at the beginning. Don’t pick something super big like an open world RPG where you drive around a tank fighting battles in the Squirrel Army against the racoons like I did. Make a clone of a game that already exists. Take something that exists already and add your own twist to it. Your own twist is the most important part. Make a small game like pong or a short platformer or a card game. Don’t make a full god damn RPG like I did. It will never get done.

Expect frustration while you are learning new things. Ask people who know what they are doing questions. Don’t be afraid to use Google. Break your project’s goals into steps and just take it one step at a time. Don’t try to learn multiple skills at once if possible. When you are getting to frustrated, take a break. Go take a walk. Get some food and watch a movie. Come back to work with a fresh mindset. You will solve the issue much faster with a fresh mindset than one who has been smashing their head into a keyboard for two hours.

Summary

Game development is difficult to start off doing, but anyone can figure it out with enough time. You aren’t going to get to the top immediately. Learn things bit by bit. Spend some time alone with your thoughts so you can get inspired. Make the projects you want to make. Don’t overwhelm yourself with an over-the-top idea. Switch up the work you do from time to time so you don’t get frustrated and give up.

I hope that I helped some people writing this.

Anyway, next time I will actually write about Squirrel Launcher, maybe.