Hints and tips! How to finish a project?

Archive of the old editing forum
Forum rules
Before asking on how to use a ZDoom feature, read the ZDoom wiki first. This forum is archived - please use this set of forums to ask new questions.
Locked
User avatar
::Bloodfury::
Posts: 332
Joined: Mon Aug 01, 2011 7:39 pm
Graphics Processor: nVidia (Modern GZDoom)
Location: Finland

Hints and tips! How to finish a project?

Post by ::Bloodfury:: »

Hi fellas!

I'd just like to know what keeps you motivated during projects? And how do you focus to your ongoing projects?
I love making doom/hexen mods etc. But my problem is that when I start a mod etc. I rarely can finish it.
I have dozens of wads in progress. But every time I work on something, my mind figures out something new and
I start a whole different project.

Maybe I just should work in community projects and do as I am told! :D

So how do you work and organize your goals during development? :)

(desperately want to finish something!!) :D
User avatar
idGamer
Posts: 322
Joined: Mon Jul 29, 2013 12:19 pm

Re: Hints and tips! How to finish a project?

Post by idGamer »

I know how you feel; I'm almost exactly the same way. :|

The best things I can come up with are these:
1. Try to watch/play/read things that will get you interested in continuing the mod. If you want to make a big, demon-filled city, for example, play some Doom mods you like that have good city levels.
2. If possible, try to establish a schedule were you work on the mod at least once or twice a day (might not work if you have a job or school). It doesn't have to be a lot of work on the mod, but regular work can help keep you motivated to finish it.

Hope that helps. :)
User avatar
Reactor
Posts: 2091
Joined: Thu Feb 03, 2011 6:39 pm
Location: Island's Beauty, Hungary

Re: Hints and tips! How to finish a project?

Post by Reactor »

My advice is, try to merge all yer ideas into one single wad. I had exactly the same "problem", as I kept brainstormin' on new ideas, new level concepts and such. Then I asked some fellow members about if this and that can be accomplished under GZDoom, and when they said "yes", I decided to carve a niche for these special levels in the project.

The best thing is having a decent storyline which you deliberately leave open for new ideas you might figure out afterwards (this eliminates the necessity of completely rewriting sections of the WAD just because you had a change of heart in the very last minutes). For instance, I always admired good space-shooter games, and I thought it'd be a nice change to create such inter-dimensional levels, where you fly openly in a seemingly borderless space with excellent animated sky givin' the illusion of flying, you have to dodge asteroids, novas, starbursts etc. while you can grab bonus items hovering in mid-air. Soon it became evident that such level in fact can be done quite easily by a couple of invisible walls embracing a wide space, using sector-wind and zéro gravity, plus a nice animated sky. And there - I can create space-shooter-like levels, which is truly a nice change after so many walking and shooting everything in sight. This is how Asteroidz, Ast-city and Ast-rock will get into my TC.

Also, creating Easter Egg levels is also nice. As you might have noticed, Doom E1M1 appears in many other FPS games as an Easter Egg, let it be official or fan-created level. I've always loved hidden Easter Egg levels based on something irrelevant of Doom. So far, my two Easter Egg levels were Goodbye Kitty!, and Hypercubed!!!, referring to Hello Kitty and the movie Cube 2: Hypercube. I shall also build Easter Egg levels for my TC, the Ourang Medan referring to the famous ghost ship of Indian Ocean, and Lost in da Mist, referring to the Frank Darabont movie based on Stephen King's novel.

As for the storyline, it is unquestionably better to have a storyline which defines the environments, the situations, the happenings, and pretty much fixes your ideas about what levels should you create. IMHO story is very important, after all, it gives a meaning why do you actually play this wad rather than a two-sentence "story" telling you to "go there and kill thingz". As someone cognizantly pointed out years before, people like to see some new stuff in each project.

And what keeps motivating? The success so far, of course! :) ;)
User avatar
leileilol
Posts: 4449
Joined: Sun May 30, 2004 10:16 am
Preferred Pronouns: She/Her
Location: GNU/Hell

Re: Hints and tips! How to finish a project?

Post by leileilol »

disconnect from the internet and go cold turkey for a long while


that's serious advice not personal in any way if you want any project getting closer to finishing, by eliminating your source of compulsive online distractions. Even Carmack does this, doing some of his coding in hotels on occasion, just to get away from the workplace distractions, which can apply relatively to hobbyists sitting in 20 IRC channels and 704 tvtropes tabs
User avatar
Caligari87
Admin
Posts: 6236
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2004 3:02 pm
Preferred Pronouns: He/Him
Contact:

Re: Hints and tips! How to finish a project?

Post by Caligari87 »

I gotta do that sometime again. I had a couple months babysitting my niece and nephew late into the night at an apartment without internet, and finding ways to entertain myself without reddit/youtube resulted in a fair amount of productivity/fun in a weird way.

8-)
User avatar
RV-007
Posts: 1501
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2011 9:00 pm
Location: Dying w/ civilization or living after it
Contact:

Re: Hints and tips! How to finish a project?

Post by RV-007 »

Assuming that this is a general topic of project completion rather than specific motivation issues, I would say the project requires a plan. Rewards to play your freakin' projects is something good, but as long it developed something you considered as freakin' good. However, that play would usually make the modder eventually dissatisfied with the progress and the modder will go off tangent to see how other projects are being done (take that as "I'll play something else [recently I played something I don't think I should be getting into and that's not your usual off-tangent! {what mad masterminds!}]").

When you are facing a less reward than the cost in the task itself, I believe that the task could be implemented in different forms. This a shot in the dark, but you can always implement your ideas in different forms. Certain forms would be writing up a fake story, drawing some diagrams, maybe even using different development engines (although I don't recommend this as it is a off-beat path that could tie you to develop multiple projects at once [used to try making rpg projects to work, but what a payload of manual tasking {easy to navigate though}]). While other forms don't really get you to achieve that milestone, at least you are doing minimal effort. Sometimes, the process just needs to take some time. I used to have some trouble going thru on what makes the floating Icon of Sin work. I had to base it off my previous work and do extensive testing for a passable survivable challenge. While time is of essence, sometimes some project milestones just require more time/focus to itself and doesn't want to share it with other projects.

Rewards, implementation forms, and time may not even cut it. Planning is utmost essential regardless of how lazy you get (planning on how to work with laziness is also taken into consideration). One don't expect to turn into a genius and make some theoretical computations based on some mathematical theorems. Speaking of planning, I believe that motivation is actually a momentary impulse regardless of definition. Let's say you want to make some badass weaponry combos based on a certain theme. You can always take root into motivational mediums (such as music) for tinkering of a project idea. However, motivational mediums can only go so far as to provide some means of a thought process to commit to that project milestone. If you got stuck on making a unique weapon idea, you are faced with going to test rewards, implementation forms, time, being lazy, planning, and that sometimes costly motivational drive just to finish that project milestone.

It's the micro and macro of the project that is taken into the spectrum. Some live and some die. I believe that BloodFury is on the right track, but of course, I cannot say how a modder should define his projects.
User avatar
Caligari87
Admin
Posts: 6236
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2004 3:02 pm
Preferred Pronouns: He/Him
Contact:

Re: Hints and tips! How to finish a project?

Post by Caligari87 »

Holy freaking nested parentheticals, Batman.

8-)
User avatar
Nash
 
 
Posts: 17501
Joined: Mon Oct 27, 2003 12:07 am
Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Contact:

Re: Hints and tips! How to finish a project?

Post by Nash »

That was quite a speech, coming from someone who refuses to update his drivers and hardware...
User avatar
RV-007
Posts: 1501
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2011 9:00 pm
Location: Dying w/ civilization or living after it
Contact:

Re: Hints and tips! How to finish a project?

Post by RV-007 »

Speaking of drivers and hardware, one must not forget that things can go haywire when you want to try a super surprise. I just spoil it like it is and upload as much updated files as I possibly can.
User avatar
GooberMan
Posts: 1336
Joined: Fri Aug 08, 2003 12:57 am
Location: Helsinki, Finland

Re: Hints and tips! How to finish a project?

Post by GooberMan »

Locked

Return to “Editing (Archive)”