Overambition?

Do you ever get so ambitious to work on a project but somehow end up abandoning it before finishing it? even though you know you can make it but you feel like it takes very long to make.

This year I had three projects wher I bit off more than I could chew.

I think my next project is just gonna be some basic-ass Doom 1 maps.

Yes, especially back when I started mapping and all that.

2 hl projects so far this year that I couldn't make long enough, Metroid-vania style pack and Contra-themed pack then for some reason I lost interest in them over time. Every time I try to continue working on them I end up changing some minor things only. I'll probably just scale back some of these ideas and slowly release them in smaller, individual maps instead,

I used to be very eager to work on maps years ago but now it feels like an exhausting and long process.

I think I'm burning out, great!

3 hours ago, sluggard said:

I used to be very eager to work on maps years ago but now it feels like an exhausting and long process, was wondering if any others feel the same way or experienced something similar (regardless of the game or type of project)

When I was making my first wad I was having a blast, doesn't matter that the end product was pretty cruddy.

I think one of the main problems that make your hobby a chore is analyisis paralysis, you have enough knowledge to know something about your map doesn't feel right, but you don't have the expertise to solve it.

I think it also helps to be, like Tarnsman once said, somewhat nihilistic when making maps, making them with the mindset that possibly no one except you is gonna play it.

Being delusional also helps (I honestly thought that my first wad is Cacoward material).

This happens often, alas.

Oh boy.

I guess one thing that I don't technically need to include is a novel I attempted to write over the course of 10 years between the ages of 15 and 25. Because I did technically complete it, and it ended up being 300,000 words long. It was also trash. But it was a good learning experience, done at a time when I at least felt like I had the will to keep going. Also many of the ideas I used in it were actually good material, its just a simple case of "lets put everything cool I can think of in one story", leading to a convoluted mess. I realised in pulling it apart and reconsidering individual concepts in there could lead to material for projects that have much better potential. I guess to put it really simply, the story was kind of a really complicated amalgam of something like the World of Darkness setting, with vampires and werewolves and all that, combined with an indepth backstory based on Greek mythology and all of that was foreground to a cosmology based on karmic wheel. Most of it wasn't thought out too well and some of it was maybe thought out too well, but it became clear that there were good stories to be made out of the components. 

And so the one I've focused on for like 6 years or so now has been relatively strictly on a Werewolf story, one which I believe is in concept, great. Problem is I've barely written anything for it yet, except I guess a fair amount of notes. And right now I'm not even really working on it at all as I decided I needed to do something else for a while. This was probably for the best. I don't consider myself to have abandoned anything, I am more like a case of terminal procrastination. 

On 12/4/2019 at 1:51 PM, Rince-wind said:

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That's probably it, I think my problem is that I have an idea of what I'm trying to accomplish, but I keep thinking it's not quite there yet, especially because It's in an unfinished state, I mean I know I'm making this for myself but I keep thinking it takes very long to get it to where I want it to be, back when I made my first levels a couple years ago I didn't think too much of their quality or length...etc. Probably set the bar way too high for myself that I kept getting overwhelmed.

E: Yeah, definitely going to release them in slow mode in smaller bites, don't want to feel like I wasted months of experimenting for nothing, new lesson learned. don't bite more than you can chew as you said.

90% of the doom mods I make solo end up not being finished or released because I go into crunch mode and then burn myself out. I'd say the 10% that do get released are worth the hassle though.

2 hours ago, Rince-wind said:

I think one of the main problems that make your hobby a chore is analyisis paralysis, you have enough knowledge to know something about your map doesn't feel right, but you don't have the expertise to solve it.

I feel this very strongly when it comes to drawing. I don't think I need to go in detail, anyone else in here who draws will probably know exactly what I mean. I end up with a lot of sketches I hate and very little will to finish them. But then I can't improve if I don't draw, so I start sketching something new, until I realize it doesn't live up to my standards and abandon it, thus adding to the cemetery of sketches I've amassed.

@sluggard @HorrorMovieGuy

Have you tried making maps for community projects?

Maybe the deadline will force you to not overthink your map.

Yeah I did submit some for comps, but was never fully satisfied with them, but at least that made me post them.

It may be that you're being perfectionist and this can be a blocker to making progress. You need to learn to embrace imperfection and understand that the creative process is an iterative one. One way to get around this is to set yourself timeboxed challenges - what can you create from scratch in an hour? in an evening? in a week? When the time you have is limited it forces you to accept that the result will be imperfect anyway, and you'll probably surprise yourself with what you produce.

Yes, multiple times..

Those projects never got finished and sit in an unfinished state.

man this is embarrassing.

I got few project that according to some people here, is promising. but I ended up abandon it. slowly crawling back up though, and I do shitty speedmap now.

This is a massive pitfall that so many mappers fall into, myself included. It's easier to dream up ideas than it is to actually craft them into something real.

Like they say, hindsight is 20/20, and grand goals are fine, but it's much more realistic to chip away at something when you can, working towards that goal. If you throw a handful of sand behind you every day, eventually you'll look back to see a giant mountain.

On 12/5/2019 at 7:10 PM, reflex17 said:

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I usually do make progress, then for some reason I lose interest in it over time until I start another project and let the older one collect dust in my drive, perhaps it's my fault for not releasing demos more often, and I really am not being a perfectionist here. Hell I even released a couple of unfinished stuff before that got better over time with patches and people couldn't even tell they were unfinished.

4 hours ago, sluggard said:

I usually do make progress, then for some reason I lose interest in it over time until I start another project and let the older one collect dust in my drive, perhaps it's my fault for not releasing demos more often.

It's actually not too different compared to inter-personal relationships, like for example a significant other. There's the "honeymoon phase" when everything is new and motivation comes without having to try. Any relationship expert will tell you though that the long-term requires effort, in most cases.

People see screenshots of huge 32 level mapsets and it isn't apparent maybe how much work has gone in. Even something like NaNoWadmo which is a speedmap compilation requires work from the mappers and others to organize. When you're new and you feel like you have a hang on the editor, ideas can pour in while you're doing the task of pushing lines around. Sometimes these ideas go to other paths, or if the mapper has more focus, they will try to adapt those new ideas to what they're working on, or save them for the next project.

Aiming for completion or releasing demos guarantees nothing, but again it is extremely valuable to have a visual in mind to work towards. Mapping is a fun hobby, but it becomes more "work" when you have to texture an entire warehouse full of crates, just as an example. And that's just part of one level. For most folks, the sustainable type of motivation comes from within, and realizing your own goals, instead of trying to please an audience or doing something you 'think' you should do. We could talk about this all day and make a sticky post warning new mappers, but we all know that new mappers don't usually listen to this advice. Seems like it's a lesson that must be learned on an individual level by making this 'mistake'. At the end of it all though, more maps is always good, and an incomplete project is still a project.

I think this happens a lot with me and wads. I get a spark of creativity and get excited to get it done but the next day I'm just like "eh I'll do it tomorrow" then I just don't touch it for like 3 months. It sucks but whatever at least I get back into it later

Not sure if I get overambitious or creatively exhausted, but I definitely get stressed out at times, despite the fact that I haven't published any of my work yet. I don't want any of my maps to either be too similar to my other maps or anyone else's work. I tend to have a nasty habit of designing maps that are too similar to other people's work (and sometimes downright copy them), which really irritates me. I'm proud of the ones that I didn't follow this trend, e.g. my upcoming project, Perdition. That's usually why I prefer to work on just single maps - which could be intended for community projects - rather than an entire project.

many times I have great ideas but in the end I don't do them because I don't have enough skill to do it

Yes, WAY more often than I would like to admit.

Typically, my ideas are really not that grand, but it doesn't help that I have less and less desire to achieve them, in the increasingly rare moments where I actually have ideas. It doesn't help that I'm too much of a perfectionist who was simultaneously harshly criticized by everyone, everywhere, for everything for his entire life. No matter what I ever did, it never pleased, not me, and not someone else either, so I'm mostly procastinating nowadays as a result, yet still manage to get the job done when I need to.

13 minutes ago, Gaia74 said:

many times I have great ideas but in the end I don't do them because I don't have enough skill to do it

It's not so much about skill as it is about having the energy and will to continue working on it for me, the few projects I released were nothing special, they were generally okay, and the ones I really would like to finish I can't usually keep working on, either because I run out of ideas before making them long enough or get too exhausted and slowly lose interest in them over time. I'm kind of like what Scorpius described.

i mean, its good to abandon stuff.  its not like hte idea is dead.  something about seeds needing to be buried to grow.

Probably, this reminds me of my old POD mod which had a hub, and a leveling up system with upgrades and stuff, started out as a simple platforming mod but eventually grew up to have a hub with leveling and some added replay value....etc. funnily enough I haven't yet finished that one either lol.

if I had a nickel for every abandoned game in my Visual Studio projects folder, I would have enough money to buy a mango smoothie from mcdonalds 

It's for the best, no reason to stick with it if i'm no longer feeling it, I like to think of them as early sketches. That said deadlines idea sounds great, It'll def force me to think of what I can come up with in a specific time frame so I don't lose interest before finishing anything, I'll put it into practice every time I work on stuff from now on.

More times than I have fingers. Its rare when I can see a project to completion.