Posts from year 2020:
Some notes about motivation
Posted on 2020-12-31 06:37
I was asked about staying motivated when working on a game project; specifically, I’ve mentioned several times having learned useful lessons on motivation from Nicklas Nygren, and I was asked what exactly I had learned. I ended up writing quite a few words about this, and I thought I’d post them here because why not. Here goes:
Initially I had a huge problem with keeping myself interested in a game project; I wanted to make big, ambitious games but lost motivation, usually really fast, and abandoned projects because of how cool mental images of other projects seemed, even if I ended up not really doing anything towards those, either.
Over time this has gotten a lot better, and there are at least 4 major reasons responsible for this that I can think of; one of them is the one I learned from Nifflas and others come from other sources. I’ll start with the two more obvious, mundane and “boring” ones:
- I’ve grown older. Part of the initial trouble was just that I was a pre-teen or teenager and had a generally very impatient state of mind. Some people might be different as kids, but for me maturing a bit helped because it gave me a better ability to resist impatience and short-term lack of fun. For reference, I was almost 23 when I felt like I had the biggest improvement in staying motivated (due to the next point.)
- I’ve had previous successes to encourage me. There are probably lots of aspects to this, some of which I might not be aware of, but I feel that even when I still had motivation problems, getting something actually finished worked in my favour in proving to me that that is possible at all; and using that proof as encouragement allowed me to approach slightly more ambitious ideas with the assumption that they might not be insurmountable. Especially useful here were my two early “largest” projects, Floating Islands Game in 2008 and Environmental Station Alpha in 2015. The former had only 35 levels but they were by my standards very detailed, and while working on the game took a long time due to phases of lesser interest, I feel that the project was part of this process of slowly building confidence in my ability to finish things. ESA was my first personal commercial game, and its development took 3 years due to my interest lapsing every so often, but (due to the reasons listed here) I managed to come back to it despite the lapses and get it done; ESA was large enough a game that I feel that after its release the motivation issue was very significantly diminished.
- I’ve learned to avoid what I once saw an article (on The Daily Click) call “Big Game Fever“. You know those game ideas that are mega-ambitious and seem like they just ooze really cool stuff that’d be so much fun to work on and see implemented? There’s a specific category of “dream games” that are extremely unlikely to ever get finished because the dream about them doesn’t include any of the bugs, issues, difficulties and design problems and concentrates instead on the inspiring, elements that are fun to think about. Some people can take a dream project like this and slowly make it a reality, but for the most part these kinds of game ideas have seemed to me like tempting dead-ends where I might get lured to abandon my existing projects to chase after a such an idea, only to lose motivation once the realization about the true workload that’d be required of me becomes apparent. Or what’s even more common, as soon as I open a new project to start this dream idea, I realize that I don’t really have the motivation to even begin because the things I was dreaming about are so late in the process of implementing everything that would be needed. It’d be disheartening to outright tell myself that these kinds of projects will never be made, but I’ve tried to make myself aware of this pattern and while I allow myself to keep dreaming and thinking of these kinds of game ideas, I keep reminding myself that I’ll get to them eventually, but not now. And maybe in some cases that’ll be true? Either way, thinking about these overambitious ideas can also bring inspiration for other projects, so that’s nice. [The article in question can be found here.]
- Last but not least (this is the specific bit I learned from Nifflas): if you only work on a project when you have motivation or interest towards it, it’ll take a long time to get it done because there’ll inevitably be spots that aren’t fun to work on in the slightest but that nevertheless need doing. Therefore some method to get things done even when not feeling like it is needed; building a method of getting at least a little bit done every day (or every day you intend to get work done, that is) can be very very useful, because it means that the project progresses even during the lapses in interest, even if the progress is slow, and that you don’t mentally allow yourself to let go of the project and move on to other, seemingly more motivating projects. In some ways this method can be as simple as just telling yourself “I need to implement X; today I’ll do this small sub-part Y of it, and if I get that done, I can consider the day successful” and thus allow yourself not to be motivated while still getting a bit forward. Potentially once X is implemented, there could be a more fun thing on the list next that renews your interest? Obviously this has the caveat that sometimes a project e.g. turns out not to be as interesting as you hoped in general and the interest just never picks up again; it might be a hurdle to separate this from cases where the interest is just momentarily gone, but I’d imagine that there are signs that you can use for differentiation (for example what elements come to mind when you consider why you’re not feeling like working on the project.)
As an addendum to that last point, for me personally to-do lists have turned out to be great tools for keeping myself on track during times of less interest. This might be obvious, but I want to specifically mention this because I know some people don’t feel the same way and because there are specific tricks I’ve noted related to to-do lists that facilitate the positive effect. Namely, I’ve noted two types of unuseful/harmful to-do list entries that I need to avoid: large wholes condensed into a single entry, and ambiguously-scoped entries.
The former is bad because when your to-do list says “implement feature X”, you might spend a day working on said feature and at the end of the day look at your list and think “I implemented sub-features Y, Z and A of X, but the feature itself is still a bit buggy/unfinished”, and thus not get to mark the entry as done and not get the encouragement of feeling that the project went forward. Therefore for me it’s useful to break down every point into as tiny sub-entries as possible, so that when I actually get something done, it’s also reflected on the to-do list and I can get the “deserved credit” for work I did.
The second harmful type relates to to-do list entries that are vague and don’t have a well-defined endpoint. These for me are usually written like “think about X” or “try to figure out solutions to Y” and often relate more to game design issues than concrete coding problems. These are bad because if your goal is to “try to think about something”, you can technically spend forever thinking about it and still not be done in a meaningful sense. Of course at times you might find an answer you’re happy with and be able to state with confidence that you thought about it and found a solution; but oftentimes (for me at least) answers to design problems form over longer periods of time while slowly mulling over them in the back of my head. Thus these kinds of entries can again create a sense of “I’m not getting this thing done” and lessen motivation. Then again, you often do need to consider these more vague, more abstract design matters that might not have definite solutions; I’m not entirely sure how to make those work in the context of these to-do lists.
Lastly, I want to point out that what I’m saying here isn’t meant to be taken as some kind of encouragement to crunch; the point of my advice isn’t to answer the question “how to work and stay motivated even while burned out or on vacation”. It’s important to also decide times when you do other stuff, both because of your own health but also because it’s ultimately usually beneficial for your motivation, inspiration etc. as well. These points are more meant for days when you’d technically “want” or intend to work on your project but also don’t feel like it.
And that was it! I hope this was useful to someone.
[I later made a YouTube video listing basically these points; you can watch it here.]
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Mountain climber! Tags: Paper puzzles Hiking track Tags: Paper puzzles Sokosoko Tags: Paper puzzles Oddstitch! Tags: Paper puzzles Rollercoaster Tags: Paper puzzles Baba Is You Editor beta on itch.io! Tags: Games, Baba Is You, Plans, Other, Social media Baba Is You Level Editor open beta! Tags: Baba Is You, Games, Other, Plans New Celltinels puzzles Tags: Paper puzzles Turbouroboros Tags: Paper puzzles
Posted on 2020-12-27 19:50
Click for big; this time it’s really needed!
Another oddball type; I think this works better than Rollercoaster, though. Huge thanks to the people at the thinky puzzles Discord server for suggestions on how to improve the presentation for this; it’s much easier to grasp now! Anyway, some puzzles:
(Updated)
(Updated)
Posted on 2020-12-26 19:13
(Click for big!)
Hiking track! They just keep coming! Let’s see, so far I’ve come up with:
- Sentinels/Celltinels/Sentinal View/Snakcelltinels
- Ouroboros
- Seaweed
- Crossstitch
- Rollercoaster
- Oddstitch
- Sokosoko
- Hiking track
Anyway, self-congratulations aside, have some puzzles of this new type:
Posted on 2020-12-23 04:33
Click for big!
Yet another paper puzzle thing, yay. I wanted to try to make a sokoban-style block-pushing puzzle format in a paper-puzzle-compatible way. The result is a bit odd and has more components than I’d like, but it seems to work ok-ish. Some puzzles:
(Updated)
Also made another Crossstitch puzzle! (Also pancelor made a couple of these of their own, which was really sweet of them! Thanks!)
(Updated)
Posted on 2020-12-19 03:40
(Click for big)
I can’t stop!! I keep getting more idea paper puzzle ideas!!! Oddstitch is a bit silly but it turned out to be surprisingly interesting, in my opinion.
Posted on 2020-12-15 23:33
Yet another puzzle type! Not very happy with this; it’s a bit clunky. However, I thought it was fairly interesting nonetheless and made some puzzles based on the ruleset. (Click the rule image for big)
Posted on 2020-12-14 17:48
Ok! The online level-sharing is out in public beta!
As mentioned earlier, I wanted to test a method to let people outside of Steam to also be able to check out the open beta. And now there’s a way to do exactly that! Just head to itch.io and pick up the limited-time editor build; it will only be kept up-to-date until the editor releases and has some limited utilities, but it’ll let you experience the full extent of the level-sharing beta! I understand that is still not quite comparable to being able to test the editor on a Switch, but as I said earlier, that is not entirely something I could make happen. I hope people will find this method acceptable. Thanks for your support!
You can also read the Steam announcement here.
One more thing: I set up a Twitter account for gathering level codes of levels that people found cool or interesting. Do tweet at @BabaLevels if you feel you’ve found such a level! This’ll make picking the featured levels easier in the future as well.
Posted on 2020-12-13 04:50
Things have taken longer than intended, as they tend to do, but we’re almost there! In fact enough there to start publicly testing the beta! Specifically, the “open beta” bit concerns the online level-sharing feature, that has so far been off-limits outside of the closed testing group.
Since this is the first time we’re setting up something like this and we want to get an idea of how much there is to worry about and what kind of troubles and such we’ll need to prepare for, the level-sharing is quite rudimentary initially. The way it’ll work for now is:
- When you upload a level, you get a 9-symbol level code (in the format XXXX-YYYY) that others can use to download your level.
- The game contains a “featured levels” list that we’ll update every now and then by hand with new interesting levels.
- When playing a level, you can at any time report it in the pause menu. Please do this if the level contains offensive things or is otherwise thematically unpleasant.
The main way to access these features is via the Steam beta branch system; a lot of Steam players have been able to check out the progress of the editor over the past months already, albeit without the level-sharing.
Now then, I’ve felt very bad about the fact that people not on Steam haven’t been able to access the beta; it’s especially unfortunate for Nintendo Switch™ users, since they’ve had to wait the longest for updates in general. Due to this, here’s how I plan to go forward:
- The update will go live on Sunday (Dec 13th) or Monday (Dec 14th), most likely. There are still some final things to be handled (although the editor will still be slightly unfinished even when the level-sharing goes live – there will be translations & music missing, among other things), and I will try to get those sorted out this weekend.
- I have an idea that I want to try to possibly offer limited access to the beta editor for those not on Steam. This might not work, so I won’t promise that it will be a thing yet, but I will investigate the possibility and share news on it when it either becomes apparent that it could never work or that it’s feasible. Apologies, but there are factors here that are beyond my ability to affect.
- The beta won’t include the new upcoming levelpacks, as those need some more work and assets.
- The beta will be available throughout December; the actual update unfortunately probably won’t be released in 2020 after all, since even if everything went swimmingly, there are some necessary procedures we have to go through that take time. Sorry about that. Once we know for sure when everything will be done, I’ll make a cool trailer and set a release date. Apologies for missing the planned date, but I hope this public beta alleviates things somewhat.
Finally, thanks to all of you for your amazing support and kindness towards the project over the years! I really want to offer all of you some neat extra content and hope that the editor works and is fun to use. I also think that Baba & friends will appear in some future games, although nothing is set in stone regarding that.
Posted on 2020-12-12 03:48
Posted on 2020-12-10 20:49
It’s big!!
(Updated!)