I am an unfortunate victim of perfectionism.

[Kingdaro]

I am making this topic because I am absolutely fed up with the way I do things. Rather, the way I don't do things.

I've managed to "finish" a few games, but only incredibly small games compared to those only slightly larger in scale that I'd like to complete. I'm no professional, but I've been doing this for at least long enough that I know the kind of scale I should be going for here. Or maybe I'm just wrong and stupid?

I seem to just repeat this same pattern:

> Have idea
> start coding idea
> idea looks great and/or plays out pretty fun
> build upon idea, e.g. add something as simple as a title menu with "play" and "exit" options
> become annoyed with game architecture somewhere along the way, usually because of some flaw or some repetition i always end up having to do
> Try to fix flaw with game architecture, but become frustrated in the process and recode it from the ground up
> Trying to "fix" the rest of the game to work with the new architecture becomes tiresome, so I end up recoding that as well
> That becomes tiresome, so delete project folder and start over. Return to any one of the above steps and repeat.

And repeat and repeat and repeat. I have a nice, simple idea I want to make into something playable and presentable, especially when friends thinks it looks cool and I think it'd be cool for them to play it. But I can't f574385cking do anything because I keep f05non8cking getting stuck on fjon3495cking game architecture and it's frustrating me to the ends of the Earth and I absolutely f059j83f98vcking hate it.

What annoys me even more is when I look at the code behind other games that have the same kinds of architecture flaws and annoyances as my own and I've acknowledged the fact that code can't ever be perfect a long time ago. But at this point, it seems like I can either recode from the ground up, or just stare at my text editor for an hour, trying to overcome the will to continue to use, what is in my mind, a horribly broken system.

My problem: I know my problem, and I've tried so many times to overcome this dumb problem but I absolutely f903n0gnmosfcking cannot and it's driving me insane. It almost drives me to tears knowing how many people I've disappointed with the promise that "it'll just take a week or so, probably less" when I end up spending a month just to get a f89t39gocking rectangle moving around on the damn screen.

Giving up is the last thing I should do, so should I just... wait? Is it just a phase? Am I going to get over it eventually? Does it take more than 4 or 5 years to do so? I can't tell at this point whether or not I'm just immune to progress, and at times, it does make me want to quit. I go into dumb depressive states for days or even weeks at a time and I return to the same rhythm, only to disappoint myself again and again and again and a g a i n.

I'm so. So frustrated. This endless cycle is consuming my life and more importantly my mental and bodily health. I want it to stop. I don't know if this is the right place to shit this massive rant, but I've gotten to a point where I really don't know what else to do. Other than cry, that is. I don't want advices, support, or pitiful 'pats on the back' because that doesn't do shit. If anything, I'm just tired of silently walking the sidelines, seeming normal outside of vague edgy tweets.

I'm just... really tired. I'm sorry.

[mr_happy]

Welcome to my world.

[zorg]

Sadly, this happens to me as well, and i couldn't solve it yet either. :c
Then again, i am stubborn enough to just not care about it, and code ahead, maybe some iteration i can get away with patching all the little parts that i don't like so it'll feel good enough for me to not scrape it wholly...
Also, if i tire of programming, i have a few other choices i can do in the meantime, like composing, and it seems to help me some.

[bobismijnnaam]

I think it's all about the goals one sets for themselves. Do you want to finish a game that badly?

Really?

Just think about it.

For few seconds, maybe even a minute, think about it.

Personally speaking, finishing a game isn't that important. Maybe you just want to program cool stuff. That's okay. Who cares if you start a new project every once in a while? If you really want to finish a game, push through. But if you don't, well, what's the rush?

[Kerrigan]

If your larger projects start to drag, or get difficult or tedious or repetitive or any mix of the above take a break. Don't delete anything, keep thinking about it, write notes every now and then to keep it fresh, meanwhile work on another small project and finish that, then go back to the larger project.

Finishing a project can be a huge motivation boost no matter how small, the lack of progress in larger projects is to be expected for a long time in development, and that drains motivation rapidly. If you do take a break to work on a smaller project that you'll finish you'll have an opportunity to learn how to adapt your larger project to a new architecture or add a new mechanic or whatever and see progress of it at the same time.

Give it a go and see how well it works for you. Ludum Dare's just around the corner .

[paulclinger]

I used to suffer from this as well, but I don't anymore (even though I'm still a perfectionist). Here are some things that helped in my case.

I think the first thing is to acknowledge what you are dealing with, which you already did. In my case, I'm currently working on a sizable (10k+ lines) Lua project, which a good chunk of it done before me, so I'm looking at the code that can be done differently, but am limiting my design/architecture changes only to those parts that can immediately benefit from it. This leads to some inconsistencies in how things done in different places, but I'm good with that as the consistency improves with time.
The second thing is to have "this game has no architecture" attitude and keep it intentionally messy (at least for some time). It may help to counterbalance the tendency to redo the framework every time you come up with a new design.
The third thing that may help is to simply limit the commit size to some number of lines and make sure that the project/game works after that commit. This will limit your code changes to be relatively small and still workable, which means that you can then abandon your redesign and still continue with your main goal (getting the game out).

One other thing I keep in mind is that in many cases systems beat goals; if you have a system that tells you to code your game for 2h every day, then it doesn't matter how much time you spend on your framework redesign, you are still making progress on your game (especially if you combine it with #3, which limits framework changes to be small and keep the project running). Hope this helps. Paul.

[Tesselode]

That's a pain. Back before my relatively long break from game dev, when I was like...13?...I couldn't finish anything. I would always get caught up in game architecture issues, and it always seemed more appealing to me to go back and redo the architecture instead of moving on to developing less fun parts of the game. So it's not the same problem as you, but I've been stuck in that loop, too. It sucks, ugh. I probably can't help you, unfortunately. My problem wasn't really perfectionism.

Maybe you should take a break? If game dev is affecting your health, then it's not worth doing. Your physical and mental health is important; put that first.

[D0NM]

Welcome to my world.

ahaha ))
Well, I have another problem ))) It is even worse.

Use some stuff like Milestones.
Use on-line TODO services. They might help

Or just give up.

[mr_happy]

Or just give up.

Never! I have half a dozen complete games made in the last 20 years... I'm sure there's a few more yet to come (I'll ignore the hundreds of incomplete ones)

[josefnpat]

I come across threads and developers like this time and time again.

The problem is attention span.

Understanding your attention span for project completion is very important. Figuring out how long you can pay attention to a single project before giving up or moving onto a new idea is important. It requires being honest with yourself. When I first started making games (as an adult, mind you!) I only had a few hours of attention span. I made some pretty bad games, but I did complete them and release them. I got feedback and learned new things. I then started doing lots of game jams (48/72hr) and that helped a lot about understanding the entire pipeline of making games and working with others when making games. I then helped make some games professionally (~few weeks of attention at a time). I then spent all of 2015 doing 1GAM (One Game A Month) where I would spend an entire month making a game. You can find all of my games, from humble beginning to high ranking ludum dare entries here: http://missingsentinelsoftware.com/ (Yes, some of the older ones are awful!)

Remember: art is never finished, merely abandoned. Work on a minimal viable product (MVP), and release it according to your attention span. You'll find with a deadline that is appropriate to your attention span that you will learn to hit the release time.