Coding burn out

Oh, how I love you computer - debugging is sheer bliss...

Was writing something about burning out while writing game code on another forum and aught to be included here.

Just describing personal experience in terms of burning out - I think to a certain extent you can develop as much as what you've already made is somewhat fun already. It's kind of like a budget - if what you've already coded is a bit of fun, that gives you the drive to code more. The tactic is to then take that and code something else which is a bit fun. Which in turn gives you more 'budget'. Because if you go and code some monsterously huge code which is all support infrastructure and boring, you'll likely burn yourself right out/run out of budget.

Anyway, trying to do a massive project which is completely boring and even painful to look at until it's 100% complete, I think, is a recipe for burn out. Try and always make little things that'd be fun right now, even before the projects fully complete.

Roll to dodge writers block

I made up that draft of a browser mmorpg (written in game maker), but

A: It's not that attractive to look at and far more importantly

B: Trying to impliment it into what I know of browser coding right now would exceed the VITAL effort to reward ratio.


Basically the effort to reward ratio is where alot of burn out or writers block comes in. It basically means trying to put in more effort than you have a certain feeling you will be rewareded for it. Maybe you think all the coding will turn out awesome - but at a certain point during it you feel the effort building up and you haven't had any actual fun out of it yet. That makes the coding a chore or even downright repulsive and it burns you out.

I like my draft, but I'm going to instead take a simple random element and see if I can get that to show up in the code from the tutorial I followed. Then I'll see if I can get that random element to go to the database. Then I'm going to work in a cash in your chips won so far or keep gambling them for the chance of winning ten times as many chips, mechanism.

I could post the draft - it's ugly to look at, but fun to play (kind of when you bake a cake that looks ugly but is yummy to eat). Comment if you want to see it! But I doubt anyone will commnet... :( ...so I'll not doubt continue with my plan not to post it.