Mappers block?

Don't map for a a lot of years, worked for me

Did you playtest what you was working on? That might inspire?

You probably just burned out. At some point it happens in all creative fields, to pretty much all creative people I've met. The best thing you can do is take a break -- you could work on something else creative, or just be a bit passive for a while. Maybe look through your steam library and find a singleplayer game you never completed and make it your goal to get through it. Eventually a spark of mapping passion will reignite when you're ready to pick up the hammer again.

I think the most important thing is to not force yourself to mapping.

Show what you currently have to others and figure out if it's worth continuing. You'll either get a motivational boost to continue it or scrap it. Sometimes being freed to start fresh is motivation enough. Playing games and looking at other mappers work can work, too. But when the skill gap is too big you will likely get the opposite result.

Take part of competitions. A time limit of week to a month works like a charm when you've worked on a single map for three years.

Or buy a fashionable item in the official MapCore store for +10 inspiration!

Quote from FrieChamp

Or buy a fashionable item in the official MapCore store for +10 inspiration!

That is cool I will get the blue one with only the logo soon

Just do something else. It will come back when you get into another game or get some great inspiration from something.

Don't push yourself to do it if your heart isn't in it, there's nothing worse than feeling like you have to work when you're not up to it or your mind is elsewhere. The important thing is to have fun, if you're finding it a chore, stop and do something else. I recommend learning to texture if you don't already have experience with that, I find balancing between texturing and mapping keeps me focused.

Quote from clankill3r

I think the most important thing is to not force yourself to mapping.

I would say it's exactly the opposite. Sure if it's just a hobby for you fine. If it's your job or what you intend to be your job then you have to learn to stay productive even when you don't feel creative.

I usualy work on some technical stuff when i'm in that situation. Optimization, bug fixing, colissions etc. Or i look up some stuff that motivates me like other peoples work, cool art, architecture etc. Or i learn some stuff from tutorials.

Procrastination is the worst habbit for an artist or designer so try to fight that.

I wrote an article on this specific issue over a year ago

Overcoming Creative Block in Level Design

Hope this helps

I like to do the mundane when I feel the creative juices not flowing or there isn't work in the pipeline for a day or two. Cover, navigation, and tech stuff. (Depends on the game of course)

Something I've been doing lately is small sandboxes where I have encounters and fronts. To see how AI navigates and set up dynamically.

I agree with Step. Also I noticed when I don't have inspiration it comes from thinking to complex. Sometimes by just starting on something with creating some basic shapes, the inspiration will kick in automatically.

Another thing that really helps is gathering reference, I'm always amazed how a small detail in a photo can end up in the inspirational spark you needed.

I like what Steppenwolf said. If you get in the habit of procrastinating, procrastinating will become a habitual behaviour which you'll find harder and harder to break. If you're at burnout stage then you need to take time off. And I don't mean from mapping, I mean from the computer at large. Turn the thing off for a week and go do other stuff. Go sit in a park and enjoy nature a bit, cook something tasty, meet with friends or something. You'll likely find that by the end of the week you'll have at least an inkling of what you'd like to acheive next.

For me I know I used to lose a lot of motivation when I showed my stuff to people. I could work on something happily in private but as soon as I showed it to someone I would get the gratification of feedback and lose the immediate desire to continue. I think this is because I am no longer doing it for me, I'm doing it for the feedback. I have managed to largely overcome that (and other stuff) purely by being aware of it. Maybe instead of focusing on getting motivated, try focusing on getting un-demotivated, if that makes sense.

Or just learn something new. That always gets me going.

There are also expectations, when you gain a reputation you want to keep it going, preferably in the right direction. I fit somewhere between the popular comments in this thread, it really depends if it's professional or personal work, but I do lean towards the burned out comment, level design is very unique, it takes 6 months or so of dedication to pull something great out of the bag. Environment art is a little more separated, you can bounce back and forward for all the different elements to keep yourself entertained, see great progress, almost a finished asset in relatively short periods of time. Even then, it's defo similar for every role out there.

So, a good solution would be to invest time in both the artistic, gameplay and performance of your levels, even if your not an expert in them all. This is pretty much what I do on a day to day basis.

I like to use references/stuff in real life to find inspiration and get me excited. The main project for CSGO I'm working on right now was heavily based off some of the architecture and layout of a building from my school.

When i started mapping, i kind of drew just everything out of my head. That well dried about over a year ago. Since then, i have not been able to draw things out like i used to. Some people go ahead and take photographs of real life locations. I have been thinking doing so and then having inspiration from them maybe. But returning to old work that's laying on a disk sometimes helps, i pulled out old map of mine and made it completely playable during this winter vacation of mine.