Hitting The Wall..

[MJ]

A stressed mapper is not a good mapper. Properly planning your map without even touching hammer is also key. Set your goals!

[Crackerjack]

I had this problem for a fuckin year... what I did is a couple things really, I just didnt think about modding or mapping, excersized, and actually began doing alot of painting. Spay painting that is, designing stuff like that is alot of fun. other than always having to sitting down to design a map or shit on the computer. Basically dont sit down anymore.. your body hates that you sit alot! Right now its fuckin with my head cause now i have a job where i sit down all day in front of comp

[Kosmo]

I had this problem for a fuckin year... what I did is a couple things really, I just didnt think about modding or mapping, excersized, and actually began doing alot of painting. Spay painting that is, designing stuff like that is alot of fun. other than always having to sitting down to design a map or shit on the computer. Basically dont sit down anymore.. your body hates that you sit alot! Right now its fuckin with my head cause now i have a job where i sit down all day in front of comp

I go to the gym 3 times a week, it does miracles.

[D3ads]

And d3, for you obviously its because you have unrealistic goals, like making massive mods or porting GTA or Quake2 to HL1 when you cant model, code or texture and have problems finishing a map.

Uhm, I never wanted to port GTA to HL1, I was working on a smaller mini-game influenced by GTA gameplay of course it didn't work out but I did well with what I made. As for porting Quake 2, wtf? That's just pointless...

Oh and I can texture thankyou very much! I also do the odd skin, multi-talented me, there's a goldmine under lock and key that is my hard-drive and one day I'll show it to you all

As it stands I have 35mb of textures, 50 mb of skins, shedloads of concept pieces, scripts, sprites, storyboards, 5 half-constructed maps and loads of other stuff that makes up about 250mb of data thus far. It's not like I've stopped work completely, I still work on it every day in some shape or form, so it's not exactly dying on it's feet. I know that my goals are semi-unrealistic but as I've said before, I'm in no rush to finish the project, it'll take however long it takes or as 3D Realms best put it 'When it's done'.

[Zacker]

I am wondering how you industry level designers handle this. For us others it doesn't really matter even if we don't map for several weeks. But what if you are supposed to be mapping 8 hours a day???

[RD]

d3 i just meant you should work on smaller projects, because they usually are much bigger than you expect, and projects that seem big but doable turn out to be impossibly massive

[hamst3r]

A deadline does wonders for me. There are times when you simply have to hunker down and work on something even if you don't want to and what you're doing is crap; something good will usually come of it

I set goals for myself, while mapping. I'll sit down and be like, okay you want to finish ct spawn in two hours, if not you a failure.

Also alot of music inspires me to continue mapping/ work harder. While mapping I can't have rap or any real rock on; I have to have somting light hearted with a good beat; like old ska, trance, alternative, exc.

[Pericolos0]

I am wondering how you industry level designers handle this. For us others it doesn't really matter even if we don't map for several weeks. But what if you are supposed to be mapping 8 hours a day???

where i work there is a masseuse

[zpanzer]

i begin to read the entire Ctrl+Alt+Delete comics again and again until i think its boring and begins to map again.

Just a question of how sane u are after it

[Skjalg]

Theres three things that work... The fast way, the long way and the way in between

The short way is to sit down and just make yourself do it. I know this sounds hard, but before you open hammer just visualize what you want to do, then go do it. Make yourself do it. If you get tired after a couple of minutes, just tell yourself you're not a looser and you want to finish it.

Start working out, this is something that will get your spirits up. The thing with mapping is that if you hit that wall, its because deep inside you think you're not good enough.. You dont have enough selfesteem (no offence^^). Working out helps alot with that.

The long way is to just toss any ideas of mapping out the door and go do something else for a couple of years...

It'll take a while :]

My suggestion is a good mix of the two first tips :]

[Taylor]

I opened Hammer today and have also reached a wall, the specifics are "Extra App ID set to 211, but no SteamAppId." According to the reliable Internet this was fixed in the latest Steam update, which is fantastic. I personally can't wait until my Steam realises it hasn't got it yet.

[Acumen]

mh, this is really annoying

the "do something different" method doesn't quite work for me. Distracted for some hours but in the end you sit there and still have no more motivation. In the past 3 Years I had this for numerous times and the only way I overcame this was to literally force myself doing it. I just started my modeling program (not quite a mapper, sry) and get started. I said go and work on it for 3 hours straight now or else theres no chocolate pudding for you tonight

And it worked, but it's really really hard, but once you're done then, you have such a strong motivation again, which is undescribable

Thing was for me, that i originally did player modeling for mods. And I was like in 5 mods at the same time (and it was just a hobby) and I didn't do anything else. So first time i lost this motivation was at the peek period of this. I left 3 mods and "recovered" somehow with forcing me doing it again. Next time i felt that motivation is almost at 0 I took a break for 3-4 months. I didn't do no work for any mod but still people came asking me whether I did progress or not.

For me this is pretty much destroying any motivation. When I tell people that i will take a break for (lets say) 2 months and still they keep bugging me. Most of the time right then, when I started up my modeling program.

The ultimatively last time I lost motivation was when I entirely stopped doing player models afterwards. I just couldn't do it anymore, somehow. It always took me 2-3 days of full concentration to do a nice one and yet it wasn't all that fun anymore (which a hobby should be, imo). So now I'm doing only environment models, which is so much more fun for me nowadays. Maybe this is what I needed all the time. I don't know, I just know that there was something that didn't allow me to model more player models without dying of frustration.

I think this kinda was like a burnout syndrome, where I just spend tooo much time on this mod work and lost all fun. I'm sure I could go back to player modeling again, but I just don't want to, cause I'm doing this for fun, in the end.

But if you have deadlines I really think you just have to force yourself and tell yourself that this supposed to be fun

You know, this sounds so easy "yeh go do something else "yeh, just force yourself". Everyone handles such situations different and there's no ultimate solution, unfortunately you have to find out for yourself what works best for you

Some people just loooove this work so much, that they hardly have such problems. They even do things in their freetime when they aren't on tough deadlines. It highly depends on the person doing this.

The only thing I know for sure, the longer break you take, the harder it is to get back in all this, cause you might have lost motivation completely or like many others said in here, even found something else that is more fun than what you used to do. Ask yourself what is more important for you

And I think if you overcome the first motivation downfall, afterwards you simply need to be careful. As soon as you notice, this is gettin on your nerves, THEN do the "do something different" method and not when it's already too late. In my opinion that is the much better way: to not even let this happen with trying to recognise the signals your body gives you.

THEN do something different and return to work with a fresh mind

If you're able to do so, you're on a good way

[Schmung]

At present I'm just doing 15 minutes at a time on the map and 15 on the model. Seems to be working, though progress is very slow. Once I'm done, I'll leave it for a while before looking into mapping for Source.

[IR]

I am wondering how you industry level designers handle this. For us others it doesn't really matter even if we don't map for several weeks. But what if you are supposed to be mapping 8 hours a day???

I was wondering about that when i first got in the industry, how am i gona manage doing this 8 houres a day and not hit any walls, strange thing is, i dont, , I think the main reasons are:

your working way longer on a map then you would doing it custom, more like several months, so basically your working in the same "theme" which helps because you can really focus on one specifc theme rather then doing a map then having to think about something new and entirly diffrent, for the next map within month or 2.

Also your not on your own doing everything by yourself, you have an art-director artists that creat work, and in my case a leveldesigner around you, that you can consult or get new input or ideas from, its a team efford.

Theres also ofcourse people expect you to do it, you get paid to do it, if a specifc area is set and idea is set even though you've never done it before, you cant say, "mm ive never done this dont really know how to do this so ill do something diffrent", which often results in loss of focus on your map or hitting a wall because it didnt turn out like anything you had in mind.

your working on a game, you see it evolving around you everyone is putting an efford in it, which is highly motivative and stimulating, its the same as working on a mod, except lets face it with mods often theres no progress atall because half the team doesnt feel like doing anything dont have time, or hit "a wall"

often for people in the game industry though, that came from custom comunity, theyll hit a wall instantly or not do any work anymore at home

I think its because, theyre focused at work they cant afford to hit a wall there, or just dont feel like doing anything game related afther 8 houres or more at "work"

all in all, working in the game industry has been awsome sofar, and even though imo the best preperation for the indus. is mod community rather then college, its quit abit diffrent

[kleinluka]

seconded....good post ir

i'll write more when im back home