So i’ve been using UE4 since it came out in 2014. Since then i have had maybe 20 projects i have started and never finished. I have ideas then give up before i have anything to show for it. The thing is i get a idea start working on it then jump over to something else and abandon the first thing. I never stay on one project for long and i hate it. I really want to finish and put something out there but its just not happening. Do any of you have advice to help me stick to something and see it through. Maybe your process to get you through things. Any advice would help Thank.
Self discipline, what else could it be, stop making new projects, when you have a new idea write it on paper or document but dont start any new project. Writing down ideas helped me a bit to stop jump from project to project not making literally any progress.
Stick only to 1 project, give yourself a timeframe to finish it, like 30 days for a simple shooter game, write down your roadmap, what you develop first week? movement and animation, second week inventory and enemy player, third week maps and gameplay decision, last week polish. And stick to it, dont be perfectionist, it doesnt matter if its sucks, see what you can achieve in that timeframe alone and ship the game, share it with people on internet/forum get some feedback, then move to a new project, or make a version 2 of your game from scratch avoiding all the pitfalls from the previous project.
Ive been jumping from project to project since 4 years ago in unity, blender modeling, programming, ue4, never finished anything and gave up, without discipline i cant get anywhere.Its good that you realised you have problem, fix it, document yourself on google/youtube there are lots of people doing the same mistakes.
Watch this video, its not UE4 related but touches a similar subject The Habits of Effective Artists - YouTube
Hope it helps, cheers.
This is a common problem in this field.
As you know games take a long time to make so having to look at the same project every day starts to get boring. which often leads to us devs switching projects. I thought years back that this was rare but now I know this is very common.
How much time do you spend until moving on to next project?
Self control dude, its harder to learn self control than it is to use Unreal. A Chicken never goes laying and sitting on new eggs before its old ones hatch. I’ve been sitting on my eggs 5 years now, and they are just about ready to hatch. So I suggest you start thinking like a chicken 
Its usually a week or two i know its not long at all.
I have had this problem too and I’m a lot better now (though I still get the urge)
My advice is contrary to most and it’s too actually just go ahead and start those other projects. At least you’re learning and getting experience and getting better. Also, you’ll start to see the blockers - the thing that make your vision a lot harder to bring to fruition than you initially anticipated. They always exist.
And finally, don’t delete your projects - instead, when you start to get the urge to change projects again, see if you have any similar to your new idea. Maybe you can adapt it. Work on that instead. Learn how to make things modular so it’s quick to adapt things.
Eventually you’ll get bored of constantly shifting and want more, you’re already starting too thus the thread. So with persistence you can use this to your advantage. Hopefully this makes sense. Maybe it’s not the best advice but it worked for me mostly.
Agree with the above comment, now that I think about it I actually went through a bunch of complete and incomplete projects before I settled on something.
2 steps.
- Start project of that kind, you know you can finish.
- Finish it.
i think one problem might be i dont really have a workflow how can is it something that is different from everyone or how do you find out what it is for you?
I would say: Take some time to plan your project out. what kind of game are you making? What is the story? what type of characters? If you invest time in planning out your idea, you will be less like ly to jump into something else.
Don’t have anything in the completed pile to discuss on game development but I do a lot of projects at work and distance learn my uni.
My suggestions are fairly simple, decide on a idea, don’t develop anything for two weeks minimum. This period is your research time, find out key challenges that will arise, is it AI or a character model - look and review resources that may help with this.
If your making a game based on real life then research locations, people get a good idea of all the assets you will need, decide on scale, how will levels be bound etc some of this applies to brand new fantasy stuff you need a catalogue of theme, images that help visualise your idea/style.
Next up break the project into tasks and create a timeline, make sure to leave some excess as tasks can take longer than expected or real life can interfere.
Now when you start development tick of your todo list one item at a time, in the sequence you designed.
This way you have milestone targets that will give you a pat on the back and you’ll see the progress. If you still decide to walk away if you return to the idea in 6months or 5years there’s enough knowledge/research that you can slot back in on the same development timeline.
Whether this will be successful for game development I don’t know but it works in my other projects in life. Hence my reading this forum and reading up on some hard to research aspects of ww2 the more I read/research the more my small concept becomes a storyline
well last year I did a 365 of doing daily 3d artwork, this year I’m planning to put some of those into unreal…
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what I’m thinking, do a small project, just anything you know you can finish - just enough so you can finish it, give it a day, a week to call it finished, and upload the result somewhere…
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giving yourself a deadline helps you push it out, and doing just anything helps you get motivated, cause you finished a thing, you’re happy…
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just completing projects is giving you some empowering feeling…
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and then you could jump at bigger stuff…
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saying all of this, I still didn’t make a single thing in UE, still learning about the ui and working out a new pipeline… will see how it goes, for starters I just plan on building scenes in UE once I get my pipeline going… at a point where I have to pause and learn new stuff…
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try and do simple things you can finish in a day, to build up your feelgood factor… just anything, stick to a steady set of tools, and play with those, if you learned enough put it to good use, don’t waste time learning if you feel it’s enough, pump it out mindlessly, interesting things happen by accident, and your brain is in creative mode when you’re not “thinking” actively, you have to relax into it and reach that flow
…just finish a project up and call it done, it doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect, just make it look finished - too much perfectionism will make you quit early