MOTIVATION SAPPING DUNGEONS/MAPS... HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THEM?

I use some types of dungeons:
-Dungeons of go of point A to point B like FF normally
-"Growth Dungeons" as I call, that need for example move some statues that
need to be moved from switches in different maps (with puzzles too)
the problem of this type of dungeons is that need make a design previously with care and need a lot of work but I like em, someday I wanna make a RPG with all the dungeons like wild arms hehe
-Some labyrinth type dungeon

And about locations, I usually use different styles of areas (from cave mines, forests, sewers, up to floating island)

Well, if the result of what I'm working on is going to kind of suck, I try to find a way to make it more appealing. 100% natural cave dungeons are boring - so I don't make them. They're probably gonna be just as boring for the player as they are for me. I can do better than that. I can replace it with a cave that is also the site of a massive 50-yard-diameter drill that's boring down into the earth's core, or something like that. Or if that still seems to boring, I can make it so the drill site was abandoned because they drilled too deep and demons started emerging. That's way more interesting than just a stupid cave. Obviously that specific example won't work in every game, but there's always something you can add to make your scenarios cooler.

However, making it more satisfying doesn't change the fact that sometimes I just don't feel like spending 20 hours in Photoshop, don't feel like coding and debugging my puzzle ideas. Making it more interesting to create also makes it more time-consuming to create, so it's a mixed blessing. Sometimes you just want to get it over with, not make it better. In those cases it can be helpful to make and finish something really cool right beforehand - you'll have gotten the ball rolling, and you'll be feeling good about your design process, and hopefully momentum will keep you moving.

i... pretty much enjoy mapping anything tbh. XD Or i can't really think of anything i wouldn't want to map anyways.

What helps me though if i really don't map something... is to play dance/catchy music, sit in a room w/ someone, and take little breaks/rewards when i accomplish something.


If i had to give anyone advice, i'd just say to try to balance the negative situation with something positive-- if you keep forcing yourself to do something, you're going to develop a mindset of constantly hating it and seeing it as a threat.

If I start to map a dungeon that is boring, there's no other way but to grind through it. The map isn't going to finish itself, and from experience, it's not going to magically be more fun when I return to it later. So it's better to do it now than later, unless there are mechanics that I haven't fully figured out yet, and that's what's causing the slowdown.

Playing through RMN games, I really dislike maps that serve no purpose. Maps that break immersion, or are merely there to showcase your mapping skills, but rather I like maps that serve a function or have some sort of interesting twist to them. I don't like generic caves, I'd rather romp through a decaying swamp with skeletons, or sky city with towering skyscrapers, than just... generic forest.

author=Darkflamewolf
Haven't touched my game in two months because I'm just stuck on how to proceed with this ice cavern. I've made 3 already in my game and each one has a unique quirk to it that sets it apart from the others. This fourth (and final) ice cave, I have no idea what to do. And so thus, it has sat on the shelf until inspiration hits. This is only the second time I've been this uninspired to work on my game. The first time was for a rather lengthy snow-forest area.

Well, here are some random-ass options off the top of my head:
- Add a giant drill that's boring down into the planet's crust
- Have a meteor impact in the middle of the cave, creating a crater that intersects with parts of the passageways
- Underground ice ninja castle
- Frozen underground waterfall, the water frozen into ice mid-fall
- Sunken ship, which the ice has frozen around and above
- Ancient dragonshrine
- Filled with clusters of eggs from eldritch creatures
- Reuse one of your existing ice caverns, because holy shit ice caverns are not common enough to have four of them in a single game unless your game takes place in an underground dwarven society on Hoth, or on the Elemental Place of Ice Caverns


Here's something I read recently on someone's blog. The basic idea here is to come up with a bunch of cool ideas for content appropriate to your core idea, before the game starts.

author=OokamiKasumi
Brainstorm a list of possible vignettes.
Vignettes are mini-stories or side-adventures inside the main story. This is just "here’s a bunch of ideas for awesome vignettes within that genre."

A werewolf vignette list might include:
Waking up in a strange place with no memory of how you got there and blood all over your tattered clothes.
Battling another werewolf for dominance in the local pack.
Dealing with a werewolf hunter who’s trying to track you down and shoot you with a high-powered rifle with silver bullets

A super spy vignette list might include:

• Infiltrating a foreign military base to find the secret files.
• Assaulting the master villain’s underwater lair with a team of Navy SEALs.
  
• Skiing down the Swiss Alps in a running gun battle on skis.
  
• Seducing the villain’s daughter to get her to betray her mother (and maybe falling in love in the process).
  
• A totally awesome car chase in a tricked out sports cars through the narrow and winding streets of Rome.
  
• Escaping from a horrible death trap.

Some of the vignettes might be incompatible, and they might be in entirely the wrong order. That’s fine. My goal at this stage is to come up with cool ideas for vignettes that will be fun to write and play.

Also, note that while there are characters in these vignette descriptions, those characters are totally undefined archetypes at this point. I haven’t decided if the villain has a daughter, I’ve just brainstormed the idea that a seduction scene could be cool and in genre.

One part of the brainstorming process is to...

Make sure you have all of the tropes you need!
I might look over the super spy list and realize, "Hey, the high-stakes gambling game in a tuxedo is totally a trope that we’re missing," so I add another vignette for that. Anything that you would feel like "there totally needs to be X" belongs on the list.

At this point...
We have an unwieldy mess of vignettes in no particular order–and typically way too many, like 15 or 20 vignettes for a 10-ish vignette game.

We then start doing the work to make it coherent and more satisfying. Pick the themes, (also known as the Premise.) Select core conflicts/issues in the game.

These let you make choices about what stays and what's cut based on the overall design you're aiming for.

I feel like if you plan your dungeons like this, you won't end up with anything you're not excited about. Even if it's filler, it won't feel like typical video game filler - it'll feel like it makes good use of the ongoing themes in your game.

Now, sometimes RPGs have these stupid parts called "towns" that really don't have anything to do with any scenario or event you're creating, they're just sort of... in the way. Towns aren't all like that, but a lot of them are. These shitty between-dungeon towns where nothing happens definitely sap my motivation, and so my solution is to try to not make towns unless they're seriously relevant somehow to the story. If I just need a "safe hub location" for gameplay purposes, I don't need a new town every time, I might just need new items for sale or a new building unlocked in an existing town. Or I might just need a heal point and a traveling salesman.

The point is that if I can't find a way to make the result interesting and cool and important enough to motivate me, I can still at least find a way to not do it. Usually, anyway.

Oh man, if a few hours is all the delay you're dealing with, you don't really even have a problem. My problem is when I spend weeks and weeks without getting anywhere.

Yeah, if I spend too much time with a project, let alone a computer screen, I go ride my bike, hang out with friends, anything not related to rpgmaker. It is definitely a sign that you should be doing something else for a little while. Biting the bullet should really be a last resort kinda deal.

Well, if it's dungeon, I usually use dungeon generator till I get basic shape that is good enough for me. Then I just add stuff to this dungeon and do this till it's done. But it only really works in case of dungeons, not towns or forests, so this is very specific tip. But pregenerating dungeon, then customizing it to your needs is less work than making one from scratch.

I deal with it by making sure I never make anything big and boring enough, ever. If I find myself in this position I just drop the thing boring me and work around it somehow. If it's boring for me it's probably going to show in what I'm making and turn out badly anyway.
This is the privilege I have as a nonpaid worker and I'll be damned if I don't use it.

bake cinnamon buns, ask girlfriend to make out, play video games, flip through tumblr forever, cry into my pillow, stare at the ceiling, drink heavily, commit mass genocide, invent a virus that will wipe out the human race in 7 minutes, summon a demon from the dark abyss to do my bidding but fail and become possessed...

you know, the usual stuff I do when I procrastinate.