[Boomer20]

So over the last couple of days I have really been looking into get back into finishing my mini-campaign.
The big issue though has been motivation. It's not that I don't want to do it. It's more the I feel as though I can't sit down and focus on actually making it. The ideas are there its the making all the complexity of events.
To those more experienced FREDers what are your tips to help build motivation?
At the moment I finally sat down and play tested what I had and started to fix bugs in my first phase of the first mission and I have found that has helped the motivation but I feel like there could be better options.
Cheers in advance
Boomer20

[karajorma]

Funnily enough I have the reverse issue. I'm never more motivated than when I've got a bunch of complex FREDding to do. It's the idea and the non-complex FRED stuff that bores me.

[Boomer20]

The dilemmas of FREDing.
I won't lie after making progress and crushing a few bugs the motivation is going up and the excitement of solving bugs is making me more motivated.
I'm just interested in seeing what people do or find helps with improving motivation. May help me when the interest is there but the motivation isn't.

[procdrone]

motivation, yea, thats one a serious issue here.

Well, sometimes, i do play some epic campaigns, missions from great mods out there... maybe see a cool thing i could make in my mod too... anyway, always when seeing Freding mastership, my motivation bumps up.

[Axem]

Motivation is a hard thing to grab out of thin air. Sometimes I've got a strong drive to FRED a whole mission in a day, other days I'm as productive as a rock at the bottom of a lake.

But I've found some things that help. Divide your tasks into smaller piecemeal things and make a list of them. As you complete tasks, don't delete them. Keep them and just mark them as completed (with something like a strike-through or any to-do like check mark things). For one your daunting tasks seem a lot smaller and as you near the end of your goal, you'll see a whole bunch of check marks that help reinforce you that "you're almost there".

Play through your own missions. Playing the mission before can help get you in the mood for what needs to come next. But generating internal motivation can be real hard to generate.

Post previews of your mod, post pics, post videos, post snippets of stuff so people can comment on it and go "oooh, aaah". Don't be worried if you don't think you've got much to show off. It's been real quiet lately for any campaign news, so its not like you're going to get overshadowed. You're then also making a commitment to people reading that "This will be playable one day," which can get you places. And re-reading the comments left months later can help too.

And if you can, find a dependable play-testing partner. The feedback they give can really get you going forward. On every mod team I've been on, teams have always been the most productive when people are working together. Try to take advantage of that feedback loop!

And to any non-modders reading, any kind words, even if you think they're just the same old type thing, can really help push a modder (or anyone creative) on a path of productivity.

[Lorric]

I just want to say that is a brilliant post Axem.

And if you can, find a dependable play-testing partner. The feedback they give can really get you going forward. On every mod team I've been on, teams have always been the most productive when people are working together. Try to take advantage of that feedback loop!

In particular I can relate to this keenly from Frontlines. The playtesting partner was largely me, and the team was Black Wolf, Lepanto and I, and the progress we made was excellent and exactly what you describe.

[Black Wolf]

Yep, Lorric is correct. A decent playtester who'll give you rapid, detailed and regular feedback is more valuable than any other aspect of FREDding when it comes to helping to keep you motivated.

One other suggestion - and I want to emphasize early on that this is one to be used sparingly - is that if you're stuck on a particular mission, consider adding a new ship (assuming your setting allows it). I find that including a new ship that I haven't played with before can add new tactical dimensions to a mission, and make it at least a little fun to play on your thirtieth run through, because you're still probing and investigating this new addition to the fleet that you probably haven't had time to learn about in the same way we have the existing FS fleets.

But again - you've got to be careful with that. Add too many ships and feature creep becomes an issue. Get too dependent on new ships to drive storylines, and you have a whole new set of issues - one of the things I found with Shadow Genesis, for example, was that it dumped a whole bunch of new ships on me over the course of several new missions, and I never got to find out enough about them to learn how they worked and how I should deal with them, or even which one was which. Worse yet, if you do this too much, you soon find yourself wanting specific ships that you can't get from the wiki, and that slows FREDding [i[way[/i] down.

So yeah. Use it sparingly. But consider it if you're really struggling every now and again.

[Boomer20]

Thanks for the tips guys and I'll definitely give that a try Axem. With my first mission in my mini-campaign getting closer to actually being finished (hopefully  ) I might start screenies and dialogue stuff to get some interest....couldn't hurt right.

[procdrone]

Boomer20, catch me up on skype. I can do play-testing and FRED advising for you if you want. (not the best around, but well)