oh hi, idk where to post this, as this isn't a content release, but talking about wanting to make something significant, but lacking the push to do it

in 2024, I released two missions and one campaign, and seeing the relatively small success, I thought I could try making an entire campaign, as HW could use some more singleplayer content... oh boy, did I bit more than I could chew.

after making a GitHub repo that same year, I began to try to chew at it, a couple of concepts at a time. hell, I even made an entire spreadsheet full of ideas of what I could pull off with enough effort and focus. Alas, the sheer size of that spreadsheet, progression of IRL things (such as graduating uni and finding a job), as well as hitting a code roadblock, have made me take an entire year-long break from this.

January 2026 hits, and I thought I could make at least some amount of progress on this, but these days, each time I try to look at the project, I feel ashamed... overwhelmed...? This behemoth became too mentally taxing for me. Even thinking of going back to the roots, releasing one mission at a time, makes me think back to said coding roadblock, as making a bunch of missions with repeated steps makes me think of writing entire libraries before thinking of starting conceptualizing a mission outside of a single random thought and writing it down. Being mentally tired and overstimulated every day after IRL work doesn't help, either.

It was so bad that I had to resort to ChatGPT and my therapist for some advice on how to tackle this, yet I didn't budge. I'm not the best with words, so here are some bullet points from ChatGPT, trying to recap whatever the hell is sitting in my head right now with my own personal thoughts sprinkled in.

one year long break is pretty long, but it was primarily due to IRL work. My mindset completely shifted from "I can drift in my own thoughts like lucid dreams whenever I can" to "oh dear, I need to maintain a sleep/work schedule so I can have money" in one fell swoop. I didn't have room to think about something that is a hobby at heart. Now that I think about it, it reminds me of a video I watched about taking lots of breaks, but I can't find it anymore in the mess that is the liked videos playlist on YouTube.

the thoughts of this campaign started to come back at Q4'25, because I want a change of pace... I do not want the rest of my life to look like that.

EDIT: The reason the break started was the code roadblock. A problem probably best described as "killing a fly with a sledgehammer" fogged my brain without having any idea of how to approach it. Having borderline zero knowledge and confidence about python's syntax did not help, either.

with the workflow I had, I found a nasty bug with LuaUtil: HedgewarsScriptLoad where overlapping function names makes part of scripts not trigger at all. Combine that with multiple libraries unknowingly spaghetti coded by me, things went haywire without knowing me (at the time) what happened.

Looking at the rest of the campaigns made me conclude that the workaround would be to copy-paste the same functions directly into the script file. To make it not tedious for me, I thought about making a python script that'd do that for me, giving it the codename "compiler", for a weird reason. I never gotten around to it, because im unable to measure the scope of such a thing, because it'd probably involve rewriting (or at the very least significantly messing with) all of my other libraries, too.

seeing the spreadsheet now, I feel dwarfed with the amount of stuff that i'd like to do, and being blinded with choices. constantly one-upping myself is one thing, but if I can't even do a really simple mission, I feel disgusted of myself. What's the point of doing anything relatively simple if I feel demotivated to start a grand project[-ish].

getting back into the swing of things feels impossible, mostly due to the mental fog after doing everything else but programming. it reminds me of this meme. not much to mention here otherwise, cuz i'd be repeating myself.

EDIT: there is something to mention here, actually. "Loss of momentum" here meaning being able to sit down at least once a week (ideally more) to be able to calmly make progress that i can be proud of. As in, i could get up from the chair and say to myself anything akin to "yes, im proud of this progress"/"i know what to do next". The overlapping function names bug was the roadblock that made me unable to say such a thing.

to quote Veritasium's "The Expert Myth":

don't get me wrong, the HWKB is a very important resource, but sometimes I doubt my problem solving skills outside of LuaAPI stuff that can fog my entire session of coding. thankfully some of the HW devs still hang around in the #hedgewars IRC channel, but sometimes even that is limiting, when it can take over a day for a reply (ik, y'all have your own lives, too), or when sometimes I need a visual aid to understand what is going on. There is an unofficial Hedgewars Discord server, but it's inactive, and not all of the devs are in it.

This problem isn't isolated to programming, either. A bunch of the ideas I have involve specifically designed maps, some of which could even use brand new drawings. I am not confident with making my own drawings/maps, even if it's still life, let alone following the vague art guidelines.

This one is a bit personal, as Hedgewars is one of my most significant chunks of childhood. Just look at my account creation date... good god. Still remembering my cringe behaviour in Peaceful Night (a theme I made, thread got probably deleted for good) back when I was a kid, alongside seeing my minor contributions to the game (icons for continental supplies, barrelhider hat) still get shipped with the game to this day make me want to redeem myself, like I want to do something much better, much more significant.

help.

EDIT: mikade replied in Discord DMs. thank you <3