I lost motivation in a project, it seems chaotic to me, yet I want to complete it (LowRes NX)

SP4CEBAR 2022-07-12 12:01 (Edited)

Since I made my GUI library I had the idea of making a GUI designer program, because making GUI's is still a bit of a pain, even with the library.

So a few weeks ago I started planning on how I wanted to edit, store, and load GUIs. I decided that I needed a tree file structure to store all the GUI files inside GUI menus, after quite a lot of hours I made that file tree and I used DOS navigation.

I'm now working on the DOS version of the GUI designer, so you can type commands to set the GUI parameters. Theoretically this shouldn't be too hard to do, yet It's taking really quite long, and even though the DOS I made is quite organized, it doesn't really have that good of an API, so adding simple features is a little harder, and my abstraction isn't as good that I can just focus on the thing I want to implement, I also need to focus on what is going on with the files.

There's still quite a lot to do, once the DOS version can edit a GUI, I want to add all the elements from my GUI library. I want this file-based GUI to be powerful, there are also quite a few features that are stored as parameters in the files, each of those needs code that is going to do that feature, and that's going to take time to make too.

I kind of lost motivation to complete this project (and I'm getting tired of it), yet I really want to get it done because it would make GUI's of any kind really easy.
For example I can get my Piano Roll DAW to work, I can make a file explorer which is more familiar to most people than DOS, and I can make a GUI for my GUI editor to make it user friendly.

Here are some technical details of how my file-based GUI system works:

everything is inside a menu, there can be up to 256 menus, the GUI system can load one menu at once, once a certain button is clicked it'll go to another menu (all configured by the file)
- each menu has parameters to do animations, and raster effects to turn rasters off
- There's a map file of cells (like an NX BG file), but with one byte for each cell, when you tap the screen, the GUI system will look your touch coordinates up in the map to find the GUI element code
- GUI elements: each menu has a folder with up to 255 GUI elements, each GUI element is a folder with a parameters file, a variables file, and a display calls file. A GUI element is an interactive element from my GUI library, a GUI element can only be called by the map of its menu
- GUI displays: each menu has a folder with up to 256 displays, each GUI display is a folder with a parameters file, a variables file, and a variable links file. A GUI display can't be called by the map, it can only be called by a GUI element or a GUI display, a display is usually a visual element, but it can also be a counter (which is called by button elements and which links it's variables to the variables of the buttons), I think I'm also going to make a "display" element to redirect calls to be able to call the loading of a new menu
- 32 bytes of bit variables, certain variables are just bits, why not pack those together in a byte 255/8=32, I may leave this out, because buttons have a press duration variable, it's only the 2-stage switches that have single bit variables

SP4CEBAR 2022-07-12 12:13 (Edited)

Here's a schematic of the folder structure:

'- ROOT
'  - GLOBAL VARIABLES
'  - MENUS
'    - MENU 0
'      - F MENU DATA
'      - F MAP
'      - F BINARY VARIABLES (32 BYTES (FLEXIBLE: STARTS AT ELEMENT 0, GROWS WHEN E ADDED)
'      - ELEMENT DATA
'        - ELEMENT 0
'          - F ELEMENT DATA
'          - F VARIABLES
'          - F CALLS
'      - DISPLAYS
'        - DISPLAY 0
'          - F DISPLAY DATA
'          - F VARIABLES
'          - F LINKS

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I lost motivation in a project, it seems chaotic to me, yet I want to complete it