Participating for the first time with 2 friends.

Using Unity as the engine with C#, Blender for modelling, Photoshop for art, and Audacity for audio

Despite some hindrances, such as having too many ideas, losing a team member due to unforeseen circumstances, and the website crashing when we tried to publish the game, we did it!

You can check out our first Ludum Dare game, Batter-Powered Business here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/battery-powered_business

I guess the next bit turned out to be a mini post-mortem...

It's definitely been an interesting experience, but fun all the same.

I programmed and did the music whilst KubaP did modelling. Learning how to make music from scratch was a tiny bit difficult but felt quite rewarding in the end. My favourite is the main menu music, which I rushed with 2 hours to go until the deadline...

Our pollution mechanic doesn't work particularly well as it ended up just being an income modifier, but we're satisfied that everything else works.

The lighting is also a bit off, in my opinion, but I don't think it's particularly noticeable...

In the end, our code may be slightly spaghetti-like, and our models do still have some issues, but you wouldn't have known that if we didn't tell you...

Either way, we're enjoying the end result and we're looking forward LD40 (And to make it extra cringeworthy, 'we think you'll enjoy it too...')

Competing for the second time with the same toolkit as last time:

Unity Engine with C#

FL Studio for music

Blender for modelling

Photoshop for textures and graphics

Also featuring:

@kubap, who's going to make some beautiful models,

Me as dedicated code monkey and musician,

@dibblechud is "l'artiste de sandwich",

Perhaps last time was beginner's luck, or perhaps it was just better executed. Either way, this time we won't have a game to show when the 72 hours are up. There, unfortunately, isn't a finished product for me to show. There are a couple of buggy screenshots, but these aren't a good representation of our idea, and we don't think they're worth showing.

Ultimately, failure to complete the task is our fault, and we full well accept that. We're taking it as a learning experience for if we do this next time.

It falls down to many factors, but my most likely options are as follows:

Lack of planning - Whilst we had an idea and mostly knew what we were happening, a few miscommunications over some details really slowed down the development process and lead to a variety of problems which ultimately lead to the game not being completed.

Inconvenient timing - It was difficult to find points in time where all members of the team were available via communications channels - This meant that we ended up filling each others' roles in their absence, which lead to everyone lacking time to fulfill their actual roles.

The theme itself - I'd agree that this isn't much of an excuse, and we really should have been able to work around it to a greater degree than we did, but the theme was one of the ones that we didn't really want. Since we didn't really like the theme as much as some of the others, it was much more difficult to think of a theme.

Time availability - As three students, we lose seven or eight hours a day to school, plus extra time because of studying and other work. We should have scaled down our idea according to the time available to us, rather than assuming that we had the full 72 hours we had last time.

tl;dr - Should have planned the idea in more detail Should have arranged regular meeting times Shouldn't have done it during a school term.

It's been an interesting second jam either way, and we look forwards to possibly doing it next time.