Industria Post Mortem
Tags: games, projects
Published: 2020-06-12 17:16:43

---
title: Industria Post Mortem
published: true
date: 2019-11-11 11:58:00 UTC
tags: Games,Projects
canonical_url: https://grocock.email/blog/industria-post-mortem/
---

 ![Industria Post Mortem](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1515879218367-8466d910aaa4?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&q=80&fm=jpg&crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&w=2000&fit=max&ixid=eyJhcHBfaWQiOjExNzczfQ)

Since completing Industria over two years ago, whenever I try and write about it, regardless of the context it always turns into a post mortem, until I inevitably remove what I write and rewrite it in a better way.

Since I've written quite a few over the year that were quickly deleted, I decided that I might as-well write one and keep it. So here we are.

I should probably start by explaining what Industria is. Industria was my entry in the 39th Ludum Dare competition. Where as a team of 4, we had to make a game in 72 hours, from start to finish.

* * *

While writing this, I noticed that I can't find the source code for Industria. So that might be something I should put on the what went wrong pile (It'll be a tall pile)

Update: [I found the code](https://github.com/ConorGrocock/Industria), it was on Unitys Collaborate service (I'm stil not a fan, you'll find out why later on)

* * *

I'd like to start with what we did well, since it was the first actual project we had worked on together, I'd like to think that we managed the work load well. We even had a Trello board with labels, people assigned to cards and a finished column that kept growing. Unfortunately we also had a bugs column that kept growing.

![Industria Post Mortem](https://res.cloudinary.com/practicaldev/image/fetch/s--v_Wq3j4s--/c_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto%2Cw_880/https://blog.grocock.email/content/images/2019/10/image.png)<figcaption>The trello board at the end of the project</figcaption>

This list of bugs only grew after we published the game on the Ludum dare website, and started to get actual feedback. This was the first time I'd ever had anything I'd made tested by someone I didn't know so I was rather anxious to get the feedback thinking it'd all be negative. But too my surprise it wasn't. It was only mostly negative but in a nice way. But no, [the feedback we got](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/were-in) was all positive, and most offered constructive criticism.

Most of the feedback was along the lines of the game being difficult to pick up, and in a game jam where people are playing a lot of games in a short amount of time, that matters.

One thing that we did definitely not do well, was manage out time. We started working later on Friday night, at a rather relaxed pace. but by Monday morning we were panicking, because we hadn't gotten to do anywhere near as much as we wanted to do. This could have been solved if we'd had a better plan from the get go. But I don't think that really happens with game jams.

Sidenote: In our later game jams we didn't learn from this, and tended to have 4 prototypes done and thrown out by midday on Saturday.

Another area we didn't do too well in, was managing our code. while prototyping the tile based grid, I created a file called 'GenWorld.cs' in a folder called 'proto'. This was supposed to be a temporary file just for that prototype.

By the end of Saturday GenWorld was over 2000 lines long and was where virtually all of game code was based. I guess it's true that there is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.

Near the start of the competition this wasn't much of an issue, since we tended to all be working on ideas while one person was writing the code. However, later on we noticed an issue. The version control system we were using, [Unity Collaborate](https://unity3d.com/unity/features/collaborate) while it was in its early stages, didn't have great merge resolution. Leading us to spend many hours merging our changes by hand. This is far from my only issue with Unity collaberate, but I'll save that for a separate post.

The dependence on GenWorld got so bad that even now, two years later, we still reference it when talking about bad code.

But by the end of the weekend we refactored most of the functionality into other files. Which allowed development to go much fast. Since then we have been much stricter on code style and formatting.

But apart from those issues, the project went quite well. It taught us all quite a bit, mostly about programming while sleep deprived, that helped us develop over the next year until the next ludum dare.

![Industria Post Mortem](https://res.cloudinary.com/practicaldev/image/fetch/s--cRmC4Hxv--/c_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto%2Cw_880/https://blog.grocock.email/content/images/2019/10/image-3.png)<figcaption>The final rating for our game (<a href="https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/were-in" style="color: var(--link-brand-color); text-decoration: none;">Source</a>)</figcaption>

As-well as us [over 2300 people](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/stats) took part in the competition. Meaning that in our top category of Theme we came in the top 10% of entrants. This is a point of pride for me. As this was our first entry. Granted most of the feedback we got was that we made the game to hard to win. But personally I think that fits with the theme of **Running out of Power** , but the ratings we got in other categories make it seem like it wasn't all that fun to play.