Add ggj 2023 post

1 files changed, 85 insertions, 53 deletions

diff --git a/notes/global_game_jam_2023.md b/notes/global_game_jam_2023.md
index 81dff04..c6732d6 100644
--- a/notes/global_game_jam_2023.md
+++ b/notes/global_game_jam_2023.md
@@ -7,13 +7,24 @@ cover_image: "/assets/global_game_jam_2023/screen_shot_2.png"
 categories: gamedev
 ---
 
-At the beginning of this month I participated in the Games Institutes's Global Game Jam event. [The Games
-Institute](https://uwaterloo.ca/games-institute/) is an organization at my local university 
-(The University of Waterloo), that focuses on games based research. Every school term they host a 
-game jam, and the one for this term happened to coincide with the Global Game Jam. Since this event was open
-to everyone (it's been a few years since I've been a student at UW 👴️), I joined up to try and stretch some
-of my more creative muscles. The event was a 48 hour game jam that went from the evening of Friday Feb 3rd 
-to Sunday Feb 5th.
+At the beginning of this month I participated in the Games Institutes's
+Global Game Jam event. [The Games
+Institute](https://uwaterloo.ca/games-institute/) is an organization at
+my local university (The University of Waterloo) that focuses on
+games-based research. They host a game jam every school term and this
+term's jam happened to coincide with the Global Game Jam. Since this
+event was open to everyone (and it's been a few years since I've been a
+student at UW 👴️), I joined up to try and stretch some of my more
+creative muscles. The event was a 48-hour game jam that began on Friday,
+February 3rd and ended on Sunday,February 5th.
+
+The game we created is called [Turtle
+Roots](https://globalgamejam.org/2023/games/turtle-roots-5), and it is a
+simple resource management game. You play as a magical turtle floating
+through the sky and collecting water in order to survive. The turtle can
+spend some of its "nutrients" to grow roots which will allow it to
+gather water and collect more nutrients. The challenge in the game is
+trying to survive for as long as possible without running out of water.
 
 <div class="gallery">
 ![](/assets/global_game_jam_2023/screen_shot_1.png)
@@ -24,62 +35,83 @@ Screenshots of Turtle Roots
 </div>
  
 
-The game we created is called [Turtle Roots](https://globalgamejam.org/2023/games/turtle-roots-5), and it
-is a simple resource management game. You play as a magical turtle floating through the sky, that requires
-water to survive. The turtle can spend some of its "nutrients" to grow roots that will allow it to gather
-water and collect more nutrients. The challenge in the game is trying to survive for as long as possible without
+The game we created is called [Turtle Roots](https://globalgamejam.org/2023/games/turtle-roots-5), and it is a 
+simple resource management game. You play as a magical turtle floating through the sky and collecting water
+in order to survive. The turtle can spend some of its “nutrients” to grow roots which will allow it to gather 
+water and collect more nutrients. The challenge in the game is trying to survive for as long as possible without 
 running out of water.
 
 ## The Team
 
-I attended the event solo and quickly partnered up with two other people, who also attended solo. One member
-had already participated in a game jam before and specialized in art, while the other member was attending a
-game jam for the first time and was looking for the best way they could contribute, they turned out to have
-particular skills for sound, and ended up created all the audio in our game. This left me as the programmer for
-our team. 
+I attended the event solo and quickly partnered up with two other people, who also attended solo. One member had 
+already participated in a game jam before and specialized in art. The other member was attending a game jam for 
+the first time and was looking for the best way they could contribute. Having particular skills for sound, they 
+ended up creating all the audio in our game. This left me as the sole programmer for our team.
+
+## My Game Jam Experiences
 
-This also wasn't my first game jam, in 2021 I participated in a 
-[Nintendo 64 homebrew game jam](n64brew-gamejam-2021), in 2022 I joined the Puerto Rican Game Developers Association
-event for the global game jam, and we submitted [Magnetic Parkour](https://globalgamejam.org/2022/games/magnetic-parkour-6),
-I've also participated in [Ludum Dare](https://ldjam.com/) back in around 2013 but I've since lost the link to
-my submission. While in high school, and myself and friend participated in two years in a row that sort of worked
-like a game jam called "Ottawa Tech Jam" where we submitted [Zorv Warz](http://www.fastquake.com/projects/zorvwarz/)
-and [E410](http://www.fastquake.com/projects/worldseed/). As you can probably tell, I really like gamedev. The
-desire to build my own video games is actually what originally got me into programming. When I was around 14 years
-old I picked up a c++ programming book from the library, since I wanted to try to build my own game and I heard
-most game developers use c++. I recall using some proprietary game development library (that I can't recall the
-name of), that let you build 2D and 3D games in windows using C++. I didn't really get to far into it until
-high school when I started to learn SFML, SDL, and OpenGL. I also dabbled with Unity during that time as well.
-But I've always had a strong desire to build most of the foundation of the game myself without using an engine.
-You can see the desire really come out on the work I did for Zorv Warz, E410, and the N64 homebrew game jam.
-When working with a team I feel it can be a lot easier to use a game engine, even if it doesn't scratch the
+In recent years,I participated in a [Nintendo 64 homebrew game
+jam](n64brew-gamejam-2021) and the
+Puerto Rico Game Developers Association event for the global game jam,
+submitting [Magnetic
+Parkour](https://globalgamejam.org/2022/games/magnetic-parkour-6), I
+also participated in [Ludum Dare](https://ldjam.com/) back around 2013
+but unfortunately I've since lost the link to my submission. While in
+high school, my friend and I participated in the "Ottawa Tech Jame"
+(similar to a game jam), sort of worked like a game jam called "Ottawa
+Tech Jam" submitting [Zorv Warz](http://www.fastquake.com/projects/zorvwarz/) and
+[E410](http://www.fastquake.com/projects/worldseed/). As you can
+probably tell, I really like gamedev. The desire to build my own video
+games is actually what originally got me into programming. When I was
+around 14 years old, I picked up a C++ programming book from the library
+since I wanted to try to build my own game and I heard most game
+developers use C++. I used some proprietary game development library
+(that I can't recall the name of)to build 2D and 3D games in Windows
+using C++. I didn't really get too far into it until high school when I
+started to learn SFML, SDL, and OpenGL. I also dabbled with Unity during
+that time as well. However,I've always had a strong desire to build most
+of the foundation of the game myself without using an engine. You can
+see this desire really come out in the work I did for Zorv Warz, E410,
+and the N64 homebrew game jam. When working with a team, I feel it can
+be a lot easier to use a game engine, even if it doesn't scratch the
 same itch for me.
 
 ## The Tech Behind the Game
 
-Lately I've had a growing interest in the game engine called [Godot](https://godotengine.org/), and wanted to use
-this opportunity to learn the engine more and build a game in it. Godot is interesting to me as its a totally
-open source game engine, and as you can probably guess from my job ([](2022_igalia_graphics_team)), open source
-software as well as free software is something I'm particularly interested in.
+Lately I've had a growing interest in the game engine called
+[Godot](https://godotengine.org/), and wanted to use this opportunity to
+learn the engine more and build a game in it. Godot is interesting to me
+as its a completely open source game engine, and as you can probably
+guess from my [job](2022_igalia_graphics_team), open source software as well as 
+free software is something I'm particularly interested in.
 
-Godot is a really powerful game engine that handles a lot of complexity for you. For example it has a built
-in parallax background component, that we took advantage of to add more depth to our game. What this does is
-allow you to control the background scrolling speed for different layer of the background, giving the illusion
-of depth in a 2D game.
+Godot is a really powerful game engine that handles a lot of complexity
+for you. For example,it has a built in parallax background component,
+that we took advantage of to add more depth to our game. This allows you
+to control the background scrolling speed for different layer of the
+background, giving the illusion of depth in a 2D game.
 
-Another powerful feature of Godot is its physics engine. Godot makes it really easy to create physics objects in
-your scene and have them do interesting stuff. You might be wondering where physics comes into play in our game,
-and we actually use it for the root animations. I setup a sort of "rag doll" system for the roots so they would
-flop around in the air as the player moves, really giving a lot more "life" to an otherwise static game.
+Another powerful feature of Godot is its physics engine. Godot makes it
+really easy to create physics objects in your scene and have them do
+interesting stuff. You might be wondering where physics comes into play
+in our game, and we actually use it for the root animations. I set up a
+sort of "rag doll" system for the roots to make them flop around in the
+air as the player moves, really giving a lot more "life" to an otherwise
+static game.
 
-Godot has a built in scripting language called "GDScript" which is very similar to python. I've really grown to
-like this language. It has an optional type system you can take advantage of that helps with reducing the number
-of bugs that exist in your game. It also has great connectivity with the editor. This proved useful as I could
-"export" variables in the game and allow my team members to modify certain parameters of the game without knowing
-any programming. This is super helpful with balancing, and more easily allows non technical members of team to
-contribute to the game logic in a more concrete way. 
+Godot has a built in scripting language called "GDScript" which is very
+similar to Python. I've really grown to like this language. It has an
+optional type system you can take advantage of that helps with reducing
+the number of bugs that exist in your game. It also has great
+connectivity with the editor. This proved useful as I could "export"
+variables in the game and allow my team members to modify certain
+parameters of the game without knowing any programming. This is super
+helpful with balancing, and more easily allows non-technical members of
+team to contribute to the game logic in a more concrete way.
 
-Overall I'm very happy with how our game turned out. Last year I tried to participate in a few more game jam, but
-due to a combination of lack of personal motivation, poor team dynamics, and other factors, none of those game
-jams panned out. This was the first game jam in a while where I feel like I really connected with my team and I
-also feel like we made a super polished and fun to play game in the end.
+Overall I'm very happy with how our game turned out. Last year I tried
+to participate in a few more game jams, but due to a combination of lack
+of personal motivation, poor team dynamics, and other factors, none of
+those game jams panned out. This was the first game jam in a while where
+I feel like I really connected with my team and I also feel like we made
+a super polished and fun game in the end.