1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
|
<!doctype html>
<html class="html-note-page" lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>Global Game Jam 2023 - GI Jam</title>
<meta name="dcterms.date" content="2023-02-11" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/assets/style.css">
<link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/assets/favicon.svg">
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/assets/favicon.png">
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Fryzek Concepts" href="/feed.xml">
</head>
<body>
<div class="header-bar">
<a href="/index.html">
<img src="/assets/favicon.svg" alt="frycon logo">
</a>
<div class="header-links">
<a href="/about.html" class="header-link">About</a>
<a rel="me" href="https://mastodon.social/@hazematman" class="header-link">Social</a>
<a href="https://git.fryzekconcepts.com" class="header-link">Code</a>
</div>
</div>
<main>
<div class="page-title-header-container">
<h1 class="page-title-header">Global Game Jam 2023 - GI Jam</h1>
<div class="page-info-container">
<div class="plant-status">
<img src="/assets/budding.svg">
<div class="plant-status-text">
<p>budding</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="page-info-date-container">
<p class="page-info-date">Published: 2023-02-11</p>
<p class="page-info-date">Last Edited: 2023-02-11</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="note-divider"></div>
<div class="main-container">
<div class="note-body">
<p>At the beginning of this month I participated in the Games
Institutes’s Global Game Jam event. <a
href="https://uwaterloo.ca/games-institute/">The Games Institute</a> 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.</p>
<p>The game we created is called <a
href="https://globalgamejam.org/2023/games/turtle-roots-5">Turtle
Roots</a>, 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.</p>
<div class="gallery">
<p><img src="/assets/global_game_jam_2023/screen_shot_1.png" /> <img
src="/assets/global_game_jam_2023/screen_shot_2.png" /> <img
src="/assets/global_game_jam_2023/screen_shot_3.png" /></p>
<p>Screenshots of Turtle Roots</p>
</div>
<p>The game we created is called <a
href="https://globalgamejam.org/2023/games/turtle-roots-5">Turtle
Roots</a>, 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.</p>
<h2 id="the-team">The Team</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<h2 id="my-game-jam-experiences">My Game Jam Experiences</h2>
<p>In recent years,I participated in a <a
href="/notes/n64brew-gamejam-2021.html">Nintendo 64 homebrew game
jam</a> and the Puerto Rico Game Developers Association event for the
global game jam, submitting <a
href="https://globalgamejam.org/2022/games/magnetic-parkour-6">Magnetic
Parkour</a>, I also participated in <a href="https://ldjam.com/">Ludum
Dare</a> 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 <a
href="http://www.fastquake.com/projects/zorvwarz/">Zorv Warz</a> and <a
href="http://www.fastquake.com/projects/worldseed/">E410</a>. 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.</p>
<h2 id="the-tech-behind-the-game">The Tech Behind the Game</h2>
<p>Lately I’ve had a growing interest in the game engine called <a
href="https://godotengine.org/">Godot</a>, 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 <a
href="/notes/2022_igalia_graphics_team.html">job</a>, open source
software as well as free software is something I’m particularly
interested in.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
</div>
</div> </main>
</body>
</html>
|
