What is the Global Games Jam?

Global Game Jam | Global Games Jam website | 26/11/2025 | pages /about

Global Game Jam - Wikipedia  | Global Games Jam weikpedia | 26/11/2025 | page main page 

When did it start?

Back in 2013, the first GGJ (Global Game Jam) was held, managed by Global Game Jam Incorporated, and there has been a GGJ every year, typically every year in January; however, when covid 19 hit, it was an online event only. However, this did not stop people from joining in 

What do they do at the GGJ events? 

At GGJ, they meet up together to make games with everyone from the gaming industry, with different backgrounds and skill sets and those who are just starting out, sharing their skills and tricks to make a game. They are also a non-profit 

So, overall, the GGJ is a massive global event in most countries where everyone will meet up and talk about their games, make games, and talk about new ways of making games 

Looking into past game jam games 

Bubble Ranch: A Cosy Hunt

What did I think of the game 

After playing this game, my overall view of the game is something you might find in an arcade, the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store or a Web app. 

Who is the target audience aimed at?

In my opinion, I feel like it is a game I would give to a 7-year-old to play; however, this is due to how simple the game is. But the game is hard when starting out you need to move around a fair bit, and to catch the bubbles, you need to sneak up on them 

Overall 

This is a good game for what it is. However, with the developments in web apps, I feel the game will benefit from an overhaul, as a lot of sites can run games with higher texture details using the right framework, such as Facebook's React framework. Back in 2014, Facebook had a 3D light version of Minecraft running on the web, using users' hardware for processing power; however, this was a small game, so there is a lot that can be done to improve 

Update on our work, and has anything not gone to plan?

Unreal Engine blueprints 

Update on progress 

This is a short update/overview of my side of the project 

How is the coding side of the project progressing? 

I would like to say it is coming along ok; however, this is not the case as of now. Some items I wish to add to the game have presented themselves to be complex to work with the Unreal Engine's blueprints coding platform. However, as it's a known fact that most games are coded in C or C++, I will be looking into coding in C since C is used everywhere. This will have a lot more information on this as well to help me; however, this would not likely replace the blueprints in this project, as I am working in a group this would need to be talked about. The key points that need to be discussed are small edits to the code, such as how long the timer is set to for each level or moving objects and changing textures to meshes, keeping it in blueprints, allows for a simple easy to easy-to-understand workflow flow but does not help when it comes to adding complex functions that i belive coding will allow e to work faster 

Modeling 

How is this going?

My role in the group is to add the game functions; however, it was discussed that I would help with the modelling if time allows me to. However, as the people doing the modelling have not added anything to the OneDrive, I am unable to give any comments on this in full. I can say from the discussions had that it has been moving along at a steady pace, so overall, this is in the green zone 

Lighting

How is this going?

The Lighting started off, but this was just adding in basic light to the world level; however, with some of the older blockouts, I can play around with this and see what is needed, but again, there will need to be discussion on where and how the level should be lighted and this will need to be reflexed in the planning and production documents as well 

GamePlay

How is this going?

Gameplay, this is partly down to everyone to sort out my role is to code the game to be fun, the others must model the game to be fun, and then we all must work on the lighting for parts of the game as well but more will follow later on this section as well .

Plan chages 

what has been chagnes 

table of contents 

1 - The main chagne 

1.1 why 

1.2 key points 

1.2.1 - Niagara systems 

1.2.2 What is it ?

1.2.3 Why are we using this 

1.2.4 review 

2 - What is going well 

2.1 What needs to improve 

2.2 What did not go so well 

2.3 what was larent 

3 - What is next 

1 The main chagne 

Pioveting 

Game play to Environment art 

Work on the group project started off well however we held a gorup maenting about how well the game play side of things has been coming along and at the end of this maeting we desied that we will poivet this to Environment Art as this is all of ours stongest skill set 

I worked on improving the block out to allow for a more moduer designe there speeding up the in engine prosses as well as working on an island coving island texturing and set dressing off assets made there was also the addion of a paer in save 2.0 the paer save in save 1.6 ther was the addtion of a PPV (post process volume) to stop the water form being visable insdie the tunnels under ground in the sae this will also allow for a air pocket and the addistion of Niagara systems to add fire to the under water tunnels and camp fire

1.2 Why did the group make thw chagne form gameplay to Environment art 

We made this move due to time that was needed we had found that in the end the time it would take to do this would over run the timeline we had been given as well the new island this was a random dircetion to take the project in however this did look veery nice to have and there was more to look at and see 

1.2.1 - Niagara systems 

Adding fire inside the tunnels and the camp fire was the new thing we wanted to try as we had moved away form gameplay this was something that was possiable to do the key locations that fire can be found is inside the tunnel system and the camp site of the time of wrighting this (05/02/2026) 

1.2.2 - What is - Niagara ?

- Niagara is a plugin for unreal engine (we ware using 5.6.1) this allows us to make things like fire , smoke and even water there are aso explales with the plugIn we used the explames and edited the values of the fire 

Adding into the view port we dragged the asset form the viewport into the Environment this also react's with the mesh around it (walls , floor ect)

1.2.3 - Why are we using Niagara Systaems ?

We are using this becasue it looks good just as simple as that 

1.2.4 - Reviewing this so far ?

overall this is a new thing that i have started using and i a not 100% sure on this as there is a lot to laren and understand about how this works 

2 - what is going well ?

The island texters set up has been moving along a lot faster now i found how out how to set up the textures for painting onto the island as well as adding some pramiters for a faster way to make small chagnes to texter alresdy painted onto the island as well as working on the brigde over the river has started 

2.1 - what needs to improve ?

At this point is hard to say due to how much the project direction is chagneing so this will be looked at later . 

2.2 - what is going well ?

Within the group we have all had some different views as to direction of where this project is heeding this did slow down the progress we ware making while we ware working this out 

2.3 - what was Larnet ?

So far, we have found that many of the items on the plan are no longer viable within the time frame we had. We dropped the plan for a playable game and moved to environment art however elemaents of the planned gameplay and testing can be found in version 1 to 1.6 howevre 1.7+ was corely for environment art work form this point howeevr this was a issue as the folders became a mess and no long in claer easy to read layout this was due to migrting project files over to a new unreal engine project with its own file set up both of witch ware a mess to work with and this had became one big mess however this did not have to much of a negitve impack to the fact most of the textures had been used on assets in the viewport and by clikcing the assets in the viewport and looking at the deatils pannnal you can see the textueres aplyed and and folder icon this will show you where in the folder sytem it is and image of the textyer that you can dubble cick on and open it form there. 

3 - What is next  ?

Start core island work adding trees and adding in some bouts made in maya i also made some bout signs in photoshop and used adube substance painter 3D to aplly this to the mesh (a sing i made using maya ) i then exported this textuer out to a folder on my harddrive with the file path [D/forUE/lib/textuers/custom/ASP3D/islandProject/boutingSign/BoutDockSignV1.png] i then in unreal egnine imported this texter i made into the project folder form the the avove file path this is new way i am saving any texters and assets now NOTE : not all texters will be in this is no folder also lib is short libray and ASP3D is short for dube substance painter 3D . by setting this libury up i will be able to find texters used before in older project however texters i did not make myself will go in the same folder but like this [D/forUE/lib/textuers/{new of texter found}/root/{root name of texter found}] this set up allows me to keep eveything in a claen and easy to find set up saving me time and allowing me to keep track of texters ive used as a go this will also be reflected in unreal such as lib/textures/{new of texter found}/root/{root name of texter found} this will hold the master texture and lib/textuers/instance/{texture top folder name}/ this will hold a copy like of the root texture allowing.