Author Archives: Nicolina Åkerfelt

Scrap Pirates Pre-Alpha Prototype Release!

You can now download an early version of our game!
Head over to our homepage and get the latest version now!

We love feedback, it is very helpful and essential for future development of the game. If you’ve played our newest prototype, please feel free to leave us some feedback and tell us about any bugs you’ve encountered!
Hopefully some of you will playtest our game and let us stay in touch with you!
Thank you!

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates Pre-Alpha Prototype Release!

You can now download an early version of our game!
Head over to our homepage and get the latest version now!

We love feedback, it is very helpful and essential for future development of the game. If you’ve played our newest prototype, please feel free to leave us some feedback and tell us about any bugs you’ve encountered!
Hopefully some of you will playtest our game and let us stay in touch with you!
Thank you!

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates!

I have blogged about Scrap Pirates before, during the Big Game Project course last spring. Good news; we are continuing the development of the game!
If you want to show your support you can either take a look at our website, follow us on Twitter or like our Facebook page!
I have also made a project page in my Portfolio for this blog.
If you are not familiar with Scrap Pirates you can watch the trailer here:

We are […]

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates!

I have blogged about Scrap Pirates before, during the Big Game Project course last spring. Good news; we are continuing the development of the game!
If you want to show your support you can either take a look at our website, follow us on Twitter or like our Facebook page!
I have also made a project page in my Portfolio for this blog.
If you are not familiar with Scrap Pirates you can watch the trailer here:

We are […]

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Program: Programming

Blog Update!

Hello!
I am back for my third year of studying game design & programming!
I have plans on becoming more active with writing posts here, not only for assignments but also other posts regarding games, as for example my work on Scrap Pirates.
The blog has been updated together with my return, so that it is more efficient and nice-looking. And you can now find pretty much all of my social media accounts in the side bar to the left. Huzzah!

With this […]

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Program: Programming

Blog Update!

Hello!
I am back for my third year of studying game design & programming!
I have plans on becoming more active with writing posts here, not only for assignments but also other posts regarding games, as for example my work on Scrap Pirates.
The blog has been updated together with my return, so that it is more efficient and nice-looking. And you can now find pretty much all of my social media accounts in the side bar to the left. Huzzah!

With this […]

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates – Big Game Project – Blog Post #6

This week was the last week before Gotland Game Conference, and therefore the last week of working on the game for the BGP course.

Most work was focused on fixing bugs and finishing the enemies for the GGC level. A results screen was created, with text constructed from an image and achievements popping up if you have reached certain amounts of stats. The enemies also blink in red when hit, since there was no feedback on this matter before.
A lot […]

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates – Big Game Project – Blog Post #6

This week was the last week before Gotland Game Conference, and therefore the last week of working on the game for the BGP course.

Most work was focused on fixing bugs and finishing the enemies for the GGC level. A results screen was created, with text constructed from an image and achievements popping up if you have reached certain amounts of stats. The enemies also blink in red when hit, since there was no feedback on this matter before.
A lot […]

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates – Big Game Project – Blog Post #5

This week I worked on another AI, very similar to how the Caterpillar works.
This was however an AI for the enemy called “Incinerator”. It will have a set ground where it can move back and forth, and when a player is close, it will start chasing the player with its furnace hatch open.

A screenshot from the game where you can see the incinerator.

Some problems with this AI was that it looked weird when it stopped chasing the player as […]

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates – Big Game Project – Blog Post #5

This week I worked on another AI, very similar to how the Caterpillar works.
This was however an AI for the enemy called “Incinerator”. It will have a set ground where it can move back and forth, and when a player is close, it will start chasing the player with its furnace hatch open.

A screenshot from the game where you can see the incinerator.

Some problems with this AI was that it looked weird when it stopped chasing the player as […]

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates – Big Game Project – Blog Post #4

The second game testing session was held on Friday. Most of the feedback was very positive and people seemed to enjoy the game, the only significant flaw that some playetesters pointed out was that they did not like having enemies in a puzzle game. To solve this, the game might have a setting where you can turn off enemies in the game, but hopefully the enemies will be part of the puzzles/obstacles of the game and so this will not […]

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates – Big Game Project – Blog Post #4

The second game testing session was held on Friday. Most of the feedback was very positive and people seemed to enjoy the game, the only significant flaw that some playetesters pointed out was that they did not like having enemies in a puzzle game. To solve this, the game might have a setting where you can turn off enemies in the game, but hopefully the enemies will be part of the puzzles/obstacles of the game and so this will not […]

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates – Big Game Project – Blog Post #3

 
 
This week for me has mostly been about creating moving platforms.

Most problems occurring whilst creating the moving platforms were simple mistakes with easy fixes, such as forgetting to create platforms that can go down/left, and not just right/up and able to go back their starting point.
When a moving platform is placed in the game scene, both speed and what distance to move can be set. Then, the script of moving platforms will check if the distance is horizontal/vertical and if the […]

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates – Big Game Project – Blog Post #3

 
 
This week for me has mostly been about creating moving platforms.

Most problems occurring whilst creating the moving platforms were simple mistakes with easy fixes, such as forgetting to create platforms that can go down/left, and not just right/up and able to go back their starting point.
When a moving platform is placed in the game scene, both speed and what distance to move can be set. Then, the script of moving platforms will check if the distance is horizontal/vertical and if the […]

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates – Big Game Project – Blog Post #2

During the Alpha game testing a lot of helpful feedback was received. Right now, the biggest problem is with the magnetism not being controllable enough. I am not yet sure of how to solve this problem, but hopefully a solution will be found next week.
One change t that has been made to make the magnetism more controllable is that the player can now adjust the size of the magnetic field. This depends on how much the left or right trigger is […]

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates – Big Game Project – Blog Post #2

During the Alpha game testing a lot of helpful feedback was received. Right now, the biggest problem is with the magnetism not being controllable enough. I am not yet sure of how to solve this problem, but hopefully a solution will be found next week.
One change t that has been made to make the magnetism more controllable is that the player can now adjust the size of the magnetic field. This depends on how much the left or right trigger is […]

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates – Big Game Project – Blog Post #1

Introduction – The Course & the Game Concept
Big Game Project is a course for the second year game design students’ at Uppsala University – Campus Gotland.  There are three requirements for to get a passing grade in the course; weekly blog posts, a game project and a post mortem report in the end of the course. The game project will be designed and developed in teams of various sizes. In the weekly blog posts I will share some of the work […]

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Program: Programming

Scrap Pirates – Big Game Project – Blog Post #1

Introduction – The Course & the Game Concept
Big Game Project is a course for the second year game design students’ at Uppsala University – Campus Gotland.  There are three requirements for to get a passing grade in the course; weekly blog posts, a game project and a post mortem report in the end of the course. The game project will be designed and developed in teams of various sizes. In the weekly blog posts I will share some of the work […]

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Program: Programming

Game Programming III – Second Week

This week I finished my linked list. I used templates for the data given to the nodes, and so all functions for the list are written in the header file. All methods have been completed and tested, now all that’s left for the linked list to be fully completed is some kind of unit testing.

In class we have been creating a UDP Chat, which also helped us to get ready for our second assignment, which is about writing a web […]

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Program: Programming

Game Programming III – Second Week

This week I finished my linked list. I used templates for the data given to the nodes, and so all functions for the list are written in the header file. All methods have been completed and tested, now all that’s left for the linked list to be fully completed is some kind of unit testing.

In class we have been creating a UDP Chat, which also helped us to get ready for our second assignment, which is about writing a web […]

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Program: Programming

Game Programming III – First Week

In the Game Programming III course we will learn multithreading, 3D engines and networking.
We started this week with Compression Challenge. The challenge was to write a program that compresses a bitmap picture to the smallest possible size and then decompresses it back to it’s original state. I failed to complete my solution for this, but I did read some about Huffman coding and run-length encoding.
Then, some syntax was presented to the class. We were shown how to use templates, which allows a function and/or class […]

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Program: Programming

Game Programming III – First Week

In the Game Programming III course we will learn multithreading, 3D engines and networking.
We started this week with Compression Challenge. The challenge was to write a program that compresses a bitmap picture to the smallest possible size and then decompresses it back to it’s original state. I failed to complete my solution for this, but I did read some about Huffman coding and run-length encoding.
Then, some syntax was presented to the class. We were shown how to use templates, which allows a function and/or class […]

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Program: Programming

Board Game Analysis II – Pandemic

Pandemic is a cooperative board game for two to four players. The players work together as a team to try and find all cures and prevent the outbreaks of four deadly diseases. Each player is give one of the five roles of the diasease control team, which each have their own unique ability.

The Game
There is three different types of Event cards. Firstly, there are the cards that depict the cities of the map. These can be used to either discarding […]

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Program: Programming

Board Game Analysis II – Pandemic

Pandemic is a cooperative board game for two to four players. The players work together as a team to try and find all cures and prevent the outbreaks of four deadly diseases. Each player is give one of the five roles of the diasease control team, which each have their own unique ability.

The Game
There is three different types of Event cards. Firstly, there are the cards that depict the cities of the map. These can be used to either discarding […]

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Program: Programming