I just started a twitter account to let everyone know more about my everyday life as a game designer and level designer at Oxeye game studo.

It would make me very happy if you would follow me there as well. <3 (@Frall_)

https://twitter.com/#!/Frall_

Thank you for all your support! :)

I am happy to announce that I will do my work placement together with the swedish Indie developers Oxeye Game Studio!

I will work with them on there current project Cobalt that is published by Mojang, I will help out with the singleplayer campaign and mostly do level design.(Check it out here and get the alpha version: www.playcobalt.com)

Also check out this amazing action teaser:


A huge thank you to all my friends in the game industry and at Futuregames that helped me with contacts etc during this progress.

I would also like to thank all the companies that interviewed me, I had many amazing companies that was interested.

I am currently looking for an internship:
The work placement is during 30 weeks, starting January 2012 and is part of my education at FutureGames, please check my portfolio further down for more info.

This work placement is completely free, I am self funded and supported by Swedish school funds as well as European Union Leonardi Programme which means that companies do not have to pay me any salary.

Check out my new portfolio at: www.fredrik-henriksson.com


Starcraft 2 map prototype:

I woke up early this morning, full of creativity and inspiration so I started planing a new starcraft 2 map layout, hope you like it! (very early layout, needs allot of testing and tweaking)

I am currently working on a small but action packed 2.5d platform game to try and learn some more JavaScript, level design and game design.



To learn some basic scripting I'm looking through and editing example scripts and following tutorials as scripting is truly something I'm struggling with, but I really want to improve.

Just thought I should share a video of one of the enemies the game will feature!
Expect more updates on the game in the near future.

This model below was my first enemy, not counting my previous cube prototype, but I changed it to what you see on the video above as I realized it kinda resembled the male reproduction organ with a little imagination. :P

Check out this great lecture about "Evoking emotions and achieving success by breaking all the rules"
it was held at the Game Developers Conference europe 2011 by Thomas Grip, project manager at Frictional Games.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014889/Evoking-Emotions-and-Achieving-Success

TF2 Introduction:

Team fortress 2 is a class based multiplayer first person shooter developed by Valve
Corporation. When announced in 1998, the game was intended to have a more realistic
and militaristic style of gameplay but the design team changed that over the nine year
development period into a fun and silly cartoonish style game, heavily influenced by early
20th century commercial illustrations.

The player takes the role as one of nine characters, all with unique weapons and abilities,
to fight with their team to complete various goals depending on the map and game mode.

Flow Introduction:

"Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.

According to Csíkszentmihályi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow.

Colloquial terms for this or similar mental states include: to be on the ball, in the moment, present, in the zone, wired in, in the groove, or keeping your head in the game.

Flow is one of the fundamental reasons that people play video games. This is especially true since the primary goal of games is to create entertainment through intrinsic motivation.

The use of flow in games helps foster an enjoyable experience which increases motivation and draws players to continue playing. Game designers, in particular, benefit from integration of flow principles into game design. Games facilitate flow as either an individual or group activity."

Taken from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29


Flow analysis:

• Balance between skill and challenge

Team fortress 2 is full of challenges all the time as it is a multiplayer shooter you’re always facing other players that may be too easy or too good for you to handle. This of course proves a challenge as you want to improve and be the better player in most fights as well as improve your teams strategies,
sometimes thou you may face players or entire teams that are so much better players then you and your team that all fun is lost.

Team Fortress 2 features nine different classes so if you feel that you want additional challenge, or one class becomes boring you can always start practise and learn to play another one as each class have a very different play style.




If you want to become really good, or want to find more friends in the Team Fortress 2 community you can increase your challenge and fun by forming or joining a TF2 clan to start working on perfecting team strategies and play clan wars against other clans.

Valve continues to add free content to the game such as new weapons, maps, “meet the
team“ videos and other fun ingame collectables like hats, medals etc, this makes the game last longer by giving there players increased fun and challenge with for example new weapons and maps. 

• Clear goals:

Team fortress 2 has several main goals, each depending on what map is played and the
game mode. The limitations to achieving the goals usually come from your and the enemy
team, the game timer also limit players and add a stressful aspect that forces the players
to take action and try to complete the goals in time. (The game modes not mentioned here
are Arena, Payload Race, Territorial Control and King of the Hill).



Capture The Flag (CTF):

Your team’s objective is to enter the enemy base and steal their intelligence briefcase
(usually a flag in other games) and bring it back to your own intelligence room, while at
the same time also protecting your own team’s briefcase.

If you die while carrying the intelligence briefcase it will drop to the ground, allowing your
team to try and recapture it during a 60 second timer.

During this time your enemy team will try to secure the area and defend it, if anyone in
your team manages to touch the briefcase the timer is reset to 60 again if they should die.

In a standard capture the flag game mode, the first team to capture the enemy’s
intelligence three times wins. There is also a time limit and if both teams are unable to
capture 3 times in this time limit the game will end is a stalemate.

Payload (PL):

In the game mode called Payload the BLU teams objective is to push a bomb cart from one
end of the map (BLU base) to the other (RED base), while the RED team must do
everything in their power to prevent it from getting to their base.

To push the cart a BLU player must stand next to it, the more BLU players next to the cart
the faster it will move (max speed is capped at 4 players). If the BLU team is unable to
push the bomb cart for 30 seconds it will start rolling backwards slowly until a BLU player
is nearby the cart once again.

BLU team wins if the cart reaches its final point, where the bomb will explode. RED win if
they manage to hold BLU and the bomb back until the game timer runs out.

Along the bomb carts track there is also a few checkpoints, when the cart reach one of
these checkpoints, more time is added to the game clock. In addition, the cart cannot roll
back past the last checkpoint.

Control Point (CP):

Team RED and BLU are fighting for control of a number of interesting points on the map.
When a player stands on a control point that is owned by the enemy team for long enough
(the exact time varies depending on which point and on what map), the point will be
captured by that players team. The objective for both teams is to secure all control points
on the map.

Some control points will be locked, unable to be captured by either team unless its
unlocked, to do that you usually have to capture a different point first.

Just like in payload, the more player of your team capturing, the faster you will receive
that point, also more time is added when a point is captured.

If the game timer ends while a point is being captured the game will enter overtime, until
the point is completely taken or lost.

Map design makes goals clear and game more fun:

The RED team use warm colors, natural build materials and
angular geometry while the BLU team has cold colors,
Industrial buildings and orthogonal geometry.

At the picture below we can compare the RED and BLU
base on the popular 2fort map, they look very different but
the accessible areas are exactly mirrored for balance reasons.

Notice the warmer colors and the build materials like wood for RED and the cold industrial look of the BLU base.

This as well as signs and arrows allows players to easier find their way around maps and know where to go without getting lost.

Each playable class also need specific areas around the map where they have increased use of there special abillities and playstyle.

Scout
- needs places where he can double jump to, thus shortening the distance he must travel in relation to other classes.

Soldier
- needs areas he can rocket-jump to.
- give him some higher perches. Soldiers greatly benefit from being above the action and firing at the feet of targets.

Pyro
- benefits from enclosed spaces like tunnels. A map with too much open space makes this guy far less useful.
- Pyros love ambush points. So putting corners in tunnels and providing things to hide behind is good.
- ammo placement is vital for Pyros. Know where to place ammo packs for pyros to pick up, but not too much.

Demoman
- the Demoman can benefit from the same rocket-jump areas you're making for the Soldier. The Demoman can actually get higher from his sticky-mine jumps, at the cost of more damage.
- give the Demoman places to use arc-based attacks. Create things he can lob his grenades over. This could be rooftops with holes, barracades, or higher-up windows.

Heavy Weapons Guy
- Don't make him run out in the open for too long. He's an easy sniper target. Give him places of cover from the ideal sniper locations. If anything, just make sure he has brief moments of vulnerability instead of a long, impossible run toward his goal.

Medic
- Medics benefit from cover and corners, just like Pyros do. Give then things to hide behind as they stay locked on their healing target. A map that is too wide-open yields many dead medics.

Snipers
- need a good place to perch and snipe people. It should be open enough that they are at risk as well.

Spy
- can benefit greatly from passages behind enemy lines. Being able to sneak into enemy territory then turn around as if they're one of the enemy is beneficial because now they've got a lot of stabbable backs in front of them.
- needs recharge points where he can hide to recharge his cloaking ability. It's especially good to have these en route to sniper locations and sentry locations.

Engineer
- needs ideal locations for his sentry, but also possible ways to destroy a sentry in these locations. Distance can influence sentry placement. Engineers don't like to put sentries where a Soldier can easily stand out of its range and fire rockets.
- carefully consider ammo placement. Where you put your ammo can influence where an Engineer will start building his things. It's good to make the Engineer travel a little or expose himself to grab more ammo. But make sure it's available.
- make sure there are safe nooks for teleporter placement. Teleporters that are placed in the main traffic will be easily destroyed.

More info on this here: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=631269

• Direct feedback:

Clear classes:

Valve decided to use strong silhouettes and shading to draw attention to specific details to
make models distinct and focusing on making the characters team, class and current
weapon easily identified by other players. Below is a picture showing all nine classes with only there silhouettes.



Feedback and motivation:

When you die in Team Fortress 2 you get to see who killed you and where they where hiding, this helps a player understand why they just instantly died by showing the sniper far away and know where he was hiding to be able to avoid or kill him next time. This is important because its extremely frustrating just dying without knowing what killed you and it prevents the player from feeling helpless. Also when you die you see motivating stats that makes you feel better to avoid frustration.

• Break of flow:

Entire teams game play experience can be hurt by a player who does not play with the
team or don’t fulfill their class role, especially in a game like TF2 that strongly emphasizes team play. For instance playing with a medic that doesn’t heal could be very frustrating.

As the game is class based where each class got strengths and weaknesses at different
map locations, for example: The Pyro with his short range flamethrower excel in tight
areas and around corners to hide and ambush people but is weak at long distance. Pyro
players also hate water. (For obvious reasons as it’s hard to burn stuff under water.)
This makes some encounters really hard to deal with without your team backing you up or doing their job properly.

Different classes also have allot easier time killing certain types of enemies, for instance
the spy, who’s main goal is to infiltrate the enemy base disguised, to put a knife in the
enemies backs, have allot easier time to backstab a sniper who got his view limited by his scope, but have a really hard time staying undetected when an enemy pyro light him on fire.





Team fortress 2 really shines when played with well-coordinated teammates, and not doing so often lead to frustration.

The game got random critical hits that sometimes kills you even though you where the
better player in a fight, many players want the critical hits removed, but they also serve as a good way for new players to feel better than they really are.

Cheaters obviously destroys flow in multiplayer games like team fortress 2 where it affects other player’s gameplay experience.

There are a few cheats such as Aimbot that helps you aim and got features like auto-fire and makes all shots critical hits. There is also a radar cheat that lets you see enemies, sentry guns, bombs and rockets as well as enemy health bars thru walls.
I believe that cheating really destroys the fun gameplay for everyone on the server except for perhaps the cheaters themselves.


End words:

This is one of my favorite games as it features fast paced, nonstop action with lots of
humor and fun team play that never gets boring as the gameplay is different depending on
what class you play.

Even thou Team Fortress 2 was delayed several years, went thru allot of re-designing and
got a completely new look it became a really great game, and I am quite sure I would not
have enjoyed the originally realistic version nearly as much as I have fallen in love with
this humoristic cartoony fast paced action game.

There are already many realistic war games out there, Valve created something new and
fresh and I’m really glad for it, this game has given me many hours of joy in the wonderful
world of Team Fortress 2.

It’s my dream to one day be able to give such joy to others with games that I took part in
creating.