During Counterplay 17 a few colleagues from Coding Pirates, Claus Toft-Nielsen of CUDiM and I collaborated with D.A.R.E.’s (Digital Arts Research Education) Bruno de Paula and Andrew Burn to host a workshop, were we helped a group of kids making games using the W.I.P. software MissionMaker by MAGiCAL Projects.

The purpose of the workshop was to test the software, as it is being developed as a learning tool. You can read Andrew Burn’s article about it here.

The 16th and 17th February I and 9 other volunteers from Coding Pirates were hired by The Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces to do two workshops in London during the Nordic Matters event in London at the Southbank Centre. Both workshops was for children between 7 and 12 years old.

The first workshop, “Hack Your Heritage: Robot Fairy Tales”, was all about robots. Here the children were to tell fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen through robots like Ozobots, Sparkis, Quirkbots and more. To support the robots the children also went crazy with lots of analogue materials ranging from paper to Lego to stuffed animals and beyond.

I have been volunteering in the organization Coding Pirates, and have done so for three years. The goal of Coding Pirates is to teach children about technologies through playing, fun and a hands-on approach.

Spring, 2015: Weekly game development workshop in the CUDiM department of Coding Pirates. The children where making their own games (using GameMaker: Studio) and controllers for their games (using Makey-Makey). The childrens products where made to become part of a “future-island” together with the other kids’ (from other workshops) end products (robots, 3d prints, etc.).

June, 2015: During Internet Week Denmark I was playing my part in a workshop at Ridehuset, Aarhus, where we made a “technology diorama” with a bunch of kids (sort of like the “future-island”), and afterwards openly showcased it for passing-by visitors.

Fall, 2015: Largely the same kind of weekly game development workshop as in the Spring, again in the CUDiM department, though this time the children made arcade machines for their games. The overall theme this season was arcades, and it was all showcased together with the products of the kids in the other workshops.

September, 2015: We did our first Coding Pirates Game Jam - Aarhus.

Spring, 2016: We started the new GameDev department in Aarhus, where we expanded our game development workshop we previously had in the CUDiM department quite a bit. Again it was game development and controller-making, but this time around the theme was “hacking (in a positive way)”, and the kids were free to choose which game engine to use / a game to mod, as long as they could argue for how their game was a “hack”.

April, 2016: We did our second Coding Pirates Game Jam - Aarhus.

October, 2016: In collaboration with Red Barnet we had a workshop at their “Den Store Venskabsdag 2016″ event at Katrinebjergskolen, Aarhus. We taught groups of children about Makey-Makey and Ozobots.

Fall, 2016: Weekly game development workshop in the GameDev department. The children were making their own games (using either GameMaker: Studio or Unity) and had the possibility of making a controller as well. The main theme was “keep it simple”, and the games were showcased at Dokk1, Aarhus.

November, 2016: We did our third Coding Pirates Game Jam - Aarhus. We also made a volunteers’ game.

Spring, 2017: Game development workshops every Wednesday where the children are making games using Unity or GameMaker: Studio. The theme this time around was “ReThink Vikings”.

February 2017: Workshops in London during Nordic Matters at the Southbank Centre. One workshop with robots and fairy tales, and one with a game jam using the theme “ReThink Vikings”.

March 2017: Coding Pirates GameDev did open workshops at the Danish Championships in Counter Strike: Global Offensive in Aarhus (not the finals). We made a Makey-Makey controller for CS and a small GameMaker: Studio game as well.

May 2017: We did our fourth Coding Pirates Game Jam - Aarhus. Lot’s of awesome games were made. I also made a small Twitch-chat-game to play in the pauses!

Fall, 2017: Weekly workshops on game development every Wednesday.

November, 2017: We did our fifth Coding Pirates Game Jam in Aarhus. Our biggest game jam yet with more than 100 participants!

Spring, 2018: Weekly workshops on game development every Wednesday.

So this one was just a mini-project done purely for fun. It is a small program to run next to the game Overwatch while you play as the character Lúcio. I also made an online version, but that one only works while the browser tab is in focus, which stops it from working with the game since the game takes focus.

The program pretty much just plays Lúcio’s full tracks depending on what you are pressing on the keyboard, so that it plays at the right times in-game.

You can get the program for free here. You will also find directions of use on that site.

Room for improvements

The ideal version of this program would read values off of the game, and maybe even control the in-game volume to allow for the menu music, but overwriting with Lúcio’s music while playing (and only when controlling this particular character). I tried to do this, but the game shut me down, and I’d rather not try more hardcore methods, since Blizzard surely would ban me from the game.

Link to download (original forum post here, but with broken link)

The very first piece of software I made - all the way back in 2007! It was a simple program for Windows storing the user’s passwords using one, single master password for encrypting the list.