Hi, I am Nikolai

Nikolai Åkerholt

Senior Software Engineer at Red Thread Games

Full-stack software engineer with a burning passion for videogames technology & crafting practical solutions. Love sharing knowledge within a team environment and have a keen eye for improving productivity in the development process.

Communication
Brainstorming
Collaboration
Self-driven
Fast Learner
Logical thinking

Skills

Experience

Red Thread Games

June 2021 - Present, Oslo, Norway

Red Thread Games is an independent game developer and publisher focusing on creating story-driven games with soul.

Senior Software Engineer

April 2024 - Present

  • Combat systems & optimizations on Dustborn, a story-driven action-adventure game about hope, love, friendship, robots and the power of words.
  • Prototyping & demo development of a pre-production project in Unreal Engine, with focus on third-person combat systems.
Game Programmer

June 2021 - April 2024

  • Developing combat & gameplay systems for Dustborn.
  • Responsible for CI/CD pipeline and setting up a scalable build-environment for prototyping and production across several platforms.
  • Prototyping of other pre-production projects in both Unity and Unreal.

Summer Intern
Maritime Optima

June 2020 - August 2020, Oslo, Norway

Maritime Optima is a company committed to developing user-friendly and smart software to assist people in the shipping industry.

Responsibilities:
  • Worked as a fullstack software developer.
  • Expanded application functionality on both web and mobile (React/React Native).
  • Improved some of the functionality in the backend microservices and graphQL API (Golang).

Summer Researcher
Sintef Ocean

June 2019 - August 2019, Trondheim, Norway

SINTEF Ocean conducts research and development related to ocean technologies.

Responsibilities:
  • Continuation of Bachelor project from NTNU.
  • Improvements on Neodroid Playground, a subpart of a research project called Neodroid.
  • Created virtual enviroment for teaching tasks to robots in VR (Unity/C#).
  • Worked on reverse curriculum generation for reinforcement learning.

Education

Master in Applied Computer Science
Courses
  • Advanced Project Work
  • Research Project Planning
  • Specialisation in software engineering
  • Specialisation in Mobile/Wearable Technology
  • Experts in Teams - Autonomous Systems
  • Introduction to Research in Mobile/Wearables Technology
  • Introduction to Research in Serious Games and Gamification
  • Integration Project
  • Scientific Methodology and Communication
  • Usability and Human Factors in Interaction Design
  • Deep learning for visual computing
  • Applied Computer Science Project
Bachelor in Programming [Games | Applications]
Courses
  • Professional programming
  • Rapid prototyping and innovation
  • Introduction to artificial intelligence
  • Software security
  • Game programming
  • Operating systems
  • Graphics programming
  • Mobile/Wearable programming
  • Mathematics for programming
  • Algorithmic methods
  • Datamodeling and database-systems
  • Cloud technologies
  • Object-oriented programming
  • System development
  • Basic programming
  • Experience design
  • Mathematics for informatics
Holmestrand High School
2013-2016
General High School Studies

Projects

VR Health and Wellness Hub
VR Health and Wellness Hub
Group-Project Jan 2020 - Present

A VR game hub consisting of several minigames (exergames/serious games) with a purpose to improve specific health-issues or general life-quality.

Details
CSGO Round-Winning Predictor
CSGO Round-Winning Predictor
Group-Project Oct 2020 - Nov 2020

A deep-learning project consisting of a webscraper (golang) to extract data about competitive CSGO matches. As well as a deep-neural-network implementation in python (Keras and Tensorflow) for predicting which team wins a round.

Details
Rogue Army
Rogue Army
Solo-Project Jan 2019 - Present

A 2D rogue-like about making and upgrading an army of units to proceed through several levels of difficult battles.

Details
Neodroid Playground
Neodroid Playground
Group-Project Jan 2019 - Aug 2019

A VR environment for teaching tasks to robots. As well as a simulated environment where these robots can learn their tasks.

Details
Mr. RogueBot
Mr. RogueBot
Group-Project Aug 2018 - Dec 2018

A VR Rogue-like shooter that is about surviving a robot apocalypse while progressing through the robot compounds.

Details
Twitch.tv Arena Battler
Twitch.tv Arena Battler
Solo-Project 2. Nov 2018 - 4. Nov 2018

Game for twitch.tv where people could enter the game and manage their character via chat commands.

Details
Game of life
Game of life
Group-Project 19. Oct 2018 - 21. Oct 2018

A simulated world consisting of different agents dedicated to survive in this open landscape through their finite-state-machine AI.

Details
Hackerbook (Web Forum)
Hackerbook (Web Forum)
Group-Project Sept 2018 - Oct 2018

A web forum with a golang backend. Simple javascript and html templating for frontend. Main focus were to implement network security features into the forum.

Details
Super Awesome Game About Fear of Open Spaces: The Game
Super Awesome Game About Fear of Open Spaces: The Game
Group-Project 14. Sept 2018 - 16. Sept 2018

Jumping platformer where you play a character that is afraid of open spaces. Keep moving to not build up too much ‘fear’ and certain platforms apply buffs/debuffs.

Details
Flight Sim - OpenGL Computer Graphics
Flight Sim - OpenGL Computer Graphics
Solo-Project 11. May 2018 - 14. May 2018

An OpenGL implementation in C++. Including heightmap loading of grey-scale image, seasonal environment changes and a controllable airplane.

Details
Getting Air
Getting Air
Group-Project March 2018 - May 2018

Android game created with Java in Android Studio. Players can interact by tilting their phone. Avoid spikes to survive and pick up oxygen to increase score.

Details

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