A Game Dev’s Story, Part II – The Kilobyte

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 13, 2012

Because of the binary nature of computers, they tend to handle things in twos – especially powers of two. The fundamental states used repeatedly by digital machines to represent everything is “on” (or one), or “off” (zero). Now, by itself, that doesn’t seem to be a lot of information. But then you can combine bits […]

Filed Under: A Game Dev's Story, Game Development, Retro - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

A Game Dev’s Story – Part I: Discovering the Future

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 9, 2012

They say that a good dramatic story has the hero set out on his or her journey after “two nudges and a push.”  I don’t know that I’m all that heroic or dramatic, but I guess the beginnings of my story as a game developer also has two nudge and a push. My first significant […]

Filed Under: A Game Dev's Story, Game Development, Retro - Comments: Read the First Comment

My Worst Bug Ever

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 7, 2012

Since I’m in crunch mode in le day job, I’m going for “easy” here with postings on the blog (mostly). So here’s a slightly modified reprint of a story from almost six years ago on the old blog. And yes, I have a tough time believing I’ve been doing this for that long. But since […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Retro - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Crunch and the Part-Time Indie: Five Tricks to Getting Your Game Done Without Self-Destructing

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 3, 2012

I don’t know when I was introduced to the concept of “crunch time” as a kid. Somewhere between stories like Tracy Kidder’s Soul of a New Machine and other tales of heroic efforts on the job, I came to see it as being the hallmark of the driven, passionate professional. Although in all those stories […]

Filed Under: Biz, Production - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Keeping an RPG Series Fresh

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 20, 2012

One summer day I was running a Call of Cthulhu adventure for some friends who were old hands at the game.  They’d played it a lot more than I had, but hadn’t played the module I was running.  They had new characters, as it was a one-off-game. And… well, we all noticed it right away. […]

Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Mining Super Metroid for Design Lessons

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 19, 2012

I never really played much Super Metroid. I didn’t own the correct hardware.  While at the time – before I got a job making games for consoles – I disdained consoles for PC games, but mainly I think it was because I didn’t have the money. But Hugo Bille writes a fascinating article entitled, The Invisible […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Lousy Choices and Linear Dungeons

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 17, 2012

A year or so ago this illustration of FPS level design “evolution” over the last twenty years made the rounds, and struck a little bit of a nerve.  Yes, many folks agreed – particularly the old-school gamers who remember gaming from the last century – it’s gotten awfully simplistic. But the maps don’t tell the […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 18 Comments to Read

The Indie Plunge, or, “WOAH! The Water Is Cold!”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 13, 2012

I feel a little guilty about this, as I’m directly referenced as an example in Matt Barton’s latest development diary expressing his frustration, disappointment, and lowered expectations as he pushed for making a 3D RPG. He’s done some amazing stuff over the last few months, going from nothing to three(?) released games, including one commercial […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Ten Tips for Becoming an Indie Game Developer

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 12, 2012

Post-Mortems on indie games always seem more interesting to me than post-mortems on big-studio games. It may be because they are just less conventional overall, or that the post-mortems I read of mainstream games usually conform to the Game Developer Magazine “5 things that went right / 5 things that went wrong” formula. I dunno. […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Game Development. Cheaper.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 6, 2012

I was going to write this longish piece about lessons learned from working on Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon. I still plan on it, but then prolific game-design thinker Raph Koster went and did a write-up about making games “more cheaply” (which can also be interpreted as, “more quickly,” as the major cost in […]

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RPG Design: Skill-Based Systems

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 2, 2012

Okay, I figured I’d chat a bit about the features of skill-based RPG systems – good, bad, and neutral. This is a continuation of my previous articles about the skill-based vs. class-based systems, and the features of class-based systems. When I first started playing skill-based systems, I thought I’d never want to go back to […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Module-Based RPG Adventure Design in CRPGs

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 30, 2011

Gonna take a short break in my discussion of skill-based vs. class-based RPG design systems to talk about something of an “ah-hah” moment I had recently. This isn’t something new or surprising to anybody, but I thought it was an interesting parallel. I’ve found myself enjoying Skyrim a bit more than I enjoyed Oblivion, and […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

RPG Design: Staying Classy

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 29, 2011

Okay, after a little bit of basic background on class vs. skill based RPG systems yesterday, I’m going to talk about some of the advantages, disadvantages, and general design features of class-based RPGs. Once upon a time, after I discovered the joy that was skill-based systems, I was really down on class-based design. Skill-based systems […]

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RPG Design: Do You Wanna Have Skillz or Have Some Class?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 28, 2011

There are two very broad approaches in RPG character rules systems: Class-based and skill-based. Class-based systems define characters by their class – some sort of role or archetype, and improvements to the character are usually determined by one’s level within the class (though equipment usually plays a role as well). The most famous example of […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Game Design: Good, Bad, and Great

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 27, 2011

For you game designers or those interested in game design out there, here is an intriguing post by Raph Koster: Good Design, Bad Design, and Great Design As always, this is not like a recipe book for great game design. Most of these comparisons are actually pretty subjective, or at least subject to a large […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: Read the First Comment

Participating in the Peanut Gallery

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 23, 2011

While Markus “Notch” Persson (of Minecraft fame) livestreamed his progress during the Ludum Dare competition last weekend, one guy (Mister Speaker) spent some time seeing what people were talking about in the accompanying chat channel.  The results are funny and sometimes sad. Think about it: One person (Notch) is doing the project, oblivious to the […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Geek Life - Comments: 2 Comments to Read



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