My Moonlighting Level Designer…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 17, 2010

Hah! Now we know why Brian hasn’t finished Anarchy Manor yet! He’s totally been  moonlighting for Gareth on Scars of War! Actually, I encouraged him to do this. Hopefully Gareth and I won’t end up in any kind of bidding war over his services. He’s done some great work for me, and hopefully continues to […]

Filed Under: Art - Comments: Read the First Comment

Making Epic 3D Dungeons (Part 1)

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 11, 2010

UPDATE: Part 2 of this series, dealing with practical considerations for level design, can be found here: Making Epic 3D Dungeons, Part 2 – Applying the Lessons I grew up playing D&D, sometimes using the classic modules from TSR, often penned by Gary Gygax himself, or other writers like Allen Hammack, Ken Rolston (known to […]

Filed Under: Art, Design - Comments: 26 Comments to Read

Games – Too Big, Too Hard?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 4, 2010

Unable to resist an easy double entendre, GamePro EVP John Davison writes about how we now have solid evidence of something gamers are frequently loathe to admit: Too Big and Too Hard The upshot of the article is this: Now that game developers are including stats reporting in their games, they are learning our actual […]

Filed Under: Biz, Design - Comments: 13 Comments to Read

Manual Labor

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 30, 2010

The “Golden Age” of CRPGs unfortunately hit around the time I was a poor, starving college student. I had more time than money. Maybe that was why I ended up getting into my games much more than I do now. Nowadays, I’m able to find out what I was missing back in the day, but […]

Filed Under: Design, Retro - Comments: 13 Comments to Read

Jeff Vogel on How He Saved the Games Industry Overnight

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 22, 2010

Long-time indie RPG maker Jeff Vogel makes some dang good points: “If you asked me why I used that same old clunky game engine and why I am still using it, I would give this answer: Because I am really smart and cool and awesome. And if more people emulated me, the game industry would […]

Filed Under: Biz, Production - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Games as Art? I Thought I Saw That Horse Twitch!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

An actual chat yesterday Me: I am surprised that Ebert jumped back to repeat himself on this subject. I guess he wanted the publicity it gave him last time. Friend: Can’t blame him, really. It’s an interesting discussion point and gets him all kinds of free publicity all at once. Me: I can blame him! […]

Filed Under: Art, Biz, Movies, Politics - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Game Design: How CRPGs Warped My Brain, Part 4

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 21, 2010

Okay, it’s time to wrap up this series on the lessons in RPG design that I learned from CRPGs over the years. Four parts is plenty. I’m gonna have to skip a lot more games in this part, but the truth of the matter is that as the era gets later, I’m having trouble identifying […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Do Game Developers Actually Play Games? Shouldn’t They?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 20, 2010

In the forum thread about RPG Codex’s Game Developer Picks for RPG of the Decade [warning: They have been known to occasionally engage in harsh language… 😉 ] some posters rather colorfully called into question the judgment of these game developers (myself included as one of the offending responses) by asking whether we actually play […]

Filed Under: Biz, Game Development - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Game Design: How CRPGs Warped My Brain, Part 1

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 14, 2010

I have been reading Matt Barton’s excellent book, Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games, which highlights the contributions and unique features of an impressively  comprehensive set of computer RPGs. It’s made me think a bit about the influence these games have had on my own thinking of what a CRPG should be. […]

Filed Under: Design, General - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

An Example of Evolution of Software Architecture

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 6, 2010

Me, many moons ago: Hah! This is genius! I am a genius.  This inventory system is a model of efficiency and utility – elegant yet flexible.  Years of software development experience distilled into the architecture of a subsystem that I can be truly proud of. Having this foundation to build on will really help smooth […]

Filed Under: Programming - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

A Messiah Complex…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 22, 2010

Warning – Fallout 3 spoilers follow. The game is now 18 months old, which by mainstream computer game years is ancient. But a lot of folks haven’t played it but may still intend to do so unspoiled and unsullied. If you are one of them, please read no further. I finally finished Fallout 3 last […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Game Design: Capturing That Old-School RPG Flavor (New & Expanded)

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 20, 2010

This is a reposting of a fairly recent post from the old blog. But I keep finding myself referencing it for the awesome links, so I figured it was worth updating to the new system… with some brand new links on the subject. “Old School” computer RPGs means different things to different people. For some […]

Filed Under: Design, Retro - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Free 8 Bit Sound Effects Generator

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 9, 2010

Apparently I’d grabbed this tool a long time ago, but never used it until I was reminded of it by a former coworker. SFXR is a tool created specifically to help generate sound effects for things like the Ludlum Dare or other “game jam” type projects, but it free for any use. It allows you […]

Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Game Design – Are There Really Any Rules?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 5, 2010

Way back when, I wrote a post about the “rules of game design” – at least the few that I’d managed to pull out of a few years of working in the AAA games business. Since writing I have now put another three years into mainstream professional games development, and several years into being an […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 3 Comments to Read



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