More Indie Bubble Popping Goodness

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 29, 2014

This one from Cliffski, and I find his opinion is pretty much the same as mine: Will the indie games market crash and burn? Short answer: Yes, depending on your definition. Longer answer (my interpretation):  It’ll be the game developers crashing and burning, not so much the market. Solution: Go for your dreams, but don’t […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Indie Studio of the Living Dead

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 28, 2014

While I sometimes wish I could be one of those total coding animals – the ones who can just go for 16+ hours with hardly a break – I don’t know if I’d want the kind of personality that would allow that. Coming off of an intense 10-hour workday, with a break for dinner, and […]

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

RPG Design: The Positive Potential of Potions

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 27, 2014

About ten months ago, I wrote about consumable / expendable resources in RPGs. More recently, Matt Barton penned an article about how much he wants to get rid of consumable items altogether in “Down with Pots!” Well, I’m gonna answer both him and my younger self. At least in part. Actually, I’m gonna write three answers […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Last Year’s Treasure, Today’s Trash

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 26, 2014

My new computer arrived last Tuesday. In a confession that might lose me geek cred, I’ve been so insanely busy that I didn’t even get it out of the box to test it out until the weekend. Statwise – it’s got a quad-core Intel i5-4690k (which I admit, doesn’t mean that much to me anymore), […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Dark Dungeons: The Movie Takes Us Into Dark Imaginations…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 25, 2014

When I was a kid and first starting to get into Dungeons & Dragons, it was riding a double wave of fad-like popularity and backlash from certain quarters for being dangerous or downright evil – which only added to its popularity. While I didn’t face too much direct opposition from authority-types over playing the game, […]

Filed Under: Geek Life, Movies - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Maybe the dream job isn’t really dreamy… or even a job…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 22, 2014

I always want to post some things without commentary, but I can’t help but comment. In this case, an article by my friend Lars Doucet, developer for Defender’s Quest. And the guy who did Tourette’s Quest. Warning, this is another one of those, “back to reality” pieces. Follow Your Dreams!… Or Maybe Don’t… This could […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: Read the First Comment

Indie Games and the Gold Rush Mentality

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 21, 2014

In 1846, San Francisco was a tiny settlement of around 200 people. Then the California Gold Rush happened. The population exploded to 36,000 within six years.  Tons of people came to strike it rich. Some did. Most didn’t. Then a few years later, the whole thing petered out. The gold rush ended. Some people left. […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Utah Game Jam

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 20, 2014

On Friday September 12th through Sunday the 14th, game-makers of all stripes in the Salt Lake area are invited to the Utah Indie Game Jam. There’s more information at the site. Note that board game developers are invited as well… it’s not just about game controllers and real-time graphics. If interested, please register, as space […]

Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: Read the First Comment

PuppyGames: The Customer as a Commodity

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 19, 2014

Since I’m sleep-deprived and exhausted and haven’t had much time to spare to the blog with this Comic Con demo coming up, I’ll just link to a really good (and, no doubt, soon to be demonized) blog post by fellow indie Cas Prince: Because You’re Worthless: The Dark Side of Indie PR Because I have […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

To swap or not to swap game engines …

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 18, 2014

I love Unity. I’m very, very happy about it. My art guys… well, maybe not so much, but I think it’s more of a matter of what they are used to. But although this article isn’t favorable towards Unity (it’s not really unfavorable, either), it’s an outstanding discussion of the analysis and challenge of switching […]

Filed Under: Production - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights 2: First Official Screenshot

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 15, 2014

Getting Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath in photogenic state was a lot more difficult than expected. Aside from having a major rethink on the art style to try and improve the apparent quality of the graphics, and totally redoing the UI (I’m still paying the price for that one), and the Steam release […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

The Comic Con Upgrade

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 14, 2014

I remember back in the 90s when a computer upgrade was almost a mandatory bi-annual thing… on odd years I’d replace parts to keep it kind of up-to-snuff, and then on even years I’d replace the whole machine.  Man, I don’t miss those days. PC gaming was an expensive hobby. Nowadays, PCs cost half as […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Passion and the part-time indie: Why the candle gets burned at both ends

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 13, 2014

When one is a part-time indie game developer, one comes to expect certain things. Like the inevitability that crunch mode at the Day Job will coincide with crunch mode for indie dev. If you are a serious, “professional” indie, this may also mean that you find yourself coming face-to-face with some very real deadline issues […]

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Black Triangles

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 12, 2014

One of my most popular posts was also my very first… which has since been lost to the Great Blog Devouring of ’14. So…  here’s the post from over ten years ago (has it been that long?!?!?!) about an event from almost twenty years ago. Still stuff I have to remind myself about some days. […]

Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Game Development: Rolling Your Own Engine?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 11, 2014

This weekend in the indie game developers group on Facebook, a vocal minority (very much a minority) ventured “opinions” disparaging developers who don’t build their own game engine from scratch. The predictable crapstorm ensued. Mainly it was troll-feeding and simply fun to pile on, as these Internet arguments often go. Now, ignoring for the moment […]

Filed Under: Programming - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Game Dev Quote of the Week: Little Pieces of Deviation Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 8, 2014

“Breaking your game down into small pieces forces you to analyze and evaluate your ideas on a deeper level. This is essential because you always want to be open to changes, you never want to set yourself into a path that you feel you can in no way deviate from. Deviation from the plan can […]

Filed Under: Quote of the Week - Comments: Read the First Comment



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