Yet More New / Upcoming Gaming “Consoles”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 8, 2013

Wow. Winter CES is happening now, and more gaming devices are being unveiled.  Gamers, we live in interesting times. I haven’t seen this level of competition since the days of Atari 2600s / 5200s / Colecovisions / Intellivisions / Odyssey 2 / Vectrex / Astrocade and a swarm of “home computers.” And I was too […]

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

Cowboys & Zombies

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 7, 2013

So maybe THIS is what you get when you go to bed right after a Mountain Dew – fueled night filled with playing Baldur’s Gate (enhanced edition!) and  working on inventory UI for Frayed Knights 2. (And no, I haven’t played Minecraft or The Real Texas in weeks, so those are at least not an […]

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Ten Awesome Gaming Predictions for 2013

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 1, 2013

Happy New Year, everyone! May 2013 be awesome! I figured I’d start the new year by making some predictions. Since I don’t actually know jack, these are really easy, and I invite you to contribute your own! Here we go – my ten predictions for the new year: #1 – The Ouya actually becomes a […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Game Design: The Same Game, Only Different

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 28, 2012

Today, I’m running a D&D game for my family – well, okay, Pathfinder. Which in and of itself is a very cool thing. My twelve-year-old self would be so impressed. We’re playing the second part of the Age of Worms campaign that came out in Dungeon magazine about seven years ago. It’s pretty well-written and […]

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

“Never Gonna Play It.”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 26, 2012

I spent less money this year on the annual holiday PC game portal sales than usual. Maybe it’s premature to say that, as some portals are still doing sales until the beginning of next year, but so far the year-end sales haven’t hurt my wallet as much as the past. This wasn’t really a factor […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

A Very Indie Christmas

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 24, 2012

Is it sad that I get so excited about taking time off for the holidays so that I can spend time working on my games? Does Santa have any digital elves that can make me some royalty-free art assets? My wife used to buy me a video game or two for Christmas. She doesn’t bother […]

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

Two Great Arcade Urban Legends

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 14, 2012

On twitter (I’m @RampantCoyote ) I was chatting a little bit about arcade urban legends. Most of the ones I was familiar with were pretty local – some kid pulling my leg claiming to have gone to a totally new world through the Stargate in Defender Stargate (later redubbed Defender II). Or how it was […]

Filed Under: Geek Life, Retro - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Games as Art, Round 33…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 3, 2012

A substitute drama teacher once told me about an experience he had seeing a production of The Importance of Being Earnest. As the play progressed, his laughter apparently annoyed a couple of older women behind him – who had not even chuckled once. Finally one of the women leaned forward and hissed at him. “Young […]

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Too Much

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 27, 2012

I picked up Dead Island during the Steam Autumn sale. I finally tried to play it. My wife was in the room. I watched part of the intro. The music and the dialog, was pretty laden with profanity. As the f-bombs continued at a rate of one every three seconds, my wife expressed disgust at the […]

Filed Under: Biz, Geek Life - Comments: 16 Comments to Read

Three Days of Slinging Dice and Raising Hell, AKA Thanksgiving

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 22, 2012

While I’ve always appreciated the “giving thanks” aspect of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S., and was never ungrateful for having the days off of school and work, I’ve not always been a fan of the holiday. When I was a kid, it was actually pretty boring, and often involved people I didn’t really […]

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Computer Necromancy

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 7, 2012

My desktop system died, quite suddenly early Monday morning. Bummer. After a few repairs and a new Windows install (on a new hard drive), I’m now back in business. Fortunately, nothing was lost on the game development front (I had backups even if my data drive had died – which it hadn’t – so there […]

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Math is for Game Development!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 7, 2012

Okay, this one’s for the kids. Wanna make videogames? Learn to love math! I’m not sure if videogames or sending space ships to other planets represent the culmination of all that great work by the mathematicians  and scientists of the past like Euclid, Archimedes, Newton, Decartes, Acharya, and Fibonacci. But it ranks pretty highly up […]

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A Message to a Young, Newbie Game Developer – Thirty Years Ago Today

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 28, 2012

I’m not sure of the official “ship date” for the Commodore 64, but it was pretty close to thirty years ago today. We had ours on pre-order for months, and it finally arrived on our doorstep in early September – after school had started, much to my chagrin. I’d anticipated spending a summer learning to […]

Filed Under: Geek Life, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Curiosity

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 6, 2012

I gotta admit, as much as I tried to blow it off as “no big deal,” the Curiosity landing on Mars thrilled me. I was glued to the NASA feed through the entire entry — realizing, of course, that by the time we saw anything the limitations of light-speed meant that it had already happened […]

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Still “Hardcore Gamer” Enough

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 16, 2012

Sometimes I worry that I’ve lost whatever it was that made me such a hardcore gamer in the past – whatever it was that made me sometimes not notice how late I was playing games until the rising sun streamed in through the window, or that made me want to write stories set in the […]

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Frayed Knights, Crunch Mode, Research, and Development

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 26, 2012

There are a few advantages to being a part-time indie. You have considerably more freedom to make any kind of game you want, as your livelihood doesn’t depend upon sales. Your “day job” can finance your game development habit. The disadvantages are pretty obvious, however, and a big one is that the indie thing has […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights, Geek Life - Comments: 9 Comments to Read



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