Feel Like Making a Roguelike / Roguelike-like? Procedural Death Jam!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 4, 2014

The Procedural Death Jam is upon us, starting this weekend… That’s part of Lars Doucet’s proposed name for Roguelikes (and the increasingly dissimilar “Roguelike-likes”), “Procedural Death Labyrinths.” The emphasis is on procedural level generation and permadeath. The game jam goes on for seven days. I’ll tell ya, if I wasn’t so behind on Frayed Knights […]

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Game Design Lessons from Ken Rolston

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 26, 2014

Ken Rolston has quite a list of game design credentials, from working on two of the Elder Scrolls games, to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (which I hear is a good game, in spite of being tainted by its history), to experience working in the dice-and-paper RPG industry. His office-mate Alexander Horn from the 38 Studios […]

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Game Development: Tool Add-Ons and Keeping Up-To-Date

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 12, 2014

This isn’t really an update on Frayed Knights 2 status. I’m overdue to give you one, I know.  This is more of a general-purpose post about game development, but of course my point of reference is Frayed Knights 2. It naturally looms large in my mind and consumes a good deal of my focus. One […]

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Game Design: What Makes Exploration Fun?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 5, 2014

I’m trying to come up with some kind of “unified field theory” about exploration in games (particularly, but not exclusively, for RPGs). Some games are really good at it – from the early days of Elite and Frontier, to the sandbox play of the Grand Theft Auto series, to Bethesda’s exploration-centric role-playing games. particularly as […]

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What Does a Beginner Need to Start Making Games?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 29, 2014

Courtesy of a Steam Sale, I found myself in possession of GameMaker Studio Pro edition for the bargain price of 25 bucks a few weeks ago. I’d actually considered taking a good, hard look at it after some comments on game development after considering some comments on one of the posts here (I think it […]

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Learning to Make Games: Putting in the Time

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 21, 2014

My dad used to joke about how he’d bought all this exercise equipment but it hadn’t helped him one bit. Then he’d say something like, “I’m going to try using some of it now, and see if that makes a difference.” Yeah, it was a lame joke. But I sometimes get into that mentality, too. […]

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Game Development Quote of the Week – On How to Measure Success

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 17, 2014

This one comes from over twenty years ago, from the pages of Compute! Magazine. This was in an era when video games (particularly computer games) were almost but not quite the big business they are today, and were still being made by small teams that would often be considered “indie” today. “You can’t concern yourselves […]

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Game Development: Looking at Hard Numbers is Hard

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 16, 2014

How much does it cost to make a mainstream video game? Kataku mines out a few numbers. I remember being told that our games at Singletrac cost closer to $1.5 million to make… but that may have been in the Twisted Metal 2 era. Jaffe would know better than me, as he was one of […]

Filed Under: Biz, Production - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

The Game Design Rough Sketch

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 30, 2013

I heard a joke the other day: “Weeks of programming can save you hours of planning.” It’s pretty true, although for certain familiar tasks for veteran programmers, the planning can take a lot more time than just jumping into code. I think in code. But of course, that’s the kind of thing that gets me […]

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The Death of Deathfire?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 23, 2013

I’m saddened. Guido Henkel and the Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore have officially pulled the plug. The Deathfire Team: Thanks you for all your support This crap happens all the time, really. Games get canceled, for many reasons. But in this case – with the failure of the Kickstarter and the episodic alternative – the reason […]

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Game Development Quote of the Week: Derek Yu on Resources and Constraints

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 19, 2013

Today’s quote of the week comes from the absolutely outstanding article (which I’m pretty sure I’ve linked to before) “Finishing a Game” by Derek Yu. If you are an aspiring game developer who hasn’t yet gone through to release, I strongly recommend this article. “The fact is, if we all had unlimited resources and unlimited […]

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Learning from Game Jams

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 18, 2013

I haven’t been a very successful “game jam” developer. I’ve participated in a few, even completed a few, but I’m not a regular participant. I have lots of excuses. But mainly, with major projects in development, and a family / social / church life and responsibilities, it’s tough to carve out an entire weekend for […]

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RPG Design: Declaring Victory. A lot.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 17, 2013

I’ve been doing a little bit of course-tuning of the combat system for Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath, which is to be expected as I’ve radically changed some significant aspects from … well, anything I’ve played before. The spell system, which is quite possibly the most complicated spell system “under the hood” ever […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week: Lee Perry

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 12, 2013

This week’s quote of the week comes from Lee Parry, formerly a lead designer at Epic (and now an indie): “If there’s one single thing I would drive into any developer’s head if I could, it would be the importance of great player feedback.  When I talk about feedback, I mean the classic loop between […]

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RPG Design: The Forgettable Fight

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 10, 2013

Maybe it was the link to the Richard Garriott quote last week, or the Matt Chat interviews with Guido Henkel, or… more likely… my current coding and rebalancing of Frayed Knights combat, but I’ve been thinking about combat in RPGs a bit more lately, and how it has changed between the old classics and modern […]

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Game Development Quote of the Week – Early Richard Garriott

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 6, 2013

Now, bear in mind that this was said less than a third of the way into his career (so far) – around the time of Ultima 6’s development. But here’s an old quote from Richard “Lord British” Garriott on his RPG design philosophy during Ultima’s heyday: “My philosophy is that once you get people compelled […]

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