Programming, Gear-Shifting, and The Zone

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 9, 2012

One of the things I need to get better at as an indie is shifting gears. Or, more correctly, task-switching. As an indie, I don’t have the luxury of specialization, or concentrating on any one task for too long. I have to be agile. I have to wear lots of hats. It gets very, very […]

Filed Under: Production, Programming - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

IP Rights – Why Are They Are Important to Indie Game Developers? Part 2

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 13, 2012

So yesterday I prefaced the whole “IP rights” thing with a story about a non-indie publisher. My feeling – echoed by most within the indie arena, but apparently not all – is that owning your own IP is a “necessary but not sufficient” aspect of your game being indie. But even within that, there’s a […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism, Production - Comments: 2 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

Release Date: I Don’t Know

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 3, 2011

Brian Mitsoda answers the frequently asked question about his upcoming game, Dead State: “When is the release date?” He very carefully explains the answer, “I don’t know.” I can only echo everything he says here. I’ve been asked a few times about how you estimate time to complete a project. The answer is that you […]

Filed Under: Production - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Troll Doll Source Control

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 22, 2011

For those unfamiliar with it, source control is – at its most basic level – a system for archiving and managing updates to the source code for software. It’s particularly useful when you have multiple people working on the software, and you’d like to make sure that they don’t accidentally and irrevocably step on each […]

Filed Under: Biz, Production - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

What Does a Game Producer / Manager / Leader Actually Do?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 23, 2011

When I was in the trenches of game development early in my career, I was lucky enough to have some producers / managers who were pretty good at their job. Later on, in other jobs (including many outside of the games biz), I wasn’t always so lucky. A couple of days ago, in response to […]

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

Podcast Interview – Dungeons of Dredmor (Gaslamp Games)

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 22, 2011

Okay, I confess – I’m not a big fan of podcasts. Yes, I’ve been in ’em… but it’s not my thing. The reason is that I can’t work and listen to a podcast at the same time. I can do it if I’m playing a familiar game that doesn’t have any necessary dialog to read […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Interviews, Production - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

It’s Not Really a Day Off

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 18, 2011

For me, at least, being a part-time indie game developer means taking the occasional day off work so I can stay home and… work. Yes, aside from fixing a fence that was damaged in a wind storm a couple of days ago, my day is going to be spent frantically fixing bugs. As will much […]

Filed Under: Production - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Alpha, Beta, and Release – Indie Definitions

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 2, 2011

The testing phases of alpha and beta mean different things to different publishers and studios, especially when it comes to games. The terms originate from the hardware industry. As I understand it, alpha testing was component testing, where the individual pieces were rigorously tested for integrity and function. Beta testing was effectively integration testing, when […]

Filed Under: Production - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Finish the Game!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 28, 2011

Jeff Vogel talks about the final stages of making and releasing a new RPG. Avadon Developer Diary #5: Getting It Done Boy do I ever feel his pain. But I think he’s much better at it by now than I am.

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

Why Am I Still Working at 3 AM on a Game?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 27, 2011

I used to stay up all hours of the night playing games. Now I stay up all hours of the night making them. Okay, I guess that’s not entirely true. I’ve been making games for almost as long as I’ve been playing them.  Even back to the point where I was trying to squeak something […]

Filed Under: Geek Life, Indie Evangelism, Production - Comments: Read the First Comment

Making Games: Adding Role-Playing to Computer Role-Playing Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 4, 2010

Continuing from yesterday’s discussion, I thought I’d provide a concrete example of how process might be applied to  a creative endeavor (like a game). While I’m really talking about the general idea, I figured I’d focus on a specific trait near-and-dear to many CRPG fans’ black hearts, role-playing. One point repeated from The CRPG Addict’s […]

Filed Under: Design, Production - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Derek Yu on How to Finish a Game

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 22, 2010

I think I need to permanently bookmark this piece and re-read it weekly. Derek Yu offers fifteen solid tips for actually finishing a game. It’s called, mysteriously enough: Finishing a Game I have been known to actually finish games from time to time. So I do have some perspective on this, though probably not as […]

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

The Episode Problem

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 2, 2010

When Robert Jordan was still alive and his Wheel of Time series was The Hot Thing in fantasy (I guess that was a while ago, huh?), I deliberately avoided it. My wife finally coerced me into listening to the first book on tape when I had a long commute a few years ago, but I […]

Filed Under: Production - Comments: 16 Comments to Read

Game PR: Indie Versus Mainstream

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 4, 2010

Brian Mitsoda recently penned a design update for Doublebear’s upcoming “Zombie RPG” entitled, “To Here Knows When.” I think the title is completely lost on me, but the subject is terribly familiar (especially as my “quickie” game is going into its fourth year of development – ouch, that hurts…) Now, people have a very good […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Production - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Rampant Coyote’s Gone Bye-Bye. What Have You Got Left, Egon?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 31, 2010

I’m dreaming about game content now. Sanity may be no more than a distant memory. I woke up from a vivid dream about 3D models of creatures for Frayed Knights. With accompanying stat blocks that would have been appropriate in a pen-and-paper RPG. And an additional chart showing completion levels. Somehow in my dream a […]

Filed Under: Geek Life, Production - Comments: 7 Comments to Read



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