A Brief History of Zork

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 8, 2012

I think many readers will already be familiar with this story, but there are some interesting details to be found therein: Eaten By a Grue: A Brief History of Zork. I’m glad it wasn’t called “Dungeon,” though I think the legal threat by TSR over the name is extremely lame. I still can’t figure out […]

Filed Under: Adventure Games - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

My Worst Bug Ever

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 7, 2012

Since I’m in crunch mode in le day job, I’m going for “easy” here with postings on the blog (mostly). So here’s a slightly modified reprint of a story from almost six years ago on the old blog. And yes, I have a tough time believing I’ve been doing this for that long. But since […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Retro - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

The Year I Discovered PC Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 6, 2012

I didn’t really have a DOS-based PC until 1991. By this point, the era of my beloved Commodore 64 was pretty much over, and while I really wanted an Amiga, its time was also rapidly coming to a close. This weekend, I stumbled across some music from Falcon 3.0 – the Spectrum Holobyte game from […]

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 10 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

Some Indies are Dickweeds

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 2, 2012

As I tried to explain earlier this week, there is a big difference between being inspired by a game and making something similar, and ripping it off “practically pixel for pixel.” It’s the difference between advancing the art (or industry), and cannibalizing it. While I don’t know this guy or the context in which he […]

Filed Under: Biz, Casual Games - Comments: 19 Comments to Read

Utah Indie Night – January 2012

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 1, 2012

The January Utah Indie Night was held on the very last night of January, 2012. The venue was new: the game development lab at Neumont University in South Jordan. The first part of the meeting was taken up by long-time local game developer Les Pardew and others talking up the proposed Digital Media and Entertainment […]

Filed Under: Utah Indie Game Night - Comments: 2 Comments to Read



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