RPG Pacing

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 28, 2014

I should keep a collection of weird (but sometimes insightful) ideas that I get when I’m busy working on my game after midnight. It seems that the combo of fatigue and focus in the late hours on the nuts and bolts of RPG development cause some strange “thinky thoughts” (as my wife sometimes calls it). […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 27, 2014

For readers in the U.S., Happy Thanksgiving! For everyone else, Happy Thursday! This one will be a little weird, as it’s the first time in almost twenty years our eldest daughter won’t be with us. She’s serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in South Carolina. It’ll be weirder […]

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

Unity 4.6

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 26, 2014

The long-awaited UI system is here for Unity! I’m pretty used to using NGUI by now (and the creator of NGUI helped work on this new UI system), so I’m not sure how much I’ll want / need to mix ‘n match. But it’s nice to have that option, and worth investigating. I’m still in […]

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

The arcade games of my dreams. Literally.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 25, 2014

I had another dream about a “lost” arcade game the other night. I have these dreams periodically. I don’t know why, especially since the whole “age of the arcades” was a relatively brief chapter of my life by this point. Maybe they are repressed memories of my playing Polybius that are trying to break to […]

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A Brief History of (Video Game) Graphics

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 24, 2014

These are fun to watch as either a gamer or as a game developer, this is a five-part series of short videos explaining the major revolutions / trends / milestones in video game graphics over the years. From vector graphics to bloom effects, it’s a pretty entertaining little set of videos. For us old-school fans, […]

Filed Under: Art - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Creating Worlds

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 21, 2014

Back in its heyday, Origin’s motto was, “We create worlds.” When I think about why I love games and why I love making games, that’s the key. As much as I do appreciate these “little” games with the single, focused game mechanic – as much as I used to love the arcade machines in the […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Elite: Dangerous Demonstrates Some Dangers of Crowdfunding

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 20, 2014

As “failures” go, it’s fairly minor. Elite: Dangerous is nearing completion, and will be shipping next month. YAY! Or not. It will be shipping without offline support. Which to many people (including me) is kinda head-scratching. It’s not an MMO – at least I never thought of it as an MMO and kinda missed the […]

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The Dog Ate My Homework

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 19, 2014

I had a gigantic post full of links and really timely, relevant material that was something of a stretch for me (and had me dealing with a very difficult topic). Unfortunately, when WordPress logged me off in the second paragraph and re-logged me in, it didn’t *actually* re-log me on. It insisted that everything was […]

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RPG Design: Escape the Dungeon? Is That All?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 18, 2014

I’m a dungeon-crawler at heart. When I think of role-playing games, my brain immediately goes to the Mines of Moria or the goblin caves under the Misty Mountains. So I’m usually trying to find my way into dungeons. But that’s me, as a gamer. A lot of dungeon-crawling RPGs have a straightforward goal: You are […]

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The End of the “Casual Era?”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 17, 2014

First things first: so-called “Casual Games?” Not going away. Ever. In fact, you could argue that thanks to mobile gaming, they are bigger than ever. WAY bigger. What are casual games? They are games preferred by “casual gamers” – the ones who don’t have the depth of interest or time commitment of the hardcore fans. They […]

Filed Under: Biz, Casual Games - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Game Dev Quote of the Week: Small Company, Big Ideas Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 14, 2014

“Try to be unique. The current main focus for indie developers seems to be to make concentrated experiences with a  challenging core gameplay, and staying away from that might be a good start in the drive to get notice. Keep it small and focused, not only in terms off the project, but also in terms […]

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Dungeon Crawling So Old It’s New Again

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 13, 2014

One concept of early dice-and-paper role-playing games (and some of the old CRPG counterparts) that has been somewhat lost in the modern era is the idea of avoiding combat encounters. Old-school D&D has a not-entirely warranted reputation for being about killing everything in sight. After all, that was how you got XP (experience points), right? […]

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RPG Design: The Role of Magic and RPG Balance

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 12, 2014

I’ve been doing some brooding over Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath since Comic Con (more on that in a future post), and it’s brought about a few changes. There’s one point I’m not sure on yet, because changes might mess with the flavor. I don’t want to mess with the flavor. One problem […]

Filed Under: Design, Frayed Knights - Comments: 13 Comments to Read

Man, I think that Mass Paralyze spell is imbalanced!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 11, 2014

Amusing bug story of the week. Actually, two bugs: On Utah Indie Night, one of the group was playing the (updated) Comic Con demo for Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath. As he gets into combat for the first time, I explain that the spells are randomly generated every time the game resets, and […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights, Programming - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Stories From a “Regular” Indie Game Developer

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 10, 2014

I don’t know what a “regular” indie game developer means, really, but I suppose it’s probably about being one of the regular, working-class indies as opposed to one of the “rock stars.” We don’t get much press. We don’t get included in documentaries. At least not usually. We’re the little local bands hoping to make […]

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Utah Indie Night – November 2014

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 7, 2014

November’s Utah Indie Night was at the University of Utah, hosted by the EAE (Entertainment Arts & Engineering) department. The formal presentation was by Paige Ashlynn and Becky Pennock of Tripleslash Studios (who, by the way, have their game – Magnetic by Nature – launching on Steam next week!) As a company, they have been […]

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



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