Blogs

A bit of a last minute scramble to get something together for the IGF. My original idea of getting the new game up and running, hahahaha… erm, sadly no. Progress is good, but not that good. However, I still am sending something. What I’m sending is the old PuffBOMB, from over 2 years ago, with a fresh paint job. The new look finally brings together my style ideas for the game from the past couple years It’s a chance to finally see it in action, and to know, does it suck or not....

July roundup action. Check it out here. Some fun stuff this time. Wild Tangent’s Fate, more or less Diablo 2 with a pet. Geneforge 3, an oldskool non Japanese RPG. Facade, the crazy … simulation of … people … with marage problems. Yeah, some really great stuff this month. As for what’s going on, I originally ruled out the idea of actually getting something done for the IGF, but I’m starting to think I can pull something together....

Amazing. Today was my official last day at Big Blue Bubble. BBB was a great place to work, but I’m a too ambitious for my own good. So, lets see if I can make this happen. The next couple weeks are some down time. Taking things easy, doing some organization, making backups, and so on. Being realistic, I’ve missed my chance to make the IGF. On the other hand, there’s still something this year I can shoot for....

Wow, it’s that time again already. Don’t look so impressed. This was a unique month. To start, we actually recieved 11 full versions! Wow. Usually, we get anywhere from 1-3 full versions per month. This time, we had a whopping 11 (1 being freeware). As for the games… ha ha ha… I’m not telling you. Ok, several interesting ones. Mexican Motor Mafia was the unanimous favorite; Ultratron, Puppytron on crack; Magic Blackboard, the strangest Breakout/Arkanoid ever… with “Space Gator”, as Anthony Flack put it; And finally, Summer School Girls, which was a game designed for the sole purpose of freaking me out....

On a mission to build corporate identity, the trials and tribulations of logo design. Given that introduction, … yeah, I was playing with logo design ideas. At the end of the day, I didn’t exactly come up with something to use. None the less, this is my blog, and I feel compelled to share it with myself, and any other misguided net travelers. Here’s “Ghastly logo“. For my own amusement, you can see it’s evolution below....

GameTunnel’s Monthly Roundup for May is up. This was apparently a tough month to find enough games. Alas, we eventually made our quota of 14. Also, this is the 12th roundup, so guess what? The roundup’s are now a year old. Spiffy. I’ve only been involved for the past 8 months, but crazy ‘ol Mike Homel’s been going strong since the beginning. Congratz. Too Normal has been quiet this past month, but hey, I haven’t announced this site just yet....

GameTunnel’s Monthly Roundup for April is up. Twas a good month, many cool games, and I didn’t make much of an ass of myself either. Bonus . The roundup’s have been a fun little research project of mine, gathering tactical and other information about what’s going on in the world of indie gaming. Impressive enough, I just broke the 100 review barrier. I’m now sitting at 101 reviews. Wow. That’s … many!...

Not much to say. I discovered an interesting feature I’m sure I knew, but always ignored in Paint Shop Pro. The wonderful world of layer masks. From an existing sketch we extract the line art as a mask, and can now do all kinds of fun coloring. We can fill in a whole layer with a color, apply the mask to only show color where the line art was, then color under on other layers to fill it in....

That’s right kids. It’s here. It’s begun. All that. Why are we here? Too Normal is my blog. Me, Mike, this questionably sane guy who makes games. Video games. That crazy amalgamation of visual and sonic goodness and a mighty tech chew. Too Normal is here to share my experience, observations and insight into what I do moving forward. Who are you? A “crazy” programmer with well over 5 years of commercial game programming experience, a dozen credits to my name, a history of programming and game development that goes back to when I measured my age with fingers, enough art skill that I get requests, a pair of credits doing voice acting (though I’m an awful actor), and several youthful years tracking music (this needs the most work)....