- The Toxin Games Team

Hello Toxin GamRs,

            For the newscast of November 5th, 2008, which we also called Kevin’s Birthday Newscast, we are going to be talking about an application that we have released which is Kevin Schuster’s Nvidia PhysX Competition Demo Entry that he had completed and got great remarks on.  We are also going to be talking about a website bug that we had fixed, a review that Kevin did about TekNmotion PulseWave Gaming Headset that he had gotten not too long ago, and we will be continuing Kevin’s Vacation segment.

            First off, we had a bug that a person reported on the website.  The bug was a dead link that was for the DirectX update that is needed for Toxin Puzzler.  We would like to announce that we have fixed the bug and the link is now working.  We are sorry for any inconvenience that this may have brought.

            Next up, Kevin has released his demo that he had done for the Nvidia PhysX Competition that was hosted by The Game Creators LTD.  For people who do not know, the competition was held from June 27th, 2008 through August 31st, 2008.  The demo has some neat effects and chilling atmosphere.  The level was developed by an editor that we are currently working on for our upcoming full scale game, Slaughtered.  The judges reviewed it on the October 2008 issue of The Game Creator’s Newsletter.  The judges had this to say: “Kevin M. Schuster was another close contender for a prize, with his first person physics shooter that had you exploring spooky corridors of an abandoned NVIDIA H.Q whilst trying to avoid the roof mounted cannon. Very well presented and polished!”  Although Kevin did not win, he was still proud to have his name mentioned to be a close contender.  Since we could go on and on telling you about the demo, we will just let you try it for yourself.  One word of warning is that the demo was developed to show off what the Nvidia PhysX engine can do so it has heavy physics calculations and heavy graphics so you may need a higher end computer to play it smoothly.  Post your thoughts and comments about the demo on the Toxin Games Community Forums.

- Download Kevin's PhysX Entry Here -

            On today’s newscast, we will be doing something a little bit different.  Since Kevin has bought a headset not too long ago, he decided to do a review on it.  The review is quite long and thorough and it may help gamers who are in the market for a great headset of functionality and at a great price.  It took about 3 days to write and to look for every single possible con and pro on the headset.  We here at Toxin Games are glad to present the review for the TekNmotion PulseWave Gaming Headset.  Enjoy.

TekNmotion PulseWave Gaming Headset - Review
Reviewed By: Kevin Schuster

As a gamer, I am real picky when it comes to sound and bass.  I have bought and took back many headsets due to their slightly poor performance in the audio/bass department compared to my Bose In-Ear Ear Buds that produce excellent quality sound and bass.  Although already having a portable and excellent ear buds, I still was in need of a complete headset that included a microphone.  I did my research well and came across the TekNmotion PulseWave Gaming Headset.  As I have never heard of the company TekNmotion, I was quite careful and did every single research on the product, including many reviews, and came to a conclusion that I should try it myself.  I bought my pair from a site called NewEgg.com that sells computer hardware from great prices too.  Comparing the ones found from Amazon.com, it was cheaper to get it at NewEgg because of free 3 Day shipping versus free 5-10 Day shipping at Amazon.

After waiting the three business days, my headset finally arrived to my house by UPS.  Anxious to try them out, I carefully took out the headset along with its software, cables, and manual.  I examined them thoroughly to see if there were any company or shipping defects that could ruin the experience and there were not any found of that nature.  My first reaction after examining them, they did not feel like a $50 product, it actually felt more than what I paid for them.  They felt more like a $100 - $150 product.  The value on the headset, so far, was extremely great, but looks can be deceiving so I did not base my review on looks before performance testing.

What comes inside the packaging are:

• 1 Double Ended 3.5 millimeter audio plug (To plug directly into the sound card)
• 1 Double Ended 3.5 millimeter microphone plug (To plug directly into the sound card)
• 1 USB connector cable
• 1 USB battery pack (If you desire to have lights and vibration through your mp3 player
• Removable Microphone (Plugs into the headset)
• A Manual
• A CD that contained Software and Drivers
• The TekNmotion PulseWave Gaming Headset

When I plugged my headset into the USB jack on my computer, it automatically recognized it and was set to be used.  Before installing any drivers from the CD, I decided to check out the ‘plug and play’ feature that all USB devices should have and it worked extremely well.  I was quite shocked to hear very nice audio with awesome bass coming out of a $55 headset, comparable to my Bose in-ear ear buds.  So far, I new this headset was a keeper due to my past experiences with the sound quality and bass in other headsets.  At this stage, if the sound quality was no good to my standards, which are quite strict, I would have started to package everything up, but with this headset, I did not.  Quickly, I loaded up a song from the new Metallica album, Death Magnetic.  The song I picked was Cyanide.  I tuned up the vibration all the way and then played the song.  While listening, the vibration was quite a neat feature.  You actually feel the sound and this is great for games and it boosts my enjoyment on listing to music.  With the bass, the lights on the outer side of the ear muffs turn from blue (meaning low bass) to green (meaning medium bass) and to red (meaning high bass).  For people around you, it is a neat show, but for the user wearing them, it really does not do much.  The problem with this is that my headset, in the right ear muff, would crackle with the lights on.  Turning the lights off solved that problem which was quite a let down a little.

            After my audio testing was over, I decided to load up the software and install the drivers from the CD.  Installation was quick and I was able to use it in a matter of minutes.  A piece of software that was installed is accessible through the ‘Control Panel’.  Upon loading it up, it is basically a sound controller that you can specify how much bass and how much volume on the microphone.  You can also pick an environment that adjusts the sound making it suite the environment the user picked.  This is quite neat because you can adjust the audio making it sound like you are sitting in a deep hallway with the echoing.  With the software, you can also turn on and turn off Virtual 7.1 Surround Sound, which is only available on USB.  This adjusts the panning of the audio making it sound like 7.1 surround sound, but really is not.

            Overall, I am quite pleased on the performance of the headset.  It was quite a neat experience to have with it.  If you are in the market for a new headset that is cheap, but offers great quality sound and bass, you should check this headset out as it really pleased me.

Rating: 9/10
Time Used: 4 Days
Gamer Recommended?: Yes

- PROS -

1. Great Sound featuring virtual 7.1 Surround Sound on USB and 2.1 Surround Sound on 3.5 millimeter audio plug
2. Sonic Force Feedback vibration effects rumbles with the bass
3. Dynamic Master Control Unit for easy volume and Force Feedback vibration control along with switches to disable the Force Feedback and lights and a mute button for the microphone
4. Removable Microphone
5. Headset adjusts to fit most sizes
6. Lights up in different colors depending on current bass level
7. Outside noise cancellation due to over-ear muffs
8. Lightweight
9. Plug & Play
10. Software is easy to use and easy to install
11. Features both USB and 3.5-millimeter audio plug with flick of a switch on the remote to change between the two during real-time
12. Comes with a battery-powered USB slot (To get the Force Feedback vibration effects and lights to work with an iPod or any audio device)
13. Great Value ($54.99 at NewEgg.com – Free Tax & Free 3-Day Shipping)

- CONS -

1. Ear Muffs may be small to larger ears which could cause discomfort
2. Needs to be plugged into a USB slot to experience the vibration feature and lights
3. Our headset seems to make a crackle in the right ear muff with the light effects turned on

            Now we are going to continue Kevin’s Vacation segment.  To avoid any confusion, Kevin wrote this as a blog of his own vacation from Disney World.  If you by any chance missed the past newscast, Kevin wrote about his first experiences from Epcot on the trip from October 1, 2008 through October 15, 2008.  As this is Kevin’s birthday episode, he will be talking about one of his favorite attractions in the Magic Kingdom, The Haunted Mansion during the Halloween Party of 2008.

            Found in the most far point of the Magic Kingdom that is on the block called “Liberty Square”, The Haunted Mansion has to be one of my all time favorite attractions of all time in Disney World.  Since I was five years old, I could not get enough of the ride.  It has great atmosphere, especially at night time.  Once I heard that my family and I were going to attend the Halloween party in the Magic Kingdom, I could not think of any ride that would suit the atmosphere but the Haunted Mansion.  During the Halloween party, they had some interesting events going around the ride itself.  First off, near the attraction there is a big barge like ship that is called the “Libery Square Riverboat”.  Since it was nighttime when the party was going on, they made good use of it by adding some fog and having a person dressed as a zombie with a lantern walking around the ship starring at people.  It was quite freaky looking while listening to the Haunted Mansion’s organ playing in the background with lightning effects.  Not only was the whole Magic Kingdom decorated for Halloween, but you could actually do some ‘Trick or Treating’ at special locations that were detailed on a special addition map.

            Next, the Haunted Mansion was a great sight.  Disney made it look freakier than it did on normal park nights by adding a black light shining towards the mansion and having an actor on the lawn play as a ghost.  It was quite entertaining to view, but since my grandmother, who was with us also, was in a wheelchair, we were not going through the normal queue line, but instead we took a venture through a different way that I had not been through ever.  The way we took was a back route that is designed for the handicapped.  The door to the way is located in the back of the mansion near the attraction’s exit.

            In the pictures above, the keys and the bells are viewable from the back route queue line for the handicapped.  The pictures were taken by my brother Brian of some set of keys that do describe the themed characters of the Haunted Mansion.  Having a person in your group, that has limited mobility, pays off quite well.  Since it was a Halloween party, the Haunted Mansion was crowded with people making the normal queue line about 30 minutes long.  Our handicapped queue line took only about 5 – 10 minutes to start boarding the ride which does include the foyer and the stretch room.  Since I love this ride so much I do not want to ruin the experience of it hence I will not talk about the ride inside.  I will only leave that to you to experience.

- The Toxin Games Team

Hello Toxin GamRs,

In the newscast of Halloween 2008, October 31st, we will be covering four stories; one story will cover about some updates that we developed on our website, the second part will cover a planned concept for the newscast articles, the third one will cover about a bug fixed for Toxin Puzzler, and the last story will be part of Kevin Schuster’s trip to Florida.  To avoid confusion, Kevin will be narrating the story about the trip to Florida since he is the one who went on it.

To start the newscast off, we would like to announce that we have updated our website (toxingames.com) with some style updates.  Now, the text inputs will have a dark grey background color and a lighter grey border color instead of a red color tone to avoid future confusion between web content.  Also, we have updated the contact page.  We now have a form that you may fill out and send with a single click of a button.  It is all web integrated so you do not have to touch your email client if you wish to contact Toxin Games.  What is required from you is a working email address so we can contact you back with a solution or further assistance for your problem/feedback.

Here at Toxin Games, we have planned a future web-based content.  Right now, you may notice that many pages on our new website are still under construction, but we are planning to release them quite shortly.  We are currently working hard on the “Gamer’s Lounge” part and we know what you are going to ask “What is that?” well, we cannot get into detail right now, but we can assure you it will bring a more of a “Community” part targeted towards gamers.  Since we are in early development, we cannot decide when it will be released.  We are aiming in a late 2008 through early 2009 release, but that is only a time range.

Since our release date of Toxin Puzzler, we have encountered a problem with the online score uploading.  We want to announce that we have fixed the problem.  The fix does not require an update.  The problem was server based, so it does not require a re-downloaded version of the game.

The last story we are going to cover is Kevin Schuster’s trip to Florida.  If you may have missed out on a later newscast, we have announced that our absence from October 1st – October 15th was due to a family vacation.  Here is Kevin’s story on that:

Before my departure for Florida, I was glad that we had gotten up the new Toxin Games website.  It was a real honor to re-develop the website using more sophisticated and professional tools while concentrating on a more professional level of developing the XHTML code for it and validating it using W3C’s online XHTML validation tool.  After the website was released, I was relieved to be on vacation with my whole family.  My family and I headed off in an RV to one of the best vacation places in the United States, Disney World in Orlando, Florida.  Since my brother, Brian, is a registered member of the Disney Vacation Club, most of our expenses were already paid for.

When we reached the Georgia area, we ran into fuel problems due to their gas shortage, but none the less, we got out of it rather quickly by finding one of the few gas stations in the area.  It took us about 2 days to get from Iowa to Florida in an RV.  Once we arrived on Disney Property, we stayed at Fort Wilderness Campground which was a nice and relaxing campground for Disney residence.  The only bad part is, if you do not take a golf cart of your own or do not rent one from their stations, you will be doing a lot of walking to get to a bus stop.  Luckily, we brought our own from our last experience staying here.  Once we got all set up, we were ready to hit the parks.

The first park that we went to was Epcot.  For those who do not know what Epcot is, Epcot is a park that contains future world where you can experience many attractions that are based around the future subject, then there is World Showcase where you can experience many countries’ culture, food, and gifts.  It was really quite a neat place to be during the night because of their fireworks show, entitled “Illuminations: Reflections of Earth”.  We took it quite slow the first day because we had well over a week to be there, so time was not really a factor to be worried about.  We check out many attractions in the World Showcase and we also did some shopping.

This is where the story is going to make a small halt.  In the next newscast I, Kevin, will be continuing my story on the vacation, so until then, Happy Halloween to all of you and keep Gaming Hard!

Here are links to some of the pictures taken by my brother, Brian, of Epcot:
Picture 1 | Picture 2 | Picture 3

- The Toxin Games Team

Hello Toxin GamRs,

If you have missed our last newscast, we had noted that a new game was going to be released at 11:00 PM CST which the game was “Toxin Puzzler”, a puzzle game that features ‘Slide and Solve’ picture puzzles.  The game was created and developed by Kevin Schuster as a side project.  In this newscast, we would like to say that the release was a success and the game is up for download.  The game is free and we look forward on adding more features to it in the near future.

Download Toxin Puzzler

View Toxin Puzzler’s Home Page

Also to make note, we will be updating the “Toxin Puzzler” home page to fit the mood of the game.  Right now, it is only a plain template and we hope to release a more suitable web page for the game very soon.

Until then, game hard!

- The Toxin Games Team

Hello Toxin GamRs,

Today, we have now updated the website for our all new E-Mail RSS Feed subscription.  You may now enter your email address into the bar at the top-right of the website and subscribe to it.  The E-Mail version of our RSS Feed is the same as the normal version of the RSS Feed, but the only thing different is that any news article that we post gets delivered to your inbox.  This is great if you do not have an RSS client (which Opera and Firefox has built-in).

Also, we are going to be releasing a new game to the public as promised.  The game is “Toxin Puzzler” which is a picture “slide n’ solve” puzzle that Kevin Schuster has programmed himself as a side project during his free time.   It has the following features:

1. Multiple pictures to be solved
2. Music composed by Kevin
3. A neat interface
4. Online score uploading (So you can view how many slides it took for other people to solve a puzzle)
5. A basic puzzle editor (So you can make your own puzzles and share them with the community or keep them for your own personal use)
6. Best of all, it is FREE so you do not have to pay a penny to play it

We will be releasing this at around 11:00 PM tonight so at that time range, check out Toxin Puzzler’s home webpage for to see if it is uploaded for download.  If you miss the release, we will make a notification newscast tomorrow (October 21, 2008) for you if you forget.

Until then, game hard!

- The Toxin Games Team

Hello Toxin GamRs,

Today, we will be covering three topics, one being the new RSS Feed that we had announced; the second will be about a movie that was released in theatres on Friday October 17th that should concerns gamers, and the third being about our disappearance from October 1, 2008 through October 15, 2008.

The new RSS Feed that we had announced in the last newscast is soon to be released.  There are some things holding us back, but those things are minor.  The one thing that we can say now is that we are not going to be using the standard RSS Feed publishing which is what you can subscribe to us right now, if you have not, we encourage you to subscribe.  We know what you are saying “But wait, why are you going to be using FeedBurner anyway if you are not going to use its standard RSS Feed function?”  Since we already have a standard RSS Feed up and running without any problems, it would not make much sense to replace it with a new one, but FeedBurner does have another feature which is E-mail RSS Feed.  With this, we can send not only an RSS Feed article of news to RSS Clients, but we can send it to people through E-mail to deliver the news directly into their E-mail inbox if they had subscribed to the feature.  Now, we do not know when we will be releasing this feature because we really have not had time to play around with FeedBurner since it is still new to us, but when the time comes that we have released it, we will make a news article specifically for that.

Image from IMDB.com

Next up in our newscast, there seems to be a movie that will concern gamers, and if you are a gamer (which you should be) then it should concern you.  Of course I am talking about the new movie “Max Payne”.  Now, as being a gamer myself, I have seen many movies based on games which most of them sucked.  For example “Doom” the movie.  In my opinion that movie was not good.  It had bad acting and did not float around the main plot that the Doom series was about, the UAC accidentally opening a portal to Hell which spawns hellish entities and demons.  In replacement it was about a virus… yeah a virus.  Anyway, enough about “Doom”, I would like to say I have not seen “Max Payne” the movie yet, but has received some good reviews, which does surprise me since the traditional logic: “game + movie = disaster”.  With this in mind, I am still going to the movie with no expectations.  When I see the movie, I will write a small review of my opinion towards the movie on the Toxin Games Community forums under “General Discussion” (look for Kevin S. as the poster).  In the meantime, check out some more reviews on this movie by going to the “Max Payne” movie page on Internet Movie Database or if you have seen the movie, we invite you to write your opinion on the movie on our community boards.  To make a small note to you, the Internet Movie Database is not a professional reviewer website.  It is just normal people like you and me talking about the movie and while giving their opinion about the movie by rating it with a details why.  It is a nice site to turn to for movie ratings from the public.

To end off today’s newscast, we will be talking about our disappearance from October 1st through October 15th 2008.  For those 15 days, I Kevin Schuster had been on a family vacation down in Florida.  We had spent our 2 weeks of family fun at Disney World and it was quite a nice get-away to relax and not worry about anything.  Now this is a small and brief explanation on my vacation, but I will save what I had done down there for the next newscast.  Until then, game hard!

Source:
FeedBurner – New RSS Feed Article
Internet Movie Database – Max Payne Reviews
Kevin Schuster – 2 Week disappearance Article

- The Toxin Games Team

Hello Toxin GamRs,

Sorry for the delay in making another update, but that is another story that I will be telling in the next news update. First off, as the title explains, we have a new RSS feed publisher which means a more secure news feed. It also gives us the ability to view how many people have subscribed to our newscast so it will encourage us to make more and more newscasts to the public and fans of Toxin Games.  The new publisher is FeedBurner which is an excellent RSS publisher to turn to if you have your own RSS feed that you want to make more known.

This is all we have for today, but we look forward on bringing you news about our disappearance for two weeks now.  Until then, game hard.

- The Toxin Games Team

Hello Toxin GamRs,

We hope you have noticed that the site has changed; in fact changed so much that it is a completely new site. This is a true factor as we have worked hard on making a new and more efficient site to browse for our products. Not only is the site a lot better looking than the old site, but it is error free. We took our time and complete knowledge to ensure that the site is compatible for most browsers as we validated it on W3C's Markup Validation Service (see seals below) and we tested it on the following browsers:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Opera
• Mozilla Firefox

The only two that we have tested on, but failed loading the site correctly was:

• Apple Safari
• Google Chrome

This is due to the XML parser. You see, in the News Feed object to the top right of the page underneath the "RSS Subscribe" window, we use XML to get the top three most current news casts, but due to Safari and Chrome's different parsing method or supposed "error" handeling the XML parsing, we were unable to classify them as working browsers. If you run them in our website, everything but the News Feed Object will load correctly. In the News Feed, you will get "Unable to gather news content" and "Unable to gahter news headline". So far, our attempts on finding or solving an issue for this problem has failed, but we will never give up.

Anyway, this covers the more popular browsers and we could be almost sure that it will work for other browsers as well, but if you have a browser that we have not tested the site on, please give us some feedback on how well the site is presented in the browser. Not only is the site error free, we also took advantage of Cascade Style Sheets (CSS). Now, we can make changes to the website without having to modify any of the pages.

We could go on and on about what has been changed so here is a list of the rest of the things changed and added:

• No more frames
• Added a site map
• Dynamic sizes (Jello design technique)
• Quick links (Top Games, News Feed, Free Games, and Bottom Page Navigation)
• Disabled web-cache'ing to ensure updates are quickly downloaded
• RSS Feed - To keep viewers updated without having to check the site 24/7

As we continue to fulfill the site with more content, we would like to announce that we are proud to have a working RSS Feed function for the site to keep you posted with news once there is a minor or major event happening (such as a game release or personal life news). As in personal life news, this contains any news that a Toxin Employee wants to share with you such as tips and tricks on something, tutorials, personal blog, or any vacational matters. This way, viewers can come back to view a new article on something outside of Toxin Games. So, keep up to date with our news cast by subscribing to our RSS feed up top. You may either click on the "Subscribe" button on the top right or you may click on the browser's RSS Feed icon that is within the website's address text bar.

We hope you find this new site much more eye comforting and exciting than the last one. Enjoy your stay!

- The Toxin Games Team