Editor: Kevin Schuster

Introduction

In this week’s Toxin Newscast, we will be releasing word on a new project that we are currently developing (a screenshot is included).  We are going to discuss some Toxin Games unrelated gamer news, tell you what we had changed on our website, and we also are continuing Kevin’s Vacation segment, continuing Kevin’s Teeth Grinder of the Week, and we are trying out a new segment called ‘Dedicated Nostalgia’.  So let’s start off the Toxin Newscast for Saturday, March 7th, 2009.

Note from the CEO

For the past months, I, Kevin Schuster CEO and Founder of Toxin Games, have been very busy.  First, I am a web designer for EverGreen Construction, LLC which is a family owned company founded by my father Alan Schuster and I have been quite busy working on their new website.  If you get a chance, check out www.buildevergreen.com when the new website is up.  Right now, I am not impressed by the current website that is on the web for EverGreen, but that will soon change as I believe that the website that I am working on is very fresh and an interesting add-on to a great ‘Green’ construction company.  I feel it should be released sometime next week so keep a look out for that.  Next, the job that you all know is with Toxin Games.  I have been quite busy with a new project that we have in the works, but I will go into more depth in another article within this newscast.  Lastly, I have been busy with school work.   You see I am going to a local college trying my best in my studies, so that always comes first, sorry.  So far, I have made the Dean’s list last semester which I am very proud of and so is my family.  Anyway, enough about the story about my life so let us continue with the newscast.

Gamer News

I hope you have been paying attention to gaming news as Rockstar Leeds has released info about their new addition to the Grand Theft Auto series for the Nintendo DS entitled ‘Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars’.  It is set to be released on the 17th of this month and it looks like a pretty good tribute to the old GTA’s that we came to know and love from the 90’s as it is set in the bird’s eye perspective.  What will be interesting about this game is the fact that it is on the Nintendo DS, which any gamer would tell you that the hardware is not as strong compared to other systems, but as I know Rockstar, I am betting that they will pull this one off very smoothly.  At GameSpot, they released an interview with Rockstar Leeds about the new GTA game which can be found at GameSpot which you can read to get more detail about the new GTA game.

Website Updates & Changes

There are a couple of things that we have tweaked on our website.  The first thing is that we removed the ‘Bugs on our Website’ table on the bottom of the home page.  We removed it because we found it to be unneeded since we have a support line available and we also have an error page already uploaded to our server so that if a URL does not exists it will redirect the browser to an error page that has a link on it that directs the visitor to the Contact page so that the he/she can fill out a report regarding the issue.

The next thing that we added on our website is the ‘Comments’ link found on only recent newscasts beginning from the newscast of February 13, 2009.  We added this because we wanted the visitors post their comments, criticism, and/or questions regarding the newscast’s content.  We feel that your opinion counts and thus is why we added it.  The third thing we modified is the graphic on the top-left of each page.  We added a new color which is ‘White’ because of a new addition to our website that we are going to add very soon and we wanted to prepare for it.  If you have not guessed what the colors are about, look at the Favorite Icons for each sub-domains of our website (Main Website & Forum).

The fourth thing we added is content to the Partners page under the About section on our website so that we give proper credit to those who have either helped us with some projects or we helped them in something.  The last thing we changed on our website is the way we display our current newscasts, starting from this one, as now we have sub-headings and not images displaying the subject matter before the actual article.  We changed it because we felt that the content was not being presented in an organized matter compared to now.

This is all we have changed on our website so far, we hope you feel that the new changes were necessary and are pointing in the correct direction.  If you do not like any of the changes that we have made and you know how to make it better, please post your opinion under the commentary thread for this newscast.

Toxin Puzzler Patch Released

We had released a patch for Toxin Puzzler not too long ago to fix a bug that it could not connect to our game server.  This bug was found and fixed by our staff very quickly so that nobody would complain about not having a fix for this problem.  If you have not updated your version of Toxin Puzzler to version 1.01, do so and download it.  If you first downloaded the game and installed it within a week from now, you have the current version of the game.

New Project in Development

As busy we were in the past 2 couple of weeks, we made room for our development in games.  In this week's newscast we are going to show you what we have been working on for about 1-2 weeks.  The project is still in its development stages, but it is quite a fun game to be working on.  The game is a top-down zombie shoot-em-up where the action does not stop as the player continuously fights his/her way through a city under a zombie apocalypse.  The player is able to roam around freely and is able to either shoot the zombies up with bullets or blow them to bits with a grenade or rocket.  We first started the idea for this game making the player to be a bad a$% by being the zombies' worst nightmare equipping him/her with an endless library of weapons.  Beyond release, we are looking into expanding this game with future updates and with special packs that keeps the game fresh and fun to play.

What makes this project stand out compared toall of our other projects is that we are using a totaly new game engine which is the Leadwerks Engine 2.0 and we are using C/C++ as the programming language. This gives us more power than ever before and we are incorporating some hardware usage into this game, such as the 3rd Space Gaming Vest. If you have the vest it will detect it automatically and use it in the game so you can feel the hits you take from the zombies. This project is near to its release, but we have to bring in a couple of stuff to it, like models for the player and zombies and we also have to concentrate on level design and we also still need to compose a soundtrack for the game.  There is no official date on its release so all we can tell you is just until it is finished.  Stay tuned to our Community forums as we may start a development thread for this game in the near future so you can get up to date information regarding how far it is in its development stages.  For a final note, we are allowing weapon requests to add to the game so send in your ideas to us regarding weapon choices to our support line email address, just put in ‘An idea for a weapon’ in for the ‘Subject’ so we can read it right away.  Please specify detail of the weapon the best you can so we can get more of an idea to what you want and this does include any media that you would like to attach.

Kevin's Vacation: Epcot Revisited

I wanted to revisit Epcot because number one, I really like this park and number two I wanted to finish telling about it.   First off, if you have not read the first part of the Epcot trip in the Newscast of October 31st 2008, I recommend you do so.  Okay, let’s begin.

As day two of Epcot went into play, we got serious in the attractions.  We started off small, like Spaceship Earth and some rides around the World Showcase area, and then we went to more intense rides, like Mission Space and Test Track.  In between rides we checked out this place in Future World called ‘Club Cool’ where you can try out different types of soda from different countries around the World ranging from the delicious German Mezzo Mix to the just plain nasty Beverly.  Remember, if you go there make sure you force someone from your party to drink Beverly because it is so… BAD!  Words cannot express how horrible it tastes so here is an image of my dad to express that.  Even the label cannot make it sound good: “Beverly, with its bitter flavor, is a popular non-alcoholic aperitif that stimulates the appetite before dinner.”… ha! How is this a popular drink and I just noticed that there is a typo in the label check it out as they misspelled alcoholic by spelling it ‘alcholic’!  Anyway, after we enjoyed the rides and as we tried to get that disgusted taste off of our tongs, we settled down to a great feast at Germany where they were celebrating their Oktoberfest which was a neat add-on to a great restaurant.  Germany has some of the greatest food, well, that is my opinion.  After eating, there are many attractions beyond the rides around the World Showcase such as a miniature train set that is setup by Italy and the overall beauty of the Architecture that went into each country which has to be my favorite part of the World Showcase.  Then at night, before closing, a great fireworks show called ‘Illuminations: Reflections of Earth’.

Overall, Epcot is a great park.  If you plan on going to Disney World, make sure you check out Epcot if you cannot visit all of the parks.

Kevin's Teeth Grinder of the Week

This week’s teeth grinder is about what everyone gets in their E-mail inbox every day, yes, SPAM!  Every day I get more than 100 items of this junk and what makes me ticked is trying to answer the question why they actually do it?  Is there someone that stupid to actually buy the crap that the company is trying to advertise in the spam mail?  This is a very poor marketing solution if you ask me.  I mean it is almost as bad compared to a person always trying to sell you something while you browse something off of a shelf at a store, you would punch that guy in the face wouldn’t you, but no Spam is much worse because you cannot punch that guy.  All you can do is just throw the friggen’ mail into the trash bin, but by the time you throw that one away you get 10 more, argh!  If I find any person who sends this crap out for a living, I will seriously bash him in the head with a mailbox.

Dedicated Nostalgia

Every newscast we will pick something from the past that was huge and we miss a lot.  This newscast’s Dedicated Nostalgia is ‘Chex Quest’.

Do you remember when you opened up a box of Chex cereal and found a prize inside the box and figured out that it was actually a real computer game that you can play on your PC well we sure do and we wish that all prizes inside cereal boxes could compare to that.  Ahhhh, the memories blowing up gobs of slime with a ‘Zorch’ gun….

Outro

To end the Toxin Newscast of this week, we would like to give you an opportunity to send in your news, whether it be a personal project that you are working on or just some cool thing you made, we are giving you a chance to showcase it on our newscast. Send in a description of the project and any media that features it (screenshots, videos, demo) to support@toxingames.com and we will be more than happy to feature it and give it some free advertisment. Also be sure to post your comments in the commentary thread regarding any of the material writen in this week's Toxin Newscast. Anyway, that is it, keep gaming hard!

- The Toxin Games Team

                In this week’s newscast we will be featuring what changes we have made on our website, a review on Metallica’s newest album, Death Magnetic, and we will also be giving you some in depth on our new section on our website, the Gamer’s Lounge.  We also are going to add a new segment called Kevin’s Teeth Grinder of the week.  It is time to kick off the first Toxin Newscast of the 2009, February Friday the 13th, 2009.

                To start off, we have made many changes on our website that it took a good 3 to 4 days to complete.  First, we modified how the News Feed object, located on the right side of every page, gets its news information by changing it to a JavaScript only object that is guaranteed to work on the two browsers that we had trouble in the past, Safari and Google Chrome.  Special thanks to the people who gave us feedback on the website.  Keep sending them in as we take any criticism to our fullest advantage.

Next, we added a few buttons on the News Feed object that contains a link to our RSS Feed document and a link to the help section on our website dedicated to explain how to subscribe and explain about our Newscast feeds.  If you have any issues subscribing or you want to know what our Newscast is about, check that page (http://www.toxingames.com/news_help.html).

Another thing that we fixed on our website is a few spacing and minor contrast adjustments.  There was some text on our website that was red with a black or dark background which was quite hard to read at times.  We fixed this and gave the text a white color to give it better contrast and easier on the eyes.
The last thing we modified was some of our graphics giving them a shinier look by adding some specular lighting.  To us, it makes it look a little more professional and gives it more depth compared to what we had before.  If you have any other requests on how to make the graphics more appealing, please drop us a line using the support line.  We appreciate any feedback we get.

                Back in the Newscast of October 31, 2008, we released word that we were working on the Gamer’s Lounge section on our website, but did not give any details on what it was about.  Now we feel comfortable to tell you what it is and we will give you a chance to put your own Input into it.  First off, the Gamer’s Lounge is meant to put a bunch of content into one place only intended for gamers.  This content includes: featured games and gamer hardware along with reviews, top scores (only for our games), online chat room, top cheat codes, and the ability to post what game you are currently playing.  Right now, the section is still being worked on and really does not have an official release date, but this is somewhat some good news because this gives you the chance to contribute on telling us what you would like to see featured in the Gamer’s Lounge.  Send your ideas to support@toxingames.com with the subject as “Gamer’s Lounge idea”.  We will pay close attention to whatever ideas you may have.

                When Metallica released word that they were going to be making a new album, I was not that hyped.  This was due to their album St. Anger, which was titled to be the worst Metallica album, so bringing out a new album was not in my interest.  I am a huge Metallica fan, so when I finally got to listen to the new CD, I was actually shocked!  It was like they got their talent back from the 80’s.  I claim this album one of my favorite Metallica albums, but what makes it so good, well, let’s find out song by song.
The first song on the album is called “That was just your life.  This song is a great song to start the album off and judging against St. Anger, they took out that ‘Garage Band’ drumming style which was quite annoying in St. Anger so that is a very good sign.  The song is slow at first, but then picks up tempo and the lyrics are quite good.  This song is about 7 minutes and 8 seconds in length and I give it a 4/5 rating.
The next song is “The End of the Line”.  When I first heard this song, I loved it which I dubbed one of my favorite songs on this CD.  This song has a great intro and it maintains its goodness throughout.  It has a fast tempo, has a great beat, and is 7 minutes and 52 seconds in length.  This song gets a 5/5 out of me.
Next we have the song “Broken, Beat, & Scarred”.  Again, a great song to listen to and is also one of my favorites on this album.  It has a pretty good intro and the lyrics are pretty good also.  The beat is catchy and maintains its sound all the way to the end.  The song is 6 minutes and 25 seconds in length and I give it a 4/5 rating.

The next song is titled “The Day that Never Comes”.  The song is quite slow in tempo, but has great lyrics.  The song has a good solo at around 5 minutes in the song and has some rather good guitar moments.  This song gets a 3/5 rating.

The fifth song is “All Nightmare Long”.  This song has a good opening and then it picks up tempo.  My favorite part of the song starts at 37 seconds in.  Again, this is also one of my favorites in the album.  It has good lyrics and an awesome tune.  It gets a 4/5 in my book.

The sixth song is “Cyanide”.  Back when I was doing the gaming Headset review in the November 5th 2008 newscast, I chose this song to do the sound test for a reason, because I love this song and has a loud beginning.  This is by far the best song on the album.  I love the chorus for this song and the lyrics are great.  The bass is was why I chose it to do the sound test for that gaming headset review.  Overall, this song gets a perfect 5/5.

The next song is titled “The Unforgiven III”.  I was not really a fan of the other “The Unforgiven”’s so I really cannot review this without being biased.  The song is slow, by expectation, and has some good lyrics.  Overall, the song gets a 3/5.

The eighth song on this album is “The Judas Kiss”.  This is a pretty good song with, again, a great intro.  The song has a slow-fast tempo, but it is a good song to listen to for entertainment.  The song gets a 4/5.

The next song is called “Suicide & Redemption”.  Before saying anything else, it has no lyrics.  It is mainly instrumental, but I still love it.  This is also the longest song in the album with a length of 9 minutes and 57 seconds, but I never fast forward though any of this song, ever.  It has this attraction that I must listen to all of it every time I listen to it.  Anyway, I give this song a 5/5 also calling it one of my favorites on this album.

The tenth and final song is called “My Apocalypse”.  This song is quite fast in tempo and is the shortest in the album as it only runs for about 5 minutes and 1 second.  The lyrics are pretty good and the beat is entertaining.  This song gets a 4/5.

Now, this is only my opinion as you can see I really like this album.  Reviewing something musical is quite hard for me to do in words as you just have to listen to the songs yourself.  You can find a YouTube video that previews all of the songs in the album.

                For this week’s Newscast, we are going to try out a new segment called Kevin’s Teeth Grinder of the week which Kevin picks something that bothers and hopefully can get some answers to and discusses it.  This week’s Teeth Grinder is something that was displayed on TV.  Here is Kevin’s story.
Last night I was watching some Family Guy on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim and the commercials were on, since I had some time to relax, I decided to watch the commercials too.  There was one commercial that got my attention and that was a commercial where the ‘Jack in the Box’ fast food restaurant logo was in the hospital being operated on.  My first thought was that it was just one of those weird ads that had no message to it whatsoever and was just designed to get their company’s logo out there, but then at the end of the commercial was a web URL which was www.hangintherejack.com.  Now I was thinking “oh boy, here is a message saying that Jack in the Box was going out of business”, but when I visited the website out of curiosity, the website was dedicated to the CEO of the Jack in the Box business chain, Jack Box, which stated that he was hit by a bus!  Now, I was kind of shocked to hear that, so I decided to view one of the videos that were in this blog type website where it has Jack’s doctor tell the viewers how he is doing, but this is where the grinding starts.  First off, the doctor did not have any emotion whatsoever, instead he had a personality that acted like he was going to break out and start laughing in the camera at any moment in the video.  Wow, that is a nice doctor… Not!  I mean, if you were a doctor and you wanted to tell people how the patient was doing would you present that in a professional matter meaning in a serious voice and showing some emotion while talking?  I sure would.  Not only did that bothered me, but at the very end of the video he was smiling and did a ‘shout out’ to one of his kids.  Is that a professional matter to a serious moment?  No, it is not!  Now after viewing some more videos which practically had the same type of feeling to it, I started to think that the website was designed to only sell more food for Jack in the Box Corporation.  It just has this cheesy feeling that you really got to see it for yourself.  If I am wrong about this and it is not a catch to sell more for the Jack in the Box Company, then please email me with a source that backs up your opinion to kevin@toxingames.com .  I am really lost in the dark here and would like to shine some light on this.

                Well, that wraps up this weeks newscast.  In the next Toxin Newscast, we will be going to continue Kevin’s Vacation segment since we have not finished that segment yet.  So, until next time, show that game’s whose boss by Gaming Hard!

- The Toxin Games Team