Check it out here.

On the surface I think this is a scary thing. Once you make a commodity — any commodity — free the value of that commodity goes to zero. I know I’m playing Captain Obvious here, but this is serious stuff. Take the music industry for example. Once Napster came along and made music free, no one wanted to pay for songs anymore. At the same time sites like mp3.com (the original) came along and offered indie artists a way to reach audiences, and nearly all of that music was free. There were some other things that happened, but the end result is that music is freely available and it’s pretty tough to make a living on cutting albums only.

I suppose the same sort of thing has happened in a way to the gaming industry. I mean, we offer free online games, and if you do a search for that term you’ll get hundreds of sites with games you can play. So why do people continue to buy games? One word: scale.

A free game, while fun, usually consists of simple tasks and gameplay. A big console game like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, though, is just so much more. You’ve got great graphics, unbelievable sound, a complicated story, and immersive gameplay that will likely keep you entertained for days. It’s like comparing our Hampton game to what DPRN is becoming. For that kind of experience it is worth the cash.

So while on the surface it may seem like guys like Carmack are cheapening the industry, I think they actually have the opposite effect. By releasing that source code they have raised the bar for the rest of us. Instead of having to take the time to develop from the ground up the kind of situations, environments, game play, etc. present in games like Wolfenstein, other developers can put that time towards advancing the field. Even if Carmack’s work on space and future work on fusion didn’t make him the coolest Geek ever, I think releasing his source code like this definitely would.

Nunchucks and bo staffs and blades with sharp edges;
Scaling tall buildings and peering from ledges;
Throwing my stars from a zip-lining string,
These are a few of my favorite things…

Shadowy bretheren (and ladies), welcome to Day of The Ninja. The official holiday doesn’t begin until December 5th, but since Toobix revels in these types of events, we decided to start the festivities a few days early. So we are hereby declaring this Weekend of the Ninja!

Unlike International Talk Like a Pirate Day there will be no silly speeches with “yar” after every fifth word.  There will be no endless stories of the past to show you how too much ale and rum seems to correlate all too well with the loss of body parts.  And there will certainly be no more idly wasting your life away sailing circles around Shamu.  Instead, we will clear our minds, sharpen our talents (and swords), and wait for the perfect time to make a tactical strike.  That is the way of the ninja. 

So let us not waste any more time and begin discussing your mission for the weekend:

1) A new challenge has been added to Hampton’s Very Bad Day.  Are you ready for Sudden Death Mode? Help the smallest white ninja avoid an onslaught of obstacles, but beware: one mistake and it’s all over! We’re also awarding prizes for the highest score. The contest will run from now until midnight on Dec 17, 2009. If you’d like to enter the contest, be sure to use your forum/gamer account username in the “name” field when you submit your score, so we can verify who you are. On Friday Dec 18, we’ll announce the winner, and that person will receive a shirt of their choice from the gamer gear shop, and their choice of 3 songs from the Digital Media Shop! Note: to claim your t-shirt and music, please send us a private forum message/email with your address, shirt design, shirt size, shirt color, and song choices. Prize must be claimed by 12/31/09.

2) Things have been brewing over at the Toobix Game Lab. Head over there to investigate. Report back with news of any dinopirate / roboninja sightings.

3) You call yourself a ninja.  Now it’s time to dress like one.  Look for these sweet ninja-themed shirts in the gamer gear shop:    

So 2BXGMRs, it’s time to unsheathe your digital kitanas and click the links above.  Let Weekend of the Ninja begin!

I am definitely more of a software guy than I am a hardware guy.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love computer hardware.  I love reading hardware specs.  I prefer reading bench mark tests over science fiction, and I love my science fiction.  I even love watching those hardware unboxing videos on YouTube.  Well, “love” might be a strong word since those vids do come across as some kind of wierd fetish porn, but it’s worth watching since I get to know what’s in the box I’m buying before I buy it! 

The thing is that my computer hardware have always been obtained and housed in one of two ways: a new office/productivity PC or a hand-me-down office/productivity PC.  It’s not that my Gateway PCs have been bad per se, but when you’re an electronic musician you have to face the reality that audio computing takes A+ performance, a high fidelity sound card, and a bunch of storage space.  It’s true that I always did make certain modifications to my computers once I got them so that they would be able to perform as optimally as they could; however, these were cheap mods and I was always either pushing my hardware to the absolute limit or avoiding actually some tasks and programs because I didn’t have the hardware to run them. 

I’ve been at that for about 11 years now.  Care to ask how long I’ve been making music with a computer?  You guessed it!  11 years!

Well, it turns out you parents were not lying to you when they said you wouldn’t be in school forever.  Believe me.  I tried to stay in school forever (stupid!), but I have finally graduated.  The best part about that is that my available cash for PC hardware has graduated from none to more than none!  Turns out that I have also finally graduated from the aforemmentioned PC as I have finally configured my first studio PC!

Now rememeber that I’m more of a software guy than a hardware guy, so you’re probably going to find something wrong in my configuration here.  Please go easy on me, though.  Comments like, “Nice work, but with that configuration your computer is going to overheat and crash if you try and type and email,” will probably have me crying myself to sleep for the next week, but, alas, I know you must say them.  It doesn’t help that the other half of Toobix is a freking computer engineer, so just try to destroy my dreams gently if you must. 

With that, let’s get to work!

As you guys know, I’m a do-it-yourself kind of guy when it comes to computers, but time is not on my side.  Getting our first big PC game release off the ground while working a fairly intense day job takes everything I’ve got.  For this reason I decided I would research the hardware but have a professional do the installation.  Enter www.EndPCNoise.com.

Holy smokes these guys are great.  Turns out they had already researched and selected the highest performing PC components that generate the least noise — an essential element for any studio computer.  Plus, they have other methods of silencing the case as a whole.  I’m mainly going to talk about hardware here, but you can read about their other silencing methods on their website. 

I started out with their flagship digital audio work station (DAW…another name for a kick-ass PC designed for making tunes), the MusicMaker Tower i7 DAW PC.  i7 is for the Intel multi-core processor that powers this beast.  I went with the 2.66 GHz since it will provide me with plenty of power while offerring SSE2 support that is essential for my virtual studio software, Orion, to run.  (The processor actually supports up to SSE4.  Search SSE on Wikipedia if you’d like to learn more.)

A processor is only as good as it’s motherboard.  For that I went with the Asus P6TD Deluxe V2 i7 Motherboard.  This will finally make my studio entirely digital as I will connect the SPDIF audio out on the board with the SPDIF audio in on my Edirol UA4-FX audio interface (http://www.e-effectmusic.com/studio/).  It’s been a long time coming but it’s finally here!  It also has 14 USB 2.0 ports (8 external, 6 internal) and an external firewire port for maximum connectivity.  Plenty of free internal PCI slots, too. 

One thing I’ve learned in modding my other computer is that RAM is cheap.  It’s real cheap.  So cheap that it’s worth just buying as much RAM as your motherboard can hold just to avoid having to crack the case and do multiple installations.  I followed that advice and put 12 GB in it.

With the i7 running on the Asus board carrying 12 GB of RAM, there was only one thing left to optomize the performance for music: the hard disk.  With a little advice from one of EndPCNoise’s lead techs, I went with 3 Hard drives.  The first is a lightning fast 10,000 RPM drive that will run the Windows XP Pro 32 bit OS (most compatible with the software I use).  It has 330 GB of storage space which should be plenty of room to house my audio recording programs so that my live sessions are recorded optimally.  The other two drives are 1 TB 7200 RPM drives that I will use for file storage.  This separates the tasks of production on the 10000 RPM disk and storage on the 7200 RPM disks, but there’s a twist to this story.  See, I am having the storage disks configured in a RAID mirror with the HighPoint Rocket RAID 2640 PCIe Raid Card.  I will save all of my files to one of those disks and they will be automatically backed up to the other.  That will save me loads of time with file back ups. 

With all of the audio optomized, that left the graphics card.  Turns out the Gigabyte 1 GB ATI Radeon HD 4850 (FANLESS) Video Card is not only quite even with high intensity tasks (40 dB or about as quiet as a bed room at night) but it plays Crysis at a screaming 51 frames per second (FPS) at 1280 x 1024!  That’s only one of the most graphics-intensive games on the market right now, and really anything over 40 FPS is good game play.  (If you’re over 60 then some consider that’s the best possible game play.)  It’s kind of a bargain high definition card, too, when you compare the cost to performance.  One thing my research didn’t turn up was the idea of adding a second graphics card to my system.  I asked the lead tech this and he said it really would not add that much performance with a guestimate of about 5%. 

I powered this thing with an 850 W power supply as the lead tech thought that 1000 W was definitely over-kill, and the 850 W would be quiter.  They’re going to jam all of this stuff into this sweet and silent case, too:

Antec P183 BLACK Tower Case

All in all I’m very pleased with the setup, and I am more than pleased with the support I got from EndPCNoise.  What I couln’t find out about the hardware by reading reviews and bench mark tests, the guys at EndPCNoise answered.  Also, they provide you with all of the user manuals for all of your hardware components, all driver/software disks and other accessories that come with your hardware, and also your OS disk.  We’ll be putting this system to the test in the next 2-3 weeks, so stay tuned to see if all of this theory turns into reality!

——————–
ENTIRE CONFIGURATION (minus the 3rd hard drive; see comments as well)
——————–

[TEXT VERSION] (minus the 3rd hard drive; see comments as well)

Asus P6T Deluxe V2 i7 Motherboard
Intel i7 920 2.66GHz 8M 4.8 GT sec
12GB (six 2GB) Mushkin PC3 12800z
No Modem
No Keyboard and Mouse
Western Digital Quiet 300GB VelociRaptor 10K SATA 2 Hard Drive
Install 1st hard drive in Smart Drive Copper HDD Enclosure
Nexus 850 Watt Inaudible 15dB 80 Plus PSU
Windows XP Professional 32 Bit
Antec P183 BLACK Tower Case
Gigabyte 1 GB ATI Radeon HD 4850 (FANLESS) Video Card
LG (BLACK) 22X SATA DVD +/- RW
Noctua NH-U12P SE 1366 CPU Cooler
No Floppy Drive
No Media Card Reader
No 2nd Optical Drive
Western Digital Quiet 1 TB 7200RPM 16MB SATA 2 Hard Drive
No Smart Drive installed for 2nd Hard Drive
HighPoint Rocket RAID 2640 PCIe Raid Card (mirroring)
No Speakers
No Microsoft Office Software
No PCI Firewire Card installed
Install Acoustipack Ultimate
No LCD Monitor
No Audio Interface
No Audio Software
No Studio Monitors
No MIDI Controller
No Anti-Virus Software Installed
Standard Processing- Ship within 5-10 Business Days
One Year Parts & Labor Warranty
Restore Disk

What is a 2BXGMR you ask?  Well, if you’ve been to our web site, spent some time in the arcade, and loved every minute of it then you, my friend, qualify for Toobix Gamer status and are ready to where the badge that comes with it.

We thought we’d take a week to prepare a little something for you to get us all in the 2BXGMR spirit.  And what better to get you in the groove than Hampton narrating to a funky beat:

http://toobix.com/gamer

Did you know there was a whole Gamer Account set up for you right now?  That’s right.  You can get access to our forum discussions, our community of gamers and a bunch of free stuff like cool Toobix Game Wallpapers for your desktop.  We’re even offerring 3 free music downloads from our digital media shop just for activating your account and signing up for our mailing list!  You’ll definitely want to tell your friends about that one!  If you’re one of our faithful fans already on our mailing list, we’re extending this offer for you as well!

So have fun with the Gamer page and Gamer Account.  As always, enjoy the free tunes!

I’ve been a musician for 25 years now and we’re quickly approaching the 10 year mark for when I first released my first song on the web. During that time I have gone through several transformations as an artist. I’ve gone from songs that take two-hands to play to 4-2-the-floor dance stompers to the video game music you’ve come to know at Toobix. While I’ve always had a clear direction for my sound, the presentation of that on the web has always been less clear to me. Until now.

www.e-effectmusic.com

Look different? I know! The reason is that this vision came from a true artist. My talented business partner, redbeard_prime, has graciously and completely redesigned e-effectmusic.com. More than that, though, he has finally visually captured what e-effect has always been all about while at the same time bringing all of our artistic endeavors full circle.

See, my music used to be here, there and everywhere, but now my music is completely dedicated to supporting the audio behind our independent video games at Toobix. The prime and I have spent the last 3 years laying the foundation for the company, and are now proud to announce that the ground work is complete. With over 30 different products in two online shops (15+ gamer T’s in our Gamer Gear Shop and 20+ songs in our Digital Media Shop), 6 classic online arcade games, a hilarious bi-weekly web comic at eddiecheddar.com, almost 40 songs to stream free at e-effectmusic.com, and a community of gamers in our forums and on our blogs, we think that the future of full scale production at Toobix looks bright.

Stay tuned because we have something special planned for all of your continued support. Hope you enjoy the new website!