The Pxl Lab
The Pxl Lab is a blog dedicated to writing about the great games, software, and the stuff you can do with them.
The Most Effective Firewall to Date!
23 years ago
by Thomas
in Randomness
Today I will be reviewing my favorite way to protect my computer, Zone Alarm Pro. Zone Alarm has been with me for a few years now, and every time I use it I like it more and more. This small firewall has saved me from countless Trojans and malicious files that would have otherwise rendered my computer dead. I underestimated it, and so many people that make that mistake will see the true benefits of this cheap program!
Zone Alarm was created initially by Zone Lab’s but was bought by Check Point in 2003. It has only been compatible with Windows XP until recently in 2008 they updated Zone Alarm to 7.1, allowing the program to be compatible with 32-bit Vista only. Zone Alarm’s main purpose is to provide an effective firewall for your computer, allowing or denying no file without your decision. Whenever you boot up a new file or possibly a malicious file, they stop it momentarily until you allow or deny access using a handy pop-up. This means that there is no possible for a program to receive access and harm your computer or send files to the internet without your permission.Zone Alarm also allows for complete program control, allowing you to choose what level of trust you think is appropriate for each program. 1 being restricted, and 3 being full access to your computer. You can also choose to kill the program, which allows no access whatsoever, preventing any threat that program might bring to your computer.
It’s Time for a Halo Flash Knockoff
03 years ago
by Japanerd
in Flash Games
I loaded up Addicting Games today and once again began rummaging around for a halfway decent flash game. In a desperate attempt to avoid another stupid stick figure flash game, I decided to play Vulcan. To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t finish this game. It was horrific. At first glance, it seemed promising, then I noticed the blatant Halo rip off. They basically come out and say it’s a Halo rip off. If you shot this game, it would bleed Halo rip off. The main character is a blue spartan-esq soldier named “Vulcan”. In the game you trapsing through the top-down world of narrow hallways shooting Covenant cop out aliens.
The game itself started off on a sour note. Incredibly bad dialogue along with subpar animations made the introduction quite unbearable. Then they thought it would be a good idea to give you every weapon right at the start of the game. Now, let me tell you my beef with this strategy. It may make it easier for the programmers, but it gives the players of the game no sense of progress whatsoever. They have nothing to work for except killing the next enemy in exactly the same way that they were able to kill the enemy on the first screen. They also made this game ridiculously hard. All of your weapons are completely ineffective until you’re almost in point blank range. The aliens begin shooting the second you step out of cover, and their aim is impeccable. They can hit you from the other side of the room the moment you poke your badly animated self out of cover. Along the same line, the game lags terribly whenever there are more than 2 or 3 people shooting at the same time. This makes the game incredibly difficult to play, considering after the 3 or 4th room you can reasonably expect 4 or 5 aliens to be shooting at you at the same time. The weapons themselves are also incredibly poorly designed. The Battle Rifle, my favorite gun from Halo, is about effective as throwing a dead rabbit at the enemies. Then the SMG’s are incredibly over powered. You can basically one shot every enemy using the SMG’s. And the Shotgun is entirely useless. The only way you can get it to work at all is if the muzzle of the shotgun is firmly placed against the targets chest. Also, the levels are designed in such a way that at least half the time every one of the enemies onscreen can shoot at you while you can hit maybe one or two of them. How did the designers manage to make it that way? I haven’t the slightest idea. It’s some sort of chaos theory engine, I guess. But I digress. Onto the finale.
This game sucks. Not Dane Cook suck, or even Superman for the N64 suck. This game achieves its own special level of suck. Dante’s Inferno will be rewritten to include playing this game forever as the ninth level of hell. This game has absoultely no redeeming factors. Stay away from it at all costs! I think I made my point.
Photoshop Tutorials – Part 2
0
The long awaited Part 2 of PST. The second tutorial is: Blending two images together on top of each other, an example would be a television screen and the sea, as used in this tutorial. As I started this tutorial, I saw that the main purpose was not to add an effect, but rather just simply combine what you already have at your disposal together into a single image. For this tutorial you need to find two, not one, images. To follow the tutorial correctly, you want to find a great picture of a television from the same angle as a landscape or a family photo because the two pictures will be overlayed upon each other. Chad Neuman, the creator of this tutorial, wants to express the feeling of an image on a Television that is being displayed realistically. I once again browsed Google, and found this. I thought that this was a great head on view that would be easy to work with. I then simply found another picture from the same angle. After saving both of the pictures to my hard drive (so as not to leech bandwidth from their sites) I opened up my trusty photoshop.
Once you open both pictures in Photoshop, drag the larger photo (the one that will be on the inside of the screen) onto the picture of the television. First, you want to make sure that your tv screen is transparent. You do this simply by selecting the magic wand tool and clicking on the white part of the television screen layer. The flaw in this is, following the tutorial you are left with a locked background layer. An easy way to fix it is to simply duplicate the television layer (ctrl + j) and then use your magic wand tool to select the white, and then press the delete button. If for some reason this does not work, you can use the marquee tool to select portions and delete them individually. Now, you completely ignore the original background layer, making background copy your television layer, and layer 1 your scenery picture. Hide the background layer by clicking on the eye. When you drag your scenery picture on top of your TV screen picture, chances are it is gigantic or very small. To resize it, press ctrl + t on your keyboard and use the corners to expand or shrink the image. I explained it because in the tutorial it assumes you already have the corners on the picture selected, which may not be the case. As you work on step 9, you want to make sure that when you select the pen tool that you have the shape layer feature enabled. After that, it is VERY self explanatory. Once you finish, you may notice the image being slightly dark. This is cured by selecting a very light image, as the author did. I finished following his tutorial exactly with this. However, after careful inspection one can see that the image is not very pleasing to the eye, and so I had to adjust. Anyone reading this and working through the tutorial should note there are ways to fix darkening of an image. I prefer to set the layer to normal, duplicating, making the duplicated overlay, lowering it to around 33%, and erasing the darkest parts using a 20 soft pxl eraser. After those adjustments I ended up with this fabulous image.
In conclusion, Chad Neuman did an excellent job creating this tutorial. It was very easy to follow, yet most of his tutorial had only to do with the image he used, instead of the tutorial being applicable to any image. I thank him for his time and effort he put into it, and I also thank Photoshop Tutorials for their wonderful tutorials.
Sniper Assassin- How Many Stick figure Sniper Games are There?
73 years ago
After many hours of searching for a somewhat enjoyable flash game (which is quite hard to find these days) I found Sniper Assassin. Sniper Assassin is one of the many stick figure shooter games, and I had the displeasure of playing it.
According to the games description, it’s “a job that requires finesse and nerves of steel”. Instead, all it requires is the ability to read, and rudimentary clicking ability. The very unoriginally titled Sniper Assassin presents you with a small area with 5 or 6 same looking stick figures at once. Your job is to pick out which one is your target. This would have been a solid concept if the mission briefings didn’t slap you upside the head with the targets flawless description. This takes away any challenge the game may have previously presented in locating your target. It’s easy, boring, and frankly annoying. I appreciate the attempt to create atmosphere with the music, but it was terribly annoying after the second loop. Game play, it’s solid, but boring. Nothing you haven’t seen in games like Tactical Assassin 2. It’s a repetitive, predictable, and criminally short game with mediocre gameplay. You’d be best off avoiding it.
Now that thats finished, lets take a moment to discuss something. Why are there so many freakin’ stick figure flash games out there? At one point, I would say they were rather enjoyable, but its getting ridiculous people! This is like the fiftieth stick figure sniping game since tactical assassin, and I’m getting tired of it. Are you people too lazy to come up with something new and original? You want a fun, different game? Try The Sniper. At least it doesnt use stick figures. Come on, flash creaters. Please switch up the usual, don’t copy the originals like Tactical Assassin or Thing-Thing, (which are both excellent games), make your own, unique, fun game.
Line Rider 2 Beta- A Flash Game to Remember
263 years ago
by Genesis
in Flash Games
Line Rider 2 Beta is a flash game that you find yourself playing again and again. The objective of the game is prevent the little man on the sled from falling off of the lines you draw for him to ride along. Want him to fall straight down at 356 MPH? Go for it. Want him to fly off of gravity defying loops? You can do that too.
Line Rider 2 has many advantages over the old version. The most obvious addition is the eraser tool. It allows you to erase lines if they happen to make your character fall off his sled. He is very fragile, and will fall off sometimes at the slightest bump. Which brings me to one of the next additions, the sled rider is now harder to throw off of his sled, allowing people with no previous experience in the Line Rider Beta game to be able to pull off cool tricks with ease. You now also have the ability to draw scenery lines. These little lines are lines that the sled will not touch. He only passes though them, as they are used to add a background to your track. If your sled was not going fast enough, then another useful addition is the acceleration lines. These increase the speed of the sled dramatically. They let the user make line rider go up 45 degree angles, but if you get him going up much further than that with only acceleration lines and no natural propulsion, then you will find him flipping backwards over himself. Another new tool in Line Rider 2 is the flag tool. When you are creating a longer track, then you can use the flag tool to change the point at which line rider will start. This saves time, because you don’t have to wait for your character to travel the entire length of the track when you are testing new additions to your track. The magnifying glass tool is another useful addition to Line Rider. It assists you in finding the pesky problem areas. The new additions make Line Rider 2 far better than Line Rider Beta in terms of ease and entertainment.
Now that Line Rider 2 has been out for a while, fans are awaiting the new Line Rider game, and some may be surprised to hear that the popular pc game is coming to Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DS in the form of Line Rider 2 Unbound. Line Rider fans are excited about what is to come in Line Rider 2 Unbound. It adds the element of art, which allowing you to create amazing tracks.
All in all, if you are looking for a challenge, give Line Rider Beta a chance, but if you just want to take the time to create an amazing track with a slightly easier interface, play some Line Rider 2 Beta.
It’s a Big Week for Browsers, The Launch of Opera 9.50
0
Shortly before the launch of Firefox 3.0, Opera had a launch of its own. Version 9.50 of the venerable browser signified a turn in Opera‘s interface. An almost complete overhaul of Opera‘s tab interface, as well as many separate new features of its own.
Being a long time Opera user, (though now throughly devoted to Firefox), it was interesting to see the changes over time. I must admit, version 9.50 continues Opera’s long tradition of pioneering in terms of browser tabs. Their new tab interface is sleek, intuative, and best of all, it works. Adding a new tab button to the right of your open tabs, as well as the ability to recover closed tabs simply by clicking on the trash can icon, Opera proves that, though it may be the little guy, it is still capable of innovation. In addition to the new tab interface, it added a Quick Find Bar, almost identical to Mozilla Firefox’s “Awesome Bar”. The new version also adds a new browser engine, making it twice as fast as Opera version 9.2 when it comes to rendering Javascript and HTML, as well as third party plug-ins. It also considerably accelerates Opera‘s start up time, which was not slow to begin with. Likewise the new version added Opera Link, which synchronizes your bookmarks with your Mobile Phone. This allows you to take your bookmarks anywhere. It also revamped the Toolbar system, giving more customization options to the user, and virtually eliminating the accidental opening of the toolbar. (That was a major problem during my use of version 9.2).
All in all, the new version of Opera is fast, sleek, and an overall improvement on an already excellent browser. If you’re a fan of Opera, I whole heartedly encourage you go ahead and download the 9.50. Personally, I’m going to stick to Firefox 3.0.
Team Fortress 2, The Greatest Multiplayer Game of the Year, Now Free
7
To celebrate their latest patch to the amazing game Team Fortress 2, Valve is allowing anybody with a Steam account to download the game for free and use it for the weekend. After the weekend (June 20-22, 2008) you can no longer play the game for free unfortunately. The new patch adds 3 new unlockable weapons for the Pyro class. There’s a shotgun replacement called the Flare Gun, which is basically just what it sounds like. It shoots off a flare to allow you to ignite your enemies at long range, but takes a very careful aim to get it right. It also adds a new flamethrower into the mix, called The Backburner. It removes the Compression Blast ability, but the Backburner always has critical hits when burning an enemy from behind, as well as adding 50 points of health to the Pyro wielding it. The final unlockable is a new axe, called the Axtinguisher. This weapon critical hits any enemy who is on fire, but does considerably less damage to those who remain in a state of not on fire.
The patch also adds 35 achievements for aspiring Pyros to unlock. One of my personal favorites, is called BarbeQueQ. You obtain it by causing a dominated player to leave the server. Other fun achievements such as Freezer Burn (provide enemies with freezecam shots of each of your taunts), make it worth your while to try for the achievements. There are also two new maps added, A capture point map called “Fastlane”, and a Capture the flag map called “Turbine”. All of these factors make it an excellent weekend to play TF2, and if you aren’t already a player, to join the phenomenon.
Results of Download Day 08
13 years ago
Download Day took place on June 17th, 2008. Throughout the 24 hour period there were an average of over 8 MILLION downloads. According to Mozilla those 8 million downloads in a single day is more than the total amount of Firefox downloads in history. Although the number of participants in this event is very outstanding, was the actual 7.14 mb of data worth the download? An inside look of the brand new Firefox 3 shows that everything they previewed in the beta and on the website came through remarkably well. The features are near perfect and a huge upgrade from it’s child Firefox 2. Firefox 3 is a breakthrough in browsers, this time clearly outdoing Internet Explorer and other browsers such as Opera. Firefox is moving up the charts, and the people can thank Mozilla for that.
There are very many helpful and amazing features that, after a few days of testing, have proved to be essential to my Firefox experience. First is the new toolbar, nicknamed the Awesome Bar. Basically, you type in a keyword, and it gives you all possible results in a drop down menu that are relevant to that keyword. It becomes increasingly helpful when you can’t simply remember the website you visited yesterday, but you do of course remember the actual content the website contained. I love this toolbar because it is too confusing to bookmark every single site you go across that you wish to view daily. This tool is a great toolbar (no pun intended) that helps keep your bars clutter free and your day just a bit less hectic! This amazing feature is probably the most helpful, but there are many others that deserve a mention. The second most useful tool added to Firefox 3 is the advanced malware protection. This protection is a huge step up from Firefox 2, letting there be a smart list of possible internet attacks being updated every second! This is another step in the direction of perfect protection. This time around Firefox 3 delivers a killing blow with a full screen message blocking possibly dangerous websites that can infest your computer. The virus defense Firefox 3 offers works with your anti-virus program as well! It lets the program know when your downloading something, and automatically scans the file, making sure there is nothing harmful contained within it! I for one am ecstatic about this improvement to the already wonderful browser. The new security measures Mozilla has taken to ensure our safety is a very important part to our internet lives. A few other minor updates that are worth noting are the One click bookmark (which allows faster bookmarking of sites if you are in a hurry), Integrated parental controls, and Full screen zoom and navigation. These provide for an all around better Firefox experience.
I have used Firefox for many years now, and from many of my friends whose first experience with Firefox is Firefox 3, their opinion of the web browser is void of criticism and critique. Firefox again does not disappoint the public, and held true to their word. I want to thank Mozilla and specifically the creators of Firefox for this wonderful, versatile browser!
Mad-Croc Energy Gum is an Energy Drink, Only Not
33 years ago
by Japanerd
in Energy Drinks
So I recently ate some “Mad-Croc” Energy Gum. Well, ate is a strong word. It was more along the lines of, chew for five minutes then spit out because of pure disgust. Mad-Croc is one of the few products I’ve found whose taste goes from fairly good to absolutely unbearable a matter of minutes. I had some spearmint gum first, which was definitely the best of the flavors. It actually tasted fairly good for the first minute or two, then all pretenses of flavor dissipated into nothing more than a sticky pile of sickening goop in my mouth. I mean, if a baby chewed this stuff, I swear you would see his face melt, Raiders of the Lost Ark style.
Moving away from the flavor factor, in terms of working, it’s not bad. The only problem is you have to chew for at least 10 – 15 minutes to get the full effect of the gum, and it is unbearable after the first three. So it’s a challenge to get the proper effect from the gum, but if you’re willing to put up with it, it is a decent energy provider. Two pieces, according to the packaging anyways, is equal to one 8 oz. energy drink. That isn’t bad, I suppose. Not spectacular, but not bad.
So, in closing, I think I would make a great student council representative because of my strong work ethic and willingness to help others. And Mad-Croc Energy Gum sucks.
A Book That Will Slip Under Your Skin
2
Ted Dekker’s Skin is the story of Wendy, a young adult who has escaped from a cult. Her family abused her, and she now has trouble with men. She is unable to touch them, and has trouble talking to them at all, due to her horrid childhood experiences. Now Wendy is on a trip to meet up with her long lost mother, but is side tracked in a freak storm. After she barely escapes crashing into a truck in the middle of the highway, she picks up a woman, who has passed out after having been bitten by a poisonous snake, and also picks up her brother. She invites the siblings into her car and they drive toward Summerville, a small town five miles away from the highway. She gets trapped in Summerville with Colt, a cop from L.A. who moved to Summerville to calm down his rough life, and Pinkus, a hardcore gamer, who was to enter a tournament in L.A. Wendy and her friends then have to survive not only a F6 tornado, but a lunatic killer by the name of Red.
Skin is edge of your seat entertainment. It will keep you turning pages hour after hour, and you will be unable to put down the book until you have finished. Again Ted Dekker delivers with a killer thriller with its own personal twist on good vs. evil. Get to your local library and pick up your copy today, or buy it now.