Frenzoo. Games with Style.

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1st mini-machinima contest - winners!

TIP - Wait a minute for all images to open

After the release of the new feature on Frenzoo a couple weeks back (lets you video capture into an animated GIF file), the enthusiasm was high so we thought it a good idea to hold a special contest: "tell a story in two 3 second clips"

Well yesterday the 1st animated snapshot contest wrapped up, with judging from Koinup CEO Pier Luigi.

There were a number of great entries.  One of my personal favorites was this by NAME, showing a Neko taking revenge on its owner:

Also, the 2nd place from SmileCorin showing a student dreaming about her future dreams:

Finally the winner, Marcynha with her Susan Boyle inspired 'Talent' entry:

Big thanks to Pier for judging, and congrats to the winners, and everyone who entered!

We may end up holding this as a monthly contest, as it was a lot of fun...

Traffic mix in a browser virtual world (aka stats for geeks)

GEEK ALERT

As part of some scaling work on our new browser 3d world at Frenzoo.com we've been taking a look at our current traffic mix. 

Being a tech lover, it's great to dive into stats, especially when it's about your own site.

For example, on Monday, we had around 24GB served*, which breaks down as follows:

     51%  getPackage.php – 3D assets (avatar, scenes etc)
     16% getImage.php – item/member images, i.e. thumbnails on web pages
     7% .swf  – flash files, for example parts of chat and create tool interface, done in flash
     7% .unity3d – the unity 3D player files
     4% .js  – javascript files
     4% images  – i.e. jpg, gif, png, including contest and forum attachements
     1% .css  – UI layout styling
     10% others – i.e. php, html, text content

To give an example of how some of these are used, a screenshot from a live chat in an underwater club:

We mashup techniques, having UI elements in the 3d window as well as outside of it where it makes sense and for rapid iteration.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of the traffic is the 3d assets used for the avatars and scenes in user profiles, live chats etc - basically all pages which include a 3d window.

I'd expect that ratio to grow even more as more content is created and new 3d features released, but it will be interesting to track how that goes.

* these figures don't include web content embedded in Frenzoo user, shop and other pages, streamed directly from other servers through to user browsers. Example - embedded youtube videos, 3rd party flash games etc

Love (my 3d avatar), love me not

The community magazine team at 3d online world Frenzoo.com have outdone themselves with the latest issue of Frenzy:  "love me, love me not"   You can read it here:

The issue features a mix of articles, some of the highlights are:

• Valentines fashion gallery
• A preview of multi-avatar chat
• Design tutorial - using shadow textures
• Chobits anime intro
• and more

A big thanks to editor Miidasu and all the volunteer contributors for pulling this together.  If you're interested to get involved in writing, layout or promotion, drop her a message on her wall.  No experience necessary!

Happy Chinese New Year!

From all of us @ Frenzoo.com, happy year of the Tiger - may it bring you much health and happiness...

ps - guess who are the designers amongst us :]

Facebook connect, 3d machinima and more

There has been a lot of interesting discussion about the pros and cons and different approaches of linking real life identity and virtual world avatars.  Our take on it is that it should be the users choice and freedom to link up their avatar with real life identity or not.  In reality there will be users who fall into both camps - those who want a true escape from their real world and those who want friends in world to be able to know and connect with their irl identity.

With that in mind, we just launched our first phase of Facebook Connect in our online world Frenzoo.com, which allows users the option to create a new account using Facebook, and then also option to use real-life name and age or not. 

Creating an account using Facebook Connect is a breeze, just a couple of clicks and literally in seconds you're good to go.

Soon we'll also add ability to link existing accounts to Facebook Connect as well as post snapshots, contest entries and more to your Facebook wall.

Speaking of updates, a number of other new things just launched in the last few days:

A new mini-machinima feature that lets you take animated snapshots in GIF format. It's a lot of fun and easy to use for everyone. For example, one made by our Brazilian ztylist Marcy:

We also have a launched a brand new chat system which is much faster and convenient to access - it all runs in a single browser window, like Meebo or Facebook.  There is a new chat bar at the bottom of each page where you can start and switch in and out of different chats. 

So far users seem to really like it, apart from the new bugs of course, we still have polishing to do this week!