To industry friends,
Frenzoo will be at GDC China in Shanghai demonstrating its two unannounced mobile games (now in beta on Android and iOS)
Screenshot:
For a private demo contact:
Simon Newstead
mobile@frenzoo.com
Skype simon-hk
Twitter simonhk
Phone: +852 6277 1812
We launched our new Notification system last week and the reviews are in!
If you haven't heard about the new notification system, here are the details:
You can find the new notification on the lower right hand corner of your window:
Click on the highlighted icon to see the notifications:
You will receive a notification when:
1. Someone posts on your profile wall
2. Someone posts on your club wall
3. Someone posts on your shop item wall
4. Someone posts on your item template wall (i.e. templates in the create tool)
5. Someone comments on your contest wall
6. You wins a contest
7. Someone wins your contest
8. Someone buys your shop item
9. Someone adds you as a friend
So far the feedback is really good, but we are always hoping for new ways to improve. Check out the new notification system and let us know what you think here.
Hello world!
If you've been keeping up in the forums, you may have noticed a lot of news updates popping up lately. If not, well that's why we have a blog!
A lot has been going on for the last two weeks. Here's a summary of the new features we have added.
1.) Change Names
You asked for it and here it is! You can finally change your Frenzoo username, in case you are bored with the one you have already.
2.) Novice Badge
Have you noticed the "novice" badge and name before some users name? What about users who have frames around their profile picture on the meet people page?
It's easy to remove the novice name and get your own picture frame. You can read here for more information.
3.) Advertisements
It's time to pay those pesky electricity bills! We added advertisements to different parts of the site to help build up our revenue. Don't like the ads? Check out how to remove them here.
4.) Easter Specials
Yep! Easter is right around the corner. In honor of Easter, we have a few Easter specials available. Just keep an eye out in the Shop and Gold Coins pages for hidden eggs and packages.
5.) Broadcasting
Our newest feature! You can now broadcast your thoughts to the Frenzoo world! Be sure to try it out!
Phew, that's a lot of updates, and there's more to come. Keep an eye out for future updates!
And please let us know what you think of the new features!
Coming support will let users enjoy Frenzoo on iPhone, iPad, Android and other devices.
The F-Team has been working so hard that we already have a new feature to announce!
Drum roll pleeeease....
Introducing a new premium option to upgrade to a larger HTML box.
You can finally fit all of your pictures, videos, backgrounds, and give your profile page that extra awesome factor.
BAM! Kick it up a notch!
If you want to see the HTML box live and in action, check out Simon Frenzoo's profile.
How do you upgrade your HTML box?
It's pretty easy. First you need 250 gold coins for the upgrade. Then, just go to your Account & Settings page and click on upgrade. But remember, you can't revert back to the old HTML box. If you decide to upgrade, it's a permanent change. If you prefer your HTML box as it is now, it's better to keep it that way.
Loving this new premium option? Not so happy with it? We always love to hear your feedback. Tell us about it here.
It's finally here.
After several months of work and lots of "now bang heads against wall" moments, we've just launched our next-gen Unity 3d architecture on Frenzoo.com
The features on the site function the same way, but it means big improvements in the way we use 3d, all through the site. A comparison:
Old Architecture:
New Architecture:
There are rough edges in the new architecture. Some previous things will be finished off over the next week or two (auto-conflict layers, high heel adjustments, fix some template issues) and no doubt some bugs.. bare with us while we sort through these.
Overall though, it's a big step forward, lets us now accelerate our feature iteration and we're excited to get it out to everyone!!
PS - a big thanks to Gloria, Ethan, Dennis and Kev who worked night and day for too long to get this ready! Also to the many brave users who helped in the alpha testing, you guys rock!
Well the wait is over, and one of the most requested features is finally here - chat snapshots!
Now you can take pictures from both one-on-one 3d chats as well as multi-user chatrooms. You can choose profile and album pics as well as new full size captures.
For example, here is a extra large picture that was taken from a chatroom using a dual monitor setup:
Click here to view in full size glory (very cool).
To celebrate the new feature we've launched our first group chat contest. It's a tough one, grab 4 people and wave together and capture at exactly the right one. It took us 4 tries before getting it right, so get your coordination skills in order.
Enjoy chat snapping.
PS - if you have suggestions for chat snapshot contests let us know in the forum!
On Saturday it was the annual Barcamp unconference that brought together the tech / startup / web / creative community in Hong Kong.
It was a big day for us volunteers, helping to deal with the roughly 500 people who turned up and over 50 sessions that were held. By far the biggest barcamp yet and lots of great ideas being discussed.
Apart from helping out I also ran one of the sessions on the topic of "Getting to Your First 10,000 Users" and sharing advice and ideas with fellow consumer web startups, based on our experience back in early beta with Frenzoo.
My slides are here:
A fun session and a productive day.
This morning I had a lot of fun speaking at the Virtual World Conference that was held virtually on Second Life, bringing together attendees and speakers from around the globe.
The speakers covered different topics around the theme of using virtual worlds and communities for business, entertainment and education, as well as the wider macro trends with gaming and virtual goods.
My talk was on the topic of the challenges and learnings of building a new browser-based 3d world. These included technical, usability, business model and more.
My slides are attached, and there were interesting questions on topics from virtual economy through to behavior abuse problems and gender/age distributions.
The conference is continuing on for the rest of the day, so do try and catch some of the sessions if you can.
What would a 3D chat world be without it's visuals?
Today we updated how we use the Unity 3D engine to improve quality of rendered avatars and scenes.
Here's a "Before and After" pic, capped on the same machine in the same scene:
For the technical minded, the following was improved:
- Anti-aliasing
- Improved alpha blending
- Adjusted texture compression
- Bone limits increased
- Nisotropic texure adjusted
The net effect is that the same assets made by creators look smoother and clearer now, with minimal impact on performance.
No tricky settings to adjust, the change has been applied across the site and to everyone.
Enjoy.
