Get to know TribePlay 7

On August 18, 2011, in Company, HR, by Jenny
1

Today i am interviewing Isaac from from Shotton, in North Wales, (a country to the West of England). Shotton is a small town with around 9,000 residents, and used to be known for its steel factory. Now people know Shotton because of its 900-year-old Ewloe castle. Isaac is a backend developer at TribePlay, working on TribePlay‘s new project, Cube Galaxy. He also helped the company do some research on HTML5. Learning new technology and tapping the talent are part of his daily life.

Isaac, why did you come to Chengdu?

I came first to Sichuan in 2007. Many UK high school graduates take a gap year, where they work or travel before starting university. I used this gap year to teach English in Deyang, though most weekends me and my friends would go to Chengdu to hang out. I experienced Chinese culture and Chengdu’s fun and relaxing lifestyle. When TribePlay offered me an internship here, I decided to come back.

How do you experience work in TribePlay, is it different from previous companies?

TribePlay is the 9th job on my working list. If you asked a Chinese university student, you can hardly get a list as follow.

I worked as:

1st job: Clothes shop assistant, TK Maxx
2nd job: Elementary school, Supervisor (looking after the kids before their parents came to collect them)
3rd job: Teaching English in China
4th job: Cleaner at a high school
5th job:Selling credit card insurance at a call center
6th job: Agency worker (sent to factories to clean or work on the line)
7th job: Bin man
8th job: English teacher for Italian students in the UK
9th job: Backend programmer in TribePlay, Chengdu, China

Though there were only 3 months in TribePlay, this is the first job that made me feel excited to come to office every day. I think working as a programmer was very different from my previous working experience. You are not just doing what the manager tells you to do. You have more responsibility and freedom.

Isaac

Isaac


Which colleague impressed you most here? Why?

Gregor’s efficiency and hardworking gave me a deep impression. Every time when he came to my direction, I closed all non-work-related windows.
Lukasz gave me lots of advice about life and relationships.

What do you like to do at your spare time?

If I’m not tired, I’d like go out and party with friends. If I’m tired, I’d prefer reading the science ficton novels.

What do you want to do in 5 years?

I want to live in China, and have my own IT Company.

Do you like traveling and where do you mostly want to go?

I love traveling. Outside of Europe and China, I’ve been to India and the Philippines and will visit Malaysia in 2 weeks. Where would I most like to go? Space…

Could you tell me of one your achievement as a programmer?

In 2009, I decided to teach myself web programming at my first year of university. After that, I made a small online game by myself which is my most popular project to date. This game had 600 players and earned me 200 GBP.

Have you ever felt regret for anything?

I felt regret every time I left China.

Thank you Isaac for your time! Also everyone check out his homepage. If you interested in the other employees join us again in our blog with another interview from time to time. TribePlay is also always looking for new talents and we offer internships in every field of game development. Check out our Chengdu Job Opportunities or contact me directly jenny -at- tribeplay -dot- com!

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Molehill – the holy grail of flash game development?

On March 10, 2011, in Flash, Technical, by Richard
2

Finally this year the Holy Grail will be attained if we are to believe Adobe: fully accelerated 3D in Flash! This prospect promises to revolutionize browser based gaming. Of course others have made excellent accelerated 3D browser plugins already (Shockwave, Unity) but simply failed because they didn’t have and in no way could gain the penetration rate of the Flash plugin.

I’m very happy with this development and I’m very curious about 2 things: how will the tools look like and how extendible will it be.
Having worked already with many many 3D engines I have concluded that the power of a 3D engine does not lay in its features but far more in its tools. The internet is littered with 3D engines made by companies or hobbyists with promising features but many lack tools to get content into a form that is usable for their engine.
Lacking of this kind of tools means you have to program these tools yourself which is most likely to be a lot more work than ‘just’ programming your game.
For making games, or any 3D application for that matter, 2 tools are vital besides the basic 3D editor such as 3D Studio Max or Maya:
One is the model preparation tool, this allows you to prepare a 3D model that came from the 3D editor for the engine, apply engine specific details that cannot be set in the basic 3D editor (dynamic textures, shaders etc.).

If you just see a blank space above, click here for Youku Version for Mainland China

The other one is the scene editor, this allows for placing game objects in the world and details that is specific to your game/application.
In this sense Adobe is facing one hell of a task, how will they integrate all of this in the already burdened Flash IDE? Or will they release a completely separate set of tools for using 3D in Flash? Or will they simply not supply them and let the community create those tools on top of their API?

The second thing is a bit of a worry to me, 3D technology is a fast evolving technology and I wonder how Adobe intends to keep up with that. Now they could expose direct access to the OpenGL and Direct3D subsystems to allow users themselves to extend the Flash 3D engine.
Of course in a monetizing sense this would not be desirable as it will kill an option to trick users into buying new Flash versions. This makes me fear the implementation will lack functionality to create cool features that simply cannot be done even though the necessary functions are very common in 3D engines (Shockwave 8.5 additive blending anyone?).

Either way, I’m sure they will come up with something useful although maybe not cutting edge we at TribePlay are going to have fun with it!

P.S. Check also this post out, Uza is providing a helpful roundup on Molehill news, with lots of demos, videos and background infos.

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How to make a fun virtual world for kids

On March 7, 2011, in Chengdu, Flash, Social Networks, by Yan
4

Do you still remember what do you enjoy doing when you were a kid? As in my memory, I loved to put on my mum’s high heel shoes, dress up a piece of white cloth on my head to pretend it is a wedding veil, and take care of my imaginary baby made out of plastic lying in a fruit basket. Apart from that it proves that women are crazy about marriage and babies in a fairly early age, it also discovers the truth about where the interests of kids lie, simulating the real world.

In the beginning of developing Eccky, we invested quite some time on how to make our virtual world more magical and special by creating lots of superpowers. However, after a while, we hear from our young players that all they want is to throw a party at home, have a pet to take care of, hold a model show and let it snow in the world!
While club penguin and some other famous virtual worlds use animals as avatar, the setting of our world is very similar to the real world. I personally believe that a VW with a human like avatar has a larger space for content than penguin or bear avatars, because a human avatar is easier for them to position themselves into the world rather than an animal avatar to take care of. Kids have very broad imagination, strong curiosity, but quite limited access to the real social world. Therefore, they love to use the virtual environment to simulate and fantasize life with their peers, and to express themselves without fear or ridicule.

Eccky Winter Scene
As developer, we are sometimes extremely amused by the reaction of our players to the new settings and features. They take things very seriously, personal and are definitely not to be fooled with. Last Christmas we introduced the winter into the world and cover the whole world with snow. Kids are so excited about it just like it really snows in the real world and shouting out “Wow, it is so cold here, I will put on some jacket”. We have interviewed some of our loyal players and asked them why do they like Eccky more than other virtual worlds such as Habbo Hotel, their answers are “You can actually go to a clothes shop and try them on, while Habbo only offer stupid catalogue to order from.” It is a hilarious answer, but contains some truth inside.

However, I am not claiming that fantasy and magical elements are not important for a fun virtual world. They can definitely give the world an extra touch. There is no puppy or kitty in Eccky, but only a little water-drop-shaped Wobble with 2 eyes but no mouth or nose. Wobble is a creature which lived in the wild long before Eccky discovered the world and led a tough life to survive on themselves. They can be adopted but need the intimate care and love from the owners to be happy. Although there is no Wobble in the real world, we still surprisingly discover that most of our players are very emotionally attached to their pets. The funny animations of Wobble and interaction between pets and owners are the most importation reasons of that.
Wobble Eccky
Observe what kind of elements there are in the real life and introduce them into the virtual world with nice animation and design, if kids are relating them to the real world, then this world is already one step ahead towards a fun virtual world.

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Online Games Vocabulary

On February 22, 2011, in Company, by Gregor
1

TribePlay is proud to be a ethnically diverse gaming company. As we mainly work for the European market, our companies working language is English, but of course often we also use Chinese in daily matters. This post collects some of the most important words for gaming and game development in China to help you for the start:

English – Chinese – Pinyin

Game 游戏 you2xi4

Gaming industry 游戏行业（游戏产业）you2xi4 hang2ye4 (you2xi4 chan3ye4)

Online Game 在线游戏 zai4xian4you2xi4

Casual Game 休闲(网页)游戏 xiu1xian2 (wang3ye4) you2xi4

Virtual World 虚拟世界 xu1ni3shi4jie4

Social Game 社交（网页）游戏she4jiao1 (wang3ye4) wang3luo4

Social Network  社交网络 she4jiao1 wang3luo4

Friends (in a Social Network) 网友 wang3you3

Apps 应用 ying4yong4

Avatar 头像 tou2xiang4

Character (in a Game) （游戏里的）角色  (you2xi4 li3 de) jiao3se4

Game Development 游戏发展 you2xi4 fa1zhan3

Game Concept 游戏概念 you2xi4 gai4nian4

Concept Art 原画设计师 yuan2hua4 she4ji4shi1

Animator 动画设计师 dong4hua4 she4ji4shi1

Designer 设计师 she4ji4shi1

Programmer 程序员 cheng2xu4yuan2

Back end 后台 hou4tai2

Front end 前台 qian2tai2

Server 服务器 fu2wu4qi4

We know better... Image (c) by Some Girl named Jen

Did I miss one? Thanks to Sophie, our Project Manager, for checking the vocabulary!

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