Behind the Pixels: The scale of Habbo

Today was published a new post on the official Habbo blog, Behind the Pixels.

Read it below:

Have you logged into Habbo today and noticed that when you zoom things are a little… different? No don’t worry, nothing is wrong with your room or monitor, we just made a little tinker here and a small tuck there. Oh. And we might given a standing ovation coupled with a fond farewell as some long time members of the Habbo graphic family bowed and gracefully walked off stage. Before you start hyperventilating (we have paper bags standing by just in case though) lets talk about what we did and why it’s a good thing for everyone.

“Habbo Mini Memorial – Remember, remember this day in November.”

Did you know how Habbo previously zoomed the room view? Maybe you did, but for those that didn’t, it worked like this: Items (such as furni) would be hand drawn at two different scales and the game would flip between those pre-drawn scales when the zoom button was pressed. Kind of like quickly swapping a camera between two independent and fully decorated dioramas. The result was something that looked like zooming even if it was more of an illusion. Which means zooming has been… a lie… in a way. Earlier this year we introduced a new zooming method as part our Habbo iOS app that works pretty differently than the desktop zoom (aka lie). Alright the pinching action is obviously different but we’re talking about what’s controlling the visual scale of our graphics on-screen. Instead of toggling between two sets of pre-made images the iOS app is using only one image (the close-up version) and is scaling it to other sizes with some beautifully written code. Magic code; It’s like fairy dust. The scaling code lets iOS Habbo zoom in uncomfortably close and equally far away while keeping the experience pretty seamless and pixelicious (by the way, we’re calling the developer that dreamed up this magic code “sparkles” from now on). Starting today Habbo on the desktop will utilize the same code based scaling that’s found in our iOS app. The classic magnifying glass button will still toggle the room view but instead of having double of everything we’re scaling all items on the fly, from the large assets, with that lovely lovely magic code. That means we’re no longer using the pre-drawn small scale graphics. They’ve been ushered into a well deserved retirement. We all know those little graphics held a special place in your hearts (we’ll actually miss them too), and you’re more than welcome to take a little “alone time” while you get accustomed to the new look of zooming, but think of all the stuff we can do now that they’re gone! What? Too soon? Ok, think about it this way and you’ll see why it’s an exciting move.

Our production team is pretty small (even I can count the members on just over one hand and I’m horrible at counting). When they work they’re given a set amount of time to complete each of their items or they get sent to the “room of shame™”. Redrawing graphics can take a lot of time to get them to the point of being polished enough for use in game. You might think I’m pulling the wool over your eyes but about thirty percent of our time (or more for complex stuff) is devoted to redrawing. THIRTY PERCENT! That’s crazy and all that time adds up when we’re making a campaigns worth of materials. By removing the need to draw everything twice our production team just gained some valuable time to spend on other projects. Think of it. Clothing can be updated more regularly. New pets will be birthed into existence more often. Builders club can have more exclusives to build with. Not to mention, your rooms will even load a bit faster since we’re only using one graphic.

Some might feel like we’ve cut out a big piece of Habbo history with this update but at its core is the aim to better focus our efforts so we can ultimately make the kinds of things you all are asking for. A pretty good trade off in my mind and we hope you also see the benefits.

Oh, by the way. I should point out that the scaling code takes your monitors pixel density into account. So if you have one of those high pixel density monitors (retina macs for example) you’re in for a treat! I’ll leave that to you to figure out though!

For those of you that have logged in today, you will have received an EXCLUSIVE memorial furni (Seen above). We hope you like this little, tiny, mini memento!

Happy Zooming!

Official post: http://blog.habbo.com/2014/11/27/the-scale-of-habbo/