Sulake has recently decided to start sending out a newsletter to all fansites, which will include a lot of events surrounding Habbo Hotel and guess what?! We’re going to be bringing all the gossip to you lot! Future features, staff information/interviews and more will be expected from these newsletters, so there’s absolutely no reason for you to not be reading important information from them. So, let’s get on with the important factors of issue 1…

 

Issue 1

 

For all of those who are still a little confused about what “Behind The Pixels” is all about, then why not take a quick read of an extract from the newsletter:

 

“This magazine has been created to give you some interesting behind the scenes content. Each issue will feature interviews with various staff members/developers/herbivores, preview upcoming features and spotlight the development  teams that work tirelessly to make Habbo an exciting world of endless creative possibilities. I’ll also be looking at some of our past projects and talking about how they came out (I’m still trying to find the mythical video that contains the pilot of the Habbo TV show that was to air in Finland).”

 

That was simply a brief overview of what the newsletter will encompass, but now it’s time to focus on the main topics that were covered this week.

 

– The Fatalistic Lemons! Aka – the development team. It has been revealed that a man named Lauri is in charge of the development team (or “The Fatalistic Lemons) whose aim is to “create interesting content and furniture for Habbos.” They focus all their efforts upon furniture and items that can be used in-game as opposed to frameworks & structures such as the navigator.

 

The team consists of 8 individual staff (including Lauri the producer) – “there are 2 graphic designers, 3 coders (both server and client side), 1 tester and a scrum master. The “scrum master” organises all daily meetings and designates jobs to each of the other 7 staff members.

– Horse furniture updates! – If you are an avid follower of Puhekupla.com, you will have noticed that a lot of new Horse furniture items have been uploaded – specifically obstacles. Some of these obstacles include a ‘Ring of Fire’ and a Country/Hedge Fence obstacle. The development team even commented on these obstacles by saying:

 

“Over the last few weeks, the team has been working on the new Horse Furni items, and the ability for horses to jump over obstacles – these should be available in countries in the next two weeks or so. The horse jumping was in the original plan for horses but was dropped early on, however, when the team saw that Habbos really wanted it, it was re-added to the project.”

 

– How it works! Many users were interested in how the development team manage to come up with all these intriguing and imaginative ideas for the hotel. So, here’s how they do it:

 

“The typical process for the team starts with a brainstorming round, where they look at user feedback on previous features, and think about what items would benefit all Habbos. The team then begins concept work on their feature/Furni, which includes sketching outlines of the items and their mechanics (for the horses, this included watching videos of horses walking, which is probably less fun than it sounds). After this, there’s hallway testing, which is where other departments take a look at the sketches and concepts and comment on them. After this, the real hard work begins – coding and designing to make the features a reality. Following few more iterations and testing, the team is finally ready to pilot. After the pilot, they look at feedback from Habbos and see what needs to be fixed and improved before releasing the feature to all Habbo sites.”

 

Sounds like a fairly complex method gets used to introduce all the wonderful features and events that we have inside Habbo today. Also, for anyone who is wondering what the development team is up to at the moment, well… it’s a secret! Lauri has kept his lips sealed and is refusing to give away anything at all – he simply said that the current developments are amazing.

 

There you have it, a quick sum-up of the 3 main topics covered in this week’s “Behind The Pixels” newsletter! Be sure to keep checking the homepage because another issue is arriving very soon!

If you would still like to see the .pdf version of the newsletter, here you go: http://habbox.com/other/BehindThePixelsIssueOne.pdf
 

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