This year Less Rain is the only German agency to win a coveted Webby Award, aka "The Internet Oscar". Nominated from almost 10.000 entries, our Red Bull Soapbox Racer won the People's Voice Award in the Game or Application category. Thanks again to everyone who voted!
Andreas Lutz wins the only other Webby going to Germany, in the Student category for his portfolio "Because clicking is so 90s!". Congratulations!
Following the nominations at the Webbys, FITC and The One Show, the Red Bull Soapbox Racer is now also nominated at the Clios 2010 in the category Beverages / Non-Alcoholic. We are pitted against the Coca Cola Happiness Machine by Definition 6, a nice example of a viral video done right:
Following the recent nominations we are now competing for a Webby as well, in the coveted category Interactive Advertising / Game or Application. And again, we need you! Please vote for the Red Bull Soapbox Racer at the People's Voice Award for a chance to win a Good Deed of the Day-Medal.
Less Rain is looking for a versatile Flash developer for full-time employment in our Berlin office with a solid background in object oriented web development and in-depth experience in AS3. We are seeking a motivated and confident problem solver with an eye for interaction design and a passion for web technologies.
You will be working in an international team of experienced developers in Berlin. Your role involves working closely with our front-end designers and the developer team to implement projects ranging from mini-sites to large scale consumer & corporate websites. You will be working on projects such as:
Julius Wiedemann and Rob Ford from the FWA teamed up for TASCHEN Verlag to present you with "sixty success stories from clients' briefings to final projects" - and two of them are ours. Both our Red Bull Flugtag Flight Lab and Vandalsquad feature as examples for a successful investment online.
While developing an AIR project one of the most annoying problems we are having is the impossibility to intercept when a runtime exception is triggered in the installed AIR application.
After Googling a bit we found a couple of interesting solutions provided by Xavi Beumala in his blog:
In Firefox 3.6 for Windows if you embed a Flash Movie with the wmode parameter in the object tag set as default (wmode=”window”) the mouse wheel event is not propagated correctly, instead it is captured automatically by the Flash movie making the scroll wheel not working properly.
Common Example (youtube video):
If you hover the mouse cursor over the embedded video, the mouse wheel doesn’t
scroll any more, instead if you leave the embedded video area the mouse wheel scrolls correctly.
The only solution I have found so far is setting the wmode parameter in the object tag to “opaque” or “transparent” so the mouse wheel event is propagated correctly, but this solution is far away from ideal.
FireFox 3.6 draws one-pixel border aorund embedded SWF (also occurs with Java Applets) where the width and height is set to 100%, causing pointless scrollbars to appear.
It seems to be a side effect of fixed usability problem which makes old bugs to appear.
Solution 1:
In about:config:
Set browser.display.focusringonanything to true and set browser.display.focusring_width to 0
The Less Rain London office is now looking for a Full Time AS3 Developer to complete the team!
You will be developing interactive environments in Actionscript 3.0, ranging from consumer & corporate websites to Rich Internet Applications. Here are some examples of the level of coding we expect:
Your role involves working with our front-end designers, back-end developers and Flash Developer team. Every project we do has a great concept / idea behind it and pushes the boundaries of what is possible, so you will never get bored doing the same website over and over again.
As a person you are quick, accurate and stress tolerant, a problem solver with good communication skills. You are self-motivated; flash development is a passion, not just a job. You like to try out new things and are willing to pass your knowledge to others.
You have a wide knowledge of Flash development and in-depth experience in web development.
Skills
Solid Actionscript 3 Development (OOP)
Experience with architecture/design patterns (MVC)
Experience with Data integration (XML, SOAP, Remoting, etc)
Experience with Papervision3D and/or other 3D Flash open library
Strong Math and Physics capabilities
Game development experience appreciated
High level understanding of Flash, Flex, AIR and other core Flash Platform
Basic third-party 3D software knowledge appreciated (such as 3ds, maya, cinema4D, unity3D, Shiva)
Understanding of Back-end and Database technologies, but not necessarily having the ability to implement.
Community awareness with new technologies, frameworks, resources and open source libraries
Programmatic motion appreciated
Eye for detail, performance and optimization
Experience with video and audio
Low-Level development appreciated (bytes level)
Eclipse/FDT, Flex Builder and SVN appreciated
Basic graphic design and motion graphics skills
Basic Photoshop and Illustrator skills
Basic understanding of HTML, CSS and JavaScript
Initial salaries are comparable to the market level and there will be a chance to negotiate as you develop.
Send your resume, references and portfolio to vassilios-at-lessrain.com.
There’s a new feature in the Red Bull Soapbox Racer, that allows you to connect your Soapbox Racer account with your Facebook account. It allows for easy login as well as challenging your Facebook friends, sharing your cars, tracks and race results in your Facebook feed.
Red Bull Soapbox - kids of all ages in self-made cars, racing down a steep hill. An extremely popular event, held throughout the year across the globe. The cars are powered by gravity only, no engines allowed but all dreams and colors.
And now it’s online! All of it, the cars, the race, the place to meet and challenge your friends. We call it Red Bull Soapbox Racer and racing you will.
Race first, think later
One single click on “Race now” and you find yourself on top of a steep road, pointing downhill. While the countdown is running, please be reminded that the game is based on a realistic physics simulation and you should not not not smash into one of those nice obstacles. Do collect cans for an extra speed boost and don’t forget the spanners. With ultra speed comes maybe damage.
If you didn’t win instantly the first time, maybe it was the wrong track. We have tracks for everybody, Wildwest, Night Ride, Turkish Riviera, Waterland, Alpenglück - many more will be added. Or was there a problem with the car?
Another car, another race
Red Bull Soapbox Racer lets you build your own car in 3D. Just draw the outline with your mouse. It’s really that simple and everything you draw will have an effect later in the game. The rounder the wheels the better, reconsider materials, use more stickers, paint, use colors, use more colors than your opponents, use every tool you have at least once. And winning races will get you even more of those. (THERE IS A NAILGUN!)
Give it some love, cars will be rated by who-knows-what so make sure there is no doubt. You may also browse through all existing cars for some inspiration.
The Challenge
After tinkering and test driving for a while there comes a point in time where you are quite sure to have the best car ever built on this planet. Challenge your friends! Invite them by E-Mail or simply click on the name of your long-time-rival in the so-called friends list.
A challenge works like this: Start the challenge and you have three attempts to race your best time. After that your opponent will be notified and offered three rounds to beat your time.
And after that, there is the highscore list for everyone to see.
Steeper, faster, harder
It’s even better to challenge somebody on your own surprise track. Give it a try, it’s simpler than building cars. Draw with your mouse where the street should go, done. Then, if you like, adjust the downward slope with some gusto and remember the guideline: The steeper the faster. Place obstacles and power-ups as you see fit, some recommend at least one can of Red Bull.
Red Bull Soapbox Racer is the latest addition to our creative online communities. Make your race times heard, we sure will try to beat you. See you on the circuit!
