Hipihi

Hipihi is a virtual world with user created content, customizable avatars,  and land ownership.

The official Hipihi site is at www.hipihi.com.

The company that created the Hipihi virtual world system is located in China, so Hipihi’s initial native language is Chinese. English and other language versions are planned.

Currently it is possible to run Hipihi on English Windows XP SP2 by installing Asian language support and setting some settings. If you speak English but not Chinese, you don’t need to try to fill out the Chinese language registration, there’s an English language registration on the Hipihi company’s site at: http://service.hipihi.com/member/register/en/register.jhtml .

If you go to hipihi.com the main page is in Chinese.  At the top right you should see  the word English.  Click that to go to the English pages.

IdeaShape Studios, operated by Second Life avatar Jolly Heron, has an English language forum at http://www.ideashape.cn for current and prospective Hipihi users. Jolly Heron has also created an MSN group for non-Chinese-speaking Hipihi users called hipihi@msn.com. You might want to join this forum and MSN group so you can get help with getting the program installed and running, and to contact people.

An now outdated English Hipihi interface guide can be found in the IdeaShape forums at http://221.11.104.147/bbs/upload/Help/HiPiHi_Interface.pdf or you can get the Hipihi interface English guide from the thread in the official Hipihi company forums at: http://forums.hipihi.com/main-read-37-ff8080811363453101139b3a4ee45f7f.html.  This url may be out of date by now.  Check in Overseas Zone for forums.hiphi.com for latest information.

Hipihi Language settings:

I will attempt to make the Regional and Language settings required to run Hipihi clear below.

Install the East Asian language pack.

Windows XP
On the Windows Start menu, point to Control Panel, and then click Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options.
Click the Regional and Language Options icon, and then click the Languages tab.
In the Supplemental languages support box, check the box for Install East Asian Languages.
Click Apply and OK.

Once the East Asian language pack is installed, do the following:

Set the Default Input Language to English United States - Chinese Simplified, US Keyboard, as shown at the top of the picture below,

and

In the Installed services, also shown in the picture below, enable Chinese Simplified in the EN - English United States section of the list.

In the Regional and Languages settings, on the Advanced tab, shown above,
select “Chinese PRC” from the drop down list right below the words
“Select a language to match the language version of the non-Unicode programs youwant to use”.

In addition to installing the Asian language pack and setting the settings described above, you also need to edit the properties of the shortcut you use to run Hipihi , on the Compatibility tab, so as to turn off the Advanced Text Services. This is shown below:

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English Interface?

There’s a partial English interface available by editing a text file in the Hipihi program folder.

On a standard Windows XP install of Hipihi, the filepath  is:
C:\Program Files\HiPiHi\HiPiHi World 50021\UIData\LocalSetting\LocalSetting.xml

This file should be edited in a plain text editor such as notepad.

The text in the file will look like this after installing Hipihi:

<LocalSetting>0</LocalSetting> or maybe <LocalSetting>0</LocalSetting>

You need to make it look like this:

<LocalSetting>1</LocalSetting>

i.e., change the number 0 or -1 in the middle to 1 .

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Hipihi Support If you are having trouble with Hipihi, the bug report forum at http://www.ideashape.cn is a good place to report it at in addition to sending email to support@hipihi.com .

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Download Skin and Clothes Templates

Hipihi skin and clothing templates are available at http://www.hipihi.com/download/avatar_templet.zip

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My Hipihi Google Group and Zoho wiki:

There’s a Google group at http://groups.google.com/group/hipihi-group. I’ll still look at this Google group, but hopefully the IdeaShape forums Jolly Heron is providing will make this Google group redundant and hopefully Hipihi will be such a success that it has multiple busy forums, by which time I will hopefully have dissolved the Google group.

There’s a wiki at http://hipihi.wiki.zoho.com . I think a wiki for Hipihi is a great idea, but it should probably be a “real” wiki that works a bit better and faster and is more powerful than the Zoho wiki.

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Historical note:

Forum members listed  at www.ideashape.cn as of 7-28-07: luktvfraaz IdeaShape Dvaecave Star Pyter Joe HuiX lily menory hipishi Cory Edo Rene tonyb dashan ahhsu Zafka min 何必风月 lalgai hailong orbix zoloe SuezanneCB Jolly

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Here’s a shot of a guide to the Hipihi’s company’s forums, which have the labels for Post and Reply and such in Chinese, even in the Overseas Zones forum for non-Chinese-sspeaking Hipihi users. This picture was presented by, and I suppose produced by, Hipihi user Warmice,  a Hipihi volunteer.

Click the picture to enlarge.