How We Did Stairs Animations And The Challenges + Easier Second Floor Wall Placement
Good Friday to you’all :)! Alejandro and Richard here with our first Patreon post.
First, we wanted to show you our new stairs locomotion, then our new tools for easier floor creation and finally a nice collection of bugs that we think all of you will enjoy seeing :)
Stairs Animations
As we are working on features related to floors, we also needed to have our characters move from one floor to the other. Chloé and Jérémie have been working on the stairs in the build mode, while Alice and I (Richard) have been working on the live mode part of it: character stair’s locomotion animations!
The first step was to make the characters play the animation while moving on the stairs. But, one of the challenges is that we have different character heights. Imagine if you were a giant, you would be covering a long distance with a single step. In Paralives, the characters can’t be THAT tall, but the height difference still has an impact on the animations which causes feet to not land perfectly on the steps. Here are some examples:
The steps of my characters don’t cover the exact distance to correctly land on each step.
Here Alex is not moving at the correct speed.
Alice and I figured out how to fix all of those issues. We created multiple versions of our stairs animations for different character heights. Look at the result:
Easier Second Floor Wall Placement
Hi! Alejandro here, first time writing for you all! I have been working on features to make it easier for you to build second floors and above.
When placing walls on the second floor, I made it so if there’s a curved wall on the first floor, it will snap to it and create the exact same curve.
The wall will automatically adapt with the curved wall below
And if you do not feel like having another curved wall, you still can place a straight wall if desired by pressing “ALT”.
Floor Duplication
Another feature I worked on that will facilitate the building of multiple floored buildings is the floor duplication.
When selecting any floor, the duplicate floor button appears.
We are thinking of adding more options like copying exterior walls only, for instance. However, for the first version we wanted something simple.
Bug Highlight Reel!
While trying stuff out, what happens can be pretty funny. Here are some of the best bugs.
I may have mixed up the going down the stairs animation with the crawling one. Is that what we should do for toddlers?
This is it for us this week. We hope y’all like it :). This was fun for us to make, and we will be making more of them. Have a great weekend, eat your vegetables and see you next time 🙂!
Alejandro and Richard
Edit - July 18th, 2024: This post is now public, feel free to share it!
Comments (98)
is getting better
I'm very interested in how time will fit into the live mode of the game. I've never been satisfied with live mode time in the Sims 4, as it just feels like simple tasks such as going up a staircase can take 15-20 game minutes, and in my experience at least, it does not take me that long to scale a staircase unless I'm at a football game or something. But my house? I'm not gonna spend 20 minutes on that. I dunno I just think there wasn't enough work put into the time aspect of live mode in the Sims so that it felt more accurate, not that the challenge isn't fun sometimes, but I just really dislike how a task like bathing kids or staircase climbing can take way more time than they do in the real world
Hi! Must be exciting being able to figure out things! It still catches my eye how the animation of walking on stairs starts and ends: paras walk INTO the stairs and the the animation glitches - for a lack of a better word - when the para steps from the stairs on the second floor.
That animation of the paras walking down the stairs in perfect sync: chef's kiss.
Can y’all make like a kids or teens running up / down stairs animation or sneakily going down stairs. Also it would be low key funny if they had a chance to trip idk
I love Parabugs
I can't find the exact post right now. But I remember you guys were working on giving the second floor depth to it. I work as a truss designer, and part of my job is designing floor trusses. So if you wanted to reflect actual/realistic floor depth the thinnest a floor can be while still being structural sound it's about 1 ft 4 in and most designers/architecture textbooks recommend a floor should be about 2 feet deep to allow for AC duct work and other things. Idk if I'm too late or if that's helpful at all but I just thought of it while doing a job.
@ Rin Canono exactly, i have 2 kids and they climb steps down backwards. It is not the same animation because at the top they have to rotate 180 dergree to climb down backwards.
The bugs are hilarious, especially the bouncing one!
Some baby’s walk down the stairs backwards I saw my little baby brother do it. So maybe that’s what toddlers should do?
The one that looks like he is jumping really high to get up the stairs is pretty funny! I would love to see an animation of paras running/down stairs too!
Yes! I would love to see it, I always skip steps when I go up and down stairs, even down escalators which seem to freak people out haha
😂🤣 the bugs are hilarious, and yes those “sync walks” look beautiful
It would be really cool to see confident paras not have to look down at their feet while using the stairs when they go up or down! Thinking of the reverse, clumsy or scares paras can hold onto the railing and be extra cautious while walking down!
I love the look of climbing stairs! and the curved walls just look amazing and it’s going be so useful to be able copy and paste floors.
This looks amazing! 😁
oh my word that looks so satisfying to watch them go upstairs, especially when literally no other game i’ve seen has ever done stairs right
The stairs animation, it looks like they “snap” onto the first set of flights, and then “unsnap” at the last one. Seems a bit out of place or is it just me?
Yes, for them to land on the steps, they need to start the animation at the start of the loop. but they could get there when their feet doesn't match.
Dude i appreciate so much the fact that you can prevent the wall from snapping into place to a curve if you want that was a very good call
Thx :)
It would be cool to see an animation of characters sliding down the staircase railing.
It would be cool, but not for now :).
I saw all the characters going down the stairs and thought about the possibilities of machinima. Now I want to make videoclips in Paralives!
:D Happy that you like that little scene I created. I'm looking forward seeing how creative people can be with the game :O!
For the floor duplication, it looks like in the picture, the individual room is selected. Does that mean we can only copy the entire floor at once, or can we also duplicate individual rooms?
For now, the tool only duplicate the entire floor at once.
Lol the bugs are hilarious! Speaking of toddlers, though, we usually teach them to go down the stairs crawling backwards, or by scooting down on their bum.
So many options for the toddlers :)!
Turn the crawling animation backwards and that's basically how toddlers go down stairs 🤣
Taking notes 📝
Oh I LOVE the duplicate floor option!! That's such a great idea! Amazing work getting the animations to work for all of those different heights😲 and YES, there was something very pleasing about watching them all go downstairs at once lol. I'm not sure if this has been covered already (sorry if it has) but will there be different shaped stairs? (U turn, half winding, spiral, etc?) Those bugs were hilarious 😂😂
Thx :)! Yea the duplication floor is really usefull, Alejandro did a good job :). Haha happy that you like the stairs stuff ^_^. For the alpha release there will be only straight stairs. We want to have different shaped stairs one day.
This looks great. I'm sure having to create a bunch of variations for the same thing adds annoying complexity to your code. But your efforts will pay off, we're going to have so much fun with heights!
We already have the code for that, it's was more complexity in the data though. But you are right that every change increase complexity! Thx :)
I'm making a para catwalk when they come down the stairs
New kind of catwalk, I like it :D.
Poor Alex is trying his hardest to get up those stairs 😆 well done everyone, you are doing a fantastic job!
Alex was having a bad dream I think :). Thx :)
Hey Alejandro & Richard! Those automatic curved walls are a beaut. And copy/paste floors? Very nice! Those bugs were hilarious but I'm even more tickled that several Paras can go up/down a single set of stairs at the same time lol 🥳 #takemymoney
Hello :). Thank you :).
Looks beautiful!
Thx :D
i love that the walls snap to the same curvature, that will be extremely useful! the whole team just really seems to understand what players want and need, this game is looking more and more promising with every post!
Thx :D. As they say "by players for players". We try our best to make a game that is easy/fun to play.
The duplicate floor button is going to be extremely useful if I want to make a building that looks like an apartment! Or if apartments are added eventually. Love the stair animations, and the bug where it looks like the para has backwards legs!
Yea it's a great tool. Thx :).
Sure seggs is good, but have you tried FLOOR DUPLICATION ?! :D "The wall will automatically adapt with the curved wall below. And if you do not feel like having another curved wall, you still can place a straight wall if desired by pressing ALT" I don't know why I was worried when I first read about curve snapping, because OBVIOUSLY Paralives would include tools to customize things ! You would never force me to create two floors with the same curvature if I didn't want to, you'd just give me the possibility to do more things more easily ! Oh me of little faith. (also, that curve looks really good, I like that curved walls in Paralives can be "soft" like this) Thank you Alejandro and Richard for your hard work (and congrats on your first post on the Paratreon !). I can't believe the team (let's not forget Alice, too) worked on so many different stair climbing animations for all these heights ! Sometimes I wish you'd tell us (approximately) how many hours things took to implement, because I don't think we realize everything that goes into making just one part of the game. PS : that toddler animation is a tragedy waiting to happen. So I guess what I'm saying is : yes, make it the animation for toddlers XD
Thx ^_^! Yea more tools! For the time, I will give very approximative numbers, anyway it's hard to give precise numbers. Well for the stairs, I most have taken about 50 hours to try things out, research and code. As for making the animation, I would guess around 30 hours for all of them (cause we have variation). That is without the time of reading books and formations ;p.
Awesome! Will we also be able to make another curve wall with another angle if we hold alt?
Yes you can, we just didn't show that combination.
Amazing job on your first posts!! Love the stair designs and animations! Thanks for sharing. So excited for this game!
Thx :D yea game!
All those paras going down the stairs made me think of a ballroom scene
oh yea! i didnt think of it this way :o
Lol the bugs and glitches were a riot! Absolutely love the attention to detail you guys always have and the smooth animations really do make such an impact on immersion! Really loving the duplicate floor tool and how intuitive everything feels when it comes to building overall! Just take my money already!
haha thx :D. We are doing our best to make the game ready for you'all !
Love it! The animations look wonderful, and the building tools make so much sense. it's so interesting to see a bit of the process and how much work goes into seemingly simple parts of the game. Can't wait to play it eventually!
Thx :), im happy that you like process part. Yup there is soo much details behind every .. .details
Love!! The glitch doesn’t bother me like it does others, but if a modder was to figure it out would you update the game with that mechanic? Also I know you just figured out stairs but how are you all feeling about spiral staircases? 😂👀 Love that you can mimic the wall below, though in play testing maybe testers can try the controls both ways? Meaning they would hold alt to make a copy instead. I just find that switching up controls can be kind of confusing for new or novice players. Love Toddlers being able to crawl up stairs by the way! I’ve been really wanting a baby gate at the stairs and maybe some parenting interactions like telling them it’s dangerous. You all have some amazing work!!!
If you are talking about the glitch on the start and end of stairs, that's something that requires code and animation. So it's not modable :(. Spiral staircases, never heard of it :p. It's going to be a challenge on it's own. Yes with playtest we are going to see what works and what needs a changes. New players play differently that someone that has been working on the game for years 😅. Toddlers shouldnt be using stairs 😨
I like how there is still improvements being done to build mode! Also the animation for the stairs is looking good. I really can't wait when this comes out!
Thx :). I can't wait for you'all to play the game. But there is still work to do! We will get there!
Starting to think the nudest bald dude is a just a different breed of human.
Maybe mustache man is human maybe not. Who knows?
Glad to learn the stairs animations have worked out. Will there be a fix for the clipping at the start/first step and end/final step later? Really pleased with the duplicate floors feature and would definitely like similar building features for smaller things like walls. Didn't know I needed it until I saw this! I often use a similar layout for houses on different floors so it makes it easier to get the right angle to play comfortably, instead of having to change angles constantly which would be especially annoying with multiple para households.
Thx :D For the clipping it's going to be like that, it's a trade off, otherwise we would have made them stop at the start of the stair then start using them. That looked robotic :(. For the duplicate of walls, we are thinking about it some variation of that.
I absolutely love the duplicate floors feature! That will save so much time, especially when building something complex.
Thx :)! Yes ! Definitely! I have been using that feature a lot lately!
The first mod I will install will be for everyone to climb the stairs like that Alex example 🤣 Thank you all for your amazing work! Another thrilling update 😊
No please ! Don't break all our work ! (You just need to change the animation speed and reference height in the stairs animation, dont tell anyone 🤫)
This is a fantastic update! The snap to first floor walls while building second floors is great! I love that you also thought to have the hold ALT key option to prevent snapping if necessary. You all are doing an amazing job and I’m always so pleased with each update. Keep up the great work!!
Thx :). Yea Alejandro did a great job on those building tools.
Oh, I love the technical/new features posts. I'm always very interested in that aspect, and I'm glad you shared some behind-the-scenes footage! Also, the stairs animation looks really good! Amazing job!!! ❤️
cool thx :). I tried to be just enough technical to not bore but also not overwhelm.
I love the work. The duplicate floors option will be so useful if we get apartments or symmetrical giant mansions and the animations look great. And 12 paras going down the stairs at the same time? A certain big life simulation game could never
Yea ! I'm already using a lot the duplicate floor feature that Alejandro made! Making that gif of the 12 going down, perfect took a little work! Happy you like it :D
Thank you for showing the bugs they're always fun to see :)
Happy to know they are appreciated! :D
The animations look great!! However, there’s a tiny moment that looks wonky when the characters start their animation and end up walking into the stairs. Maybe they could pause for a split second before starting the upstairs animation, so that they don’t walk into the stairs? (like with the turning animation where characters pause to turn instead of just immediately glitching out to turn) But it’s not that big of a deal and great job overall! 🫶
Thx :). We did the stop at the start but it make it look too robotic and slows the movement. We rather have the stairs be a continuous movement. But that cost is the wonky at the start.
How cool! Tho my face literally went from ☺️ to 🤨🧐😂🤣😳😱. Hahaha omg the process of making it better, that bouncing bug might work perfectly for a trampoline
Cool thx :-). I was not sure what level of detail to show the process because i don't want to bore people with too much details. Ohhh a trmpoline would be nice ... Wait .. I would need to make the code for the movement 🤔🤨
The last animation really had me 😂 there's something so creepy about it but I can't stop laughing at it Anyways great job guys! I love the solution, it's pretty straightforward. Simple solutions are the better ones most of the time. I wouldn't have thought of doing it this way, but it looks really good, especially in the gif where they all walk down together!
Creepy animation is something you see all the time when you make them until it works well 😂, like code! Thx im very happy you like the result!
I wonder, if a group of para walk up the stairs together, could they converse with each other? (Ex, Sebastian and Maggie walk upstairs, as they walk, they look to each other, talk, shrug and other body language gestures)
That is a good question! An other nice little detail! For now, there is no conversation when walking in a group. But that would be nice :D
Love it! Hope we can run up and down the stairs to not make it too tedious!
That would require more animations 😮 and that would be dangerous ! You shouldn't run in the stairs!
the Alex animation hahahaha
Gotta go fast !!
Are apartments going to take place in the game? I saw the tower, and I jumped to a conclusion.😅
It's something we are looking into in general. We just don't know when we are going to make them.
The amount of work being put into this is amazing
Thx :). I will be sure to pass the message to Alice and Alejandro too!
Awesome! I have a question: Is it possible for paras to accidentally fall down the stairs when going down?
Hello :). It's not possible yet, my code makes them walk without stopping :p
Oooo