Multitasking + Translation Tools + Key Rebindings
Hi!
Alex here with various Paralives development updates. Let’s get into it!
Multitasking Progress (For Patrons only! Please don’t share)
We have been working on multitasking lately. It’s a pretty complex system to develop but a very interesting one for sure! We have to create rules to determine if interactions are compatible for multitasking, we have to improve our animation system to support playing and combining multiple animations on a single character and there are many other challenges like that as well.
So far, we are making good progress! We already have some interactions that can be multitasked together. I’m looking forward to sharing many examples in a future Patreon post but for now, here’s Sebastian dancing and speaking on the phone at the same time (or pretending to speak on the phone because there is no phone in the game yet)!
Friday night at the club but you just realized you forgot to call your grandma this week.
Game Translation Tools (For Patrons only! Please don’t share)
Paralives will be available in multiple languages so that as many people as possible can enjoy it. To support that, we needed tools and systems to translate the game. Most often, games are translated by having a big Excel file where each row corresponds to a specific text in the game and each column is a language.
We made it so it’s possible to load an Excel file like that for translations in Paralives. This works well but it requires a lot of back and forth when you see a missing or erroneous translation in the game and need to edit it. To make that process easier, we made it so developers, modders and translators can directly edit texts or translate them while playing, seeing the changes immediately. Just press Ctrl+T over any label in the game to translate it.
In this GIF, I am translating parts of the main menu of the game from English to French. Note that the design of the main menu is not final.
Aside from translating the game in different languages, this tool allows developers, modders and players to change texts in the game very easily. This should allow people to customize almost any text to their liking and even submit these changes as a mod on the Steam Workshop if they wish!
Editing the name of the Dance interaction shown in the interaction queue while playing.
Key Rebindings (For Patrons only! Please don’t share)
Recently, I added a menu to allow players to change the keyboard mapping. This will be very useful because even though the game will try to have the best keyboard layout and shortcuts by default, many people have their own preferences. We hope this customization option will make the game easier to play for everyone.
The key rebinding menu. Click on a key binding and then the game will ask you to press a key or a combination of keys on your keyboard to assign it.
July 2022 Development Recap
On the development page of our website, we post a recap of the work we did each month. Here’s the recap for July 2022:
🎨 Started working on skin textures for senior Parafolks
🎨 Created more vegetation for the game and improved its art style
🎨 Created more furniture and objects
🎨 Worked on two hairstyles
🛠️ Created and integrated various character animations
🛠️ Made optimizations to character texture loading
🛠️ Worked on refactors and improved workflow for furniture and object integration in the modding tools
🛠️ Added a section to rebind keys in the option menu
🛠️ Created a censored effect to hide parts of a character in private moments
🛠️ Worked on supporting interaction multitasking
🎶 Created music for the game’s soundtrack
✨ Secrets!
You can also check out our full development roadmap to see the tasks that we are currently working on what’s coming next.
Thank you and have a great weekend!
Alex
Comments (62)
I know that you're not really translating the game yet, but "Play" in portuguese has many meanings. "Toque" is an order, like "Play this music". Play like in "Play a game" is "Jogar", much like spanish. So, I could correct it inside the game :D
You’r and your team are incredible oh my God oh my god just oh my God
Alex: So far, we are making good progress...... Me: *nods* Yes, You Guys ARE!
I'm late to the party, but let me tell you, as a conlanger and linguistics enthusiast, this translation system is everything and more to me! I am so excited for this game!!! Come on, Paralives, let's get Paralovely!
Regarding phones: I think it would be interesting if different Paras had different phones: Like one has a phone with a touchscreen, another has a phone with a keypad, etc. Love the animations so far! ❤
Even better if you have to buy it for them, or if you can decide to give them a home landline instead
This translation mechanic is genuinely blowing my mind! It looks so user-friendly, while also having so much potential for translation, accessibility, and custom storytelling
Love from Brazil! 🇧🇷♥️
I am so excited for this game! Every news is incredible and I love that you want to offer so much support and possibilities for modders as well.
Hi Alex and team!!! greetings from Brazil🇧🇷♥️. it's so amazing. I love Paralives.🎉🌟🎉🌟Alex, eu notei que principalmente nas animações de dança, os pés dos Paras ficam colados ao chão enquanto todo o corpo se balança, o que dar uma sensação irreal. Foi uma escolha da equipe de animação esse modelo ou é porque a animação não é definitiva?
I'm liking Seb's new and improved hair. The quality looks much better. Going with the whole multitasking while on the phone thing, it would be cool to see a para balance the phone on their shoulder when they need both hands free.
I get to say we want Traditional Chinese!
If anyone on here speaks Irish, I'm BEGGING you to do a translation!!!
Love seeing only 23 items left before early release and 64 items done! Super excited for the dogs and cats though too! Keep up the great work!
These customisation tools look amazing. Just one question - will it support swapped mouse buttons? I left hand my mouse and one of my peeves in games is when the mouse buttons are set and can't be changed.
I've never been so excited for a game before :D multitasking is something i really wanted to see!
SO EXCITED!
I'm so excited with this update news! Oh, and in regard to Seniors please try to refrain from set in stone facial features, animations, etc., please. Not all Senoirs are hunced over and wobbly, getting kinks in their backs, or with gray hair and deep jowl lines. My dad's hair color was still mostly black with some gray at 80 when he passed. Neirther he or my Mom had deep wrinkles or jowel lines and they diid not hunch over when they walked and my Mom lived well into her mid to later 80's. People IRL tend to stereotype seniors which I find sad and demoralizing. So, I'm hoping our Para seniors won't be stereotyped as well. With that concern said, I'm loving everything you guys are doing! I'm constantly being impressed!!
So true. My Nunna is 88 and only started "looking her age" a couple years ago. It's not that long since she accidentally fooled someone into thinking she was in her 60s. They were talking about their young grandchildren and it took her a while to realise that Nunna was actually talking about her great-grandchildren. There was a 20 year age difference!
OH I have one more question, with the keybinding is it/or will be possible to mod WASD for the paras to move around camera view etc.? I'm so excited to see the senior paras though!
What are the max a para will be able to do in multi-tasking and the complexity of it? I'm mainly curious how many (or max ) actions a para can do within multi-tasking. Like take the above GIF of Sebastian dancing in the club while talking on the phone. Would he also be able to dance, talk on the phone, and drink at the same time? Another example of 4 multi-tasking actions, Maggie is walking, on the phone, holding hands with say her future kid, while also holding an umbrella because its raining I also have another question not sure if this makes sense, but i'm going to try my best to explain. This got me also thinking too of possible possibilities, can paras pass their multi-tasking action(s) onto another para? What I mean by this is, Say if a para is multi-tasking say with the above example I gave of Sebastian (dancing, talking on phone,and drinking), but, another para comes up to them to greet them in a hug, could he pass his drink to the other para to hold for a moment, so he could give them a hug instead of walking over to place it on a table then go back to hugging the person, then the para who greeted him hands back Sebastian's drink. Sorry if that's confusing haha
I think that if I tried to dance, talk on the phone, and drink something at the same time I would choke. 😂 But maybe Sebastian is more coordinated than I am!
It's here ! ...the moment I remind you of my gripes with some games' approach to key bindings : https://www.patreon.com/posts/50806616 It is not just a matter of preference, but also accessibility afterall. I love the ability to translate on the fly, but part of me is afraid of how terribly wrong this could go in the wrong hands. (oooh, "secrets", very mysterious !)
Oh yes, thanks for the reminder! I think everything you mentioned will be fine in Paralives and shouldn't be an issue and I will definitely make sure that new features and key bindings that we will be adding will not break the important requirement you mentioned as I totally agree with them! Thank you very much for your post and your time!
Excited to see seniors at some point! <3
Sonia is making progress on them, looking forward to showing elder characters!
I LOVE the multitask function. So glad you are working on details like these. Will certainly make the game feel even more alive. It looks really good!
Thank you!! Yes, multitasking is really important to make the character look natural
Wait, does Sebastian have a new hairstyle? It looks so good
Good eye! His hairstyle was improved, yes
So excited to see these developments! Keep up the good works, y'all!!
Thank you Jessica!
I noticed that the translations in the translation file seem to be for the languages you already confirmed the game would be in. To clarify, the modding for languages is for any and every language a player speaks and wants to make a translation for?
Yes, it will be possible to add a new language and translate the game to support it, even if it's not among the confirmed languages that we have announced!
Hello ! Regarding translation, am I to understand there will be no professional translation ?
Hi! We still haven't made a final decision regarding translations but we want them to be of good quality so we will probably hire professional translators. They might use the in-game translation tools or the Excel file, whichever they prefer
I noticed facial overlay applied to Sebastian while dancing (editing name of interaction GIF) and I'm so happy. The smile seems improved, the facial expression is very expressive and the dancing while talking on the phone is realistic and fits the game so much with the cartoony aestetic compared to the ridicolously over the top animations of the sims 4. Alice is doing a magnificent job with those. Also, I see hair texture improvements and I'M IN LOVE! Thank you so much for creating this wonderful game Paralives team!
Thanks sooo much! We do have the goal to make the animations realistic and show personality without being cartoony!
Please don't forget to include Zoom in and out on your customisable keyboard mapping. I don't have a mouse wheel and this means there are many games I cannot zoom in on.
Wouldn't it be easier for you to just buy a mouse with a scroll wheel? Especially since you play other games and you clearly need it for them.
Hi Alex! I love y'all for what you doing and can't wait for the game And I have a question. I don't know if it was said in the past and i overlooked it but... What will you guys (Paralives team) do about music in the radio? Bc in The Sims they have songs that you can hear in the real life radio, they bought the licences for it and I gess it is reeealy expensive. So I was wondering if you guys will also buy licenses for songs or make your own in lots of diferent styles or maybe look for people from the fandom etc. that are good at making music and want to help whith development in that way sorry form my english, there are propabely some errors ':D anyway I love you and wish you all the best at what you are doing
Oh that's a great question, I'd also like to know about the music! I think getting the licenses isn't worth it, it's super expensive and we can listen to them anyway, like I sometimes put on Spotify in the background when I'm playing games. Even recording some indie original songs can be cheaper than those licenses and would add more individuality to the game!
Oh man, now I'm getting excited. The July roadmap in particular has me interested. can't wait to see elderly parafolk, or the gardening system.
Thank you Angela! Just a quick note to say that we are creating trees, bushes, flowers, etc but there won't be a gardening system to make things grow (could be nice one day after launch though!)
Just a suggestion, translate play as "Jogar" in Portuguese from pt. I love to see the posts and see the evolution of the game, it's fantastic 🥰😍
Oh thank you!
As someone who did the tedious job of manually changing alot of the Sims 4 interactions to Victorian style phrases to go better with my gameplay style, this post has me beaming with joy. Being able to click and edit interaction names on the fly while playing will free up more of my time to enjoy playing rather than focusing on editing the game files slowly outside of the game.
I totally understand the pain and I'm so glad you like this tool we made!
This is so exciting! Love seeing the work that you all do!
Thanks Finnelia!
Great how you think about those little things that make things like translating so much easier! Great work, I love it. Keep going 🤩
Thank you <3
The way you keep us informed every step of the way means so much! You guys are truly amazing!
Thank you Jennifer!
Good morning Alex, can you share if Sandrine is still with the team? I haven’t seen her post anything or interact with the community in several months, and it seems like Jeremie has taking over her communications post.
Hi Sean! Thanks for asking. That's correct, Sandrine left the team back in may and we posted a message to announce it on Discord and here on Patreon in the community tab back in May. Jérémie is taking over for now :)
The dancing/calling animation looks very smooth!
Yes! Thanks to Alice, our character animator!
So much progress love it😍
There's still a lot to do but it's really cool slowly seeing Paralives become a fully fleshed out game!
This made my day!! It’s an amazing post & it all looks like it’s coming along wonderfully. 🥰😍 also loving the dance! 😂🕺
Thank you Becky!! Glad you liked the post!