More Vegetation + Multitasking + Fun With The Photo Mode!
Hey there!
We have a variety of updates this week that I’m sure you’ll like. Let’s get started!
Multitasking Progress
In a previous post, I’ve told you that we were working on allowing Parafolks to do multiple interactions at the same time and I showed you how Sebastian was able to call his grandma without even needing to stop dancing first.
We’ve made more progress and our multitasking system is shaping up pretty well! We’ll show you more and more of it in the future. For today, here’s Maggie walking and eating at the same time.
Now, nobody will be able to say that Parafolks are dumb and can’t walk while chewing bubble gum at the same time!
Vines
We’ve shown you our work on the vegetation in Paralives. Since then, Léa and Chloé tested more vegetation related objects. Among those are the vines. Léa created 4 vine objects that you can place on the walls of your house to make them really pretty and filled with a bit of nature! I’m sure I’ll be using them in all my builds!
Vine objects that you will find in the build mode cataloguetalog.
Various vine objects positioned and rotated on a wall. It sure adds a lot to the scene!
Cedars
Chloé created some cedar trees. This fluffy greenery will be used a lot by many landscapers.
In Paralives, even if players won’t see them in most cases, our trees have roots. This way, people can use our flexible placement tools to get creative! Maybe someone just bought a cedar tree and it wasn’t put into the ground yet. Maybe there was a storm and the tree fell. Anything is possible!
Fun With The Photo Mode
As you know, Paralives has a photo mode where you can position your characters, select their animation, choose image filters and more. Yesterday, Jérémie made a cool image where he used a scaled-up duck-shaped candle to make Marvin and a friend go on a little boat ride!
Video: Interaction Menu Features
A few weeks ago, I shared with you Patrons an exclusive look at the features of the interaction menu in Paralives. Yesterday, we showcased these features in a public video. Here’s the link, in case you missed it:
🎥 Live Mode Sneak Peek #3 - The Interaction Menu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZsarIPfdWM
The video showcases features that I’ve shown to Patreon supporters before as well as a new feature that allows you to shift-click interactions in the menu without closing it. It’s useful when you want to add multiple interactions to the queue without having to re-open the menu each time!
Quick note: Thanks to the Patrons in the #developers channel on Discord (Ancient, Hero and Legend tiers) who followed me and shared ideas on Wednesday afternoon while I was live blogging my work on this video. It was a spontaneous thing that I tried for the first time and maybe I'll do it again in the future!
That’s it for this week’s post. Have a great weekend!
Alex
Comments (64)
Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my God I have nothing to say I really love you I support you much as I can
The vines feel a little of the wall, will they be edited later so all of it or optionally, just some parts look attached to the surfaces, I'm guessing yes cuz i read above it's not final, i go worried, they look great though! Bright green n fresh, i also would love mushy looking vines the type u can cut n eat like veggies lol i love those ! Any chance in the future we can "free draw" vines from a point or click n pull as we like like spray web or propagate vines with cuttings ?
PLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANTSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!
Just an opinion, but I think the way Maggie's face looks when she's eating is a bit uncanny, and I believe it's because the eyes are fixed on the front the entire time, like a Barbie Doll, for instance. I know these animations are not final and you guys will most likely fix this one, but if I may offer one small suggestion, I'd make her look at whatever food is on her hand when she takes a bite! Other than that, I love that you guys are building a multitasking system! So much needed, so, thank you!! 🤩🤩🤩
I had another idea for multitasking possibility, a woman pushing strollers and sipping her coffee too, while talking to her friend is is walking with her
When this game is released I will literally scream and cry and even whilst playing the game I will still be screaming and crying from pure joy.
Is Marvin's friend ok
You guys rock!!
Love all of this! Love the ivy! Love the tree roots! Imagine a big oak tree with big roots and you can juuuust lift it ever so slightly out of the ground to see the tops of roots weaving in and out of the grass; love it. And all the interaction menu stuff from the video was amazing to behold. The flexability, to user-friendly-ness, the built it opportunities for creativity all over this game are so so so exciting.
Man, I love you guys so much. Seriously adding detailed roots even though the majority of players will probably never use it in their build, I just respect that so much. Doing it all for the possibility, the creativity… I’m just so excited for this game, words cannot express.
Munching while walking around...so much my style XD
A little unrelated, but looking at the uprooted trees made me think it could be nice to see yard work make a return from the sims 2 days. Trimming the bushes, pulling weeds, maybe even mowing which could get rid of those patches of long grass. It would give our para kids a chore to do or maybe a service could be hired if you don't want to deal with it. Just allows the world to feel less set dressing-y and more like a living, breathing place. <3
I second this idea! It was always fun feeling like I actually owned a property, but sometimes I wanted to pretend I was rich, so I’d hire all the workers and watch them come and go each day. I miss gardeners…!
The pinning feature sounds amazing!!
ahhhhh! I love that the trees have roots! All these little details are so cool!
I love watching the gradual progress on this game and look forward to it every week. One unqualified observation, though: I have no graphic artistry skills whatsoever (my artistic talent is somewhere in the negative, lol). But I noticed that when Maggie opens her mouth to eat, it's kind of whitish inside. That seems strange to me. Most people's mouths are darker. I know there'll be food in front too. But should her mouth be darker inside? Oh! And in the second vines picture, is that an orange roof I can see the edge of? Have rooves been added to the game? I don't think I've seen anything about rooves in any posts yet.
I think the white is her teeth. Her tongue is a light pink. Certainly lighter than average, but not wholly unnatural. Maybe it's brighter for now so the animation is easier to see.
I’m shocked about the trees having roots! That’s something I never thought about but I can imagine builders would be thrilled, it can add so much depth to a story. Also the search for interactions is genius! It’s the little details that shows how passionate the team is about this project. Everyone is doing such a great job 👏
Can I just say how amazing this game looks! This is the game I have always dreamed of and now it’s coming to life! I’m so excited! 😆
I love how Paras can walk and eat at the same time. It seems small but it means you can have ice cream and walk on the beach, or cotton candy and stroll through a fair. How cute is that (just invoking vibes, not insinuating that there will be a beach or a fair)
That would be really cute indeed!
Love this!
<3 <3
Wow.... Loving the duck picture Jeremie. Every time we get a new patreon post, it is something amazing and this is no exception... sorry to say lea and chloe but as a builder-type person, i was more distracted by those window shutters. <3 Thanks for a great post as always Alex and thank you for the wonderful opportunity on Wednesday. It was so much fun and gave me (if not everyone) a fantastic feeling as we helped shape the future game. :)
Thank you very much Stewby and thanks for participating last Wednesday!
This game is looking awesome. I love seeing a new update. 😍
Thank you :D
Yay the multitasking!! It’s the little things, but they mean so much
Yes!
The shift click is a quality of life change I didn't know I even needed, but it makes so much sense to add it to the game. Love the work.
Thank you A.J. I know I will be using it a lot while playing!
So good! I'm so happy to see all of this progress. I especially love the climbing vines<3
Thanks Estelle!
oh wow those vines climbing up the side of the wall are absolutely *gorgeous,* love to see this game shaping up more and more each week!!
Thank you!!
Having visible roots could also be interesting if we eventually get mangrove trees and things like that
True!
PLAAAAANTS
YES
I love the crisp look to the textures on the house.
Thank you :)
This is looking really great. Well done, everyone.
Thank you so much Lane <3
Once again I am blown away. The versatility of the vines, the FLUFFINESS of the trees, and the roots!! I never thought about how useful it could be to have a tree in its entirety, roots and all, in a build. And the shift+clicking for interactions!! That could make it SO much easier to guide conversations or other repetitive activities. Amazing. I cannot wait to play this game.
Vines are terrific, especially with the possibility of rotating them (or stretching them, like we saw for beds ?) and recoloring them. For trees to have roots might have more uses than you're saying. Especially if we can adjust their Z axis, put them in planters, or simply place them on slopes. A separate set of roots would also be of great use. Lastly, I'll copy here my message under the Interaction Menu video : I didn't know how much I needed "Talk to self" and especially "Think about the past" as actions for a Para, until now. I really love this idea of Paras being able to have an inner life. Can't wait to see what other actions we'll be able to choose for our Paras to interact with themselves. Does calling a Para give us the option of being able to "pin" the Para we call more often than the others ? The fact that we have two ways of performing an action (one quick, one detailed but with available pins/shortcuts) is really fantastic. This is the kind of flexibility that Paralives has been the symbol of since the first announcements, and seeing it* come to life is really satisfying. All kinds of players will be able to play this game, each in their own way. Also : no need to open the menu several times ? GOD THIS IS GOOD. Details like that, or like the reordering of actions in the task bar, are really a huge QoL difference. One sidenote, as I've noticed this in previous sneak peeks : it's kind of weird that the icon in the task bar doesn't match the icon of the action. "Dance here" has a full body icon, but the icon in the task bar for it is only an upper body icon ; "Use" the toilets is an icon representing the toilets, but in the task bar we see a roll of toilet paper. That makes little sense to me. Why ask us to recognize two icons for each action ?
Vines can be scaled uniformly but not stretched, at least for now Ah yes, placing trees on slopes will be nice! We are planning to allow users to rotate on any axis Thanks for copying your message from the interaction menu video here! I'm really happy to hear that you liked it! - "Talk to self" and "Think about the past" are just empty placeholder interactions for now but I like the idea of having interactions like that - For now, pinning won't allow you to pin a specific Para but we will have to look into that when we work on social interactions - The interaction icons are temporary and might change completely. Right now, icons are different because there are way smaller in the interaction menu than in the interaction queue and they do not have the same style. But I agree that it could be nice if it was unified. Making them different as some pros though and I think that's why they are different in The Sims. We will be working on all that, thank you for your feedback!
Love the progress! The foliage looks really nice. Have always liked the look of vines up against houses but removed ones in RL due to them damaging the house, so it'll be nice to be able to have that look in the game. Really excited about the multitasking as well. Are you restricting it to only object and (conversational) interactions with other paras, or might it also (eventually) be possible for an adult para to, say, carry a baby/toddler while on the phone or holding them and eating something etc.? I could see how some options might be a challenging to implement and you'd likely have to weigh it against the benefits. Would you consider weather/seasons affecting flora in the future, like maybe flowers/fruits/seeds on certain flora in specific seasons and actual storms occuring every now and then that might result in trees falling over (and possibly some loose branches strewn about)? Or is that technically impossible?
Thank you Zedef! It's great that we don't have to worry about house damage done by vines in a video game! About multitasking, it's true that some combinations might be trickier to do but we will be testing many of them as we go to see what we can do! We might not be able to do some combinations if they are too complex, true. Holding a baby while speaking on the phone and doing other things like that would be amazing! Looking forward to seeing if we can do it. We are probably going to change the color of different vegetation objects with seasons. Having fruits appear in once per year would be really nice too! Trees being affected or damaged by a storm would be cool to see. We will have to keep that idea in mind!
I love this! As I will be focusing alot on building etc. I was thinking, is there a way to add more "dept" to the vegetation without making them crazy "big" in size. And/or, is it possible to change their size by ourselves? I love how far you´ve come with everything! (very picky when it comes to my vegetation) Also, will colour variation be an option for the vegtetation? Making them more/less green or something else?
Thank you Kiiiwiii! The vine objects will be rescalable, yes. You will be able to scale the whole object up or down Regarding color customization for vegetation, we are looking into it. It's possible that some trees and plants won't be recolorable because the game will need to automatically change their color when seasons change. Other plants or trees that do not have their color changing with seasons might be recolorable, though. We will be able to confirm that later on!
The vegetation looks so good and fluffy! The idea of including the roots is pretty nice. Maybe larger trees could have roots that really stretch down and out? The art style is really coming along very well!
Thank you very much! Yes, different trees have very different roots so we will be trying to take that into account! Some will go deeper while others will stay closer to the surface but covering a larger area maybe
Everything is so amazing!! I'm mindblown by how good the vines look by combining only 4 objects in creative ways 🤯 🤯 🤯 Please tell Léa for me that she's a genius! 🧠 Are you considering having objects that are only the roots? That we can mix and match with any tree. I'm thinking specifically for having thicker and/or longer roots in some places. All the foliage looks so amazing I can't wait to see more nature!!! And finally - the multitasking is incredible. Is it planned to allow paras to eat and walk at the same time, or is this just a test/an example for the post?
Thank you Zahlea! It could be nice to have an object that is only root, it would be more flexible, in some cases! Regarding multitasking, we are testing many combinations for now and some of them might or might not making it in the final release, depending on what makes senses or if we encounter issues or if it's not really realistic to multitask this way
I find the roots so funny for some reason love how the game is progressing
Haha, I see what you mean
Amazing ❤ keep up the awesome work guys!
Thanks Jenni!
Do you think procedural vegetation could be added to the game? I like to put plants in my builds but I always think that it looks artificial as all the trees look the same, the same with vines and flowers. A way to randomise them with some sliders to find the perfect match for the situation would be great.
Oooh yes like this
Love the post! One thing about roots though, there's usually about as much root as there is plant, and while I wouldn't suggest that you should do that in Paralives, they could definitely be a bit bigger ^^' (although I'm super happy we're getting them at all)
I think the problem with making them bigger is that there is no gravity in the game (afaik) so they would be floating, be more voluminous and less "life-like" (in case you want to simulate a fallen tree like they mentioned). In real life they may be bigger but gravity makes them fall down and together so there is no trouble IRL
THANKYOU DEVS 🥰💕
Thank you Becky <3