Paramaker Item Showcase + Social Situations + Planning of Build Mode Content

Hey there,

Alex here today to share various updates about what we are currently working on. Let’s get started!

👕 Paramaker Item Showcase: The Beanie

Léa and Sonia recently created various new items for the Paramaker. Today, we’re showcasing one of them which is a cute beanie. I think Léa did a pretty good job since it looks super comfy!

An anonymous Para showing us the new beanie.

It comes in different colors!

🤝 Positioning Characters for Social Situations

As you know, we are currently working on the part of the live mode concerning relationships and social interactions. One of the biggest challenges is that we have to design complex algorithms to place characters in social situations. Richard is making good progress on that. He has to make sure that the positioning looks natural which is harder than it looks! Here are some examples.

The Circle

When chatting together, characters need to be positioned in a circle. Objects like chairs can also be considered, in which case characters can sit instead of standing up.

Just some mustache men having a chat. We use spheres to visualize the positioning algorithm. The greener the sphere, the better this position is.

The Object of Interest

In this situation, characters are looking at an object of interest. It could be a painting, a musician, or a TV, like in the screenshot below. Characters need to be in front of the object, not too far from it and not too close to it either.

Mustache men watching TV. Notice how the top position on the couch is not a valid position because it is not in a good angle in front of the TV.

Physical Contact

When characters have to perform an interaction that requires physical contact, the positioning algorithm needs to make sure that the characters are at a specific distance in front of each other. After all, you can’t handshake someone from 3 meters away!

The character on the left needs to move to one of the positions visualized by the green spheres in order to perform the handshake interaction with the character on the right.

I hope you liked this glimpse of Richard’s work. We’re excited to be improving and playing more and more with this algorithm in the near future!

🦆 P.S. Can you spot the duck in each of the 3 screenshots above?

🪑 Planning of Build Mode Objects to Create

We have already shown you a good amount of furniture and objects that we have made for Paralives’ build mode. However, we will need to create a lot more of them before the initial release of the game. Since the art direction and the build mode features are now well established, we are able to create new objects at a much quicker pace than before which is pretty exciting.

To plan everything that we want in the game for it to be enjoyable at launch, Chloé recently worked on a huge list of all the furniture and objects to be created. For each of them, reference pictures are included, resulting in a pretty massive board:

This is only a fraction of the list!

We can’t wait to reveal various furniture and objects here on Patreon as we create them!

Enjoy the weekend!

Alex