The Complexity of Making Pancakes

Hi there!

Alex here today to bring some live mode development progress updates. Since releasing last December’s Paramaker focused video, we’ve been able to start doing more game design tasks related to the live mode.

Paralives is made of 3 big parts: the house building mode, the Paramaker where you will create all your characters and the live mode, also called simulation mode where you will be able to manage the lives of your Parafolks in great detail. This will include fulfilling their needs, building relationships, starting a family, getting educated, progressing in their career and so on. Before we can add all these elements to the game, we need to build the foundation of the live mode which consists of enabling the characters to perform all kinds of interaction around the house with different objects or other characters. This system is quite complex and is currently draining a lot of our brainpower but we are progressing!

Making a Pancake: Not That Hard of a Task, Right?

Today, I wanted to give you a look at how many details there are to consider in order to have functional and realistic interactions in the game. I love pancakes, so let’s use the “Cook pancakes” interaction as an example for today’s post. There will be hundreds and hundreds of other complex interactions like it in Paralives: just imagine everything you do in your own house in real life on a given day! A reminder that this post is for Patrons only so please don’t share it, thank you!

1. The cook pancake interaction is added to the action queue by the player.
2. The Para needs to get to the fridge. The game needs to find the shortest path from the current position of the Para to the fridge.
3. The Para is ready to walk to the fridge but first needs to get out of bed because they are currently sleeping. The Para waits for his energy to be replenished completely unless the player cancels the Sleeping interaction.
4. The Para stops the sleeping animation.
5. The Para plays a waking up animation.
6. The Para plays a stretch and yawn animation with the corresponding sound effects.
7. The Para pushes the sheets of the bed.
8. The Para sits on the edge of the bed.
9. The Para is actually on the top bed of a bunk bed.
10. The Para turns around and gets on the ladder of the bed.
11. The Para moves down the ladder.
12. The Para gets off the ladder and stands beside it.
13. The Para turns around.
14. The Para walks towards the bedroom door.
15. The bedroom door opens.
16. The Para walks through the door.
17. The bedroom door closes.
18. The Para walks toward the stairs.
19. The Para has to wait for another Para to walk up the stairs (it's a small staircase).
20. The Para walks down the stairs.
21. The Para walks into the kitchen and walks in front of the fridge.
    
    All these steps and we haven’t even started to make the actual pancakes! I’m getting really hungry now.
    
22. The Para places their hand on the fridge’s handle.
23. The door of the fridges plays the open animation while the hand of the Para is animated to stay on the handle.
24. The Para moves their hand toward the pancake ingredients sitting in the fridge.
25. The Para grabs the ingredients and holds them.
26. The Para pulls out their hand and the ingredients from the fridge.
27. The Para pushes the door of the fridge to close it.
28. The fridge plays the close door animation.
29. The Para turns around.
30. The game needs to find the most appropriate counter to cook on based on proximity, based on if another character is not already using the counter and if the counter is not already occupied by other objects.
31. The Para walks to the counter.
32. The Para needs to move their arm forward to place the ingredients on the counter.
33. A mixing bowl appears to prepare the pancakes.
34. The Para grabs ingredients and puts them in the mixing bowl.
35. The mixing bowl is slowly filling.
36. A spoon appears in the Para's hand.
37. The Para hand is moved over the bowl.
38. The Para starts to mix the ingredients.
39. The Para grabs the bowl containing the pancake liquid.
40. The game needs to find the most appropriate stovetop to use (there might be multiple of them in the house) based on proximity, based on if another character is already using it and if the stovetop is not already occupied by a pan.
41. The Para turns around.
42. The Para walks toward the stove.
43. A pan appears on the stovetop.
44. The Para opens the stovetop.
45. The Para pours the pancake liquid into the pan.
46. The Para disposes of the mixing bowl.
47. A spatula appears in the Paras hand.
48. The Para waits for a moment.
49. The Para looks at their watch.
50. The Para looks to the right and then to their left
51. The Para looks at the pancake to see if it looks ready.
52. The Para reaches for the pancake with the spatula and starts to flip it.
53. The pancake plays a flipping animation.
54. The Para waits for a moment.
55. The Para scratches their back.
56. The Para waits while looking at the pancake.
57. A plate appears in the hand of the Para.
58. The Para, using the spatula, moves the pancake from the pan to the plate.
59. The spatula is disposed of.
60. The Para turns off the stovetop.
61. The pan is disposed of.
    
    After all this work for making a pancake, we might as well eat it!
    
62. The Para turns around while still holding the plate.
63. The game needs to find the most appropriate place for the Para to eat. Maybe it will be outside if the weather is nice, maybe it will be at the kitchen table if there are other family members eating their breakfast there, maybe it will be on the couch in front of the TV, maybe it will be standing up if the Para just moved in and has no furniture, etc. The game ends up deciding to eat at the kitchen table because there was an empty chair and there was enough room for the plate on the table in front of the chair.
64. The Para walks towards the chair while still holding the plate.
65. The Para puts the plate on the table in front of the chair.
66. The Para places their hand on the top of the chair.
67. The chair is pulled while the Para’s hand is animated to stay on the chair while it moves.
68. The Para sits on the chair and a system adapts the sitting animation dynamically to make sure that the sitting pose looks right. The feet of a smaller Para would not touch the ground while sitting while a taller Para would need to bend the knees a bit more to have a natural sitting pose.
69. A fork and a knife appear in the hands of the Para.
70. The Para plays an animation to cut the pancakes.
71. The Para plays an animation to use the fork to get a bite into their mouth.
72. The Para plays an animation to chew and swallow.
73. The last steps are repeated a few times while the pancake in the plate is updated to reflect the fact that there is less and less of it left.
74. During the whole eating action, the hunger of the Para got fulfilled and its comfort improved too because they're sitting on a chair
75. The Para plays a happy animation because they enjoyed their meal.
    
    You were going to leave your dirty plate on the table, weren’t you?
    
76. The Para automatically decides to wash the plate because they like it when the house is clean and tidy.
77. The Para stands up from the chair to stand up beside the chair.
78. The Para places their hand on the back of the chair.
79. The chair is moved toward the table while the hand is animated to look like it’s pushing on the chair.
80. The Para moves their hand toward the empty plate.
81. The Para grabs the plate.
82. The Para turns around.
83. The game needs to find the most appropriate sink or dishwasher to use. Proximity will be taken into account but also, we need to check if the sink or dishwasher is already being used and also, we would prefer if the Para would wash the dishes in the kitchen rather than in the bathroom. The game decides to wash the dishes in the nearby kitchen sink.
84. The Para walks toward the sink.
85. The Para places the plate in the sink.
86. The Para reaches for the sink handle to pour hot water.
87. The sink now pours hot water.
88. The Para plays an animation to wash the plate.
89. The plate is updated to look clean.
90. The plate disappears.
91. The Para reaches for the sink handle and turns it off.
92. The Para gets back into the default standing pose.
93. The Para plays a relieved emotion animation.
    
    At last, that’s it for today’s pancake adventure. Our Para is now ready to face the day and do many other interactions which will require their own set of many steps!

Interesting side notes:

• For the whole process of this breakfast interaction only, around 40 unique character animations were needed, around 25 sound effects were played and around 15 objects were used.
• All of these steps are assuming that everything goes well! The player might delete a kitchen counter while the Para was using it, the player might cancel the interaction midway, the Para might not find their way to the fridge or maybe the only path available between the fridge and the stove needs the Para to go through a swimming pool!
• You might notice that some objects like the cooking pan and the forks appeared out of thin air. This is because having to get them from cupboards and having to wash them and then put them away after use would add a lot more steps to the already complex process of making pancakes. Skipping these steps reduces the development time which is great for us since we are a small team and also, less steps means that your Para will take less time cooking pancakes and will be able to use that time to do more activities which is good since there’s never enough time in a day!
• Keep in mind that the steps listed in this post are just to illustrate the complexity of performing an interaction. Some steps might be added and others might end up being removed depending on the level of details and quantity of animations that we can produce before releasing the game.
• Want more info about our design and thinking process behind the live mode and interaction system? Check out this past Patreon posts: First Steps of a Live Mode: Interactions and Live Mode: Our Goals and Next Steps.
  

I hope this gave you a glimpse of all the game design and code that will be needed to perform even the simplest interactions in the house. It’s a lot! However, the hard part is thinking about all the little details and building the core of the system which will take us a while still. Fortunately, once the foundations are there, a lot of interactions will use the same features and we will eventually be able to show you complex interactions performed by our Parafolks.

I can’t wait to share more of our progress but until then, have a great weekend and take care!

Alex