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Another Week In The Developer Life Of Jeremie
🕑 Added 2024-08-30 13:00:11 +0000 UTCA good Friday to all! This week, I wanted to give you another glimpse of what a typical work week looks like for me. That means going through my tasks, trials and tribulations, and more! I always enjoy talking about what I’m doing on a day-to-day basis, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading about it! As usual, this post is for Patrons only, thank you for not sharing it around!
Day 1 - Meetings and performance tweaks
Today was my day at the office. I love working from home, but having in-person meetings with the rest of the team once a week can also be fun! It depends from week to week, but I usually have between two and four different meetings; one-on-ones, Quality Assurance priorities, sprint planning and task review meetings.
These are busy days, but I still had time to make some performance improvements (trying to make the game run as smoothly as possible on as many computers as possible) to our molding system, which caused a fair bit of lag whenever you would place many moldings on your walls.
Here we place some moldings.
It can be a complicated process, but it’s a very satisfying job. As you can see, the number of generated garbage (unwanted data that gets created and then needs to be cleaned up) goes from 150MB/219ms to 0B/5.81ms. It’s pretty technical, but smaller numbers are better!
In four steps, I optimized the generation code for the Build Mode’s moldings.
Day 2 - Bug Fixes, bug fixes, bug fixes!
Two weeks ago, Charlotte gave an overview of how our Quality Assurance process works. As you can imagine, as a programmer, it is my responsibility to fix the bugs (well, not all of them, but most of the bugs related to the features I’ve made or worked on!). Some take a lot of time, while others are quite easy to fix. Today I fixed a bunch of them related to the town map, photo mode and the interface shown when you select an item. The bugs were mostly due to the addition of new features not being properly handled at some places in the game.
There was a specific bug where showing variations of an item didn’t show thumbnails properly. This took me a bit more thinking and I had to add some extra code to fix it up.
In this screen, you select whether you want rails on the left or right side of your stairs. You can also choose to have none or have rails on both sides. The parts circled in red shouldn’t be present on the thumbnails.
Day 3 - Swatches, stairs, systems.
Today I had a remote meeting with Alex and Alejandro about our current reworking of the color swatch system for the game. It has been on our “to-do” list for a while now so I’m glad we are finally taking the time to do it! Alejandro is doing pretty much all of the work on this module, but since I’ve worked on the swatch system at the beginning of the project, I’m helping out a little on the design end of things.
One of the things we’re doing is making sure that players can create new color swatches easily or duplicate swatches made by the developers to edit them as they wish.
I also fixed some bugs related to stairs – some edge cases we didn’t account for where you place a stair somewhere with no roof above and various tweaks here and there on some build mode systems. An exhaustive list would be too much, but I poked at bulldozing walls, getting the wrong amount of money when you attempt to connect two walls that shouldn’t connect, and one very mysterious issue we have with wall/floor thumbnails that still baffles me to this day!
It’s not a real remote meeting if I don’t have two cats hanging out around me. I hope my coworkers don’t hear Tofu (left) meowing too often!
Day 4 - Move wall improvements
One of the big task I have on my plate before we’re confident that the build mode is good for Early Access is improvements to the wall movement tools. You might’ve seen them in a video, a while back, but we felt they weren’t good enough for primetime. We don’t want all the walls of your house shifting in weird diagonals when you move a single wall, the game should smartly move your walls as needed to prevent that. I’m not (at the time of this writing, maybe future Jérémie finished the job, in which case, good job!) completely done yet, because there are many scenarios to keep in mind.
Here’s one scenario of wall movement, there are many such cases.
Day 5 - More walls tweaks, more bugs to fix, more designs to ponder!
There are always more bugs to fix, so I start the final day of this week with some more squashing. Some issues with camera movement when you’re looking into terrain that has been lowered, some parts of our interface that shouldn’t show up but pop to say hello regardless, infinite money glitches using fences, the usual! When that’s done, I keep plinking away at the move wall improvements, properly handling other scenarios of what the player could want to do with their architecture. In the end, Alex and I discussed some design questions we still had after our latest round of playtesting.
These playtesters had more than one hour this time, but wow, talk about amazing creations!
Sometimes I wish days had more hours (or weeks had more days) because there’s so much to do, and so little time! I hope everyone had a good time reading about what I did for one week, and a good weekend to all!
Jérémie
Comments
Freya
Those are some beautiful pictures. It looks so cozy
Kathleen Cross
oh my gosh being able to choose where the railings are makes so much sense but it'll be so wonderful
Jérémie Tessier
There are going to be sidewalks, yes!
Jérémie Tessier
The bed and planter thing are real spiffy yeah! It was possible to just plop them next to each other like that without much problems :)
Bettina Dransfelt
I love to follow the process of Paralives. It really show how much work all of the team put into the game. I cant wait to play, and will continue to enjoy ever little step of this game forward. With a great team comes a great game.
Katie
Omg I’m so excited. I’ve been following the progress of this game for a long time and I’m so happy to see the updates you guys give us. Love the cute kitties too but the houses look amazing as well. Thank you for your dedication. You guys are awesome
Heather Kiser
This game is so esthetically pleasing. I love the art style!!! I’m so excited 😆
JossGun Shipper
the last two photos are breathtaking. I could get lost in that bedroom and field
I kinda forGoT
are there going to be sidewalks? lol sorry i just wonder how they safely walk around.
I kinda forGoT
omg the 3D grass!!! i love how the town gives Sims 3 vibes
Chiara
Ha ha, exactly my thoughts as I have a bed next to a wall too! "Beautiful room, but a pain to change the sheets"! :-D
I JONES
Presumably the room in that last image is only possible due to the free placement and sizing features? To get a bed and a planter looking like they were built as one piece of furniture.
Fran Smith
Great post! I love these development posts. :) PS: The mouldings and the wall moving gif aren't loading for some reason. Nobody else mentioned it so, it might be computer specific. They load when opened in a solo tab, just not in the page itself. I've never had this problem on this page or any other page before. I'm running a high end gaming PC with Firefox if that helps. It might be my end, but seems strange, as this is the only instance I've ever seen it. PSS: Also, I'm not receiving notification emails any more. I used to get them every week, but I haven't received them for many months now. Just wondered if there was a reason, because I haven't touched my profile.
Kateřina Králová
It looks so pretty!!! I'm already so excited about the release!!
Anabel Blunk
I like the variation in the swatch shapes; it makes them look more natural.
Ally Hoffman
Looks amazing!! The more I see, the more I realize that this will be one of those games of a generation (like Civilization, Sims 1, Age of Empires, Myst). Keep up the great work!
Nathalie Carluccio
Looks sooo good 👍❤️❤️❤️
Cece
everything in the game just seems so straightforward- like that exterior trim! just goes on the individual wall, no drama about being on walls it’s not meant to… and those preview images! that bedroom with the desk nook is so frickin cozy, can’t wait to get my grubby lil hands on paralives! good job team and thank you Jeremie!
Kayne
Thanks for letting me know! Hope that y'all can adress this soon. Until then I admire the work you do, Jérémie. You put in all the work and I love to see the progress! It really looks super fun already and I can't wait for what's to come. Thanks again for taking the time!
ladyteruki
Hi Jérémie, thanks for letting us shadow you for an entire week again ! I really love these posts, feel free to post more in the future XD It's also very nice to hear so much about bug fixing, an aspect of development that is rarely discussed (except when players complain that not enough of it has been done), despite being such a big part of why a game ends up being, you know, playable. It must really be tricky to find the root of some bugs, in particular when it comes from an interaction between two functionalities. ...More bug fixing also means that we keep getting closer to the Early Access release and it's a never ending cause for celebration !!! (the playtesting builds are gorgeous, that lavender field is so nice ! and the mansion on a small hill is artfully landscaped, which I always admire because I suck at everything greenery). "In four steps, I optimized the generation code for the Build Mode’s moldings." Careful, when you phrase it like that, you make it sound easy XD But seriously, as someone with an aging computer (not sure I'll be able to afford a new one before Paralives releases), I'm really grateful when you take the time to find these solutions to optimize the game. It is, of course, too soon to tell us what configuration the game will eventually require to run, but it makes me hopeful when I read things like that.
just a little bawn
Love hearing what goes on behind the scenes!
Gill Reid
So interesting! I can't wait until release but I honestly want you to take your time to iron out all the little bugs. I think you are all doing a fantastic job and seeing how you've developed over the years has been amazing. Thank you everyone for what I know will be the game of my dreams!
Melina W
this was really interesting! i can imagine there's quite a bit of pressure the more time passes but I hope everyone in the team is staying healthy!
Jérémie Tessier
We're working on many aspects of the game still, yes! I'm not sure if the sky is going to change much before early access, but it could. Thank you for the comment!
Romée Lutterop
I am SO excited to see all of these gorgeous images come out of development! We're all rooting for a successful launch, and hope you guys are taking the time you need to make it a reality without overworking yourselves. It looks incredible!
Kayne
Building is gonna be fun. But is the sky still a wip? It looks really akward on all pictures and really doesn't match the rest. It would need to be a little more realistic. The clouds look really trippy in a bad way
Ana Caroline Martins da Silva
Y'all must be feeling quite stressed about the end of the year, but you're doing such amazing progress every week! Thanks for sharing it :D
Miss Lara Light
As always, I love seeing what you all are working on! I think these creations of whomever the play testers are should stay. They’re gorgeous 😍 They all give totally different vibes, and I’m here for it!
phoenix grey
The more I read/see about the development the more I wish it was 2025. I'm loving the development and decisions being made for the game.
Jérémie Tessier
Inside and outside, yes!
Thaaeroprincess87
The landscaping in this game is going to be amazing. Also I had no idea you could have railings on one, both, or no sides of the stairways. That's a very cool detail. Quick question though, will moldings be available inside buildings or only on the outside?
ZLoves
I'm partially stressed for you guys, bc 2025 is nearly right around the corner 🥹 Yay for us, but hopefully not too chaotic for y'all! Also that photo of the white house in an open field is gorgeous...reminds me a little of Last of Us 2. And world map you say? 👀
Jérémie Tessier
Thank you!
Yvette Lopez
But if you need a person to test the game I’m totally available 👉🏼👈🏼 🥺🤣
Lane Brettschneider
Thank you so much for sharing, Jérémie!! I love hearing about the work all of you do day-to-day. It really shows how much work goes into making a game, and how much love you all are putting into this one! I am absolutely squealing at what the playtesters created! It's SO beautiful and I can't wait to play!! <3
Josephin01
What I'm most pleased about is that the stair railings can be individually adjusted, meaning that I can attach a railing to just one side or even none at all. And I think the last picture is really beautiful. Wood, plants, soft materials and natural colors like green, brown... exactly my idea of comfort. 💖🥰
Trisha
Thank you for sharing this with us and for all the hard work you put in to taking care of those pesky bugs!! Also love seeing what play testers have done!! ❤
Sláine Sheils
Soo amazing cant wait to play
Mauro Fantin
Good work, Jeremie! I always find it fascinating to see what game developers actually do in their day to day, it inspires me to work in the area one day. Also, those buildings at the end look so cool! Especially the little bedroom at the end — absolutely my definition of cozy. Good job!
Anna
Great job! I fell in love with the room in the last image... My current one is next to a wall too, and it's such a pain to change the sheets... But I want this one either way!! So many wood, and plants!
Judi Dielman
Thank you and the dream team for all your attention to detail and working out the bugs! This game just keeps getting more beautiful over time . I think we all appreciate it. 💜
Candle
This is amazing! thank you for sharing another week of your job, plenty support for correcting the bugs and pats for the cats!
