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Live Mode Progress Overview + Making Characters Walk Naturally
🕑 Added 2022-07-22 14:49:11 +0000 UTCHi there,
Alex here! As you know, after working a lot on the build mode and Paramaker, we are now focusing on the live mode where you will be able to control the actions and the lives of your Parafolks. But what are we working on exactly? That’s what I will be describing in today’s post. Anna and Jérémie will also be sharing details regarding two specific tasks that they recently worked on. This post is for Patrons only so please don’t share it, thank you!
I like to think of the live mode as two big chunks:
👉 Chunk 1: Making Paras interact with the world
- ⏩ Pathfinding: make characters move from point A to point B
- ⏩ The interaction menu to select actions to perform with an object or with another Para
- ⏩ The interaction queue and action system to manage the current and pending actions of your Paras
- ⏩ The animation system to make Parafolks do all sorts of things and look natural while doing them
- ⏩ The system to adapt animations dynamically so that they work regardless of the context like the height of the character
- ⏩ Multitasking: engineering our systems so that Paras can do multiple interactions at the same time
- ⏩ Ability to interact with different objects and for Paras to hold objects in their hands, when making pancakes, for instance
- ⏩ Ability to interact with other Parafolks like hugging them or having a conversation
- 👩💻 Chunk 1 is a big technical challenge to develop because the code is very complex, the animations are harder to make moddable and everything needs to be optimized very well
- 🟢 Chunk 1 is our current focus and we have made good progress so far. We will be able to showcase the above feature more and more soon and I’m looking forward to it!
👉 Chunk 2: Making Paras have an interesting life
- ⏩ Needs and emotions
- ⏩ Identity and personality
- ⏩ Relationships
- ⏩ Character autonomy and AI
- ⏩ Skills
- ⏩ Careers
- ⏩ School
- 👩💻 Chunk 2 is not as big of a technical challenge but requires more game design and idea testing to make sure that the gameplay is fun
- 🟠 Chunk 2 will become our focus when chunk 1 will be in good shape. We have a lot of ideas and innovations that we are eager to start testing!
Don’t forget to take a look at our full development roadmap from time to time to see which features we are working on exactly, what’s completed and what’s left to do: paralives.com/roadmap
With that being said, recently, I have been working on two features. The first is adding multitasking support to our interaction and animation systems. The second is creating a censor rectangle to hide naked characters when they are in the shower or using the toilet, for instance. I will be talking about these features in upcoming Patreon posts!
Jérémie and Anna have been focusing on various tasks related to the animation system, dynamically adapting the character animations in various contexts and making the locomotion (walk) of the characters more natural. They will share some examples of that now.
Adjusting the Speed of Locomotion Animation
Anna here, bringing my stone to this post’s wall!
Recently, I worked on the speed of locomotion animations. By locomotion animation, I mean any animation that is used to get the character from a point A to a point B, like (but not restricted to): the walking animation, the running animation, the swimming animation…
Those animations are imported into the game without any speed: the file that I get to work with in the game from Alice, our 3D animator, contains an animation of a character walking “in place”. Then, we can move the character around directly from the game with a set speed in the code, which enables us to control the speed of the movement dynamically (as it comes from interactions triggered by the player). However, we need to adjust both the speed of the locomotion AND the speed of the animation playing, so that the leg cycle can feel smooth and realistic!
Here is what can happen if we don’t adjust both speeds correctly:
❌ If you look closely, you can see that Marvin’s feet are “sliding” a little bit instead of being planted into the ground at each step. The locomotion is too quick in comparison to the actual animation speed!
❌ In this GIF, it is the opposite: the walking speed is too slow compared to the animation.
One last detail to account for is the various heights of the characters. If we only have one walking speed for every character, setting an unique walking speed might not be enough for the walking animation to look smooth on every character.
❌ In this GIF, while Marvin and Maggie’s walks look okay, it seems that Eli has a little bit of trouble catching up and his arms are moving really fast for what should be a casual walk!
For now, we’ve decided to have two different speeds depending on the range of our character’s height, which means short characters will walk a little slower than their tall counterparts. If we need to move short and tall characters at the same speed in the future (for taking a walk as a family for example), we might need to add more animations to avoid this previous issue!
✅ Here is the current stage of locomotion animations: small Paras are a little bit slower when walking and running than tall Paras!
Taking Small Steps to Avoid Floating Around While Rotating
Jérémie here, for this part of the post!
One of the things we have to figure out for natural character movement in live mode is what to do while they are rotating. Either while moving or in-place, we don’t, as humans, just spin on ourselves or do exaggerated walking motions. We do subtle things with our feet and our whole body, and not having these things in the game gives a weird floaty effect to our characters when they rotate.
❌ As you can see, with just a plain old rotation, the movement is not natural.
So, what do we do? One simple enough solution would be to have an animation of the character rotating that we could play to make their body and feet look natural while we are spinning around, but your Paras will be able to move in all sorts of directions and we cannot make one animation for each angle! Additionally, if Paras need to rotate when they are starting or ending a movement, the animations will be different, so there’s a lot to think about!
❌ Just by adding an animation, the rotation is much more natural (but the timing is still not perfect and the feet are sliding). Also, this animation only works for rotating by exactly 180 degrees. What if the character needs to rotate by 27 degrees or 135 degrees?
The next step for me will be to ask Alice to make another rotating animation that only rotates by 90 degrees and another where the character does tiny steps but does not rotate at all which we will call the 0 degree rotation. Then, in the code, I will dynamically blend between these animations so that our character can gracefully rotate to any angle between 0 and 180 degrees!
That’s it for today, have a great weekend!
Alex, Anna and Jérémie
Comments
Panthro Samah
I saw the first gif and thought: Billie Jean is not my love.
SketalDaz
Marvin's first animation shown could potentially be an inspiration for "moon-walking" ;)
Fran Smith
These are my favourite kinds of dev chats! Love, love, LOVE these incites into how you make the game!!
Hannah Moody-Goo
I've never felt so represented as a short person before! I naturally cover less ground than taller people. If I want to keep up, I have to move my legs much quicker than others. These tiny details make it feel so realistic.
Natan Peixoto
Looks great!
Alex Robitaille
Take your time on chunk 1, we all can't wait to see where you take it all <3
tahirah
i definitely agree! my ideas ran out beyond showering/bathing haha
ramaru
In my opinion, chunk 1 is so important to get right because all the gameplay systems will be built on top of that base structure. Chunk 2 is what will excite most players but I'm very interested in the, as you said, technical challenges of just building that base and the innovations involved in that. Already the progress and the thorough brainstorming of each aspect is amazing so I'm expecting great results! Thanks for the insight!
BonaparteBardithion .
I love this for bathing, but bubbles would look a bit odd for someone sitting on a toilet and even more so for standing at a urinal. Not sure what would be a more situationally appropriate alternative.
Nerdy Gaymer
I love that you seem to take our feedback into consideration. I just got here but I'm lovin' it
Beth Attrup
i actually love that the shorter paras are slower walkers
Maxx
I think it would be a bit dizzying and distracting if the whole room turned personally
Luther Duncan
The perfectionism is very admirable ! Keep it up beautiful team ! 😍🥰
Katja
wow! :3
S&M Gonzalez
I have a question, for those who mod, if we wanted to add an animation say for a para to touch a door to open it will it apply universally to all the paras to the action to open doors? How will the mod system in place allow this?
Destinee Bennett
Boost!!
Maxx
Like in cartoons! I love that idea, seems a lot more tasteful. You could have a combination of bubbles and dust/”fog”
Alex Massé
Could be an interesting thing to test! However, sometimes, the dressing room is quite small so turning the camera around means the camera could get through walls and objects so we would have to hide these walls and objects dynamically which would be a challenge
Francis McDonald
Outstanding progress, the movement of all paras are so great
Alyssa
I am chomping at the bit to play, but I love seeing all the detail that's being worked on! I love that paras can be different heights
Morgan
Keep up the good work paralives team can’t wait to play the game !
AureRed
what if instead turning the character around in PAM player camera only would go around after all is somewhat 3d space in PAM or it would be to much work?
SymmaGe
Loving the progress and thought process in each aspect of this game. I get more and more excited with each update from y’all.
Alex Massé
Thanks so much everyone!!! <3 <3 <3
Layla
SO proud of this development team! You guys are making huge progress!!
Thaaeroprincess87
I would have never thought about the rotating animations, but now that I see them I'm really grateful y'all are putting so much thought into everything. Thanks for all your hard work!
Giammarco Victor Venturi
So happy to see that live mode is almost done!
tahirah
re: censoring naked paras for hygiene scenarios, how cute would little soap bubbles covering the censored bits be?? I think that would look more immersive than a mosaic or black bar or anything else personally.
sofst
ILY GUYS <3333
עדן כהן
Thank u for posting its so interesting and fun to be part of the creation of this game ❤️❤️
Lucie Baha
I wish you all the best for your fantastic work on this project.
Serra Abak
This has been my favorite post to date, I love learning about the process of adding in the small details that make something feel alive!
ZombieZmaj (Jenni)
Absolutely love the attention to detail ❤
Zedef
Very interesting, hope to read more of these dev diaries as you progress with all the listed features under the chunks. I didn't even notice Marvin's sliding vs stepping until it was pointed out. This team has suchy an attention for detail and seems to strive for perfection. Perhaps the pace of walking can also be influenced by (inter)actions the para is doing simultaenously, like two paras walking next to each other and having a conversation. And it's not unusual for tall people to adjust their pace to shorter people, especially children, when walking. Anyway, interested in seeing the solution(s) you come up with in the end.
kirabook
The rotation animation is a nice touch!
Jennifer Huber
The detail that you all are adding to the game (perfect example is the animation while rotating) will make it amazing! I never cease to be proud of supporting the wonderful creators making this game!!
MrPinguv
It really shows how you pay attention to every detail. I can't wait to see a social event with lots of paras where they look like they are alive, acting differently and smoothly, and not robots with an intel pentium for a brain ;)
