What We're Working On + Chalet Update (Patreon)

Hi there,

I hope you had a nice week. It was a good one here in Montreal, even if we had a surprise snowfall which is unexpected at this time of the year. It was an unwelcome event for some of us but summer will come!

What We're Working On  (For Patrons only. Please don't share)

Here's an overview of what we're up to these days:

• Alice, our character animator, recently made some studies regarding the animations that Parafolks will perform when using their phone. She's also working on various reaction animations and improvements to the structure of the skeleton used for animations (the rig).
• Christine wrote a summary of the personality brainstorming and launched the new one about careers and jobs. She's also preparing future social media posts and replying to everyone's questions on our various platforms.
• Léa and Sonia, our 3D artists, just made some concept arts for the Chalet video and are now creating the missing furniture and objects that will be used in that video.
• Jérémie and Étienne are both working on improvements to the build tools and fixing some bugs related to that. One of the things we've done recently is adding animations and sounds when connecting walls as well as making it easier to snap walls together in a grid less environment.
• Anna is designing the interaction system that will define every action that your characters will be able to do in their house and around town. For instance, this will determine the sequence of animations to play when cooking a meal.
• I (Alex) am working on the general interface style and the one for the item catalog, as discussed in a previous post. I'm looking to make it easy to use and pretty to look at.

Chalet Update  (For Patrons only. Please don't share)

We've worked hard on making sure it's easy to build a house in Paralives. To showcase that, we're preparing a video where we'll build a house from scratch in the game. The style of the house is Canadian Chalet, as chosen by you Patrons. 🏡 We're making good progress on the furniture and deco of that house and today we wanted to share some of our sketches and inspiration. Please note that this Chalet does not confirm that there will be hiking,  camping and other outdoor activities in the game. "Chalet" is just the style of this house we're building!

On the left, we have the dining room and on the right, we have the living room. Both of these are in an open area with a split level so you can have a good view at the huge window (not pictured). With the texture of the walls and the furniture, we aim for a cozy, natural and stylish look. 

Then, upstairs, we have the bedroom. That's were couples who come to this retreat will relax after a long day outside. Using that fireplace is a must during the winter!

In the Chalet, there's also a kitchen, a hallway and a bathroom. We'll show more of that soon. Right now, we're creating the missing furniture as well as reusing some of the objects you saw in our previous videos. Our goal is not to create a ton of new objects for the game just yet but to have enough of them to build a full house and showcase our build tools. We should soon be able to show in-game screenshots of the results. Stay tuned!

Have a great weekend 🎉

Alex