Disability Survey + LGBTQIA Survey Recap + Terrain Tools Preview (Patreon)

Hi there,

Hope you're doing well. We have some cool stuff going on this week so let's get started!

Diversity survey:  disabilities, illnesses, impairments and neurodiversity 

Today, we’re excited to share with all of you our new community survey regarding disabilities, illnesses, impairments and neurodiversity! Our vision is to put the focus on a positive and light-hearted representation. We understand the game is an escape from reality for many and we do not want to force a certain gameplay on anyone or gamify serious and painful elements. We would love to read your ideas and feedback on how we can represent you and your story in Paralives!

If you identify with this specific topic and you want to help us, please fill out this 15 minutes survey: https://forms.gle/wbJ3SiUNrwyFCJyT8 

The survey is for Patrons only at the moment but it will become public in a few days.

LGBTQIA+ Diversity Survey Summary

Christine, our survey mastermind, prepared this recap:

Back in early July, we shared our second community survey with all of you. This time, we wanted to gather some insight and feedback from the LGBTQIA+ community. More than 5,000 of you participated which is absolutely amazing, thank you so much! From general ideas to full-blown concepts to links to educative resources, we’re really grateful for the time you took in helping us create the best game possible.

When it comes to the Paramaker, a lot was suggested. Allowing players to separately choose gender and body frame / anatomy opens up a lot of possibilities. We also understand the importance of offering a third choice of gender, one that is non binary with the possibility of further specification. When choosing a body frame, players should have the option to add or remove any “traditional” feminine or masculine features such as breasts or Adam’s apple. Inclusive details like top surgery scars are also on our radar.

Romantic interest and Physical / Sexual attraction being separated in different categories with an option to disable one or both of them would allow for aromantic and asexual representation. While we want players to be able to select the genders they want to be attracted to for each of these categories, we also want to put a focus on other preferences such as personality traits and physical features.

Gameplay decisions should not autonomously change the orientation and gender of your Parafolks, meaning that all changes should have to be set up manually by the players. We understand that providing elements allowing you to recreate a coming out (maybe an interaction to “reveal a secret”) and a transition is important. The ability to set up events would then be ideal to recreate Pride or transition parties for example (also with assets like flags and face / body makeup). And let’s not forget about adoption for all couples and other options such as surrogacy.

Believe me, this is only scratching the surface of everything we have written down. At the moment, these are all highly considered elements but they can’t be confirmed yet as we’ll need to test things out. This survey generated some great discussions and ideas amongst the team and we are really excited to reveal more in the upcoming months. Again, thank you to everyone who participated!

Terrain Tools Preview

In Paralives, you can easily landscape your lot as you wish. A big part of that is having good terrain tools and we are working on them at the moment. We still have features to add but here's a preview of some of the tools available! Please keep this early preview between Patrons only, for now :)

Sculpt: Move up or down some parts of the terrain with the brush

Flatten: Click and drag with the brush to make the terrain flat

Smooth: Use the brush to make your hills look softer

Lake: Fill a part of the terrain with water. Note that pools are created with a different system, closer to the wall placement system.

These tools are all custom made and they run on multiple threads on your computer so it runs pretty smoothly and I'm really happy about that! It's not shown on these screenshots but there's also a brush to paint different types of grass. I'm looking forward to show more terrain stuff in a future video!

What's next regarding terrain tools:

• Improve the visual of the brush widget
• Improve the terrain menu and user interface
• Customize the water and change its color
• Raise and lower the height of the water
• Paint the terrain texture (to create sand on a beach, rocky hills, etc)
• Creating a hole in the terrain for the basement of your house. This will allow people to build a house on a slope.
• Add more grass types and different terrain sculpting brushes
• Terrain pathfinding so Parafolks can walk around
• More stuff! Don't hesitate to tell us in the comments if you have suggestions!

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend! :)

Alex