Paralives Close to Release.

[Dark Thoughts]

Man, I tried something similar in that lot, but the wall & roof building drove me absolutely insane - even without the grid snapping, which is downright unusable (at least in that lot, might be better on the open ones).

[carlfatal]

@Dark Thoughts, a friend told me, that she was sure, I would choose that lot as my first... 

 

And heck, I simply had to. I am done with rectangular stuff, done with all I did in the Sims, even considering that I used every mod I could to improve build mode. And now this! A game with nice looking dolls, with way more adult gameplay than the Sims, and with a build mode that instantly catched me. 

I know, that I will build my own world here like I did for the last time in Sims 3 more than 10 years ago. This is definitely the life sim I waited for. And yes, it´s a bit clunky, the camera is hopping like a squirrel, and I also see a good amount of problems. But I definitely praise the devs for providing such a high standard, you can see in every little aspect: They played the Sims, and they became bored and angry like a lot of us, seeing the idea of a life sim shredded into pieces by EA and their slave Maxis... 

Here, I´ll show the layouts of every floor (Like I wrote, there is mostly one 90 degree corner per room. And yes, you have to work for the walls to build a room. But having that in mind, it´s not that difficult, you only need to remind yourself all time to proof if it works. Use any floor, if it stays in one room, then you´re doing right.










 

 

 

 

Now I really need a job. Heck, it´s time to get basemental for Paralives. 

[Dark Thoughts]

How did you make the roof work so well? One hard thing was to drag the outer walls out, but I realized you kinda just have to go off screen with the mouse and realize the wall won't render below the ground, but still reach its boundary end when you place it.

 

I'll definitely try again later. I'm currently still demoing the game and had to rage quit because when I tried making myself some Nutella sandwich I managed to cause a fire. Smoke detector blared, but no one showed up as the fire slowly spread, and my para just stood there panicking, until they caught fire themselves. I like a lot of what's there, including the fact that they went for more of a European town style, instead of the Yet Another Ameritard Suburban Hellscape. But the price is pretty steep for me - especially with the many issues & lack of features (especially the lack of autonomy), making it a hard to justify purchase. I really hope we'll see proper complex script based mods, because that's gonna be the most important factor for the longevity of this game.

[Siemann]

4 hours ago, Dark Thoughts said:

a European town style

 

carlfatal's screenshots instantly had me saying "Finally a Europe simulator!"

 

Really cool how gameplay merges life sim staples with RPG elements in how traits and mood affect the para's performance in the moment. It feels like you're actually playing the character, and not just God puppeting a pawn.

[Dark Thoughts]

Ugh... I can see how you went with that corner cutout. I wanted something similar but with a balcony over the entrance. That part works, but as soon as I add a pillar to the corner to hold it up, the pathing for the stairs breaks and I can't walk in or out. A lot of very finicky & buggy aspects to the builder.

[carlfatal]

12 hours ago, Dark Thoughts said:

How did you make the roof work so well? One hard thing was to drag the outer walls out, but I realized you kinda just have to go off screen with the mouse and realize the wall won't render below the ground, but still reach its boundary end when you place it.

 

Let me show it with a pic, that I made during the building process: 

 

You can see, I placed two walls, and the inner ones are for the main roof. Those two walls had to be parallels. Then I cut out, where I want to have windows, and close the parts in between with small roof parts.
And like in the Sims I build roofs in small parts, section after section. So here I have 11 roofs on two floors. 

 

6 hours ago, Dark Thoughts said:

Ugh... I can see how you went with that corner cutout. I wanted something similar but with a balcony over the entrance. That part works, but as soon as I add a pillar to the corner to hold it up, the pathing for the stairs breaks and I can't walk in or out. A lot of very finicky & buggy aspects to the builder.

 

As easy as it sounds, when I explain how I built that roof: It vanished three times, when I deleted walls on the floor beneath. As long as you use the grid function, it should work fine (although I know people, who experiences bugs with build mode like loosing the floor or haing rooms not detected as such). But yes, build mode is finicky.

For me the most tricky thing was to make single rooms in this crooked house. Especially when I added the chimney, that is leading from the basement to the roof like it has to be in my houses. This small addition broke every existing room, and I had a lot of work to put it together again afterwards.
But overall I think, that a buildmode providing such freedom will have it´s challenges, and that it can´t be done in a more convenient way. I love tricky builds, and most of my Sims 4 builds were exhausting the building mechanics there (of course with mods like Tool) 
So my advice is, build until your fingers bleed. I had to even rebuild this house from scratch, cause only later on I realized that I would be able to build a real basement. I think, it has a steep learning curve, and for now I miss a few roof parts, that would give us options for porches and things like that. Also roofs should not show up on the inside but they do. 

 

7 hours ago, Siemann said:

Really cool how gameplay merges life sim staples with RPG elements in how traits and mood affect the para's performance in the moment. It feels like you're actually playing the character, and not just God puppeting a pawn.

Yes! This game is made for adults not for toddlers. And that is, what I really like. I feel treated with respect by the developers, they trust my abilities to work my way through a life sim, that provides fun and challenge. 

Edited May 28 by carlfatal

[Dark Thoughts]

18 hours ago, carlfatal said:

As long as you use the grid function,

 

I literally cannot. It constantly switches between the two neighboring houses' grids, making it unusable in this lot (I have yet to try an open lot to see if it is better there but that's my current assumption about the issue). For the stairs though, it seems you cannot have ANYTHING in front of them for a good ~2 meters, or it will break pathing. The other issue I had with this balcony, is that the floor is basically just a 2D plane, which means the balcony looks paper thin if it is floating above air, and without the support beam it looks even dumber. Maybe walls + arches would work, which would also mean I could maybe use wall details there, since they get applied to the top part, but that would mean I would have to sink in the basement all the way and I wanted to have a raised design too. It's all very limiting unfortunately.

 

18 hours ago, carlfatal said:

I had to even rebuild this house from scratch, cause only later on I realized that I would be able to build a real basement.

 

Yes, I went through that too after looking up how to make basements, as I could not figure it out myself. Turns out there's no tools for that yet... Luckily I wasn't too deep into the build yet and I guess repeating the process gives you some routine and experience in how to get through it faster & more accurately. Had to then do it again once I realized I have to also cut out the basement as it otherwise would cut out the ground above it. The balcony issue however came much later unfortunately and I likely have to bulldoze the lot and go for a similar layout to yours. Maybe I even not min-max the back space to leave some of the plants there like you did.

 

Edit: I think I'll give up on this game for now. Tried an open plot, built a little house with the entrance on the upper floor but I cannot get the stairs to work. It just keeps saying "Can't go there".

Edited May 29 by Dark Thoughts

[Benmc20]

Bought this game the day it was released. Installed after. OK, it's a bit rough around the edges but so much potential.

 

Right now, this is clearly THE true successor of The Sims 3.

Edited May 31 by Benmc20

[Darkening Demise]

Someone claims to have made a mod to allow script mods for Paralives on Nexus. Modders are moving faster with this game than even The Sims 4! Guess it helps this was built with modders in mind giving documentation for things and all.

[Siemann]

6 hours ago, Darkening Demise said:

Modders are moving faster with this game than even The Sims 4!

 

Eleven years blue-balled works wonders. XD

[Dark Thoughts]

Someone made a traits framework.

https://www.nexusmods.com/paralives/mods/177

 

Could be useful to get some Wicked Whims / Devious Desires type of adult traits for the game.

[Dark Thoughts]

I'll have to issue an urgent warning about the Body Physics mod by BloodUrge:

 

- First this mod contained a .bat file, which was required for the mod installation, according to the author. This was flagged by your virus scan as being suspicious and apparently removed.
- Then this mod author also had another mod, a russian localization mod, also containing a .bat file as part of the required installation method, which also was flagged as suspicious.
- I dropped a warning in the comments section of this mod, warning people that they should be careful with executing .bat files, that his other mod was also flagged, and that the localization mod indicates that they're russian. This comment got deleted without a statement.
- In a newer version of this mod, the .bat file requirement got removed. The mod author also deleted his other mod that indicates his questionable nationality, and has set his country of origin to Estonia instead.
- Pointing out this extremely suspicious behavior again in the comments got my comment once again removed, and they also now blocked me from spreading that knowledge.

Given the very suspicious behavior of this mod author, in combination with their nationality, the previous installation methods through .bat files and ticked off virus scans, I thereby would highly recommend to re-install your operating system if you happened to have either of those mods installed.

[DoctaSax]

On 6/5/2026 at 9:54 PM, Dark Thoughts said:

I'll have to issue an urgent warning

 

You're being a bit overly paranoid, imo. The reason for the .bat file existing is explained in the comments thread and seems plausible enough, even if it's no longer necessary. That an AV would flag is also not proof it was malicious. The fact that they had a Russian localisation mod doesn't make them a hacker, or even Russian, and explicitly setting their country to Estonia to assuage fears that you spread doesn't prove anything either. People can be proficient at languages from other countries. 

 

I agree that any mod with .bat and/or .dll files should be scrutinized more heavily than others, but unless these files actually contain proof of malicious code, just going on about 'questionable nationality' looks just like harassment of someone who just published a mod they put work into, so it's not much of a surprise your comments aren't welcome anymore. 

[Dark Thoughts]

16 hours ago, DoctaSax said:

You're being a bit overly paranoid, imo. The reason for the .bat file existing is explained in the comments thread and seems plausible enough, even if it's no longer necessary. That an AV would flag is also not proof it was malicious. The fact that they had a Russian localisation mod doesn't make them a hacker, or even Russian, and explicitly setting their country to Estonia to assuage fears that you spread doesn't prove anything either. People can be proficient at languages from other countries. 

 

I agree that any mod with .bat and/or .dll files should be scrutinized more heavily than others, but unless these files actually contain proof of malicious code, just going on about 'questionable nationality' looks just like harassment of someone who just published a mod they put work into, so it's not much of a surprise your comments aren't welcome anymore. 

 

Then why did they remove the mod and obfuscated their country of origin after being called out? Why did they not address the concerns in a reply to my comment, but instead choose to hide away the warnings to the point where they prevent me from doing so? This is all just adding to the already suspicious behavior regarding their mods, because .bat files are absolutely not necessary for these type of mods (also evident by the fact that they are apparently not needed anymore). And yes, being russian is a questionable nationality. This should not be controversial at this point unless you've been living under a rock, especially when it comes to cybersecurity.