Well as of yesterday my project shifted gears and is now heading in a completely new direction. Instead of creating an animated work, I'll be writing a paper that is part research paper, part discussion, and part creative writing, based on the idea of Quest Design in video game development. How did I get from point A to point B? Well here's an explanation.
The problem originated when I set out to work with DAZ Studio. The computers in the MAC labs in Knutti have the program, but they don't run optimally, and their libraries were....mixed up, so when I loaded the models I had bought, I couldn't find them. Add in the fact that my city environment was made for DAZ Studio 4 and the MAC's had DAZ Studio 3, and it was clear I wasn't going to be able to get my work done in the COMM labs. My other option was a high performance gaming PC that my father and I built and he had ordered for me as a christmas/graduation present. The problem there was the shipping was taking forever and I couldn't rely on a computer that literally wasn't here yet.
My next step was to see if my laptop could at least run the software. I figured if anything else, maybe I could get poses down and do a storyboard while waiting for the PC. The software installed and after some playtime with it and some panicking about finding my models, I got everything to work, albeit very slowly. The laptop ran the software in a very choppy fashion, making it impossible to get any real detailed work done. So I crossed off that option, still waiting for the PC.
My roommate was gracious enough to let me try his laptop with the software. Being a higher end computer, it ran everything more smoothly, until I worked in the lighting, at which point everything ran slower than my laptop did. Again realizing this option wasn't going to happen, I scratched it off the list.
Finally, my PC came in, and I immediately installed DAZ Studio 4 and began installing models. I was shocked, however, when I brought in all the characters and realized that the software ran just as choppy as on the past two systems. I brought this fact to the attention of my director, who asked me to check the RAM/CPU usage. My PC has a 8-core processor and 16GB of RAM, I figured it could handle the software no problem. As it turns out, however, the software didn't know how to allocate everything correctly (and there wasn't a way to fix that). My roommate, being fairly tech savvy, and I ran some tests and found that the CPU usage spiked whenever I tried to do anything in DAZ, while the RAM usage didn't change at all.
As a last resort option I figured that the earlier version of DAZ, DAZ 3, may have all the compatibility issues worked out and might be better at using my desktop's resources. I tried installing it, but it required a serial number, and the one DAZ provided me didn't work, not even the one my director gave me worked. Defeated at this point, I brought these issues to the attention of my director and we worked out a new plan.
The job I'm going to be attempting to get when I graduate is called a Quest Designer. There's an opening at Bethesda Softworks for the position. A Quest Designer (QD) works with the game designers, level designers, etc to create the plot points and missions that the player will complete in order to progress in the game. Not every game needs a QD (Sports games or Shooters, for example), but story-driven games and RPG's almost always have one. My project now is to write about QD's, what they do, why it's important, and also show some examples of Quest Design in popular games. Finally I'll be writing some quests of my own, in narrative form, which I can also submit with my application for the actual job.
This project requires less production work, but it will require more research and reference. The biggest advantage of this project for me is that it will be easily applied to my ideal line of work, allowing me to hopefully achieve my goal of working for Bethesda right out of graduation.
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