The Date Quest and Maya (not Maia)

Greetings! This post gives an update about where I'm at with the release (spoiler: writing the script for Ana's date quest) and also shares some thoughts on my experiments with Maya. Ana's date quest is the last full quest that'll be included in 10.4, so once it's done 10.4 shouldn't be too far off. Let's get into it!

Ana's Date Quest

Since the last post, I've mostly been working on Ana's date quest. As of last time I was still in the planning phase for it, but I'm now well into writing the script. The planning phase was particularly rough because this is the first time I've had to really think about romancy stuff in the context of writing - once you get past the initial phase of attraction, how does that go? What sorts of things are people looking for; what should they be looking for? And how do they go about finding it out?

"Compatibility" is one of the big things, and it's kind of a nebulous term. It means a lot of different things to different people, so I've had to break down what I think are all the relevant dimensions to see how Alex and Ana compare. And... come to find out they're very different people! This is hardly surprising, since the two were designed to be foils for one another. But I refuse to believe lasting loves only happen between people who meet in grad school and both want 2.4 kids, who both love Star Wars and salsa dancing, who are both really responsible with money, and who both want to live in a suburb of Sacramento, CA. What about "opposites attract" and all that?

It's been observed that psychologists are often really messed up people - hence their interest in psychology. After reading a bunch of love advice columns, I've concluded the same is probably true of the people who write love advice. It's not that I think their advice is wrong exactly, but it probably deserves to be taken with a handful of salt - especially for a story like this. Love advice of the sort you find on the internet these days is intended for the relatively pampered, somewhat selfish bourgeois found throughout the modern West. What makes Alex and Ana's (and Emily's) experience different is that they've been whisked away to this other place and forced to endure hardships and trials together - and experience triumphs! - that few do these days. It's really more like the experience of soldiers at war, and in these sorts of situations people can bond much more closely than they can in the "normal" world. So maybe it doesn't matter if your partner doesn't check all the boxes on a list - you've been through stuff with them that you never will with anyone else, and they'll "get" you in a way no one else ever can.

To be clear, though, no matter how you play it, this date isn't going to end with Alex and Ana gazing dreamily into one another's eyes as they exchange sweet nothings. They're still a long way from that, and may never get there. But... maybe they can start heading that way if you so choose.

By the way, here's a screenshot of the Articy model for the quest, which I thought would be interesting to share for some reason that escapes me. Think I was just trying to show something about my process. It's really handy for mapping out all the different ways things can go, or if what you have in your head will actually make sense when put into game form. It's also handy when actually writing the script!

Learning Maya

I've been learning Maya - the 3D software - and the biggest thing I've learned so far is that I have a lot to learn about Maya. In general, though, I like it. Blender has always felt like a work in progress (it is), but Maya is still basically the same Maya it was when I dabbled with it many years ago. It has a ton of features, and they're generally pretty complete and well thought out. I was able to learn a bit about Xgen, Maya's hair system (originally developed for Disney's Tangled) and I really like it. I can already tell it's way more powerful and easier to work with than Blender's hair. Xgen was the main reason I decided to switch from Blender to Maya - animation being another big reason - and I'm now convinced it was the right decision.

Here's an import of Alex's model I was playing around with after completing one of my courses. This is Alex's poly hair as opposed to the strand-based 'do I'll have to make (in Xgen), but I was surprised how well the model imported. I'm going to have to play around with the shaders in Arnold (Maya's native render engine) to try to get something that looks better, or I may have to make the whole thing from scratch in Substance, I don't know yet. I also need to learn more about animation to see if there's any changes I want to make to the rig... and then there's a muscle system? Looks neat. And then of course there's the hair. I've seen people make eyebrows and even eyelashes with Xgen, so think I'll give that a try, too. As before, though, the guinea pig will probably be Emily, since her hairstyle is a bit simpler than Alex's.

Arnold is another thing I'll have to think about, though. It's a really great render engine, but it's kinda slow in CPU mode, and you miss out on a lot of features in GPU mode. That's fine for still images, but doing animations in Arnold probably isn't feasible unless you have a render farm or something. And switching to a faster render engine - like Redshift - means you have to redo all the shaders, which is a lot of work. But we'll see. Arnold has a really powerful denoising tool that may take it from "impossible" to "kinda possible."

Conclusion

So, there you have it. I'm not giving another projected release date, but I'm pretty sure it'll be out in May, and anyone who was a $5 supporter at some point from mid-March on will get it when it's out. I'm going to continue writing, and continue learning Maya on the side. If you have any ideas for things I missed in the "relationship stuff" post please let me know, and thank you for your support!