Feargus Urquhart

It is a web-board existing on a server somewhere in the ether you know?

After being fired by Interplay, Jessica decided to take a break from the game world for a bit. She's waitressing at a local restaurant and spending more time practicing with her band.

Most dev studios use Maya or 3D Studio MAX with a smaller number using Lightwave. I would suggest getting to be the best you can at a single 3D package. The reason being is that once you know one package very well and have expanded your 3D art abilities within it - adapting to another package will be less difficult and you'll have gotten to be a better 3D artist as well. As for us, we use 3D Studio MAX for pretty much everything.

Why no?

I know what you guys think about me and past products and you know what I have said in response to those thoughts. So, I have an idea. Can we all just begin with a new slate? We might be able to build a stronger community here and get a lot of great discussion going about games and the industry that people will enjoy participating in.

A short addition that I would put is that when you show off your work it is better to show a few things that work very well then a bunch of things that are half ass. You always want to put your best foot forward and that you can create something from initial design/spec through to completion.

This would be my advice, which repeats and expands on some of the stuff already said. 1) Get a degree in something that gives you a lot of experience writing both fiction and technical things. You need the fiction to be able to write good dialog and you need the technical writing to describe systems and events to programmers in ways that they can understand quickly. 2) Learn a 3D program well enought to construct a simple level - pretty much one made out of blocks. This shows you can get around a 3D world and that you know what most of the 3D terms really mean - texture maps, texels, bump mapping, verticies, etc... Putting a level together in something like the NWN or Battlefield 1942 can really help you here. 3) Learn to program either in C++ or a scripting language. This will help you understand how the computer thinks and how you have to design systems and game elements to make them work in the real world. 4) Get a job in QA, however don't stay there long if there does not look like a way to get out. a) Don't be super pushy about getting out - that annoys people. B) Let it be known that you are available to do extra things like review strat guides. c) Offer to help out at trade shows - try to work whatever trade shows you can (like E3), especially during setup and tear down, even if you have to pay your way to some extent. d) Come up with ideas for the games that you are working on and present them - but don't shove them down the producer's throat. Most producers are overworked and on death march like schedules - they may really like your ideas, but just don't have the time to include them or even consider them. There you go.

Yep, you could try there or on the Interplay forums. Any of the guys that worked on the Icewind Dale series or Torment could answer questions concerning the Infinity Engine.

Having to be relevant has never stopped us from posting before. Actually, I think a lot of us for some reason had a crap load of stuff to do this weekend. But, we are all up here now.