Thanks for explanation. Since I'm not using/working in DAZ I can only guess what is customizable and what is not. I assumed that this suit/costume of firefighter is not customizable, at least at the part of helmet (colors and other stuff are easier to customize and make them customizable in overall, though).
And it's one thing when customization consists in prescribing some parameters inside the DAZ itself, and quite another when you need to draw a texture or something like that manually, combine everything and load it back, check that everything is working fine, etc.
If there is no customization, although it is possible "by the click of fingers" - this is laziness. But working with textures and so on requires a lot of time and potentially increases developing time.
I partially agree with your claim regarding DPC using the "default" assets. Their customization could make the immersion into the world of the game even deeper and the feeling of secondariness when someone sees the same brands, labels, bottles and so on in other games would be much less. But... imo, this is not something he should spend extra time on, so I don't really care about it, personally. And since he has already used particular assets, it would be strange if he changed them and would lead to additional questions and assumptions from players. Like, for 2 seasons, the characters drink "Pink Beer" and others like that, and then suddenly everything changed. I think only few people of the whole players base may agree for increase development cycle times even more just to allow him to customize some secondary or tertiary assets. It's a material for "remake" if it will be released ever, but not for the current development cycle till its end, imo.
B&R security and that security guy in ANO mansion confused me a lot too. The policemen suit and that "NYPD" badge is just ridiculous. Because police and security are not the same and NYPD badge is making situation even worse. Both regarding giving wrong assumption about where B&R is located and ending with police used as security guards in some college.
But damn it, everywhere and everyone has some flaws. Imo, the above are the kind of those that can be forgiven.
Yeah. In theory, everything is customizable because, even when you can't do it in Daz, you can go to another software (like Blender for meshes and Photoshop for textures), but some customizations are easier than others. Don't think, though, that using only dials is always an easy way out. For characters, for instance, if you just want to change a minor detail, it'll be easy, but creating an entire new character with dials to the point people will recognize it as custom (that is, "never seen before") and also looks good it's something that takes a day or more (depending on your perfectionism). Poses are another example -- and, since most of them are made for the base form (the Genesis whatever number), the more your character departs from the base form, the more you have to adjust it (and posing is something you basically only deal with dials -- and it takes a lot of time). And, sometimes, going out of Daz is something that is overhead.
In the case of the firefighter helmet, It's an easy customization (for those who have practice with some photo editor like Photoshop or Gimp) because, as you can see in the promos of the asset, there are many variations, and when you look at the photo of the clay render (without textures) you can see the surface is flat. When there's some relief, one would have to go to a software like Blender to modify it or erase it, but since it doesn't, you just have to create the textures which, in this case, is not even a complex texture, so you just erase the number and add another one (and it doesn't even need to be the same typeface). But I don't think this would be necessary because, unless there's some hidden meaning in the numbers, any number would do. In fact, in scriptwriting theory, the recommendation is to not add any relevant detail unless it means to the movie (or TV show, or novel, or whatever). So the fact he uses the default number is a tell that it means nothing; if he had changed it would either be a tell that it means something or create a red herring which, if it were unintentional, would be a mistake.
On the other hand, in the case of the security guy's uniform, I think it was a mistake because the NYPD badge conveys more information than a mere number, thus it either creates the idea that NYPD has some meaning (which is a little absurd since he's a security guy in a college) or that it was some sloppy design, an oversight. So I agree with you on that matter. But, of course, since, on the whole, DPC is way superior to the vast majority of the other devs, it's excusable (even more when it's something that happened in season 1). And maybe (since he codes a lot and likes to do mini-games) DPC came from a coding background and not a graphic designer background, so he wasn't (at least, back them) acquainted with Photoshop and used to customize materials as he was with coding so changing the badge would be too much without hiring someone... (And, even today, he does little customizations for material or textures; the most notorious one being the HOTs' uniform which, in fact, is just the colors of one of the default materials with the inscription "HoT" from another, with a cyan detail on the side which can be done inside Daz; most of his customizations were like this -- coloring).
We have to keep in mind that, when you do a VN (adult or not) alone, it's like doing a movie or a TV show and you have to be the director, the producer, the screenwriter, the cinematographer, the editor, the sound designer, the costume designer, the architect and props maker, and even an actor by proxy (and, even when you don't create the assets yourself, which is most of the cases, you have at least to select them; something that, when well done, also takes a lot of time). Thus, it's a lot of work and everything you can do to save time is a rational decision. Because, even if customizing the firefighter's helmet would be easy, if you start to do this for every element in the scene, the time spent will add up, and you'll end up spending a month or more just customizing them. So, yeah, in an ideal world, everything would be custom-made like in Hollywood movies, but in the world of AVNs we have to select what matters and let the rest go.
