SHOOTING TO KILL, PART TWO: THE COMPACT EXPLODER OF FRANCIS CHUNG

The ongoing effort individual residents and groups of residents to bring the world of multiplayer first-person shooters into Second Life. Part One, Ryen Jade’s Tartarus project featured here.

After we stop hugging (see 8/19 entry), and she’s offered me a martini, Francis Chung whips double pistols from her inventory, and proceeds to unload both clips into my body. I’m near-blinded by the muzzle flashes, as she squeezes off scores of rounds.

“How ironic is that?” she says, over the roar. “My primary sources of revenue are from selling guns and hugs!”

The latest model of Francis Chung’s Compact eXploder (v. 1.2.38) comes with an owner’s manual that’s nearly 2000 words long, including a technical FAQ and a descriptive background that’s translated from the Japanese. (The weapon is inspired by the work of anime artist Masamune Shirow, lead creator of “Ghost in the Shell” and “Appleseed”. “[T]he Seburo is this fictitious company that he made up,” Ms. Chung explains, “just for background in his series. This is sort of my tribute...”)

“The Seburo is tuned for high-velocity ammunition,” The manual boasts cheerfully. “We invite you to compare with other guns.” At L$1500 (about US$7.50), it’s not the cheapest weapon in the growing resident-made arsenal. But then, Ms. Chung offers owners a way of defraying the cost-- a customer referral program, which gets you a L$100 kickback, for every new buyer you send her way.

But it isn’t just the weapon itself, that they’re buying, because the eXploder is essentially a fully appointed kit to transform the experience of Second Life into an FPS.

To demonstrate this, Francis takes me to the Seburo shooting gallery, located in Chartreuse. It’s set hundreds of meters in the air, but because it’s hovering above the White Star Casino, we can still hear the classical music channel that’s being streamed from the land below. So while we engage in brutal gunplay, and bullet casings tinkle at our feet, the placid swelling of Bach and Schubert keep playing in the background.

Yes, when the Seburo is fired, not only do you hear a satisfyingly thunderous audio clip of high caliber gunfire (or an electrified “snick snick”, if you have the silencer attached) casings also erupt from the weapon, and spread out on the floor around you.

Francis laughs, and runs over a particularly thick pile of spent shells. “[D]unno why I love that jingle so much,” she says. And as her feet plow through them, it suddenly sounds like Christmas sleigh bells. (Or given the context, slay bells.)

I peer down, and the gamer in me gets the better of me because…

“THE SHELL CASINGS ARE SMOKING!”

The tiny wisps of black smoke pour from each shell-- just as they do from the gun barrels themselves, after they’ve been fired. It’s touches like this that make the eXploder seem like a professional product. Which is probably because that aspect of the weapon was, in fact, made by a pro.

“I have a specialized particle script that I wrote that allows me to do things that add random variation to the effects,” Neil Protagonist explains to me in IM. “Which is honestly the key in making an effect look good. It has many features the Lindens forgot to add (or didn't know to add.”) Then again, Neil would know: when he’s not adding things like the muzzle flash or the gunsmoke to the eXploder, he’s an effects artist in the game industry. His last gig was at FASA, a Microsoft game studio, where he worked on the Xbox game “Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge”, among others. (He’s now working with another studio, for an upcoming pirates-themed MMO.)

At the firing range, Francis fires another clip at the targets across from us. “Did you see the wall? If you shoot the target, you get
little bullet marks.” She smiles. “There's a different effect that plays depending [on] what you hit. If you hit a prim, you get a ‘KA-PWING’, and sparks. If you hit land, you get dirt clouds, and a thump sound.”

I unload by own pair of eXploders into Francis, and filmy plumes of blood erupt from her body. “The bullets detect if they've hit an avatar,” she tells me over the goy splatter, “and there's a particle effect that Neil came up with.”

On our chat window, the Seburo Compact-eXploder v.1.2.38c informs Francis: “You were shot by Hamlet Linden.”

“You don't even need to see the shooter,” she explains, “You *know* you're getting shot at by a Seburo.” Meaning, in Jessie’s combat sims, two or more residents armed with Seburo handguns effectively have everything they need to transform the world into an FPS playing field. (Though Francis herself has no plans to incorporate it into a larger world, like Tartarus.) If you can keep track of who shot whom, you’re pretty much ready to go.

(“I put that [tracker] in,” Francis explains, “because sometimes some jackass sneaks up on you, and just caps you. So it tells you who got you, so you know who to extract revenge from.”)

For all the coding she puts into the weapon, “The most flattering compliment I get about the Seburo is [from] people who are amazed at the ‘craftsmanship’ that we demonstrate.” That would include the custom animation poses that automatically kick in, whenever you hold eXploder, and whenever you fire it-- either singly, or with one in either hand, looking appropriately like a John Woo badass, as you let rip. (Linden Lab’s default gun posture, it must be said, it not necessarily the most stylish example of gun opera choreography-- it makes you look less like Chow Yun-fat, and more like a obstreperous old man with lower back pain.)

“The Seburo was just designed around the concept of cool,” Francis Chung tells me. “I think most people forget that-- making something beautiful is the hard part. Making it functional is easy. I think probably 90% of our time was purely focused on the audio and visual experience of the gun.”

Neil Protagonist expresses even loftier ambitions when I ask him why he spends so much of his free time improving the art and effects library of Second Life, when he already does such similar work at his office.

“[W]hat motivates me is a love for creating effects, my prime goal being to improve the state of visual effects in games as well as bring more cinematic elements to video games,” he tells me. “Primarily I am referring to the purposeful use of color theory and color psychology. But that’s a rant I'll save for another day... my goal in Second Life is the same goal I have at work: to improve the overall quality of the effects in the game.” Even if that means working with the more limited tool set available to him here, or having to sometimes build those tools, himself.

“Really, it boils down to a love for creating effects,” Protagonist says. “There is something fascinating to me about natural effects such as fire, steam, etc. Something about it grabs me and enthralls me.

"I think part of why I find it so interesting is because it is never static. It’s always in motion, never the same, always changing...”