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Your humble narrator, waiting for those sweet sweet words: You were killed.

Having abandoned aspirations for a career in first-person shooter (FPS) games a long time ago for reasons related to nausea, disorientation, and an overall skill level that might be best described as Emo, I have nonetheless been fascinated with the genre since its inception, due in large part to game developers making tools such as Software Development Kits and Level Editors available to vibrant amateur communities who then ‘Mod’ their proprietary technologies into new games and gameplay experiences. The possibilities for making and examining architecture within this arena have been another story, seemingly dominated by an established set of conventions for map-making, as evidenced by a preponderance of precisely scattered wooden crates and redundantly symmetrical networks of dimly lit corridors.

To simply look at screenshots many would assume the Source Forts Mod for Half-Life 2 to be just another CounterStrike clone. All I can say to them is duck and cover. While surreptitiously perhaps, the developers of Source Forts have placed architecture and the act of making architecture at center stage, and in so doing have lobbed a 3pointD grenade into the Pantheon of FPS clichés. (more…)

The closing keynote talk at the Second Life Community Convention this past weekend was given more or less in tandem by Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale and Chief Technology Officer Cory Ondrejka. While the pair were their usual charming and amusing selves, their act having been well honed by now, they looked back at the history of Second Life more than they looked forward to its future. More about that past in a post soon to come; for now let’s look ahead with Cory at what the future of the SL codebase may hold. (more…)