The Alphaville Herald

Interview with Opfor founder Jack Orlowski (aka bicycle maker William Bukowski)

by Alphaville Herald on 06/08/04 at 12:14 am

Jack Orlowski (Jacko) is kind of legend around Jessie, both for founding Opfor, and also for the exquisite detail on his guns. He?s been away for a bit, and is now trying to scrape together some cash to reactivate his Jacko account (too much land can put you in hock to the Lindens, it seems), but in the interim he?s back with a low budget avi: bicycle maker William Bukowski. In our conversation we talk about the history of Opfor, but also about his real life job as a metal fabricator and his use of Second Life as a tool for prototyping his r/l designs. He claims that using SL is ?way easier and much more intuitive than cad or 3dmax?!!! Uncle Phil should be delighted to hear that one!


Jacko’s Street Sweeper

AVDetector whispers: Making icon for William Bukowski
William Bukowski: heya sorry if i seem blind
William Bukowski: my comp is super slow today
Urizenus: ah there’s some lag in the sector too
William Bukowski: i thought I could make french fries and talk to you at the same time
Urizenus: should be possible
William Bukowski: but deep frying requires a bit of attention
Urizenus: are the fries fried now?
William Bukowski: yeah and eaten
Urizenus: oh ok cool
Urizenus: ok, well i’ll start this with some historical stuff
Urizenus: Is this the first MMORPG you’ve been on?
William Bukowski: no i played a bit of AO and ATITD
William Bukowski: well allot of atitd
Urizenus: AO?
William Bukowski: anarchy online
Urizenus: oh right, of course
Urizenus: and what was the other?
William Bukowski: a tale in the desert
Urizenus: oh you spent a lot of time in that one?
William Bukowski: yeah it was the tech that grabbed my attention and people made art
William Bukowski: to make supplies you had to collect and manufacture raw materials
Urizenus: yeah I hated that. gathering grass and mud and stuff
William Bukowski: yeah
William Bukowski: anyway i found SL
William Bukowski: and never looked back
Urizenus: were you into the lawmaking end of tale?
William Bukowski: no
William Bukowski: i gathered a lot of stuff and finally worked my way into a guild
William Bukowski: then it got really boring
Urizenus: When did you come to SL?
William Bukowski: july 13th 03
Urizenus: alright and did you find Jessie right away?
William Bukowski: i saw the jessie wall article and this bad ass pic of this dude with a gun
William Bukowski: and i was like sweet
William Bukowski: when i was a kid i was a big Punisher fan
Urizenus: hehe
William Bukowski: and always been a bit of a gearhead
William Bukowski: im a metal fabricator in rl
William Bukowski: custom furniture etc
Urizenus: we’ll get to that in a sec…
Urizenus: but did you move into jessie right away?
William Bukowski: yes
Urizenus: and then you needed guns
William Bukowski: well actually not right away
William Bukowski: i lived a week in another sim and made my first gun and founded opfor
Urizenus: so you founded opfor by yourself or with others
William Bukowski: by myself
William Bukowski: on my 3rd or 4th day
Urizenus: so for our readers, what is/was opfor?
Urizenus: and what does opfor stand for?
William Bukowski: well opfor is mil jargon for opposing force
Urizenus: opposing who?
William Bukowski: they use it as a general description during wargames or operations
Urizenus: but in this context did you have an opposition in mind?
William Bukowski: well
William Bukowski: kinda in opposition to crappy guns
William Bukowski: and lame models
William Bukowski: all the m16s i saw looked week they where way to big
Urizenus: so the whole mission of opfor was to develop better guns?
William Bukowski: yeah in all aspects
William Bukowski: models textures and scripting and scale

Urizenus: and that was it? no other goals? like seizing territory or kicking ass in jessie?
William Bukowski: well not initially but when the neighborhood started falling apart
Urizenus: how so?
William Bukowski: well people would move in and block off access or build giant black cubes
Urizenus: so then opfor had to become proactive?
William Bukowski: we did it in a subtle fashion
William Bukowski: just by influencing sellers to sell to us first as far as land acquisition
Urizenus: and then?
William Bukowski: well we blocked access on a couple of real nuisances and since we controlled such a large area of jess

Urizenus: must have been expensive controlling all that land
William Bukowski: yeah
William Bukowski: plus the highspeed cable isn?t cheap
Urizenus: what is the reward in the gun making game? Is it sort of like model building?
William Bukowski: well as a resident of NYC
William Bukowski: guns are out of my reach
William Bukowski: so i kinda get to play airsoft on my comp
William Bukowski: plus i get to make any gun i want
Urizenus: airsoft?
William Bukowski: yeah electric pellet guns from japan that look damn real
Urizenus: oh ok
William Bukowski: and people go out and play more realistic type military games
Urizenus: who are the best gun makers in SL now?
William Bukowski: umm well ive been out of the game for a bit
William Bukowski: but i give mad props to ryen jade for his scifi stylings
William Bukowski: francis chung and seburo heavy industries
Urizenus: what do you think of Francis Chung’s Seburo Compact Exploder
William Bukowski: love it
Urizenus: why?
William Bukowski: i made a deal with francis to sell the exploder at opfor
William Bukowski: well the model and texturing, umm its just awesome
William Bukowski: every detail
William Bukowski: thats it detail
Urizenus: you like the multiple parallel scripts too?
William Bukowski: yeah very slick stuff
William Bukowski: im not much of a scripter
Urizenus: do you do your own scripting and gun design, or do you seek out others to do that
William Bukowski: i outsource the script but the scriptor gets very detailed instructions on what i want the script to do
William Bukowski: the guns are all replicas of my fav guns
Urizenus: and you do the visual design part
William Bukowski: textures?
Urizenus: yeah
William Bukowski: sometimes
Urizenus: do you have a representative gun of your design that you can sell me?
William Bukowski: on me right now?
William Bukowski: No, william [this avi] is a bike maker
Urizenus: lol
William Bukowski: he has no guns
William Bukowski: well a pop gun
William Bukowski: fucking dirty hippy
Urizenus: are any of your guns for sale at opfor ?
William Bukowski: yeah
William Bukowski: cya also sells all the guns i made from july 03 to nov 03
William Bukowski: you will also see allot of bootleg editions of my guns around
William Bukowski: mostly the ump 45
Urizenus: Tell me about the bike biz
William Bukowski: well its mostly in support of my interest in rl in making bikes
Urizenus: have you made any since you came back to sl?
William Bukowski: yeah one model of my bike in rl
Urizenus: did you prototype the bike here? or make the rl bike first
William Bukowski: jack has a more complete version
William Bukowski: no that?s a bike i bought
William Bukowski: and copied
William Bukowski: but the angles and lengths are all scale

Jack show’s Uri a bike he’s building in game.

Urizenus: so I’m confused. you are a bike maker here or in rl or both
William Bukowski: aspiring in rl
Urizenus: but you are a metal fabricator in rl?
William Bukowski: here i use it just to see how things will look and figure out angles
William Bukowski: yes in real im a certified welder
Urizenus: you said that you do some prototyping here in sl?
William Bukowski: yeah
Urizenus: you do that a lot or just tried it once
William Bukowski: i designed a set of shelves
William Bukowski: and a set of handle bars that are still in the works
Urizenus: you going to do that again? Was it helpful using sl for prototype work?
William Bukowski: for projects that use basic geometry like tube and angle iron yes
William Bukowski: but compound curves and stuff no
William Bukowski: fenders are a good example of compound curves
Urizenus: how do you get the values of the angles and the scale of everything right
William Bukowski: transferring out of sl or into
Urizenus: into
William Bukowski: basic layout in reverse
William Bukowski: depends on your source material as well
William Bukowski: if you have the actual object then you just measure it and use a bevel gage and a protractor
William Bukowski: if you have pictures then its a lil more difficult
Urizenus: do you now consider SL to be a tool or aid for your metal fabricating work?
William Bukowski: its an aid
William Bukowski: i can do without an aid
Urizenus: lol
William Bukowski: a tool i need
Urizenus: well, can you imagine other people in your biz getting sl accounts for this purpose?
William Bukowski: yes and no
Urizenus: go on…
William Bukowski: yes because its very easy to use
William Bukowski: no because some fabricators who do very high end artsy stuff are always worried about their ideas getting ripped off
William Bukowski: my current employer is like the latter
William Bukowski: he is designer/ fabricator
Urizenus: is sl like the poor man’s cadcam?
William Bukowski: yeah i have cad as well but i cant use it well enough
William Bukowski: that it isnt a hindrance to the design process
Urizenus: so this is easier to use than cadcam?
William Bukowski: way easier and much more intuitive than cad or 3dmax
Urizenus: wow
William Bukowski: at least from the point of a self taught individual with limited resources
Urizenus: so… any chance we will see Jacko back in jessie soon?
William Bukowski: hopefully im working hard to pay up all my other rl utils
William Bukowski: and the next charge on my debit card is to linden labs
Urizenus: woot!
William Bukowski: its actually only 60 bucks i owe to LL
Urizenus: that’s not nothing
William Bukowski: they are the rl meth dealers around these parts
Urizenus: hehe
William Bukowski: they cook the wickedest shit
Urizenus: Linden Lab does?
William Bukowski: yeah its called Second Life