“I like this”

The “like” button is one the things I like most about Facebook. When someone writes something I like I don’t have to think of something clever to say, but I can still make a mark and give the writer a pat on the back.  It’s just a nice, effortless way to show appreciation – “well done, but I must be on my way”.

So I was glad to find this neat plugin by Benoit “LeBen” Burgener which lets you “like” a blogpost. It’s activated and added, so if you enjoy any of these posts feel free to push the “I like this” button.

The multiple meanings of “Sotali”

It’s almost a bit eerie (well it’s not, but it’s kind of cool).

We have just finished the recording of Pettersson & Fredrikssons third duo album and we have already decided the name for it: “Sotali”. As a dialect term from the north of Sweden it could literaly be translated as “slow” but rather means  someone who is actively doing nothing. Contemplating perhaps. We find it fitting both because, well, it’s almost a caricature of who we are as people, but mostly it is a pretty good description of the music on the cd. It is very mellow and we feel the tunes often has a thematic of time’s passing and the flow of things.

As I usually do, I googled the phrase to make sure it doesn’t have any too offensive meanings in other langues.  Apparently it seems to be a word in a native american language from tribes around Minesota.  Actually, the “sota” in Minesota comes from Sotali, meaning “sky-colored water”.  I guess it’s one of those things like where folks on Greenland has lots of words for snow, these people living around lakes and rivers need words for different kinds of water.

So what’s kind of cool, seeing how we inadvertently named our upcoming cd “sky-colored water”, is the album cover and layout for our last cd which looks like this:

Also, in the booklet we have more watery pics as well as a two-page spread of a blue sky with some clouds. Sky-colored water.

Does the word “Sotali” mean anything else in your language? Please let me know in the comments!

PS. Also, it is quite possible to pre-order Sotali right now, just send a mail to sotali@silkwood.se and let us know that you want a copy when it comes out!

Virek Online: The evolution of a Metaplace world

This post portraits the creation and building of my main Metaplace world Virek Online, up until MP closed their servers on January 1 2010. If you don’t know what Metaplace is, read this post about it or, well, just google it.

When I got into Metaplace’s early closed beta I had the vague idea to make a virtual hangout to embed on my folkmusic-duo Pettersson & Fredrikssons webpage, where fans and friends could chat while listening to our tunes. I envisioned a fantasy tavern with instruments that you could click to select music, or something of the like.

I must admit I was overwhelmed when I arrived. This was bigger, harder and more complex then I thought. And also much less stable and developed. My laptop could hardly run the java-toolset, the embed functionality wasn’t there yet and I definitely didn’t understand much of the scripting and…well anything really.  But. There was promises of a simpler and sleeker interface called the “light tools”, which would resolve many issues and be kinder to noobs like myself. So I started building.

After a while the “light tools” arrived, now with the somewhat less patronizing name “flex tools”, and it was pretty great. Over time most functionality from the java tools was ported over and I started to feel like I actually could do stuff with this. And about this time, I decided to do something a little bit different – what if I’d make an actual, playable, tongue-in-cheek adventure game which borrows lore, npc:s and story elements from Pettersson & Fredrikssons music? I had already named the world “virek online”, since our latest cd was called Virek. It is a dialect word which means “Far-travelled”, so I thought…what if YOU are this “Virek”? The far-travelled one. The one who is destined to save us all. That’s as good a base for a fantasy rpg story as anything, so I started writing a tale.

The story

I came up with the idea of the Land of the Minstrel Kings, once ruled by two minstrels (suspiciously similar to Pettersson & Fredriksson) but now the evil wizard Braand has wiped the peoples memory and proclaimed himself king. You arrive after a shipwreck and meet the kind and wise court wizard, Jon-Masn, who says you are the chosen one, “Virek”. The name Jon-Masn is taken from a legendary fiddler from my part of sweden, who was told to have magic powers. The name Braand, on the other hand, is taken from our first album – Brand (meaning fire). Anyway, to be able to claim the throne, Braands right hand “The crimson knight” stole the magical Holy Crest (a blinged out version of our duos symbol) from the Minstrel Kings and fled east to the Land of Ice and Snow – Bottn.  Bottn (reminiscent of my homecounty Västerbotten in the north of Sweden) is a harsh and cold place, inhabited only by wicked penguins and a Saami shaman called “Väverskan”. The Crimson Knight is there, and after you kick his ass he reveals that he was decoy and that the wizard has the Crest, and is hiding in the castle. Long story short – you go in the castle, find and fight the wizard who evaporates, but leaves the Crest. You give the Crest back to the Minstrel Kings, who now play for scraps at the tavern, and you are hailed as the Far-Travelled Hero that you are.

That’s most of the story. On your travels you’ll come across a drunk fiddler-poet (Knaft-Jonke), a girl who needs a special pink flower to cure her fathers horrible dermatitis as well as your standard RPG-fare of flying fishes and ghosts. And also, there be meeps (and they give you awesome ice-shooting powers).

Hurdles

As a person with zero coding knowledge, limited graphic skills and who didn’t really knew what game design was there where, to say the least, some pretty big obstacles to come across. That Metaplace was the platform helped alot, especially in the graphics department – it was easy to import images, and after a while when the Google 3D Warehouse importer went live things got even easier. I’d download models to Sketchup, tweak and modify them and upload it to 3D warehouse. Then I could just import that model directly into my world in Metaplace. Very handy, even if image quality varied. When it came to coding, Metaplace stepped in as well – or rather, the users. In the wiki and forum users had uploaded “script snippets” – functions expressed through lines of script which I could copy and use in my world. I slowly started understanding the basics of the script-language by taking scripts apart, modifying them and changing their function. Sort of what I did with the 3D warehouse models. After a while I actually could make simple scripts myself, even if I never got very good at it. Later Metaplace introduced a “marketplace” system, where users could upload modules, complete objects with scripts and images for other users to download and use in their world. This simplified things a great deal and among other things let me install dialog and inventory systems, spawn points and other game mechanics in the world. A big thing was the bundle of functions called “cruises component pack” written by the user Cruise which I – after much direct help from him – managed to start using for many different things, like health/damage and projectiles.

A huge problem for a long time was that of player choice. I had made a big world with different scenes and many NPC:s to talk to, but they where meant to be encountered in a given order. Even if I could make the map-layout and use dialog hints to try to steer the player in a given direction, I could never be certain. At this time, there was no quest-system or similar in the marketplace and I definitely lacked the skills to write one. Enter the inventory. A user and mp-employee called ZimZam had made an inventory system which was flexible and rather easy to use. I used this to let the story propel forward – the court wizard “Jon-Masn” would give you a scroll, which you needed to be able to talk to the next npc, who would then give you a fruitbasket to hand over to someone who otherwise wouldn’t talk to you because she was hungry. And so on. In a bigger story, this would of course not be sufficient, but for this small tale it worked pretty good.

A world in motion

To my surprise, Virek Online got chosen to be “community spotlight” in Metaplace’s blog in sep/oct -08. This led to a few pretty cool things – I got to show off pics from the game outside the site (this was otherwise forbidden due to the beta-agreement), the game got mentioned on Raph Kosters website and it was featured on the front page of MMO-bussiness magazine Worlds In Motion. It was cool, but also felt odd. I was just playing around, and here’s a screenshot of my game in between pics from WOW and Warhammer Online!

Close, but no cigar

Late spring 2009 I was very close to finishing this project. All places built, most functionality was working. The story was smooth. And then things started falling apart. Persistance issues, things didn’t get deleted from the ground as they should, the inventory was malfunctioning. Odd behaviours overall. Turned out, I hadn’t understood a basic premise: all “places” (different scenes) in a world activates when the player logs in. This meant, that as a player logged in every flying fish, every spawner, every scripted behavior was active, clogging the server with requests. And this was probably one of the biggest worlds in Metaplace.  So after a while I came up with a system to only let scripted objects “do stuff” when a player is nearby. This sounds simple, and it probably would have been for a competent coder, but for me it was a great accomplishment and something of a win over the scripting language.

The ending

After that things worked like a charm. A few weeks later, Virek Online was more or less finished. It would need tweaking in a few areas. I should have made the end-boss way harder, there where some bugs, a few sounds was missing, and…well there can always be more polish. But it was playable.

Not many people played it to the end though. Below is the complete list of people who made it to the very end, and who choosed a “prize” to be displayed in the throne room.

The Far-Travelled Heroes of Virek Online are:

Fred_the_third (that’s my alt) , Linnea, Obo, Raph, Reflex, Lunarraid, Isabelle, Inumo, Betyyy, Beacool, Nora, Gesully, Duskie, Sarim, SuperBobo, Alex6007, KrazyJosh1234, Tootles, GabbyGood, vBommel, GregDaniels, Jasmin, Truule

If there’s someone I’ve missed or who actually got to the end, but failed to claim the prize (because of bugs or otherwise) please let me know.

Documentation

Before Metaplace closed down eternally, I vidcapped an entire runthrough of the game. It’s divided in 10 youtube-videos. You can watch them all here: http://silkwoodmusic.wordpress.com/worlds/. Unfortunately, the sound quality is pretty bad for reasons beyond my control. Just note, that the sound was way better then this when the game was played.

Final thanks

I want to end this huge post by giving a huge thanks to the users, developers and staff members who helped me in so many different ways with this game. I have learned so much from it, and had so much fun. I never dreamed of being a game developer, but now that I’ve had a chance to pretend to be one I sort of have a craving to do it again sometime. So please, Metaplace inc, come back with something cool. And stay this time.

Thanks to Raph, Cuppy, Amethyst, Cruise, Zimzam, Crwth, Chooseareality, John, Lostbetween, Lunarraid, Slasrath, Scopique, Dorian, Jason and MANY MORE. I probably forgot most of the people who where super-important for the game, and now I can’t get back and check. If you know I used your modules or received help for Virek Online in any way, let me know please.

Metaplace (A goodbye of sorts)

While media contemplates the closure of car giant Saab, my heart is saddened by the end of a completely different venture.

It was in mid 2007 that I first heard about the Metaplace platform, like so many others through the Boing Boing website. I was instantly struck by the idea of creating your very own small virtual world so I signed up, but soon forgot about it. Half a year later the invite came.
For quite some time after that, Metaplace was my haven of creativity and learning. It challenged my intellect as well as my fantasy. It was a creative playground, an opportunity to use whatever skills I could muster up in design, graphics, coding, writing, sounds and music without any risk of being harshly critized or judged.

It empowered me to dream up ideas (yes, very silly ideas mostly) and seing them come to fruition after some time of gathering resources, scripting, tweaking and building. Furthermore, it was also the most social and warm community I’ve ever been a part of online. From the insane amount of help you’d get by people in the forum to the banter in Metaplace Central, these people were golden. One reason for this prosperous community culture was the wonderful staff, always willing to lend a helping hand.

The fact that Metaplace founder and gamedesign-legend Raph Koster was very active both as a builder and socializer helped too. Oh, and also the fact he’s a wicked folk-guitarist.

Which leads me to the music. My biggest failiure when it comes to Metaplace is that I never managed to play live in-world. The technology for live concerts where there and lots of concerts was played, but I never got around to it for practical reasons. My laptop isn’t fit to play music through and if I used my stationary PC it would wake my son up if we played at night. We had started some preparations to be able to use the computer in our studio, and was set on making the release concert for my duo Pettersson & Fredriksson in Metaplace. But now, that won’t happen. I did however play a small part in the live music scene of Metaplace. The very first concert in Metaplace, played by Grace McDonnough, was in my Folk N Coffée world which I had set up like an outdoor, hippie-esque folk café. Sadly I couldn’t attend since it was in the middle of the night for me, but it is said to have been a lovely gathering. Another great music party was the cross world tour ”Rocking the metaverse” for which the staff built a custom concert area called ”The Lotus”. It was a beautiful creation, and a wonderful concert.

As I now think about Metaplace, it becomes abundantly clear to me how it has affected my life in a very direct way. Not only was it a huge boost in my interest for the web, digital culture and gaming, but it was also my first, and very unexpected, foray into scripting languages. In turn, this gave me the courage to take a year long course in ”web technology and databases” and thus affecting my overall education and possibly my future profession.

I have no idea why Metaplace didn’t attract a lot of people. But it was apparent to me that whenever I made efforts to invite friends to try it out, I had very little luck. I’ve blogged about Metaplace – on my own blog, my bands blogs and even as guest writer on a widely spread blog run by the cultural department in my city. I’ve invited people on different forums, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and so on. But few came. I think this is also the reason to why I didn’t spend alot of time there towards the end – I think I was so sure that it would get huge once it opened to the public, that when it didn’t I just lost interest for a while. But I always believed it would catch on, and I logged in almost daily checking my meeps and comment. Sometimes I’d go visiting the Metaplace Central or check out worlds on random. It is a sad thought that we never will get to know how time would have treated Metaplace.

Perhaps it was just a child born in the wrong age. Everything today is all ”micro” and ”mobile”. Low effort, casual experiences made to be taken in small doses daily. Metaplace was not. It presented itself as a casual ”game”, but to get anything real and lasting out of it you had to plunge in head first.

And oh, how awesome it was when you did. Metaplace might be over, but as is stated, the company behind it will continue. I wish them the best of luck, and hope that we will cross paths again. I am sure wonderful, creative things will come from this. Thanks for a wonderful time and the best online experience I’ve ever had. It will be sincerily missed.

UPDATE: Saab got another chance in the eleventh hour thanks to Spyker. Alas, Metaplace.com had no such luck. The company Metaplace still exists and uses the technology to make casual Facebook games. While I sometimes play and sort of enjoy the games, I truly miss the old metaplace. I must admit to holding a small, vain hope that they will come back to UGC in the future.

Artist wanted!

Background
My duo Pettersson & Fredriksson is finally about to record our third album. Recording will start next month at UpSweden Umeå, later mixed and mastered at Ballerina Audio.

This is in many ways a budget production – we will record in a studio which we are fortunate enough to have for free and we’ll use skilled friends for photography and layout. That doesn’t mean it will sound or look low-budget – what we miss in finances we hope to take back in time and persistence.

Artwork
That said, we really want the cover to shine – and that’s where you come in. We need you to create a work of art for the cover  (well, not really the cover, but more on that later) of our record. It can be digital or analogue, illustration or painting. Have a listen to the demo-tunes below and see if inspiration strikes. If you would be interested in this please send a mail to daniel@silkwood.se, and please also include:

* Any kind of description or idea of how you would like to make the cover (colors, motifs, style)

* A link to or attachment of any earlier work of yours

* Let us know what kind of payment you would like. It’s a low-budget project, but we will pay you reasonably.

There is, though, one special condition for the artwork: The record will be a six-side digipack, with a 50X50 square hole in the front page.  Your artwork will be on the fold-in page which lies behind the front page.

This means only the very middle part of the artwork will be visible when the sleeve is closed. When it’s opened, though, the whole work is shown. We hope this could make for a very cool effect, and one I think never has done before. If the art uses this in clever and beautiful ways, that would be awesome.

Get back to us!
So have a listen to the demo-tunes below and see if you get a feel for it. I also include a few pictures of our instruments for inspiration, perhaps they’d make a good motif? Please don’t hesitate to contact us at daniel@silkwood.se.

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“Magic Lutes” in concert at TFF Rudolstadt 09

As you might now, I was at Germanys biggest folkmusic festival TFF Rudolstadt this summer as a part of the “Magic Lute” project. We were a whole bunch of musicians from around the world who had four days to put a 2 hour show together. We had a GREAT time and did two very successful concerts at the festival. (I blogged about the whole trip in swedish at Umea2014)

It seems the festival will release the whole concert as a live CD for purchase, so I can’t put all tunes up here but here are a few of them:

This is my favorite track from the concert. Everyone is playing, led by Géza Fábri (playing the hungarian lute kobza) and Tünde Ivanovics (vocals). I love the opening tune which almost sounds like an irish ballad (but it is very hungerian).

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Here’s one of my contributions, an original tune by Pettersson & Fredriksson called “Fjärilen”. It’s in the style of a traditional swedish dance, but it has something of a hippie-esque feeling to it. It starts of with Katsia Prakopchyk playing the melody on barock mandolin.
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“Of ice and fire” is a composition by Taiwanese pipa-player Zhong YuFeng (who I also played a great duet with during the concert). She claims that it’s in a traditional chinese war-music style, but to me it’s pure 70s hard rock riffing. It got pretty caotic and lenghty but oh so cool (and it gets better and better towards the end)! (I play the base-y stuff on the mandora)
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Tünde Ivanovics (SER/HUN), vocals
Géza Fábri (HUN), kobza
Zhong YuFeng (TWN), pi’pa, moon guitar
Naziha Azzouz (ALG), vocals
Adel Salameh (PAL), ’ud
Dimitris Varelopoulos (GRE), laouto
Katsia Prakopchyk (BLR), baroque mandoline
Daniel Fredriksson (SWE), mandora
Michael Metzler (DEU), percussion
Wolfgang Meiering (DEU) mandola, percussion

A comment broke my blog.

Ok, any help anyone can give me would be great!

I moderate all my comments, but unfortunately I haven’t installed akismet yet, since there was a problem when I tried to install it (and I figured I could just go ahead and not approve spam in the beginning). The last days I had noticed that the number of spam comments I had to delete was growing fast (like, 30 per day or something).

And now when I try to go to the edit/delete comments or spam page I come to a blank page, only with the number “35″ on it. How weird is that?

So, I try to delete spamcomment by spamcomment through “recent comments” on the dashboard. When I come down to around 10 pending messages, and reload to get the last batch, I no longer can log in to the dashboard! Instead I come to the blank page with “35″.

The only way for me to be able to log in to the dashboard again is to log out and make nonsense comments enough to fill the “recent comments” field. Then I can log in again.

This tells me there is a comment which is f***ing up my blog. I can’t delete it by normal means, which means I need to get to it some other way. Suggestions?

UPDATE: Using the plugin “Spam Karma 2″ I managed to delete all cued spam comments, which also took care of the problem. So the blog is happy again and I now have a good spam-stopping plugin! I’m still very curious of what exactly caused the problem though, can’t find any info about it around the web.