Majik 3D MMORPG

For historic interest / post-mortem, this site hosts legacy material and links about a volunteer-driven, partially open source cross-platform Majik 3D MMORPG project and its multiplayer roguelike and MUD predecessors.

The project was active from year 1995 to year 2002. Initially the project started as a MUD (text-based Multi User Dungeon), then became a 2D roguelike-game, and finally a 3D game.

Total of 3313 files hosted here.
Last updated: Jan 25, 2023.

Jan 2023: Fixed access. 3 text-based versions should be accessible again using MUD clients, 'telnet'. One of them is accessible through the 'play' button.

Random fan describing the project in 2005:

"More to your liking, there's also another D&D like MMORPG that's in development that's for free named Majik 3D. They plan to create a world whereby there's no NPCs so that shopkeepers, farmers, weaponsmiths, city guards, etc. are all human players. There's also economy that's controlled by players, as well as quests generated by human players as the role of city owner (reward for executing players known to always kill newbies, etc.). Also, quests could be in the form of eliminating giant spider infestation near the city (fauna can "breed" and reproduce as there's also an ecosystem). Simply put, it's a world on its own governed by player interactions. Really good and unique concept. Unfortunately, they lack in developers and production is almost at a stand-still when they lost their proprietary engine due to legal reasons. They're attempting to re-build the engine ground up."

Even though Majik was originally a volunteer-driven, open project, at its final years the original development team opted to use proprietary technologies developed in co-operation with their employer, creating a vendor lock-in situation for the team, essentially killing the project when the company went bankrupt. However, there was attempts at resurrecting the project, again as a volunteer-driven, open project.

The game servers were not publicly open source because it made sense to keep game mechanisms and game secrets hidden from players, even though they were developed by volunteers. Later, servers were released or re-made in barebones form for all legally unemcumbered versions. The source code for clients and servers is available under GNU General Public License v2.

• A volunteer-driven project for an immersive online roleplaying game

Please also see detailed history written in year 2000 or so.

• 1994: NetRPG a.k.a. NetHunt a.k.a. Majik 0: Before firest version of Majik, there was some attempts for creating a turn-based MUD, distributed over an UUCP-network, allowing all the BBS computers in the network to have their users join the game. It was initially created by Werc, the Hobbit Hole BBS SysOp, and then it evolved into a game called NetHunt, created by the original creator of Majik.
• 1995: Unreal Reality MUD a.k.a. Majik 1 running on a multi-user BBS
• 1996: Majik 2 running on an Internet server, heavily modified CircleMUD (DikuMUD). The game was still called Unreal Reality MUD, until one developer of the game, Shinael, made it to be "Majik".
• 1997–1998: Majik 3, totally rewritten MUD sharing no code with earlier attempts, now using LPMUD driver (MudOS)
• 1998: Majik 4, 2D multiplayer roguelike game (no longer a traditional MUD)
• 1999–2000: Majik 3D, 3D multiplayer modifiable, perlin-noise generated game world
• 2000–2002: Majik 3D, totally rewritten based on proprietary SurRender rendering engine developed by Hybrid Graphics Ltd. and server technology developed by Taika Technologies Ltd.
• 2002–today: Several attempts to continue the project every now and then such as Carrot, Torrac, Undermajik, 3ddung, Carrotle, Gridle, Gridle-SDL, ... (this list may get more complete later and/or with more details, also see Future directions)

A lot of content is missing from archive.org archives and dynamic content may not work, but only these archives are able to show snapshots of how the project was updated over time.

• 1997: Original Majik 3 MUD web site
• 1998: Majik 4 the roguelike version
• 2000: After the decision was made to go fully 3D
• 2003: Last snapshot of the original Majik 3D website, showing news article on "We have decided not to continue using Taika's technologies"
• 2006: The last available archive, showing efforts to continue the project after Taika Technologies, Ltd. bankruptcy

Initially, we used a set of mailing lists over e-mail. From 2001 onwards, we used a Web forum custom written for the project, so that it was compatible with our user database, for example. Both of these no longer are running, but the old mailing list archive was found, and so was the old forum messages database.

The original forum as archived by archive.org is here (opened message) and here (topic view), but as always archive.org does not archive all.

• 1999-2001: Mailing lists
• 2001-2003: Majik Forum

• The Majik 3 team in 1997
• Team member list salvaged from a database backup

• Github: Majik 3 MUD library (server) source code
• Github: Majik 4 roguelike client source code
• Github: Majik 4 roguelike server source code
• Github: Majik 3D client source code
• Github: Majik 3D simple server source code
• Open source versions and precompiled binaries as originally released

• 1997: Original page listing our early ideas
• 1998: Majik 4 era ideas page
• 1999: Decisions on gods, priests, world, sages, this predated the "World Book" efforts
• 1999: World Book and world map, initial pre-Wiki version
• 2000: World Book salvaged from a legacy Wiki system (all over 100 bytes pages were salvaged, 155 pages in total)
• 1998: Majik 3.5 design proposals and other text files published internally for the team and publicly over anonymous FTP (/open/)
• 1998: Text files that were published with the open source release of Majik 3 Mud Library
• 1999: Design proposal for a dynamic objects system
• 1999: The Book Of Creation, Chapter 1

• Jun, 1999: Majik 3D client source code published
• Sep, 1999: Majik 3D predecessors' source code published
• 1998: Recruiting coders to restart Majik 3 while we were busy with Majik 4
• Jan, 2000: Imaginary Realities: Why do a 3D mud?
• Feb, 2000: Imaginary Realities: Roleplayability in Muds
• Feb, 2000: Last open source version of Majik 3D released
• Jul, 2000: Co-operation announced with Taika Technologies, Ltd.
• Aug, 2000: IRC meeting for discussing about Taika co-operation
• Tucows Software Library cataloging Majik
• Wanted: Mikrobitti -magazine article about Majik 3D from around year 2000, would gladly receive a copy!
• Wanted: Tilt! TV -show clip where Majik MURPE is mentioned in the show around year 1998, would gladly receive a copy!

• Jan, 2002: Majik theme by Dazzt

• Some examples of get-togethers and hackathons we kept for getting stuff done, or for meeting the normally remotely working team in real life

• 2003: Draft of a design specification for Carrot, which was one attempt to continue the project in a simplified form
• 2005: The Old Revised Revolutionary Anthology of Carrot (Torrac), returns back to text-based MUD form
  • "...[graphical] interfaces can even distract the player from total immersion that the ever-living story in a text-based game could form in the world's best graphics engine, the mind's eye of each individual player, when it's well tuned for its almost unlimited potential of visualizing worlds of imagination!"
• 2007: The Awakening of a Gaming Addict (Implementing Real Life Majik)
• 2021: Future directions
  • "For taking advantage of the lack of graphics for the ultimate immersion through imagination, there does not need to be surplus of text, but optimal amount of text."

You can contact the original developer, namhas, who has e-mail account with the same name at gmail.com. You can also visit developer profile of namhas for seeing other projects.