Palandian Majica

Majik 3D, the last incarnation of Majik MURPE

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Features

The world is filled with an endless number of games that proclaim themselves roleplaying games or RPGs. However, they are more likely advanced adventure games where the emphasis is on gaining power instead of on the adventure itself. All that matters is how many experience points and/or levels your character has gained. The world is static and you can do most, sometimes all, quests as many times as you want. You kill a major monster or a leader of some large enemy society, but when you wake up in the morning the monster is still there and the setting is exactly the same as it was before. You can go and kill it again and gain the same experience points and equipment possessed by the monster.

Majik is a dynamic, extensive roleplaying world which is controlled by the players themselves. There are no pre-defined quests or "areas"; instead there are player-built cities and quests which appear quite dynamically, even surprisingly. For example, a great monster can arrive at the gates of some city. The city's owner (player) hires a group of warriors (also players) from the streets of the city, presenting them with the quest, a quest to kill the great monster attempting to raid the city.

Majik doesn't have experience points, nor does it have experience levels. All character advancement is done by training skills, researching magic, making money, favoring the deities, and, most of all, gaining better positions in the various societies in the world of Majik. You start as a peasant and in the end you can be an emperor controlling whole continents, and your character doesn't have to be physically or mentally extremely powerful. Majik is more a world than a simple game. You don't play Majik, you live there!

Specific features:


A real 3D world
Majik features a 3D world with a behind & above -view. This means that there will be real differences in altitude that will affect visibility, among other things, and it is intended that the players do not see behind them, making things such as surprise attacks possible.

Dynamically generated polygonal 3D objects
Real and dynamic polygonal 3D objects. Majik is possibly the first 3D game ever daring to use dynamically generated 3D objects. See the proposal about the dynamic objects posted to the majik4-design mailing list. It should clarify this feature a bit.

Permanent death
When a character dies, it is removed and ceases to exist. The same goes for Non-Player Characters (NPCs) as well. This feature has received much criticism for one obvious reason: people don't like to lose their characters. However, we want death to be serious. We don't want a world where people run around attacking dragons blindly or acting against common sense in general. Permanent death is possibly the only effective way to achieve this. However, when the character gains in power the character might have then gained his/her deity's favor and he/she might have a chance to be resurrected by the deity itself or one of its fervent followers.

Language system
Many races and cultures have their own language that can only be understood by people who know the language. An orc player might not be able to interact with an elf player at all, or at least may find communication rather difficult. In practice, speech will be scrambled according to the language characteristics, i.e. an orc says "Hello World" in orcish. Since the orcish language emphasizes rough consonants such as r's, z's etc, an elf character, who doesn't know orcish, might see the speech as "Frrzag Wgold!". Some real languages have been developed for certain races but their purpose is only to provide words for some common concepts and location names since we, unfortunately, cannot rely on players to learn new languages.

Realistic and complete battle system
Things such as hitlocs, exhaustion, stuns, different combat styles, ranged combat (missile weapons and throwing weapons) etc. are all supported fully. The battle system is rather realistic: getting into a swordfight is likely to get you either killed, crippled or otherwise severely hurt, and assaulting a greater demon will get you killed, chopped to pieces and trampled into a bloody pulp within 2 seconds of effective combat.

The world writes its own history
The world is completely dynamic. If you kill a monster, it will not appear again. If you perform a quest, then the quest will be done for eternity until a new quest of similar nature appears. If you dig a hole in the ground, the hole will be there until someone does something to it. If you burn a house, village or city, it will remain burned. If you build a city, it will be there until it gets destroyed in some way and so on. By making the characters' actions meaningful in this sense, the world will have a colorful, sometimes dramatic history and a reckonable future.

No guilds
All "guilds" are bound to cities or some other manifestations of culture. There are no MUD-like "guilds" whose only purpose is to train players in different areas of expertise.

Realistic learning
Learning things takes time and patience. You can't learn skills by the normal MUD-scenario, eg. stepping in a guild and typing "train ". The actual skill is always developed by actually using the skill. Learning theory from a trainer does just that, improves your knowledge of theory. Learning theory, however, improves your chances in learning from practice and vice versa. Players, naturally, can also teach other.

No experience points
There are no universal experience points. You can't become a good farmer by killing monsters. This also means there is no reincarnation, i.e. you cannot just get a reinc and re-assign all your fighter experience into mage skills. The only way to become a good mage is by casting spells and the only way to become a good fighter is by fighting.

No experience levels
It is foolish to think that all living things share some sort of universal power-magnitude. A master magician cannot be compared in power with a master martial artist or a master carrot salesman since they use different types of skills and manifest their powers differently.

Multiplaying
It is allowed to have more than one character, however playing multiple characters at the same time is NOT allowed (even though denying it is probably needless since there is no sensible way of playing several characters at the same time). This feature exists because of variety, players can play different types of characters depending on their mood etc. This, however, is not a favored way to play. It is more effective to concentrate on a single player, but because the game lacks any easily attainable form of reincarnation, having multiple characters must be allowed. Sooner or later you are likely to find that you want to play another type of character.

Skilltree
Skills are arranged in a skill tree. They are dependent on each other; for example, evolving in "1-handed swords" will also improve your prowess in "2-handed swords" as they are similar skills that have much things in common. This is, of course, tuned so that you can't reach a "master" level in a skill in which you have only trained indirectly.

The money circulates
The game will not create money itself. There will be only a certain amount of money in the game until someone specifically decides to make some more money. This way the money can actually run out in some areas. A single player can actually affect the whole economic system. If he/she for example drains a whole city dry of money, then the city will be a poor one until someone brings in money by purchasing local goods.

Human controlled gods
Gods are really the coders of the game and they roleplay just as much (if not more) than the players. They can interfere, in their divine role, in just about everything. They form their own churches (these are much like "guilds") and rival among each other in power and in numbers of mortal worshippers.

Divine point system
Unlike players, the Gods share a universal power-magnitude known as "divine points" among each other. Gods gain divine points from mortals who worship them and they must use their divine points in cases where they want to interact in mundane matters. The more worshippers a God has, the more powerful the God is, but when the God gains in power it is then harder for a single mortal individual to attain the favor of the deity.

Uniform worldmap
Everything is portrayed on the same 1m x 1m scale, there is no difference between "wilderness" and "area", it's all the same.

Magic-users research the magic
Using magical energy in Majik is not as simple as in most games. In most games there is a list of pre-defined spells which you "cast" when you are powerful enough to use such a spell. In Majik you will have to actually form your spells yourself from components. You have to find certain "pieces" of the magical power all around the world, then you will have to find the right combinations of the "pieces" to create a magical spell. It is very hard, but once you have found a spell, the spell will be a powerful one. You will also have a chance to hide those "pieces" so that others won't find them. You can keep the all information you have learned to cast the spells to yourself, you can give the information to your friends, or you can sell it for money. Knowledge is power.

An event driven AI (Artificial Intelligence)
NPCs receive events and then do something. For example, a guard can receive a "help needed" event from an innkeeper who's under attack, which causes the guard to arrive and whack the assaulter. Races will also have morale modifiers and things like that, allowing them to behave differently depending on whether they are poor or rich, weak or strong, etc.

Offline players
When a player quits Majik, his/her character doesn't bluntly disappear but remains in the game as an AI-driven NPC. Thus, quitting the game is not a way of escaping dangerous situations. The players should quit only in some safe location such as an inn or their own home, otherwise there is a chance of getting killed.

Players run the game
If there is a player who should be removed for inappropriate behavior, the players can handle the problem by collecting a mob and killing the player together and the coders will not interfere. The players don't have rules, they will make their own rules if necessary.

Strict theme
There will be no areas such as "moomin valley" or "smurf village". All areas will be unique Majik areas created exclusively for Majik and not copied from anything.

Inventoryless system
In the most CRPG games, even the real pen & paper role-playing games there is an inventory for the character where he/she can throw the stuff he/she wants to carry, the only limiting factor being the amount of weight the user can carry. How could you carry 10 swords without a backpack and fight at the same time? Majik has developed a more realistic system for this. Characters have an inventory, of course, but you can only add stuff like clothes, backpacks, sword scabbards, belts, pouches, cloaks and so on. It is much like the inventory in most games that show what items the character is wearing. Then if you have added a belt and connected a sword scabbard to your belt you could add a sword or any other item that would fit in it. The same is true for backpacks and everything else. They just would have more or less space for the items. There are also a few side benefits when using this system in a 3D view: 1) we have no need for a space-wasting and inconvenient inventory screen when you can actually take an item from the ground and move it to the part of your body where you want it placed, and 2) the other users can identify you more easily. When they can see how you're carrying items, they see your style.


Majik Development Team
Mon 17 January 2000