Majik FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
- 1. This file.
- 1.01. What is the purpose of this file?
- 1.02. What does 'FAQ' stand for?
- 1.03. Who is the maintainer of this file?
- 1.04. How can I contribute to the FAQ?
- 2. General information on Majik MURPE.
- 2.01. What is Majik?
- 2.02. What is a MURPE?
- 2.03. What is Majik 3D?
- 2.04. When will Majik 3D be open to the public?
- 2.05. Who are the developers of Majik 3D?
- 2.06. Does Majik have a homepage?
- 2.07. Do you need my help?
- 2.08. What is the difference between WorldForge and Majik?
- 2.09. How much will Majik cost to play, or will it be free?
- 2.10. Why did you choose 3D, aren't there easier alternatives?
- 2.11. Why make Majik when other, similar projects are already underway?
- 2.12. So why won't you charge money, I really think you could!
- 2.13. How are you going to solve the problem of troublesome players?
- 2.14. Does Majik have an IRC channel?
- 3. Majik 3D client.
- 3.01. Where can I get the client?
- 3.02. What platforms does the client support?
- 3.03. Is the client's source code available?
- 3.04. Does the client have any special hardware requirements?
- 3.05. What do these version numbers mean?
- 3.06. What is the latest version available for download?
- 3.07. I have found a bug, what should I do?
- 4. Known problems with Majik 3D client.
- 4.01. The client crashes when pressing OK in the about box.
- 4.02. The Win32 executable reports missing WS2_32.DLL
- 4.03. I got "unsupported special key" when trying to move.
- 4.04. I have problems with connecting to the server.
- 4.05. All I see is a blank screen and nothing happens.
- 4.06. When compiling the sources, I got errors of missing header files.
- 1.1. What is the purpose of this file?
- This file is an attempt to present and answer some of the most frequently
asked questions about Majik MURPE. It is advised that everyone interested
in Majik should make him/herself familiar with this file thus avoiding the
need for the developers of Majik to answer the questions presented herein.
This file is written by members of the Majik core development team so
everything presented here is absolutely reliable and is the official view of
the Majik development team.
- 1.2. What does "FAQ" stand for?
- "FAQ" stands for Frequently Asked Questions.
- 1.3. Who is the maintainer of this file?
- This file is maintained by the members of the Majik 3D core development
team.
- 1.4. How can I contribute to the FAQ?
- If you have a question to ask, and you feel like the subject is so common
and essential that it should be included in this FAQ, just send mail to
majik@majik3d.org and ask your
question.
- 2.1. What is Majik?
- Majik is a project to create an online roleplaying environment set in a
complete and ever-evolving medieval fantasy world with the help of
modern 3D-technology.
- 2.2. What is a MURPE?
- MURPE stands for Multi-User RolePlaying Environment.
- 2.3. What is Majik 3D?
- Majik 3D is the fifth, and hopefully final, distinguishable incarnation of
Majik. All of Majik's predecessors
have essentially been MUDs, the fourth being a roguelike + MUD synthesis,
but Majik 3D is a 3-dimensional RPG that uses a real hardware-accelerated 3D
engine. At the moment Majik 3D is under heavy development. The source code for
some of Majik 3D's predecessors is available from:
ftp://ftp.majik3d.org/attic/ - build
your own MUD or multiplayer roguelike! :)
- 2.4. When will Majik 3D be open to the public?
- Unknown. It will probably take months, even years. Look at our
milestone plan to get some idea where we
are going and where we are within the next few months.
- 2.5. Who are the developers of Majik 3D?
- The people responsible for the base code of Majik 3D are listed below:
- Tommi "Namhas" Leino
(namhas@majik3d.org)
- Jari "Dazzt" Saukkonen
(dazzt@majik3d.org)
- Atte "Yorkaturr" Koivula
(yorkaturr@majik3d.org)
- Otso "Harum" Mäkinen
(harum@majik3d.org)
- There are also numerous
designers who are designing the world among other things, and doing
miscellaneous things apart from coding.
- 2.6. Does Majik 3D have a homepage?
- Yes, the URL for Majik's homepage is:
http://www.majik3d.org
- 2.7. Do you need my help?
- Yes, certainly. This is a non-profit volunteer-driven project where the
developers work only when they have time and on things they have interest
in. Approximate time spent on the project by a volunteer is only few hours
a week (or even less!). Compare that to a person working on a project
for a living, doing work from 8 to 12 hours in a day with benefits of sitting
at the same board with other developers and being able to know exactly what
to do next and how and doing it even if it is not so fun.
- Thus, if one does 3 hours in a week as a volunteer we would need 13-14
developers for one person doing 8 hours work in a day for a living. Then as
we add those other benefits it may be that for one we need 20, and a project
like this certainly needs more than one or two developers! Remember also
that the 1:20 ratio is only true if all of our volunteers are as skilled as
would be in the commercial project.
- You can help the project in many ways. Our primary need is of skilled
programmers, productive world designers and those with skill in computer
graphics, 3D, 2D, or with pen and paper (see our art
gallery). It is also very possible to help the project by suggesting
ideas, sending bug reports, fixing bugs or porting the client to new
platforms (show us that there is some benefit for the client being Open
Source!), adding a link to Majik from your homepages or wherever applicable
(see our banner - draw a better one!) and by, for
example, correcting the many spelling mistakes in these pages. Use your
imagination.
- And remember, when you have found a bug, do report it immediately and do not
wait, hoping that someone else will report it. They may not. For a while we had our Win32
port of the client in such a condition that it didn't work at all (there were
files missing). About 500 users downloaded the client and only one of them dared
to report such a fatal bug when a week had passed.
- In any case, the address is majik@majik3d.org.
- 2.8. What is the difference between WorldForge and Majik?
-
WorldForge:
WorldForge's approach is not to create a single game, but instead a flexible
framework that can support a variety of different kinds of servers, clients,
rule sets, worlds, and graphical "looks".
Majik:
The Majik Project does not strive to create a system for creating
roleplaying worlds, which is what WorldForge aims at, but is a concentrated
effort to create one complete and evolving roleplaying world.
- 2.9. How much will Majik cost to play, or will it be free?
- Majik is totally free of charge until it is so big that we must distribute
it using CDs and at that point the medium will be the only factor determining
the price.
- 2.10. Why did you choose 3D, aren't there easier alternatives?
- A very common question. It seems almost everyone thinks that making a
complete 3D world is much more difficult and time-consuming than a 2D world,
but in fact it is quite the opposite. In a 2D client, every tile, character,
etc. needs to be drawn by a graphic artist, and the code for LOS (line of
sight) and other such things can get rather complicated, although that is not to say the code in
a 3D world is especially simplistic. Majik's 3D client doesn't even need
excessive graphics - most of them are done by the code itself. The screenshots
available of the current client program are all done without any aid of a
graphic artist. Since a 3D world can survive without a horde of graphic
artists and is generally easier to implement, consider the possibilities and
limitations. Which one do you prefer: to climb up a mountain, turn to face
whatever direction and see for miles or to see a flat world from a constant
isometric angle? :)
- 2.11. Why make Majik when other, similar projects are already underway?
- You should instead be asking "Why have other projects been started when
Majik was already being developed?" The development of Majik began in
1995, its only competitors at that time being text-based MUDs. The developers
started the project because they wanted to make something with more depth
and purpose than the mindless monster-killing that goes on in most MUDs. The
purpose of Majik has always been to provide an actual, working roleplaying
environment that would be completely player-controlled and self-sustaining,
without the constant need for outside administration and control. The actions
of players can cause significant changes in the history, environment and even
geography of various areas and races, unlike in most MUDs where only the
"gods" and implementors can make changes to the world. When we started Majik,
there were no similar projects; had one existed, we would have
joined the project to avoid reinventing the wheel, which seems to be a popular
habit in the Open Source community nowadays. A waste of resources I would say.
- The recently discovered commercial game called
Underlight can be estimated to be the
nearest to our project at the concept level (not the world), otherwise it is
unique and easily distinguishable from our project. Tell us if there are
others.
- 2.12. So why won't you charge money, I really think you could!
- It would be too complicated. We would have to require the players to have
a credit card, which many people don't have. It would halve our player base
just because of the lack of a credit card. There are other problems as well, such
as everything concerning code contribution for a commercial project. The
majority of Open Source enthusiasts would hate Majik on principle. We
would also have to form a company of some sort to do it legally, which is not
a simple thing to do.
Instead, we hope to receive donations from the players. We're about to
establish a non-profit organization to support this and similar projects. We
could then, for example, give divine favor to the donators and thus
they would have something "concrete" for their money. This is, of course, a
bit unfair, so the divine favor would not give any immediate
advantage for the players, it would just enhance the donator's relationship with
his/her deity with less work than those who do not donate. Thus, the donators
would just seem more lucky.
The money received by the non-profit organization will be saved until needed
for things such as upgrading our server, which will be absolutely necessary as
time passes. If we then have any spare money left, we can use it to feed
people at Majik conventions or otherwise support the project. The money is
not owned by any individual.
- 2.13. How are you going to solve the problem of troublesome players?
- We're trying to build an environment with such an atmosphere that there
would be no place for such players, as they would find out themselves sooner
or later. Also, there are lunatics in real life, why couldn't there be
lunatics in Majik too? It could actually be fun to roleplay such cases.
- 2.14. Does Majik have an IRC channel?
- Yes, channel #majik at IRCnet, but it is not so popular. The right way
to get in contact with Majik is to send mail, but there is also one of Majik
3D's predecessors online, the Majik 3. It is a telnetable MUD which is nowadays
online only for chatting. You can connect to it by telnetting
majik.majik3d.org 7600. Of course,
you might also find us idling in the Majik 3D.
- 3.1. Where can I get the client?
- Right now there is no client you could use for playing Majik. However, if
you want to participate in bug-testing, portability-fixing, development,
or just want to see how it looks right now, you can download the client from
our download page.
- 3.2. What platforms does the client support?
- The client is primarily developed under Linux and it is ported to Win32
(95/98/NT), IRIX and Solaris. In the future it will hopefully be ported to
all the architectures and operating systems supported by
the Mesa 3-D graphics library.
- 3.3. Is the client's source code available?
- Yes, it is available under the GNU Public License from our FTP server. To
us it seems beneficial that other people are able to port the client freely to
all systems and make small changes and corrections without our constant
intervention.
The server's source code, on the other hand, is not, and will not be,
available to the public, because having it available without control wouldn't
have any apparent gain (unlike with the client) and it would, in time,
lead to unnecessary fragmentation and thus make it harder to maintain
centralized development with a clear, consistent goal. This arrangement
doesn't restrict you in any way - if you want to play with the source, you just
have to send us mail, join the development team and have full access to our
CVS tree.
- 3.4. Does the client have any special hardware requirements?
- If you want to use the best detail level you will need a 3D card,
otherwise the graphics will just be too slow. However, it is possible to
reduce the detail levels so it is actually possible to run Majik on systems
without additional 3D hardware.
- 3.5. What do these version numbers mean?
- (major version).(minor version).(patch level), e.g. 0.3.2.
- A first major version will be released when we aren't pre- anything and
later when we can say that the client isn't at all the same as was the
last major release. A minor version is then released when a milestone
has been achieved and a patch level is released when a minor correction
or bug fix has been applied to last minor release. Your client's major
and minor version numbers must match the server; otherwise you are
kicked out. The server doesn't care about the patch level.
- 3.6. What is the latest version available for download?
The latest version is for |
IRIX: | 0.3.1 |
| Linux: | 0.4.0pre |
| Solaris: | 0.3.1 |
| source: | 0.4.0pre |
| Win32: | 0.4.0pre |
- 3.7. I have found a bug, what should I do?
- If it doesn't appear in the FAQ's section 4, report it immediately to
majik@majik3d.org. Thank you.
- 4.1. The client crashes when pressing OK in the about box.
- We don't have any idea why it isn't working. It works fine in Linux and
other Unix versions, but it crashes under Win32, even though it
should be using exactly the same code. Perhaps this can imply something about
the stability of the operating system you are using. To solve this problem, you
must either wait for us to figure it out or if you're in a hurry, install Linux.
- 4.2. The Win32 executable reports missing WS2_32.DLL
- Your Winsock version is too old or it is missing completely. Get a new
Winsock
version.
- 4.3. I got "unsupported special key" when trying to move.
- You're trying to move without your num lock key turned on, or you're trying
to move using arrow keys. To solve the problem you must either turn your num
lock on and use numpad to move or wait until we make it work in any case.
- 4.4. I have problems with connecting to the server.
- You may have an old IP address in the majik3d.ini (Win32) or majikrc (Unix)
configuration file. The right one is: 195.74.0.76. A better way would be to
use the majik.majik3d.org address instead, because it will be the same even if
the IP address changes in the future. The problems can also arise when a link
to Majik is temporarily down or the server has crashed. In the latter
case it should come up automatically after a few minutes of waiting.
- 4.5. All I see is a blank screen and nothing happens.
- Turn your num lock on and try to move using the numpad. Just
hit one of '4', '6', '8' or '2' and the landscape should appear. This happens
because the code has calculated height for the landscape at the spot you
are standing before the landscape has been constructed and thus you
end up below it.
- 4.6. When compiling the sources, I got errors of missing header files.
- You apparently haven't properly installed all the libraries required to
compile the sources. See the README file that came with the sources for a
list of needed libraries.
Majik Development Team
Mon 17 January 2000
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