History of MazeWorld

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On February 10, 2023, the author originally posted a brief version of the history of MazeWorld on their personal Cohost blog. Unfortunately, Cohost went read-only on October 1, 2024 and is set to go offline by 2025. The post originally promised a remake of this post in a wiki page - this is the page you are now visiting.

To those of you who I know from Cohost: Eggbug forever, and thank you all dearest chosties. For everyone else, please enjoy another effort to preserve this project's history.


2008-2009 ; Concept origins, before MazeWorld

2008 is the earliest I recall ever wanting to make a game. I started throwing together some seeds of ideas I had at the time on literal pen and paper because, for quite some time during that year, I didn't have a home to call my own, much less a computer and an Internet connection. I distinctly recall writing down all of the stuff I wanted in this game on single sheets of ruled paper, the kind I'd use in school and whatnot.

This reflected a work method I kept to this day; I function better when I can see lists of stuff and I can visualize things in the list. So before even considering what kind of game this would be, I was drafting the lists of items in it. As this is the central part of MazeWorld's identity, I started with the weapons. This quite shamelessly started by just listing my favorite guns and melee weapons in all of my favorite video games at the time, and I recall having a list that was a good 50-60 items long but very lopsided in many ways.

When I finally moved into a real home and got back a computer and an Internet collection later in the year, I started transferring all of what I wrote on literal paper to .txt files. The Windows Notepad has been (and continues to be) one of the most used and abused tools in everything I worked on, and this was no exceptions.

It's around that point I started thinking about what kind of world or universe this would take place in. I'd already had a few years of experience running roleplaying forums (remember free forums in the mid-00s? Felt like everyone was on at least 6 of those...) so I had some semblance of an idea of how worldbuilding worked. But I still had a long way to go. No formal experience in writing beyond the roleplaying, even less experience worldbuilding or designing tabletop RPGs.

The only consistent details I really wanted at the time are still central elements of today's Mazes:

  • Lots of weapons, obviously
  • A secluded and dystopian setting that would explain why there is a high concentration of creatures and hostile things to shoot or swing a sword at
  • A lot of different items that do stuff

Another element that slightly changed since was that the players of whatever this would eventually become were required to create characters that were outsiders, or at the very least, pulled into the realm and forced or at least motivated to overcome what the realm will throw at them until they find a way out. I just wasn't yet sure exactly how that would work. I just knew one thing; it worked amazingly well for one of my inspirations, Half-Life.

Naturally, this wasn't the only inspiration at play here. Besides racing games, which are a lifelong obsession, this project was coalescing all kinds of other interests; a nascent and rapidly, rapidly growing interest in firearms and shooting mixing with all the games I was a fan of at the time that remotely had any shooty bits, from the aforementioned Half-Life and Counter-Strike to GTA San Andreas. There were even a few flash games in my mind, namely wpnFire, which I spent an embarrassing amount of hours playing back in the day.

It's also at the same time that I fell into the Touhou Project, and while the kinds of bullets you find in Touhou rarely have anything to do with guns, that, too, became a lifelong obsession, so it was kind of inevitable Touhou and the themes of Touhou would eventually influence me.

From there and throughout 2009, I tried, as best as I could, to come up with something my limited experience and skills would let me attempt. I rather dreamily imagined all kinds of concepts for all kinds of games I was woefully unequipped to develop. Off the top of my head:

The 2D platformer idea

This was supposed to play like wpnFire; move in a 2D plane with WASD and free-aim with the mouse. It was meant to be set in an abandoned facility in Germany, where the final villain would have been a robot/artificial intelligence of some kind. I went as far as trying to make sprites for that robot; having watched Wall-E shortly prior, its design ended up having the same color scheme as EVE. I'm pretty sure it had a similar name, too... Sadly I lost those a long time ago.

The RPG Maker project

I don't recall much about it, but I know I tried to put something together on RPG Maker at some point. Don't ask me what version it was, I don't recall either! Just one problem; I was terrible at using it, so I ended up giving up on it.

The FPS project

As mentioned earlier, I was a huge fan of Half-Life and what the Source engine could do. So I foolishly thought to myself I had the chops to make this project into a mod. Then, I ran into a wall - no way my 15-year-old ass on a garbo Dell computer had what's necessary to even get started. So I shelved it. I briefly thought about it again later when I got Garry's Mod and was able to somewhat string props and enemies together, then I realized the sheer number of assets I'd need to get all the stuff I want would have kept me busy for 84 years. Not to mention I wasn't a 3D modeler or an artist.

Eventually, I had to go back to the devils I know, and in that case, that meant something mainly text-based. Even if they were on their way out at the time, I had to go back to what I knew. I had to build a new roleplaying forum.


2009-2010 ; Project Downpour

Project Downpour was the literal name of the forum at the time. The name was shamelessly inspired by a Touhou arrange album I was listening to at the time called Downpour Field (of course it's a Rolling Contact album, it's almost like I'm a fan of this circle or something).

But far, far from the cutesy and high-energy atmosphere this album exuded, the setting of Project Downpour mostly followed the themes I had in mind at the time. In a few dots, this is what the setting was about:

  • The setting was a secret uncharted island with a large research facility that eventually gets discovered because something went wrong in there
  • Multiple military forces converged on the island for some reason (I wanted to contrive a reason why so many guns from so many parts of the world would even be there)
  • Players could take on the role of one of these investigating soldiers or a member of the research facility, with appropriate equipment and access to areas of the island (in a VERY Half-Life fashion)
  • Whatever the research facility was up to tore the fabric of reality, and now monsters lurk all over the island and inside the facility; if nothing's done, there might be other tears elsewhere in the world and they might really break the planet

Unfortunately, that's about the extent of it. The forum never got off the ground, and I mainly attribute that to two factors.

  • Everyone was moving on from RP forums and classic forums of the era, instant chat was simply more convenient to do everything on (especially chatting and roleplaying), and social media was rising. It was simply a terrible time to start a new forum for that sort of purpose.
  • Turbulent life events. Very turbulent life events. 2008 and 2009 were formative in many ways, but mostly because those years sucked bad for me.

Downpour went nowhere, but I wasn't about to give up on my ideas just yet.


2010-2011 ; Infini-hotel concept

I did have two cool things I could rely on at the time. I had MSN Messenger (remember that?) and I had friends that, if at least in a one-on-one format, were ready to humor me and try my latest random experiment of the day.

One of them eventually formed THE seed for what was to come next. I don't recall if I ever gave it a name beyond something generic like "Endless Hotel" or "Infinite Hotel", but here's how it goes.

  • The setting is in an infinitely tall hotel, with each floor having a set number of doors and each door having a random room number.
  • Room numbers didn't come in order, they were randomized (thanks, random.org!)
  • Secretly and on my end, I had a complete list of what each room number corresponded to. Each room number led to -something- a weapon, some food, a hostile creature, or some kind of silly event, like walking in on a couple having sex or a maid cleaning up.
  • Feeding into the above, I could repurpose much of the weapons, items, and creatures from Project Downpour into a big list, and randomize it for every game session.

Oh yeah. I was a teenager. So I did commit the cardinal sin of all roleplaying settings; it was horny as hell so I pushed the horny a lot on my players. This has been somewhat of a recurring theme until I got serious enough about this game that I actually wanted working on making this game better. In retrospect, thank goodness the people I played with didn't hold it against me. I tried to hide it for a while, but I think it's better if I acknowledge where it comes from, dumb teenage shit and all.

But despite all that, I had a compelling idea; how far can players go with what they find? How well can they manage the resources they come across, fight back against what wants to fight them, and deal with the rest?

It was just a dumb experiment at first, but it proved fun, or so everyone else told me. Simple, yes. Unfinished, definitely. But I had something there, and I kept building on it. More events (what I'd end up calling "the thing in a room"), more defined gameplay elements, some kind of damage and body health system.

This was rapidly becoming a prototypal play-by-chat tabletop RPG even if it took me many years to even know what these words meant. Eventually, I needed two things: a convenient bot to roll dice with and maybe even generate these random events for me on the fly. I also decided to change the setting from the infini-hotel to a new one, more like Downpour was. An infinitely expanding maze of rooms and corridors, connected with doors. Every room was different, you could never be too sure of what you'd find next. All you, the player, knew, was that you had to push forward. The Mazes were truly born at that point.


February 10, 2011 ; MazeWorld 1.0

The year is 2011, and what better place than IRC to get the kind of play-by-chat experience with dice bots I needed?

IRC? In 2011? Oh yeah.

It wasn't my first time on IRC. I began much of my chatting on the Internet at all there, all the way back in 2003. So once again I was playing on "devil you know" rules, but it was purposeful.

On February 10th, 2011, I officially moved to IRC and decided on the name of this game: MazeWorld, or MzW for short.

I opened the #mazeworld channel on the Rizon network, and started making my new base of operations there. It did everything I needed to: support bots for dice and random events, gather everyone interested in the game in one place, and serve as a great stage for roleplaying.

Fundamentally, MazeWorld was intended for a one-on-one experience from the get-go. One GM, one player, and for much of its life, the one GM was me. Time zone differences being what they were, organizing anything with more than one person when my friends were spread between France, the UK, the United States, Canada, and Australia was a nightmare. It was easier to do one-on-one because there were only two schedules to align.

The game as I had intended it at the time ran for a few months. I also started doing things with the game that were very... let's say video game-y, like building a leaderboard of who had the most kills, most rooms visited, most money collected, and so on. But who cares, right? It let players compete a bit, and it was fun, even a point of pride, to look at the leaderboards and see it fill up with names bit by bit.

MazeWorld's basic premise was simple.

  • Your character is an outsider that died or disappeared in their homeworld and has been forcibly pulled into the Mazes instead of moving on to the afterlife by its Administrators. There were originally three Administrators, one of whom was Hebizuka Jinkou, and they were somewhat tongue-in-cheekily called Game Masters.
  • Every room is completely random in looks and contents, just like in the infini-hotel concept. You might walk in on clothes, armor, weapons, food, medical items, other things, or something trying to kill you, or even just money.
  • At fixed intervals, defined by the number of rooms you traversed, you'd either find a shop or an opportunity to do a mission, which was a short setpiece much like a Fallout or Elder Scrolls quest. Meet person, decide how to react to the situation presented to you, make choices/fight/etc., get reward (or not).
  • As a remnant from Project Downpour, the world wasn't just filled with hostile monsters, but also humans with various occupations. Scientists, engineers, soldiers, security guards (which were later split into town guards and police), and so on.
  • Pulling from Touhou, youkai eventually became like humans; civilized creatures that can talk and were part of the world as equivalent species to humans.
  • The overarching objective was to find four Amulets (in a very NetHack-inspired aesthetic) that, if found, would give you the power to open a door that leads back to your original homeworld. Each of the Amulets came with a very low chance of coming up as a random event, but if you couldn't find all four before that point, progressing forward and completing every mission meant you were guaranteed to find an Amulet instead of a new mission (there was a set of 11 spaced 40 rooms apart, so you had to complete at least 440 rooms then move forward)

And with that, character sheets managed entirely by me for the players with a bunch of Excel files, we had the original version of MazeWorld (the world), in the original iteration of the Mazes (the setting). This was the foundation on which I built the rest, and hooo boy. How have things changed since. So many things changed since.

Fortunately, it's also when I started tracking down every single change I made to the game.


Complete timeline

The MazeWiki has lived on two other sites prior to this one. The predecessor to the current wiki is simply referred to as Old MazeWorld.net or just the Old Wiki. Before that, MazeWiki was on Wikidot.

Ever since I was able to restore the Wikidot, I have been able to save additional information.


Timeline and changelog history

2011

The Dark Ages: Until version 1.5, the changelogs were not recorded at the time, so the exact changes made at this point were not saved.

  • February 10, 2011: MazeWorld 1.0
  • May 7, 2011: Wikidot opened. MazeWorld 1.32
  • May 23, 2011: MazeWorld 1.35

The 1.5 era

Changelogs for the 1.5 era preserved here

  • July 10, 2011 (official update day listed as July 17, 2011 to coincide with the author's birthday): MazeWorld 1.5
  • September 11, 2011: MazeWorld 1.6
  • November 7, 2011: MazeWorld 1.61 mini-update (backup screenshot preserved here)

2012

The 1.5 era, second chapter

The 2.0 era

2013

The 2.0 era (continued)

  • February 10, 2013: 2-year anniversary
  • April 13, 2013: MazeWorld 2.4

The 2.5 era

2014

The v3 era

  • February 7, 2014: MazeWorld 3.0 - "MzW Version 3"
  • February 10, 2014: 3-year anniversary
  • February 15 through May 20, 2014: Various post-v3 updates, similar in nature to the "revision" series of updates in the 2.0 era. These updates were not numbered or named other than by date.

The Community Requested Updates (CRU): Various changes aimed at implementing player requests and suggestions.

2015

The Community Requested Updates (CRU) (continued)

The Opus Perfecta (OP) era.

The first attempt at trying to produce the changes necessary to "finalize" the game, it was symbolically named "opus perfecta" - perfect works. After each OP update, a "testing period" was systematically launched to test the new features and, if necessary, implement immediate changes in various Testing Period Updates. Completion of the Opus Perfecta updates would bring the game to Version 4, which was meant to be the final and complete version of the game. Naturally, that plan kind of went out of the window.

Opus Perfecta part 3

The scope and scale of this update grew... quite big, large enough to warrant its own era and series of sub-updates... which meant it also got really out of hand and kind of confusing! I got really sick of the word "part"...

2016

Opus Perfecta part 3 (continued)

Transition phase before version 4

The MazeWorld community finally transitioned away from IRC to its current home on Discord during this period.

2017

Transition phase before version 4 (continued)

The v4 era

2018

The v4 era (continued)

The v5 era

Version 5 was announced as "the finished state" update and all of the work that led up to it from v4 was the second attempt at "finishing" the game. It was even referred to as such on Patreon and announced as "the big one" - the moment MzW would need no further updates. As you can see... Yeah, not quite there yet.

  • November 22, 2018: Transition to the new wiki (this site) begins
  • November 27, 2018: MazeWorld 5.0 - The Finished State update!!

2019

The v5 era

From 2019 onwards, many updates focused on simplifying the game or making it easier to run. By that point, MazeWorld had grown and had gained a litany of new features, but was resting on several years of the writing equivalent of tech debt; many of the methods used to run this game were exclusive to me only, and were as messy and complicated as they were difficult to explain to others. There was only one path forward to make this game easy to run for someone other than the author; simplify everything that needs it.

All of the updates below are documented on Changelog/2018-2019.

  • January 17, 2019: MazeWorld 5.1 - KISS Update (Keep It Simple, Stupid!)
  • February 10, 2019: 8-year anniversary
  • February 20, 2019: MazeWorld 5.2 - Extra game modes update
  • April 23, 2019: MazeWorld 5.3 - Simplification update #2: Blood
  • May 18, 2019: MazeWorld 5.4 - Simplification update #3 : Stress and inaccurate hits
  • July 13, 2019: MazeWorld 5.41 - Weapon accessory tweaks and simplifications
  • July 21, 2019: MazeWorld 5.42 - Detective update
  • September 5, 2019: MazeWorld 5.43 part 1 - The SteveMRE Konbini Update part 1/3. This update had to be broken up into multiple parts because if I hadn't, I'd have needed two consecutive all-nighters to make all the necessary changes...
  • September 6, 2019: MazeWorld 5.43 part 2 - The SteveMRE Konbini Update part 2/3
  • September 6, 2019: MazeWorld 5.43 part 3 - The SteveMRE Konbini Update part 3/3
  • September 24, 2019: MazeWorld 5.44 - Various changes in various domains
  • November 10, 2019: MazeWorld 5.45 - Simplification update #4: Ores, metals and mining
  • November 14, 2019: MazeWorld 5.46 - Simplification update #5
  • December 8, 2019: MazeWorld 5.47 - Simplification update #6

2020

The v5 era (continued)

All of the updates below are documented on Changelog/2020.

  • January 6, 2020: MazeWorld 5.48 - Simplification update #7
  • January 12, 2020: MazeWorld 5.49 - Simplification update #8
  • February 10, 2020: 9-year anniversary
  • March 17, 2020: MazeWorld 5.5 - Game mechanics changes, new ammo types
  • April 10, 2020: MazeWorld 5.51 - Changes to game mechanics, simplification of damage models
  • May 7, 2020: MazeWorld 5.52 part 1 - Bestiary update: Preparatory changes
  • May 14, 2020: MazeWorld 5.52 part 2 - Bestiary update
  • May 23, 2020: MazeWorld 5.53 - Update to food and hunting
  • June 24, 2020: MazeWorld 5.54 - Magazines and other knick-knacks
  • September 8, 2020: MazeWorld 5.55 - 555-WE-SAFE update
  • October 15, 2020: MazeWorld 5.56 - The Unintuitively Named Update (that has nothing to do with 5.56mm firearms)
  • November 15, 2020: MazeWorld 5.57 - The Shotgun Blitz update

2021

The v5 era (continued)

All of the updates below are documented on Changelog/2021.

  • January 20, 2021: MazeWorld 5.58 - The late, late LBE update
  • January 24, 2021: MazeWorld 5.59 - Expansion of Maze Customs minor mods

The v6 era

This time, I knew that giving it a big version number wasn't corresponding to a truly major update. In fact, version 6.0 was mostly about welcoming players again, the only real change was new restaurant menus. I knew I would be making more incremental updates throughout the year and beyond, so I focused on that.

You can also probably tell I was obsessed with Yakuza / Like a Dragon. (lol)

  • January 28, 2021: MazeWorld 6.0 - The Big One
  • February 7, 2021: MazeWorld 6.01 - Various minor changes and improvements
  • February 10, 2021: 10-year anniversary
  • February 13, 2021: Development of our original Discord dicebot, Sidekick, is discontinued. Within two hours of my announcing the end of Sidekick, player and contributor The Moth Court developed a test version of SnakeEyes, which became our current dicebot.
  • February 17, 2021: SnakeEyes officially goes live.
  • February 18, 2021: MazeWorld 6.02 - Telephone Club Update (does not contain actual telephone clubs)
  • April 9, 2021: MazeWorld 6.03 - Simplification Update #9: Kiwami Edition
  • May 3, 2021: MazeWorld 6.1 - Character Traits Update
  • May 29, 2021: MazeWorld 6.1.1 - Various changes and fixes
  • June 27, 2021: MazeWorld 6.2 - The Shields Update

The early v6 era - 1000-Weapon Update

Multiple years in the making, the 1000-Weapon Update is a colossal task that did exactly what it says on the tin: add as many weapons to the game as necessary to give MazeWorld a thousand different weapons to play with. I aimed for a parity of about 3 firearms to 1 melee weapon, or more accurately, 75% weapons in Classes 1-4, 25% of the rest. This was a huge undertaking, suggestions were collected on a Google Docs document for years, and I picked August to start implementing everything. As such, there was no v6.3 - I instead started at v6.3.1 to keep track of the number of parts I'd done. Then, I divided each weapon into their ingame categories, grouped them into pairs (one firearm category and one melee weapons category) at random, then went to town.

  • August 15, 2021: MazeWorld 6.3.1 - The 1000-Weapon Update, Part 1: First, The Ammo
  • September 6, 2021: MazeWorld 6.3.2 - The 1000-Weapon Update, Part 2: Machine guns and one-handed swords
  • October 2, 2021: MazeWorld 6.3.3 - The 1000-Weapon Update, Part 3: Revolvers and bayonets
  • October 3, 2021: MazeWorld 6.3.3.1 - The 1000-Weapon Update, Part 3.1: New speedloaders and speed strips
  • October 18, 2021: MazeWorld 6.3.4 - The 1000-Weapon Update, Part 4: Auto pistols and Staff/pole weapons
  • November 23, 2021: MazeWorld 6.3.5 - The 1000-Weapon Update, Part 5: Combat rifles and Exotic Melee weapons
  • December 28, 2021: MazeWorld 6.3.6 - The 1000-Weapon Update, Part 6: Shotguns and Whip/Lash weapons

2022

This is the "current-day", in the sense that every update since 2022 is on the regular Changelog.

The early v6 era - 1000-weapon Update (continued)

I was in a bit of a rush to add the new weapons to the game before the next anniversary, so there were many rapid-fire updates here. Working on MzW often took a toll on my sleep schedule, but the pace was relentless here!

  • January 1, 2022: MazeWorld 6.3.7 - The 1000-Weapon Update, Part 7: Underbarrel weapons and Crude weapons
  • January 2, 2022: MazeWorld 6.3.8 - The 1000-Weapon Update, Part 8: Hand grenades and Axes
  • January 9, 2022: MazeWorld 6.3.9 - The 1000-Weapon Update, Part 9: Grenade launchers and Knives
  • January 23, 2022: MazeWorld 6.3.10 - The 1000-Weapon Update, Part 10: Pistols and One-handed clubs
  • February 1, 2022: MazeWorld 6.3.11 - The 1000-Weapon Update, Part 11: Precision rifles and Two-handed clubs
  • February 9, 2022: MazeWorld 6.3.12 - The 1000-Weapon Update, Part 12: Conventional rifles and Handgear
  • February 10, 2022: 11-year anniversary and MazeWorld 6.3.13 - The 1000-Weapon Update, Part 13: Submachine guns and Two-handed swords

The middle v6 era (post 1000-weapon update):

After celebrating 11 years of MazeWorld with a preposterous pile of new guns and weapons, regular updates resumed; rebalancing, simplifying, optimizing, and the occasional new stuff.

  • March 5, 2022: MazeWorld 6.4 - The Love Hotel Grabbag of Optimizations Update
  • March 22, 2022: MazeWorld 6.5 - Further Balance Updates
  • April 20, 2022: MazeWorld 6.5.1 - Simplification Update #10: Completely Baked Edition
  • July 20, 2022: MazeWorld 6.5.2 - Lockpicking minigame update

The later v6 era

Starting late in 2022, a player-turned GM, GenericArchangel, became invested in suggesting patches, changes, and new ideas to the game, which proved to be consistently good and useful. Numerous updates from that point on have been co-designed with their input, if not outright written by them. While I remain the game's primary author, their contributions are invaluable enough that I consider them partially responsible for the state of "modern" MazeWorld. Although their involvement started earlier, I tend to consider the start of the "co-designed" era to be 6.6, as it was the first major co-designed update and the introduction of the AR-10 to Maze Customs; something Gen had been wanting for quite some time by that point.

  • August 24, 2022: MazeWorld 6.5.3 - The R&R Update. Co-designed with GenericArchangel.
  • September 18, 2022: MazeWorld 6.5.4 - Guns, Blood, and Drugs; A balancing update
  • October 3, 2022: MazeWorld 6.5.4.1 - Archery rule patch
  • October 17, 2022: MazeWorld 6.6 - The Battle Rifle Update. Co-designed with GenericArchangel.
  • October 18, 2022: MazeWorld 6.6.1 - The Str⑨ngest Balance Update. Co-designed with GenericArchangel.
  • October 30, 2022: MazeWorld 6.6.2 - The Redrawn Map Update
  • November 1, 2022: MazeWorld 6.6.3 - The Static MG Update. Co-designed with GenericArchangel.
  • December 24, 2022: MazeWorld 6.6.3.1 - Scary Snipers with Braking Power Mini-Update

2023

The later v6 era (continued)

  • January 23, 2023: MazeWorld 6.7 - The Bestiary Update. Co-designed with GenericArchangel.
  • February 10, 2023: 12-year anniversary
  • March 18, 2023: MazeWorld 6.7.1 - The Mining Overhaul Update
  • June 19, 2023: MazeWorld 6.8 - Deep Wound update
  • August 19, 2023: MazeWorld 6.8.1 - Mining hotfix
  • September 26, 2023: MazeWorld 6.8.2 - Explosives hotfix
  • October 4, 2023: MazeWorld 6.9 - The Nice, Big Re-Balance Update
  • December 25, 2023: MazeWorld 6.9.1 - The Soldier of Fortune Update. Designed by GenericArchangel with minor assistance from me for implementation.
  • December 27, 2023: MazeWorld 6.9.1.1 - Melee Repair Kit hotfix

2024

As of the time of publishing, this is the current year. We are still in what I consider the "later v6 era", with the hopes of finishing everything on my roadmap to v7 before the game's next anniversary in February 2025. And maybe, this time, third time's the charm, and I really won't need to make further major changes...

  • February 10, 2024: 13-year anniversary and posting date of the History of the original MazeWorld post on cohost


Important pages

These are the resources used to build the timeline above.

Retrieved from "http://mazeworld.net/w/index.php?title=History_of_MazeWorld&oldid=16896"