Eposia

Origin story

Eposia was meant to be a pure horse project. A forum where people talk about horses and play horse-themed roleplay. Nothing more.

The idea behind it was simple: a place where people write stories, play roleplay, develop their own characters, own virtual horses, and build a community together. The inspiration came from early internet communities and virtual riding stables, whose forums I spent a lot of time in back then.

What fascinated me most was the creativity. People created their own stories, traded with each other, designed content, and built a living world together. That's exactly the feeling I wanted to bring back to life with Eposia.

Technical development

For the implementation I chose WoltLab, after having mostly worked with MyBB up to that point. WoltLab felt more modern and was much more extensible. Working on the project, I got into PHP, community platforms, plugins, permission and role concepts, user profiles, and customization options. Just gaining that experience was already a win for me.

And then I increasingly stumbled onto new possibilities. Fantasy elements, magic systems, energy and mana systems, custom abilities, ever more complex character development. Bit by bit, the project had almost nothing to do with horses anymore.

I wanted to broaden the whole thing, make it less niche, reach more people. Sounds good at first. Except in doing so, I completely missed the actual goal. What the project was really supposed to give me, it ultimately didn't.

What remained was mostly inspiration during the most intense phases. And the experience of seeing what's actually possible, both with and without AI. I kept checking myself constantly: can I build this? Can I develop a plugin? That's exactly where it drifted off to. Less game design, more technical experimentation. That cost a lot of effort and, in the end, is also what caused things to stall.

Current status

Eposia hasn't been abandoned, but it's been deprioritized. Studies, work, and other projects, including this portfolio, have meant that active development is currently on hold. You can look at the project in its current state, though it's not fully functional or thought through down to the last detail right now.

The core idea still excites me just as much, though. Should I pick Eposia back up at some point, I'd redesign it from a UX perspective. In particular, the onboarding would need to be much easier.