Looks like it was a multi-player Zelda-like with user made campaigns.
I can see why that would be a hell of a lot of fun.
grayhaze@lemmy.world 6 months ago
As someone who has never heard of Graal, despite being plenty old enough to have done so, what would you suggest for the best files to download? Can you give a quick summary of what the game is and why it’s fun to play?
Pronell@lemmy.world 6 months ago
p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That’s the gist of it. Well ahead of its time too.
p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Oh man, where to start? It was basically a player driven legend of Zelda (top down, she’s graphics) game. Are you familiar with littlebigplanet or dreams on playstation? It was basically the first community driven game based on creations from other players, and it’s approach to scripting and level design was easy to pick up and learn (for its time). You could make entire games with it, even custom items. The game was released in 1999, so by today’s standards it is pretty basic I think, but still. It’s not perfect, but it was fun. It had its own campaign and allowed you to make your own essentially. It also had a really cool customization system. You could design your own skins, shields, swords, weapons, etc. Some of the more devoted among us even made custom music, and then you could import them all to the game. It was both offline and online too, with its own dedicated servers, and online it functioned as an mmo where you could contribute your levels and houses, if they were approved. There were actually multiple servers with their own expansive worlds aside from the main server. The big thing for me was just exploring what everyone made; the internet was fledgling and new back in those days, and it was awesome as a kid to learn other kids were out there making things. Sure, there were adult creators, but most of these creations were made by kids between 10 and 16. Now though I’d say it functions as a really cool time capsule of a simpler time. The fun came in sharing, creating and playing other creations. If you’ve never played it, you may not find it nearly as great as I do, honestly. The nostalgia hits hard, but overall I’d say it’d be worth at least poking around for those without it, just to see it. Hell, I won’t ever turn anyone away from it though. I think it’s important to archive a piece of obscure history like this and to also spread the word to anyone else who played it back then. I’d love to give the game new life.
As for files? I’d say just download the last known version of the game before they got rid of player creation, the offline campaign and forced it to always be online. The file to download is Graal 1.4.0. It contains all you need to play it, and please note, a good chunk of what’s in the game is from kids who are full grown adults now. If anything, treat it as a museum. If you do want more, the jedi level pack is a good pack to play around with.
blue_struct@feddit.de 6 months ago
Oh wow. I remember trying to play this as a kid for 2 hours or so. Since then I occasionally thought about it, because the concept is interesting, but could not remember the name.
Now I can check it out again.
Mango@lemmy.world 6 months ago
YOOO this actually sounds sick!
p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Brother, it was sick as hell
Mango@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Wish I had a PC right now. If this website gets the hug of death from this and it’s not up in a couple months when I order a Framework 16, would you send me the files?
ICastFist@programming.dev 6 months ago
The part of player created content sounds more like Second Life or VR Chat, but 2D. Or a 2D Roblox, minus the evil corpo behind it.
p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah, basically was. Such an awesome piece of internet history.