Not entirely different, mind you. But I’m someone who has been lurking in this community since the ZO days, and lately I’ve been thinking of a game design that brought me back looking for people from this world.
I’m not a programmer, I’m not excessively talented, but I have been tinkering with a game design for a long time that is essentially Graal on roids. I have design docs laying around on paper from years of thinking, but think for a moment of the potential.
We keep all of the core concepts of Graal, we lower the graphics resolution a little. We make everyone an ‘admin’ of an expanding open world. We make a market for assets, an in-game editor. We give scripting values a ‘cost’. We have a mechanic allowing control of territory, and we dump off the idea of blocks, everyone can just ‘draw’ on the map. The kicker? The currency is used for editing.
If anyone here is familiar with Second Life, the DS series Drawn to Life, or the mobile GPS game Ingress, I’m sure you can see the potential. Anyone who grew up in the Graal community from the dial up ages can see what a new generation could do with something like this.
Many of us are here because we all know the world doesn’t have anything to ‘replace’ graal. I see a lot of people trying to remake it point for point. There is a greater potential here. There is more that we can pull out of this community.
I ended up here because about a year ago I was trying to put together a good working copy of Graal with 4 player local co-op to show my wife. I played a lot with my little brother and best friend growing up in offline times. We built massive worlds. I found a backup of some stuff, but I needed more. I have been slowly picking up the bits from NekoRoy’s site, but saw the closing news, did a little research, and thought the best thing I could do is pitch my game design and see if any other talent is out there.
I prototyped a Graal Clone in MMF when I was a kid. I can still art. I can music. I’m rusty on everything, all alone, and with a design a bit far beyond my scope. Is anyone here interested in something… beyond graal?