Classic Conceptual Art (found my external hard drives)
 

I finally found my external hard drives, and then had to dig a little deeper for a 12 VDC / 2.0 A plug. I'll keep posting interesting stuff as I come across it, but it might take a while because I'm trying to create a new back up of the files onto a faster external hard drive.

Here is a screenshot of the first battle fought on MoD fort after the server wipe. I had coded it such that a guild had to maintain the flag for a minimum of two minutes to ratchet up a victory, after which a new round would start in 15 seconds.

Attachment 20718

You know the Deadwood Guild Tower? That was formerly the Kull's Castle Quest. It got wiped with the server. Here is an intermediate-stage plan for mapping out what the replacement quest would have been before someone decided to make it into a guild fort.

Attachment 20719

My sketch/plan of the geography for an initial expansion the overworld after the wipe.

Attachment 20727

Here's a preliminary map of the first expansion made to the overworld after the server wipe, obviously not the final version, but the idea was to bring Graal Castle back.

Attachment 20720

This is right after the east mountain was first added. Actually, it was right after the all-nighter I pulled retiling it from scratch. If I can find a picture of this mountain before I retiled it, I'll post it here. I'm somewhat disappointed that this version of the castle didn't last because it had an awesome courtyard hedge maze and a roof garden, and especially because it was removed after already having been incorporated into the questing story line.

Attachment 20721

This was going to be the boss battle for the Graal of Fire (or maybe water...). The red guy's aura swings you around the room and if you hit those glowing walls you get hurt. The strategy for victory should be fairly obvious. I believe Cappa created the graphic of red guy.

Attachment 20722

This was a maze room for what was going to be the water temple, where you would inevitably end up getting the Graal of Water.

Attachment 20723

Oh, found a few screenshots of that version of the castle I miss.

Attachment 20724

Attachment 20726

Attachment 20725

Awww the original MoD noobs. Now mike and xen have someone to idolize.

Really cool, I actually really like those map expansion concepts.

Just wondering, why were the servers wiped?

one was for the introduction of the npc server.

Nice

tl;dr: scripting language upgrades.

Initially Graal was coded in such a way that everything was scripted clientside, with certain features being handled on the server. A lot of game features had to be moved to the server because people hacked the game client (what you would download to your PC to play) and made the gameplay less enjoyable for other players. It's harder to hack a server (home-turf advantage). As a longer-term strategy, Graal created an NPC server, which basically split scripting from being implicitly clientside or serverside to being explicitly clientside or serverside. There was a generous amount of time given to the volunteers managing the Classic server to convert the server's code to be compatible with the NPC server.

Late in the game, I converted hundreds if not thousands of levels. I didn't know much about scripting yet, but I thought that converting the easier levels would alleviate the sense of hopelessness. One day, they cut over, and Master Storm, the manager of Classic at the time, told me that he had pulled an all-nighter just getting a core set of levels up from Graal City with custom movement and hit-detection systems. I saw the code, it was definitely rushed. I became the replacement for the development administrator shortly after.

Meanwhile, there was also another cut-over looming in terms of GScript1 vs GScript2, which makes the whole ordeal seem somewhat inevitable in hindsight.

The original MoD tower scene actually came much earlier. That screenshot was when it was reintroduced.

Found a Graal Easter event screenshot taken in my favorite level of all time.

Attachment 20729

Preliminary design plan for top level of the T-shaped castle shown above. Guards would be posted that would capture you and throw you in the dungeon. You actually had to be thrown in the dungeon in order for the quest to continue.

Attachment 20730

Preliminary design plan for the new Gnome Caves. I assigned the creation of levels to multiple people over time, but nobody ever created them. It was a bit of a bottleneck in the quest timeline.

Attachment 20731

I really hated the shape of Nimda, but I don't think anyone ever changed it because it was pretty low on the priority list.

Attachment 20732

Another incomplete map screenshot showing the preliminary developments on the western side of the main Graal continent.

Attachment 20733

Massokre, that map is uglyyyyy

missing a lot of those names, tho :(

So that's what that level with the black gelat was for lol. Before the scarf quest on Classic came out, the Mask Shop was the level with that black gelat

There's a secret at the top-left corner of the level that goes to a spar arena.

Do the levels in Graal Reborn have this?

If the server is up, yeah.

Well, ain't that the truth. If you're talking about the overworld, that's a step to what was around when I left, and still what's a lot of what's around today. Cliff detailing on the continent north of the river that isn't Onnet or Graal City is all me in that map. The exception would be the old level25.graal, which I went waaay out of my way to include because it was one of my favorite levels.

http://i.imgur.com/VvlHt.png

Was Stefan involved a lot in these sort of dev updates way back then? Fair play to you for pulling all nighters and such, but the amount of work you and others must've had to put in this is crazy.