Well......we already have a post on the board about how you found Graal, but what about what you did before you found out about Graal? This is gonna be long!!!
What i did before Graal, was nothing really special....for 4 years i programmed games with Megazeux, a pure DOS program. The whole game itself was ASCII based, but it was nice because it came built with an editor and such. And its own programming language that is real easy to learn. Its real limitations is the fact that it was DOS and it was limited to the 640k, but it could use EMS/XMS memory and could play module based music (MOD, S3M, XM, etc.). The other limit is your imagination and understanding of its language.
Several times, when i have been scripting NPCs, I've really wanted to replace the commands Im using with Robotic that I used in Megazeux. Even though it was ASCII, I made my very own (and very basic) Mode 7 engine.
Megazeux is a very powerful game, as far as the editor is concerned, but not as powerful as Graal. But both have their own unique commands. One thing I wish Graal could do is natively play mods.
Here is basically what a Robot (the programmable objects in megazeux)looked like on the inside:
end
:"touch"
* "hello"
end
that would make it display the text hello at the bottom of the viewport window when you touched the robot....It even allowed custom ASCII graphics and 16 color palettes.....there is the link to one of the top MZX sites if you're interested
http://www.digitalmzx.net/
though as a warning......the Megazeux community tends to be very harsh towards n00bs and even each other...
Since I found Graal, i havent used Megazeux...but still have it