The Dark Legacy was the name of the first game Zorg created, which eventually evolved into the first Gangsterz. Written in Perl, it set up some of the key systems now seen in the current Legacy. Although it had many problems, it was mostly a learning experience.

The Plan

• The story of this game started in 2001, when Zorg abandoned his work on an other online game called Graal Online where he was a Scripting Admin of the playerworld 'Bravo', in order to start his own project.

• He decided it was a browser based game he wished to create, being inspired by games like Planetarion and AlienAA he had played at school. He had some past experience in setting up forums for websites, one of which was YaBB which is writen mainly in Perl, so he set out to learn the scripting language.

The Story

• He had no help during this time, but he had a goal. It took a few weeks to learn Perl and setup the basics for a login system on his friends webserver at razza.org. However he still had no idea for a game, so he went with a simple idea and started designing the type of game he liked playing: a medieval fantasy RPG (Role Playing Game). At this point the project was named 'The Dark Legacy'.

• The project ran into problems though; fantasy-type website layouts require a lot more graphics and a lot of skill to design. At this point in time, Zorg could not do this, so he decided to make a futuristic RPG instead. The initial layout was green on a black background and the inside of this RPG was coming together.

• At this point the game was accepting signups, though the player count was only around 50 people. One player joined going under the name 'mehownzu'. Finding various flaws in the signup system, he exploited bugs to create high level characters with vast amounts of money. Needless to say, he joined the staff team working as Creator with Zorg.

• Also at this point, the game was recruiting staff. A player named Sk8erMJ88 went shot up through the ranks and was also taken on to the team of Creators. Although Zorg still handled all the scripting alone, he now had 2 other people helping in the game's design.

• The name Dark Legacy was soon deemed to be inappropriate for such a futuristic-themed game. The name Gangsterz was chosen instead, and the whole game was recolored with a blue on black theme.

• The game had a rough ride, but the player count soon got in to the thousands with the lack of innactive deletion. The systems built in it and around it were flawed. The account system was file-based, which resulted in long loading times, and various Perl problems lead to the whole game being reset on more than one occasion.

• Although it was hard work to keep together, one key system came through towards the end of development: the ability to design your own character by selecting a head and body. This system gave the game its own unique style, with its big head, smaller body characters being inspired from Graal Online.

• The game eventually collapsed, due to the small webhost being unable to support such a large site. This was not the only reason, though. Various bugs still plagued the game and lag was one of the biggest problems.

The Aftermath

• After the game was shut down, the main script files were stored on razza.org. However, it appeared fate had tired of this first project. In 2002, a while after, the game shut down. Zorg was formatting his computer when razza.org suffered a harddrive failure. The result: the complete loss of all Dark Legacy / Gangsterz files.

• During this time, and somewhat distracted by real-life, end-of-school exams (Zorg was 16 at this point), he returned to Graal Online. There he joined a new project as Graphics Admin, starting a playerworld called Era Online.

• One of the other people working on this project, Angel, was owner of her own webhosting company. She had heard of Zorg's former project, and although never seeing it, she offered to host a complete remake of it on one of her company servers. Zorg accepted...

See Gangsterz 2 - Version 1 to continue...