Cube Legends was a mod / total conversion by Thomas "Tentus" Holden.
The original game, Cube, is a freeware Quake-like FPS whose engine allowed for real-time editing, even in multi-player. It eventually spawned a “sequel” of sorts, Sauerbraten, with much more advanced capabilities.
Back in 2005, eleven years ago, it was blowing my mind that someone could do this, turn a FPS into this kind of fantasy deal, and in only 20 megabytes. (that was a big deal for 56k speeds)
I actually did a lot of stuff with Cube and Sauerbraten back then (I should try to dig it up). I don’t think all of it was lost; through a quick Google search, I found some of my uploads from 2006. There are a few people who complained about the bad quality of my levels, and it’s pretty funny for me to see that if I’d been who I am today, but back then, I’d be really dismissive of those maps as well. In hindsight, I’m reminded of, and am very thankful for the handful of people in the community who tolerated my bad English and, well, me being a 13 year old... I remember chatting over IRC with the programmer of the engine, who’s a pretty prestigious guy. And today it’s more or less the same situation... I’ve “made it”, and I can inspire people to do their thing and get started.Â
Level editors in video games are one of the main catalysts that propulsed me to where I am today. Cube & Sauerbraten levels were pretty much my first piece of what we call today “user-generated content”.
For a while, I ran a French community for both games with a couple of friends. I’m still in touch with one of them, but the other guy disappeared into thin air around 2009. His online nickname was Asibasth. I wonder what he’s up to now.
But anyway. I remember CL really striking a chord with me. The stock MIDI music by Bjorn Lynne played a big part in this (and I eventually found a proper version of the amazing “The 12th Warrior” in one of his albums). It was one of the big reasons I composed my own (kinda bad) fantasy-ish music for a while up until 2010, with one of the aforementioned friends.
Cube Legends seems really bad and/or weird by 2016 standards; nowadays, you can do better with Unity or Unreal in a couple days. But back then, modding games to this extent was still a relatively rare feat. You didn’t have easily accessible tools for content creation.
As for Tentus, he seems to have stopped updating his personal website in late 2012. I wonder what happened to him. I sorta struggled to find a working download of the mod, and even then I think it's not the absolute latest version, as I believe some of the unfinished maps (like Blizzard) were way less glitchy last time I went through them.
I wanted to make a video that immortalized the game in its last known state, with a run-through of the maps that come included. You can tell the ambitions of Tentus: an overworld separated in different maps, where you could walk up to entrances that transport you to other levels. While the mod doesn't try to hide its Zelda influences, a few of the maps are straight-up replicas: Ganondorf's Tower from Ocarina of Time, the feather dungeon from Link's Awakening, Snowhead Temple's boss room from Majora's Mask...
Despite the "crudeness" of the art quality, it still manages to have an atmosphere of this own, with some evocative moments (the foresty side of Runic Hills really stands out to me). Of course that's from my point of view, and I have some emotional attachment to this thing. I don’t know if Thomas Holden will ever come across this blog post but I want to thank him for what he made. It sounds silly to write it that way, but he indirectly showed me what you could really do within games and it was a big spark in my mind.Â
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