Who was the original developer of CK?

[Bloodsucker]

I remember hundred years ago when CK was about to be released or slightly after, there was a talk that Paradox bought half-finished (?) game from another dev, that was then finished/fixed and released as CK. Does anyone remember this? Who were the other devs?

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

I remember hundred years ago when CK was about to be released or slightly after, there was a talk that Paradox bought half-finished (?) game from another dev, that was then finished/fixed and released as CK. Does anyone remember this? Who were the other devs?

As far as i know..

A russian studio (i think more or less one guy whose name i forgot), but when you ask Paradox they say they bought a mess
and basically had to build it up again from ground and finish the game in half a year or so, so for Paradox it has been solely made
in design and code by Doomdark and Johan. That might be true or an exaggeration, i don't know.

Rumours had it the russian was partying heavily (potentially with money he had received) instead of finishing the game.
As well no idea if evil intend spreaded these rumours or if true.

 

[Testy]

Iirc, the Russian developer was called Snowball something. Maybe Snowball Studios?

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Iirc, the Russian developer was called Snowball something. Maybe Snowball Studios?

Right, that was/is the studio name, yup. Had forgotten about it.
Sergei something..and they even had released their own version of CK in Russia...as far as i recall...
Madness.

 

[Testy]

Sergei Klimov.

 

[Bloodsucker]

Thanks guys

 

[Jayavarman]

There might be introductions and screenshots from the original Russian developers somewhere in the beginning of this forum.

 

[ssj18vegeta]

There might be introductions and screenshots from the original Russian developers somewhere in the beginning of this forum.

There are. Sadly all the screenshots are not visible anymore because they are not hosted anymore.

I did find some screens here from what appears to be a beta version: https://worthplaying.com/article/2004/2/29/news/15529/

It would be cool to have some more screenshots from alpha/beta CK1.

What also would be nice is if Johan would write a 'history of CK1 development' post, similar to the one he did for VIC2 recenty.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

...
I did find some screens here from what appears to be a beta version: https://worthplaying.com/article/2004/2/29/news/15529/

That simply looks like the release version (and the article was written around the time).
Additionaly it's not realy that different from now. Don't think that had much to do with the older artwork.

 

[Saint Angelo]

I would love more stories about the old days, but it always seems to me Paradox pretends Europa engine never existed these days

I bet there's so many amazing stuff from early versions of these games and we'll never know

sad shep.