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Development and release of Perimeter 2. Even before the release of the first part of the Perimeter, a contract was signed with 1C to create a continuation of the game. After the departure of KRANK from K-D LAB in the summer of 2004, work on the sequel was suspended. However, obligations to 1C remained, so in 2008, at their own expense and in the shortest possible time, the game Perimeter 2 was released, which included many old ideas that technically could not be implemented in the first part - direct terraforming, water, fast combat and other innovations.
The premiere of the first product on the Vista Engine platform, the result of the development of the previous two years - a custom project for the Codemasters publishing house - RTS Maelstrom.
The Vista Engine platform was at that time a unique tool for creating games in various genres. The platform was based on a low-code approach - assembling worlds, content management, editing mission scripts, cut scenes, AI logic, visual / sound special effects, etc. a set of visual programming tools.
In addition to Maelstrom, several prototypes of various RTS and RPG games were created on the Vista Engine platform.
In the fall of 2005, when Koenigsberg (aka Kaliningrad) celebrated the 750th anniversary of its founding, an addition to the game Perimeter - Testament of the Emperor went on sale.
The plot is based on a parallel history of the development of the Empire in the Psychosphere.
The Emperor, with the help of his Deputies, builds the Sponge Empire and creates a Mechanical Spirit, designed to help in the discovery of new worlds, which leads to the appearance of a superintelligent Mechanical Messiah, the discovery of a parallel chain of Sponge worlds, a meeting with the mythical Lost Frames of the Exodus and traces of an alien mysterious race. In general, everything we love.
In the spring of 2004, the Perimeter game was published by 1C in the CIS and Baltic countries, and Codemasters became the global publisher of the strategy. At KRI 2004, the game received two prestigious awards at once. Perimeter was named the Best PC Game among dozens of game projects developed in Russia and the CIS countries for a personal computer, and besides, the conference jury chose our project in the Best Game Design nomination. After the release, the game received a number of awards from domestic and foreign gaming magazines and websites.
Perimeter was nominated twice at the 2004 Develop Industry Excellence Awards and the K-D LAB team was invited to the awards ceremony in London in a large conference room packed with game industry stars of the time.
In the same year, KRANK left K-D LAB, deciding to start producing projects and organized KranX Productions together with 1C.
The remaining founders of K-D LAB - Yulia ULITKA Novikova, Mikhail SNARK Piskunov, Evgeny STILLER Khudenko, Alexander SICHER Kotlyar and key people who later joined the team - Oleg WHITE Belyaev, Evgeny GEORGE Novikov, Elena PINGUINE Khudenko - founded the KD Vision company, which became the successor of all Products and technologies of K-D LAB company. KD Vision has begun work on the universal VISTA Engine platform.
In May 2004, a contract was signed between CD Vision and 1C to develop a continuation of the real-time strategy Perimeter Emperor's Testament and Perimeter 2.
At the first International Conference of Computer Game Developers KRI 2003, Perimeter, developed by RTS, won the Best Technology award.
Another unique development of K-D LAB is the QD Engine technology. This is a professional 'No-Code' tool for creating adventure/quest games that allows the project builder to independently carry out all stages of game assembly from preparing materials and designing logic to the final implementation of the game and preparing the master disk. The games Dwarf Nose (based on the famous cartoon), Pilot Brothers, the Other Side of the Earth, The Pest Case, and Just You Wait! Issue 3. Song for a hare - we assembled on the QD Engine technology.
In the autumn of 2001, MOONSHINE RUNNERS were published by 1C in the CIS and Baltic countries and received from Game.EXE Our Choice and the title of Left Carving 2001. The Western version of MOONSHINE RUNNERS, is gradually being published in territories around the world. An important distinguishing feature of the game was the creation by BITRIX, headed by Sergey Ryzhikov, of a special Internet server WWW.SAMOGONKI.RU with an interesting architecture that allows organizing many online racing competitions in parallel between owners of legal copies of the product.
In the summer of 2000, K-D LAB and 1C signed off the contract for the development of a unique real time strategy game PERIMETER, built on a fresh territorial game concept and a terraforming technology specially created for this. In the same year, K-D LAB became a long-term strategic partner of 1C, signing several more contracts for the creation of new games, and releasing the Round Score puzzle, created on the basis of the original Brainy Ball idea (Second Prize of the 1996 ENIX Game Software Contest).
Back in early 1999, KD LAB began developing the MECHOSOMA project, a turn-based race on voxel landscapes. After long experiments on the new gameplay, it was decided to significantly change the project, adding arcade controls to it, replacing the visualization technology with polygonal and completely redoing the style and the universe.
The new project was named MOONSHINE RUNNERS and in 2000 it was among the nine finalists of the Independent Games Festival at GDC 2000 (the world's largest conference of professional game developers in San Jose, USA), receiving the title of IGF'2000 Winner.
In mid-1998, the world premiere of the first big VANGERS project took place - a full-fledged game built on a mixture of action/adventure/racing/RPG genres and published in Russia by Buka, and in the markets of the USA, England, Germany and other countries by Interactive Magic. In Russia, VANGERS quickly gained the status of a cult project and many fans, and also received wide industrial recognition as one of the first and most original domestic games published outside the CIS. The Russian gaming magazine GAME EXE called the game the best in the nominations Action 98 and Left carving 98. The community of fans of the game has survived to these days.
Grand Prix ($200,000) at the prestigious Japanese ENIX Game Software Contest for a MOBL game designed by Andrey KRANK Kuzmin. Among several hundred teams from all over the world, the jury chose MOBL for the most original game idea. Thanks to the efforts of the team, the game was implemented in just 5 days. Yulia YLITKA Novikova, Mikhail SNARK Piskunov participated in the development of the idea, it was implemented by Vlad Spitsky and Andrey KRON Sukhanov. This cash prize helped the company to survive, the team moved to their own cozy office.
VANGERS for the second time on the cover of Game.EXE #5. The issue contains a huge material about the game and K-D LAB with photos. In general, in 1998 the game received the best press in Russia among the game projects that had come out before. Almost all gaming publications devoted their pages to her. On Anigraf exibition "Vangers" won in two nominations.
Second Prize ($10,000) at the prestigious Japanese ENIX Game Software Contest for the game Brainy Ball, made in a few days based on the original idea of Mikhail SNARK Piskunov. The idea was implemented by Evgeny STILLER Khudenko.
A contract for the creation of the VANGERS game was signed off with a well-known national publisher - the Buka company.
The team was replenished with 3D artist Vlad Spitsky, he immediately became an indispensable link in the team.
The Kaliningrad company K-D LAB was founded. The key K-Division developers (Alexander SICHER Kotlyar, Evgeniy STILLER Khudenko, Andrey KRON Sukhanov) led by Andrey KRANK Kuzmin and entrepreneurs - Yulia YLITKA Novikova (Shaposhnikova) and Mikhail SNARK Piskunov teamed up to develop games and develop their own business in the industry of electronic entertainment. They rented the first office in an apartment with cockroaches and started making computer games as the only true product for self developed technologies, intending to conquer the whole world with them.....