Gone But Not Forgotten Video Game Developers/Publishers Lost 2000-2017 - The Software Refinery

Gone But Not Forgotten Video Game Developers/Publishers Lost 2000-2017

The Software Refinery, Ltd or just The Software Refinery were a video game development studio based and founded in Leeds, West Yorkshire in the United Kingdom. The studio was founded by Ciaran Gultnieks, Ian Martin and Mark Griffiths, with all three acting as Directors for the company with Mark Griffiths also acting as the Company Secretary.

Ciaran Gultnieks started his career in the video game industry back in 1987, when he joined the startup company Vektor Grafix, with Gultnieks soon starting work on the conversion of the coin-op Star Wars game for the Sinclair Spectrum, with Gultnieks Programming the conversion, additional programming was also provided by Ian Martin.

 Ciaran Gultnieks worked on the conversion fo Star Wars to the Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and PC

Following the Spectrum conversion an Amstrad CPC and PC version followed by a conversion of the follow up Star Wars game The Empire Strikes Back, again this was converted to several platforms, Ringwars would also follow this again converting the game for the Spectrum.

Ciaran remained at Vektor Grafix for the remainder of the companies life, at a later date both Ian Martin and Mark Griffiths would join him for the 1989 game Strike Aces. Gultnieks worked as lead programmer on the 1989 game Fighter Bomber, more commonly known as Strike Aces in North America, Ian Martin also worked as a programmer on the game while Mark Griffiths worked on the games artwork.

 All three founding members of The Software Refinery worked on the 1989 release Strike Aces

Gultnieks was also a key member in the development of Vektor’s game engine, the 3D engine they used in all of their releases, including B17 Flying Fortress, Shuttle and Killing Cloud, the trio remained with Vektor Grafix, even after the companies takeover by Microprose, with Vector Grafix becoming their Leeds development studio.

In 1993 the trio would work on the PC version of Dogfight 80 Years of Aerial Warfare, as well as the Amiga/ST port of the game, with Gultnieks working as lead programmer on the title, Martin also worked as a programmer on the game while Griffiths worked on Graphic Design for the game.

Soon after this Microprose themselves were bought out by Spectrum Holobyte, following the take over Spectrum Holobyte closed their UK satellite development studios, including the Leeds branch where Gultnieks, Martin and Griffiths worked. The same year as losing their jobs they set up a new company together in The Software Refinery.

The company would work in several software fields including several arcade projects, but were best known for their PC games, which were published by Gremlin Interactive. The first of those PC games was released 2 years after the companies founding, releasing in 1995 on the DOS, Linux, Mac and Windows platforms Slipstream 5000 was a first person sci-fi themed action, racing shooter.

 Slipstream 5000 was the first major release for The Software Refinery and releases in 1995

The game as a 3D racing game with ten playable characters to choose from, each with their own individual flying craft, which they flew around major cities and various global tourist attractions, including the Grand Canyon, Giza and Tokyo City.

Giza in Egypt was one of the real world locations that the player could race their craft around.

The game offers the player both a single race event and a championship mode, the latter having three difficulty settings, the hardest difficulty setting (hard) has the player competing on all ten tracks in the championship mode, with points awarded for finishing position with 10 for first and decreasing for the following positions.

The flying crafts in the game all have a turbo booster equipped as well as blasters, the player can equip better turbo’s as well additional weapons to sabotage opponents crafts. Additional pick ups are available while traversing the tracks, these can repair damage to controls and engines.

There is also a white non racing ship that can be shot, this ship when destroyed will turn into one of the aforementioned pick ups. In addition to the positive pick ups there are also red icons thrown in as well, these cause your ship to go into reverse, the championship mode has cash icons as well, these can be picked up, and act as the game currency for the ship upgrades.

The game sadly did not sell well due to the stiff competition from consoles, critically however the game was well received, with the game having 3D graphics which we pretty advanced for the time, while quite quickly surpassed by console games, the game would later be commented on as being ahead of its time.

Three years after the release of Slipstream 5000, their second major project was released, the studio making away from the racing genre and into the 3D first person flight simulation genre, and their Elite and Privateer inspired game Hardwar.

 Hardwar was a free-form first person pilot driven flight simulation shooter that released on Windows

The game puts the player in the role of a freelance Moth pilot in the city of Misplaced Optimism, the city is located on Titan one of Saturn’s moons and is a profitable mining outpost, this profitable and stable economy was ripped away from the colony however when the major corporations pulled out, leaving the colony stranded with no form of interplanetary travel.

During the two centuries that the colony was isolated, a neo feudal system took over on Titan, with a corrupt and ineffective police force maintaining what little law and order remains in the colony, this is where the player comes in, the game allows the player their own discretion on how they earn a living, 

with the honest approach an option for players, but pirates will be a major issue for anyone choosing this route, the player could become a bounty hunter or just be as down right evil as the other scum that inhabit Titan.

The games developers The Software Refinery were based in Leeds in West Yorkshire in the North of England, the game features several locations named after building around their Leeds offices, the game also features references to the movie Hackers, with four of the pilots on the police most wanted list called Zero Cool", "Acid Burn", "Lord Nikon" and "Crash Override. Designer and Producer on the game Ade Carless, plays the Police clerk in several of the FMV’s that are in the game, also GMTV and daytime Tv presenter Ben Shepherd playing the role of Syd

The Software Refinery continued in business for another four years after the release of Hardwar, the company eventually closing their doors in December 2002, when the company went into voluntary liquidation. 

Since the closure of The Software Refinery, Ciaran Gultnieks went on to found F-Droid software repository in 2010, which is a catalogue of FOSS applications for the Android platform. He also contributes to microblogging platform StatusNet.

Written By

P J Gibbon