Ciaran Eugene Gultnieks (born 1970) is a British computer game programmer, whose projects include Star Wars (1988, for home computers), Dogfight (1993), Slipstream 5000 (1995) and Hardwar (1998) [1] for the PC. He is the founder of F-Droid and contributes to the microblogging platform GNU social.
Gultnieks was the first employee at Vektor Grafix, [2] later moving on to work for Microprose and Spectrum Holobyte. [3] In 1993, he co-founded development house The Software Refinery, [4] which closed in 2002. [5] In recent years he has contributed to various open source software projects. [6] In 2010, he founded the F-Droid software repository, a catalogue of FOSS applications for the Android platform. [7] [8]
He is credited on the following games: [9]
MicroProse is an American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey, Sid Meier, and Andy Hollis in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the Civilization and X-COM series. Most of their internally developed titles were vehicle simulation and strategy games.
Hardwar is a 1998 science fiction flight simulation computer game developed by The Software Refinery and published by Gremlin Interactive. In the US, the game was distributed by Interplay under license. The box artwork and styling for game was created by The Designers Republic, who also worked on the Wipeout series. The soundtrack was provided by artists signed to the Warp Records label. Funbox Media digitally re-released Hardwar via ZOOM-Platform.com on September 17, 2021. Funbox Media and Jordan Freeman Group, the aforementioned ZOOM-Platform.com, would team up again to release a Steam (service) version on February 15, 2023. The Steam (service) edition remained DRM-Free.
Trade Wars is a series of video games dating back to 1984. The video games are inspired by Hunt the Wumpus, the board game Risk, and the original space trader game Star Trader.
Premier Manager is a series of a football management video games started in 1992. Published by Gremlin Interactive, it was first developed by Realms of Fantasy, later passed to Spanish company Dinamic Multimedia. The later games were later published and developed by Zoo Digital Publishing, who bought the rights from Infogrames and hired some members of the original Gremlin staff. The latest releases in the series were developed by Urbanscan Limited, a company established by Gremlin founder Ian Stewart.
Sensible Software was a British software company founded by Jon Hare and Chris Yates that was active from March 1986 to June 1999. It released seven number-one hit games and won numerous industry awards.
Star Trek: Birth of the Federation is a 4X turn-based strategy video game developed by MicroProse and published by Hasbro Interactive. The game was initially released in 1999 for Windows personal computers.
Gremlin Graphics Software Limited, later Gremlin Interactive Limited and ultimately Infogrames Studios Limited was a British software house based in Sheffield, working mostly in the home computer market. Like many software houses established in the 1980s, their primary market was the 8-bit range of computers such as the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Commodore 16 and Commodore 64. The company was acquired by French video game publisher Infogrames in 1999 and was renamed Infogrames Studios in 2000. Infogrames Studios closed down in 2003.
Slipstream 5000 is a 3D airplane combat/racing video game developed by The Software Refinery and published by Gremlin Interactive for IBM PC compatible computers in July 1995.
Ben Daglish was an English composer and musician. Born in London, his parents moved to Sheffield when he was one year old. He was known for creating many soundtracks for home computer games during the 1980s, including such as The Last Ninja, Trap, Krakout, and Deflektor. Daglish teamed up with fellow C64 musician and prolific programmer Tony Crowther, forming W.E.M.U.S.I.C., which stood for "We Make Use of Sound in Computers". Daglish had attended the same school as Crowther. Daglish mostly worked freelance but was employed by Gremlin Graphics for a couple of years.
Jungle Strike is a video game developed and published by Electronic Arts in 1993 for the Sega Genesis. The game was later released on several other consoles such as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), and an upgraded version was made for DOS computers. The Amiga conversion was the responsibility of Ocean Software while the SNES and PC DOS versions were that of Gremlin Interactive, and the portable console versions were of Black Pearl Software. It is the direct sequel to Desert Strike and is the second installment in the Strike series. The game is a helicopter-based shoot 'em up, mixing action and strategy. The plot concerns two villains intent on destroying Washington, D.C. The player must use the helicopter and occasionally other vehicles to thwart their plans.
Jon "Jops" Hare is an English computer game designer, video game artist, musician and one of many founder members of the early UK games industry as co-founder and director, along with Chris Yates, of Sensible Software, one of the most successful European games development companies of the late 1980s and 1990s.
Tim Wright, known professionally as Cold Storage, is a Welsh video game music composer most known for his work in video game soundtracks such as Shadow of the Beast II, Agony, Lemmings, Wipeout and Colony Wars.
There have been numerous Monopoly video games based on the core game mechanics of Parker Brothers and Hasbro's board game Monopoly. They have been developed by numerous teams and released on multiple platforms over 35+ years.
Star Wars: DroidWorks is a 1998 edutainment computer game and the premiere title from LucasArts subsidiary Lucas Learning. It uses the same engine as LucasArts' previous title Star Wars: Jedi Knight. The creators aimed to create a game that would be both appealing and nonviolent. The game's original release date was moved up by months, which resulted in the development team cutting some planned game features.
Vektor Grafix was a British computer game development company led by John Lewis and Andy Craven. Vektor Grafix was founded by Craven and Danny Gallagher in 1986. Their first releases were home ports of the Star Wars arcade games. The Leeds-based company then went on to become a developer of mostly 3D simulation games and was eventually bought by MicroProse in July 1992, becoming their development studio.
Dominic Robinson is a computer game programmer. He came to prominence as an in-house programmer for Hewson Consultants when he converted Uridium to the Spectrum in 1986. This was followed by another classic Spectrum shoot-em up, Zynaps, and a puzzle/shooter, Anarchy, both of which were released in 1987. After leaving Hewson, he joined Graftgold to work on the Spectrum conversion of Flying Shark, as well as the Amiga and Atari ST versions of Simulcra and Rainbow Islands.
F-Droid is a free and open source app store and software repository for Android, serving a similar function to the Google Play store. The main repository, hosted by the project, contains only free and open source apps. Applications can be browsed, downloaded and installed from the F-Droid website or client app without the need to register an account. "Anti-features" such as advertising, user tracking, or dependence on non-free software are flagged in app descriptions.
NAPS team is an Italian independent video game studio based in Messina, Sicily. They work mostly in the home computer and console market. Is the oldest Italian development studio.