Retribution Engine - History

History

Work on the Retribution Engine was begun by Andrew Gardner in 1997, inspired by games such as Doom and Quake and also John Bradley’s ‘Tumbling Tie-Fighter’ demo program. The original aim was to create a game titled Corridors of Power. The first public release of the game occurred in March 1999 and consisted of a simple two-level demo of the game. The game and engine were regularly updated and generated much interest. The biggest comment was that game designers would like to use the engine to make their own levels and so Paul Moxon joined the project to develop a level editor in October 2000.

From this moment, the work became two related projects. Work continued on Corridors of Power and ran in parallel to continued development of the Retribution Engine. April 2001 saw the first public release of the tools and so allowed others to begin work on their own levels.

By August 2002 Corridors of Power was just another mod for the Retribution Engine. John Eriksson and Tom Methven joined the team and began development of the game ‘Dreamworld’ which eventually became ‘Sinister’. Gunrock was also in the process of developing several levels, two of which were ultimately released.

In August 2003 Corridors of Power was completed. From this time the official name of the project became the Retribution Engine and work concentrated on the development of the engine and tools while existing designers and new ones such as MitaMAN continued to develop new levels.

In December 2006 the project hit a number of difficulties and development ceased. But in June 2007 the engine was reborn as an open source project and with the hope that development might continue with the help of the open source community.