Ukrainians love city-building strategies, and not only play them, but also develop them. Our selection of the best city-builders includes two Ukrainian games at once - the futuristic Cliff Empire from the Lviv studio Lion's Shade and the pastoral Ostriv from Kharkiv resident yevhen8. Perhaps the roots of this love stretch back to the early 1990s, because it was SimCity (1989) from Maxis Software, which laid the foundations of the city-building strategy genre, that became the first big game for many Ukrainian gamers of the first and second wave.
Did you know that in the mid-1990s there was a company in Kyiv that worked with Maxis, helped them port games to Windows, including the younger, or "kiddie" version of SimCity - SimTown (1995), and even developed projects commissioned by the large Maxis Software? This is the Kyiv studio Tavex, probably one of the first Ukrainian companies engaged in game outsourcing and game development. If you count by the year of foundation, then there are no questions at all, because Tavex was created a year before Ukraine gained its long-awaited independence.
The company, or as they called it then, Tavex, is a joint American-Ukrainian industrial enterprise founded in 1990. Such joint companies sprang up like mushrooms after rain at the end of Perestroika. From Americans, usually emigrants from the socialist camp countries, they received money and access to the Western market, from Ukrainians - expertise and brains. The Tavex office was located on Nauky Avenue 41/1 in the L-shaped building of the Institute of Semiconductor Physics, which at that time was leased to the Institute of Cybernetics. The company had two directions: sale and integration of security systems - video surveillance, access systems, etc., which, by the way, is still in operation; and offshore programming, or as they would say today - outsourcing. So Tavex is probably one of the first gaming outsourcing companies in Ukraine. By the way, the company's website is still up and running and it's a very powerful nostalgic greeting from the Internet of the mid-1990s.
Tavex competes with Luhansk's Meridian'93 for the title of the Ukrainian developer that released the first commercial game. The strategy game Admiral Sea Battles (1996) by Meridian'93 was published in the West by Megamedia Corporation on September 30, 1996, and the golf simulator SimGolf (1996) by Tavex was released under the Maxis brand on November 15, 1996, that is, 6 weeks later. So Admiral Sea Battles retains the title of the first Ukrainian commercial game, SimGolf is the second, and the third is Chasm: The Rift by Action Forms, which we have already talked about.
Interestingly, on the Moby Games website, which is considered the most accurate archive of old video games (in fact, it is almost a Wiki, filled in by users under the supervision of editors), SimGolf is attributed exclusively to the publisher Maxis (since 1997, it has been a division of Electronic Arts, which is responsible for the The Sims series), but if you look at the game's credits, it turns out that almost all the surnames in it are Ukrainian. Actually, these are the employees of the Kiev studio Tavex, who worked on the game under the leadership of Volodymyr Vinetsky, who is listed as the creative manager of SimGolf. The same situation is with the English Wikipedia - Tavex is not mentioned, but the surnames of the developers are listed. I have already corrected the Ukrainian Wiki page. As Volodymyr Vinetsky himself says, at that time they were not very knowledgeable about legal aspects, so it is possible that the name of the Ukrainian studio, which actually performed almost all of the game development, did not appear in official papers and advertising.
Actually, in order not to forget that the Ukrainian gaming industry is not a "branch" of the Russian one, but has deep roots and was founded almost simultaneously with the Eastern European gaming industries, I decided to recall the Tavex studio and extract my (in 1997 I was still writing under the pseudonym Oleg Nilov) interview with Volodymyr Vinetsky, which was published in the weekly "Computer Review" No. 28 for 1997, dated August 22, 1997.
Below is the author's translation from Russian with improvements and additions from 2024. Interestingly, this is the first article to which I gave the title "Made in Ukraine". As our regular readers know, this title was later used in "Home PC" and Gameplay and now continues to be used for materials dedicated to Ukrainian games. There are already over 250 materials under the corresponding tag on Mezha.
Made in Ukraine
Continuing the story about Ukrainian game software development companies, which began in "Computer Review" (No. 18 and 23 for 1997) with articles about Action Forms and Future-Art, we bring to your attention an interview with Volodymyr Vinetsky, deputy director of the Kiev company Tavex, which develops computer games.
Oleg Danylov: There are legends about your company. I often heard that someone in Kyiv works for Maxis. Who exactly?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: The story is this. Three to three and a half years ago ( this is about the beginning of 1994 – approx. from 2024 ), a friend of one of the American co-founders of our JV ( Joint Venture – approx. from 2024 ) was engaged in programming. He is the author of Alley Cat, if you remember, there was such a game on the first XTs ( i.e., we are talking about designer and programmer Bill Williams – approx. from 2024 ). We got in touch with him, exchanged thoughts, ideas and decided to start cooperating. We worked for about a year, then he offered our project to Maxis. After that, we worked with Maxis for two years.
Oleg Danylov: What kind of game was that?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: To be precise, we made three games for them, two of which you probably know. There is a children's version of SimCity - SimTown. By the way, it has already appeared on pirated discs. The second game - Widget Workshop: The Mad Scientist's Laboratory , which is somewhat reminiscent of the famous The Incredible Machine with a bias in electrical engineering, also in a version for children. Both of them migrated from Macintosh, and although we made them ( we are talking about porting to Windows 3.x, because in the early 1990s Maxis developed games primarily for the Apple platform - approx. from 2024 ), the idea does not belong to us. The third game, released last year, made from start to finish by Tavex, is a three-dimensional golf simulator SimGolf. This is our largest work and one of the first games in the world to consist of two components: the simulator itself and a three-dimensional golf course editor. And the editor occupies a worthy place in this pair.
Oleg Danylov: Why is nothing known about your company in Ukraine?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: We were not interested in getting publicity here, our market is not ready for this. This is, you know, cheap fame. Unfortunately, there is no point in making games for Ukraine yet. ( In 1997, this was really true, the level of game piracy was 99.99% - approx. from 2024 )
Oleg Danylov: How are your games selling in America?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: I don't have data on Widget Workshop and SimTown. But since their release (winter 1995), the products have been localized for eight to ten countries. This is an indicator that they are selling well. SimGolf is selling better than the other two. It was released last year (1996).
Two-dimensional sprite objects are placed on a three-dimensional landscape. Mouse Swing technology is used to control the blow. The game has its own 3D engine, and many polygons are needed to create a real three-dimensional landscape.
One of the tasks we faced was to recreate real, well-known golf courses, down to the trees and houses. We created a special software product for chipping and digitizing maps. The course editor itself, which is supplied as an EndUser tool, was wanted to be purchased by companies involved in the creation of golf courses in America, but Maxis has not yet decided to do so.
After SimGolf, several similar games from other developers were released. Of course, Links holds the palm of the championship here. For each sports game, publishers involve a famous golfer: for Links – Arnold Palmer, for SimGolf – Robert Trent Jones ( a famous American golf course designer – approx. from 2024 ), for Jack Nicklaus Golf – Jack Nicklaus. In our game, there are voiced moments when Trent Jones gives instructions and comments on shots.
Oleg Danylov: So, your cooperation with Maxis was quite successful?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: Yes, you could say that. If Maxis had not gotten into the difficult situation it is in now, I think the cooperation would have continued. Now Maxis has become the property of Electronic Arts ( the acquisition took place on July 28, 1997, this interview was prepared in early August 1997 – approx. from 2024 ). And although it retains its brand, it is going through a difficult transition process. By the way, two of our guys work at Maxis, they signed a three-year contract with them.
Oleg Danylov: You said that you started working with another company?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: Yes, after we broke off relations with Maxis, because it is practically impossible to work with one order. Even before the break, or rather, it was not a break, but a smooth transition, because we started making the second version of SimGolf, worked on it for more than five months, but the results are still somewhere at Maxis. At the same time, we were looking for contacts with other customers. In Germany, this project is not related to games, but in America there are two game projects. In my opinion, these companies are not well-known enough. One of them is CoinMan, and the other is Led Effects, which cooperates with Sharp Communication. This company previously dealt only with slot machines.
Oleg Danylov: Tell us more about the game projects.
Volodymyr Vinetsky: We are currently developing three-dimensional billiards.
Oleg Danylov: But there have been many of them. What is original about your idea?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: I have not yet seen any three-dimensional billiards that would use modern technologies: DirectX, Direct3D, etc. The best of them is Virtual Pool - I, for example, really like it, a good toy, even against the background of arcade and strategy games that have appeared recently. It was released a year ago and immediately gained universal recognition due to its simplicity and pleasantness in use - you want to play it. Of course, we have not yet managed to achieve such a degree of convenience. We have not been playing billiards for long - the second month, but there is already something to look at.
The game is designed for DirectX and video accelerator boards (the first truly gaming 3D accelerator, the 3dfx Voodoo Graphics 3D, appeared in late 1995, forever changing the world of PC gaming – approx. from 2024). Now it makes no sense to make games that are not focused on MMX (a set of additional instructions specific to the encoding / decoding processes of streaming audio / video data, i.e. for games and multimedia, which first appeared in Pentium MMX processors in early 1997 – approx. from 2024) or video accelerators. They give approximately the same result; more precisely, if you use only MMX, it will be a result at the level of average accelerators, for example, S3 ViRGE3D. Expensive accelerators, such as the 3dfx Voodoo Graphics 3D, provide a gain of about twice, but accordingly they are three to four times more expensive.
Oleg Danylov: Your games are simulators. Why did you start working in this genre?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: This is probably a subconscious choice. I don’t know how much we were interested in making 3D-action. There was never a real boom among simulators, there were kind of hits that everyone treated favorably. The same SimCity, Civilization ( according to the then Western classification, Civ was precisely a simulator - note from 2024 ). Many modern genres, in fact, arose from SimCity. 3D-action is still an indulgence of consumer tastes. There is, perhaps, some zest in the fact that we are not making a consumer product, but a game with some sophistication and artistry, intellectual.
Oleg Danylov: It often happens that developers create a game for themselves.
Volodymyr Vinetsky: Of course, this is an important point in development, otherwise you can't make a good product.
Oleg Danylov: So, you liked playing simulators?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: No, we just like to play 3D-action: Quake, Duke, even DOOM so far. But this is for relaxation, and we have a special attitude towards simulators, logic games, strategies. Of course, we can’t do without 3D-action, but developing 3D-action and simulators are completely different things. One thing is the pursuit of fame, another is work for the soul.
Oleg Danilov: Have you contacted any of the Russian publishers? ( sorry, we didn’t understand then – note from 2024 )
Volodymyr Vinetsky: The other day I spoke with a representative of one of these companies, and we agreed that it was too early to make toys in Russia. They were interested in multimedia encyclopedias. From a programming point of view, making an encyclopedia is not at all difficult, we have the artists, but unfortunately we don’t have a scriptwriter yet, but for this product a scriptwriter is still needed.
Oleg Danylov: Do you have a large staff?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: There are only 10-15 programmers and artists. Games are just one of our many areas of activity. So far we have not had any failures, but in order to survive, you cannot concentrate on one thing. We also deal with video surveillance systems, security alarms, and some physical devices.
Oleg Danylov: How did you get into gaming, since it's not the most profitable business?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: At first, an agreement with a Western customer was enough. They pay - we develop, it is impossible to work differently in our country. Sitting here, it is difficult to penetrate their market, and ours has not yet formed. Therefore, you have to work through a Western representative: first do some development, then organize a joint venture, participate in sales and only in the future shape the market. The final stage of such activity is to come up with a completely own game and implement it yourself. Now, the final control and final decision remain with the customer. He can say that all this is good, but the market needs something else.
Oleg Danylov: There is an opinion that it is difficult to work with Western publishers, is that true?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: What does it mean – difficult? Of course, if we had made Golf ourselves, we would have made it better and faster. For example, we don't like the interface that was included in the final version, and what's more, we have our own version with the original interface. This is not due to the fact that Americans don't seem to know the market and don't understand what they want, but rather to the problems of large companies. With those specific people who exercised control at Maxis. It was often said, "do it like those people", in the case of SimGolf it was - "like Microsoft Golf". Americans are very conservative. As for humor, they certainly know better, their humor is completely different from ours.
Oleg Danylov: It turns out that all domestic development companies work for the West ( unfortunately, this period ended in the early 2000s, Ukrainians began to work more with Russians, and this later hit our studios painfully - approx. from 2024 ), in Russia they all have a clearly internal focus.
Volodymyr Vinetsky: To make a game, you need money first of all. The publisher should invest it in development, first of all. I don’t know of any such companies in Ukraine ( the situation has not changed yet – note from 2024 ). Moreover, I have never heard of Russian companies making a profit from games.
Oleg Danylov: Can we conclude that you don't see any prospects for your games in Russian? (I can't throw out the words from the song, but how stupid we were... - note from 2024)
Volodymyr Vinetsky: Well, why, when the game is already made, it is easy to offer it to someone, it is more difficult to make something from scratch. I think we will participate in the spread of billiards. Now we are also making a 3D screensaver with Schedule and Internet navigator functions, it will be built using a modular structure, have playlists and the ability to connect third-party modules. The product is also being developed based on Direct3D. The name of the project is 3D Screen Machine. Both of these projects were demonstrated at the E3 exhibition and received good reviews.
Oleg Danylov: Let's go back to billiards.
Volodymyr Vinetsky: The technology is currently being tested and the speed is being tested. Since we use Direct3D, the resolution can be as high as your computer allows, it's all about speed. In general, Direct3D is still a raw product. One of the problems is that each board "understands" object textures a little differently.
The cue is controlled by the mouse. By the way, the interface for controlling the stroke in SimGolf is our patented Mouse Swing technology. We used mouse control for the first time, although we ourselves did not believe in it, knowing how difficult it is to draw a clear line with the mouse in a graphic editor. But after playing with mouse control and keys, we were satisfied with the results. So we followed the same path here.
(Unfortunately, the patenting of the Mouse Swing technology was not completed due to problems with the Maxis acquisition, and then a similar technology appeared in all golf simulators. Ironically, now an analogue of Mouse Swing, adapted for a gamepad, is used by the official golf game EA Sports PGA Tour from the same Electronic Arts that acquired Maxis in 1997, preventing Tavex from patenting its own technology - approx. from 2024. )
One of these days, an off-center hit will be implemented. Now we only have the physics of ball movement, interaction with the boards, pockets, and the cue, but only for direct hits. While on a Pentium 133, 5 fps is obtained on the full screen, to create some interactivity, at least 15 fps is necessary, more cannot be achieved on modern accelerators and Direct3D (what will modern adherents of 60+ fps say?! - approx. from 2024).
Oleg Danylov: What are the computer requirements for this game?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: There are no specific requirements. But don't forget that the game renders a 3D scene. Currently, the target machine is a Pentium 133 and a 3DVirge accelerator with 2 MB of memory.
Oleg Danylov: What will be in the game besides billiards?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: Of course, tournaments are planned. Multiplayer mode, network game, which still seems to be not used in billiard simulators. There was a good idea for SimGolf 2, but it was not proven as a game, although we already had everything we needed. This is a game server based on the Internet node, it has the entire collection of tools and data related to the game. Thus, you can join the server at any time ( n fact, for 1997, a rather bold decision - approx. from 2024). It resembles the KALI and MPlayer.com servers, but is more advanced in the direction of one game. When KALI did not exist, we organized a similar server with SimGolf. It was possible to hold network tournaments, exchange messages, and there was also a database of players, many auxiliary tools. This task will be solved here.
Oleg Danylov: By the way, how will the machine play?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: We need a good computer player that has artificial intelligence, AI. Although the computer can calculate all the shots, it does not happen quickly enough, and in a limited time a person will intuitively find the best shot faster (there were times when AI could not keep up with a person! - approx. from 2024 ). If the computer calculates situations for about a minute, it is no longer interesting. Solving a direct problem (where the ball will go) is much easier than finding the best ball that will hit a given point. The task is not to find the best player, but to break the computer player down to acceptable levels so that it is interesting to play with him. This task is rather psychological.
Oleg Danylov: A classic question for game development – when will it be released?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: I can’t name a deadline right now. We don’t even have a publisher yet. CoinMan is just a partner who finances us. The development is divided into stages, the first of which is E3. The reviews are good, although, in my opinion, everything is progressing very slowly. And although, as they say, any of your code can be accelerated, DirectX is Microsoft code. In two months, the next stage will begin - you can even play billiards online. To make the game fast, we have to bypass Direct3D technology, because it is still insufficiently documented and crude. But as for products that use Direct3D, I think we are at the forefront: we will squeeze everything we can out of it. The next stage, and it is going at a breakneck pace, is to make it in time for the American Christmas sales season, which starts in October. In total, the development period is six months.
Oleg Danylov: Will there be anything on stage besides a pool table?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: We are thinking of placing figures of three-dimensional people here, at the bottom of the screen a three-dimensional hand with a cue, inspired by DOOM. There will probably be an opportunity to choose a player figure. The main thing is the naturalness of the movements. While I doubt this, the character's approach to the table, tilt, preparation for the blow... Unlike many three-dimensional games, the task of our game is realism. As it turned out during the development of SimGolf, the most difficult thing is to simply make a good animation of the player. In the game, all the animation was filmed from a real character, and, as it seems to me now, it would be better, without relying on the Americans, who did it for about a year ( at that time mocap was only starting to be used for games, so yes, it was difficult and long - approx. from 2024 ), to convey the movements qualitatively. Here, in billiards, the real style of the player and his movements is also necessary.
Oleg Danylov: Are you a fan of billiards yourself?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: When we started development, we bought a table and started playing. We haven't yet involved professional players in the work. Now we need a physics and mathematics programmer, and we have one, because in SimGolf we have already gone through the kinematics of ball movement (flight, rolling).
Oleg Danylov: How do game ideas come about?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: SimTown and Widget Workshop are Maxis ideas, it's clear where they came from. Widget Workshop is a very good game, it's not an analogue of Incredible Machine, but an original idea. SimGolf is our idea. Probably, game ideas are born over a cup of coffee, in nature, in a completely non-working environment. I don't think that good games appear as improved versions of already known ones with minor edits. Recently, by the way, we were offered to make a game based on Panzer General, introduce our historical elements, tweak the strategy, etc. We are not interested in this, and never have been - it's a lot of work. We are interested in developing original games.
Oleg Danylov: Are there any further plans?
Volodymyr Vinetsky: There are no plans for the future yet. But we are moving away from technology, we are always interested in understanding something new. Although we are maximalists, we strive to do everything better and better, and this sometimes harms the development process. We can say that we are looking forward to new technologies with pleasure.
What happened next?
Unfortunately, the development of Live Billiards, which is the name given to the Tavex game in the Western market, was delayed and the product was released only in 2002. In the CIS it was released under the name "Billiards with Comments by the Pilot Brothers" and yes, there were the Pilot brothers, created by the Soviet/Russian children's writer Eduard Uspensky, "1C" and the "Pilot" studio have been exploiting these characters in their games since 1997, and it was "1C" that was the publisher of the game in the CIS. Live Billiards was not a great success.
The 3D ScreenMachine screensaver with a scheduler, email checker, editor, etc. was released back in the 20th century.
In addition, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Tavex developed several casual games, as well as variations on classic hits such as Digger2000, Tangram 3D, Kremlin Puzzle 3D, Ever Mahjongg, MaJewels, PacQuest 3D, Sea War: The Battles 2. Most of these games were available online on the TerraGame server (now defunct).
In 2005, together with Terra Game, Tavex released Pool Master: Live Billiards 2, an improved version of the same billiards game. This was the last game from Tavex.
After some time, the company was divided into one that deals with security systems and one that develops software. Volodymyr Vinetsky worked at Tavex until 2016, working on software for data processing, graphics, CAD/CAM systems, etc.
Yes, perhaps Tavex studio failed to reach the level of major Ukrainian game developers. But they were one of the first, they were the ones who paved the way that later led to "Cossacks", STALKER and Metro, as well as to the emergence of a powerful outsourcing industry in Ukraine.
Other archived interviews with Ukrainian developers: