CP3D

CP3D (formerly known as Club Penguin 3D) is a game inspired by the game "Club Penguin," which Disney closed in 2017.

History

Beginnings

The idea for Club Penguin 3D started around 2016, when TheWilliam had the idea of putting Club Penguin into a 3D environment. The game started as an Adobe Flash file with all the drawn assets replaced with 3D renders and was initially named Club Penguin 2.

The project went nowhere and there were no plans to continue it.

Start of development

A few months later, Club Penguin Island was announced along with the shutdown of Club Penguin. Club Penguin Island wasn't what TheWilliam expected from a 3D Club Penguin. He wanted something more, but didn't know how to deliver it.

Club Penguin Rewritten, a Club Penguin Private server, was an inspiration for TheWilliam. During a photo shoot in their Mountain Expedition event, a photo was taken at the top of the Toughest Mountain of him and some penguins. The person who took the photo posted it on Twitter, and TheWilliam saw that his profile looked liked the profile of someone who would want to help with the Club Penguin 2 project.

While the person wasn't who TheWilliam was looking for, he was interested about what was being planned for the project. TheWilliam told him all about it and what he wanted to do with it, and it went on from there. However, it was mostly models and concept art. Those models and art were then posted on Twitter, which got the attention of RocketSnail, the founder of Club Penguin. Once they were also posted to the Club Penguin subreddit, it got the attention of PaloniteCP, who wanted to be a part of the project. He was working on his own 3D Club Penguin at the time.

From there, progress with models and development was made. TheWilliam wanted to leave modeling once there were enough modelers were on the team. However, most of his models remained in the game during the release.

Coding Begins

About one year later, coding had begun on the game. However, all coders that were hired previously had failed, and the team was hopeless for coders. A user on Twitter by the name of "Tootya" had suggested a coder to the team. TheWilliam contacted that guy, and put him on the team.

He did amazing work, and he was promoted as the main coder on the spot. Most of the main coding was done in just a few months, and the team was amazed at how fast he worked. His name was Snowfire, and he remains on the staff team today. Another coder who contributed a lot was TechnoRazor. Some of his contributions include modeling the puffles, interfacing the playercards, and some website and server work.

Finally, after alpha testing and some more months of work, the Beta Test Party was released on October 24, 2018. By that time, only a few of the original staff remained on the team, which were the owners and a few developers.

Improvements & More Development

A comparison of the different designs for the Town.

2019 was nothing short of a year of tremendous improvement for the game and continuing to polish it. Catalogs, parties, mini-games, and more continued to be implemented. The game also continued to grow in players.

A major change came to most of the rooms in mid-May 2019, when they were revamped to be more detailed than the previous designs.

However, the biggest change of the year was a brand new in-game penguin model. The model up to this point was replaced in Late July - Early August 2019 with a more friendly looking model. It was also more animated and had more expression than the previous model.

To wrap up 2019, in October of that year, the majority of the rooms were once again updated to a new look, to the design that is being used to this day. They were more detailed, and more background details were 3D modeled.

The year of 2020 also showed to be an amazing year of improvements. Updates were being pushed out almost every week, and the game hosted its very first original party, the Egyptian Party. More rooms from the original Club Penguin were introduced, such as the Stage and Recycling Plant, and the quality of parties were improved greatly, with more decorations and detail.

The Game Gets A DMCA

In mid-May 2020, several DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notices were being sent out by The Walt Disney Company to various Club Penguin Private Servers, causing many to close. In response to this, to avoid copyright, the team rebranded the game from Club Penguin 3D, to simply being known as CP3D. Despite this change, on May 20, 2020, the CP3D team received a DMCA notice. On the day the notice was received, the servers were closed off.

Since the game was created from all original assets and code, borrowing nothing from Club Penguin, unlike the majority of Club Penguin Private Servers, the CP3D team sent a letter back to Disney, inviting them to discuss why exactly the game received a DMCA notice, since the game borrowed no assets from Club Penguin besides the name, which was rectified days prior. The team then publicly revealed all of these events and said that if they did not receive a response back from Disney by the end of the month, the game would close permanently.

The end of the month approached, and with no word from the team, the future for the game was looking grim. However, at the end of the month, with no response from Disney, an announcement was made saying that the game would remain open, with some chances to alter it from the original Club Penguin. These changes included a revamped login screen, redesigned emoticons, and a few other things. And at last, in mid-June 2020, the game relaunched with the new changes in place.

An open letter to Disney was also published on the game's website regarding all of this, which can be viewed here.