The History of VORTEX Software by Mark Haigh-Hutchinson Version 1.0 March 1995 Like many software houses in the 1980s, VORTEX began as a hobby. Costa Panayi first got interested in computing back in 1982. Whilst working as a mechanical engineer for British Aerospace he brought home a Sinclair ZX81, played around for a bit, then starting writing programs for it. After learning BASIC, Costa and his friend Paul Canter wrote a number of programs that they then sent to Michael Orwin, of Orwin Software. "It was a collection of programs, Mastermind, Pontoon, Othello, and Awari. We were quite chuffed. You wouldn't believe it, he's still sending us money!" Costa would recall in 1984. "The 1K machine was really useful for learning how to be efficient. To begin with it was quite difficult to see how you could write games." Costa then started learning machine code from books such as Toni Baker's ‘Mastering Machine Code on your ZX81’. The first game using these techniques was COSMOS. He and Canter set up VORTEX and decided to sell games themselves. Then the ZX Spectrum appeared and sales of COSMOS rapidly dropped off. They quickly converted the game to the 16K Spectrum, including colour and sound but a little deterred by their first experience, licensed the game to another company. Costa next began work on ANDROID ONE - which was when his brother-in-law Luke Andrews became involved. "It was a natural progression for VORTEX" Luke explained, who was a craft's teacher at the time. "I'd handled money working as a teacher and I used to have my own furniture making company." Crete Panayi, Costa's brother helped with the advertising side of the business. From Costa's earliest games he developed a number of concepts that would be carried forward from game to game, starting with the scrolling techniques. "For ANDROID ONE we tried to produce a game with a lot of features. We used the scrolling techniques to produce a long corridor, and designed a few rooms, then tried to get something running about the screen," Costa remembers. ANDROID ONE became a popular success, and was sold through W. H. Smith. The sequel, ANDROID TWO, took the action further with a much larger playing area. "I wanted to do a sequel which had something special about it. That's why I developed the 3D effect. It was our first 48K game, and took me about 9 months to write. It was released just before Christmas 1983." Costa was still working at British Aerospace during this period. "The game became so complex. The millipods caused problems. Most people used dark backgrounds but we decided to use the BRIGHT colours. The other thing was the wraparound maze." In the end the effort certainly paid off. "I was tempted to do ANDROID THREE" he recalls, "But I decided to leave it for another day." Then came TORNADO LOW LEVEL. "TLL was really a progression of the ideas in ANDROID TWO. I expanded on the 3D landscape, making the wraparound more complex. There is an extra dimension as the plane isn't always on the ground." TLL became a big hit in the summer of 1984. One aspect of the game that Costa was particularly proud of was the shadow cast by the plane. When you fly over a building the shadow climbs up the wall, which, if you think about it, means suddenly it has to move faster than the plane to keep up. "It took a bit of doing, that" Costa says, smiling quietly. That summer Costa left British Aerospace to concentrate full-time on programming. His next game would take the form of CYCLONE, another flying game but featuring a play area much bigger than that of TLL. This time the player would control a helicopter rather than a plane. On finishing CYCLONE, VORTEX moved into offices based in Salford on the NorthWest edge of Manchester. Prior to that they had worked out of Luke's home in Sale. I still can remember visiting Luke late in 1984 and as he opened the door all I could see were enormous stacks of CYCLONE cassettes. There were 35,000 to be exact. The next week they had all been sold... At that time VORTEX was using a company called Ablex to do their cassette duplication and Costa invited me to go with him to supervise the mastering of CYCLONE. As we were waiting for the first master tapes to be duplicated someone at Ablex showed us a game that had just been mastered a few days previously. The game was KNIGHT LORE by ULTIMATE PLAY THE GAME -- and it had a profound effect on us both. Costa returned home and then spent the next nine months developing completely new 3D techniques -- the result was HIGHWAY ENCOUNTER. As such, HIGHWAY was the third "isometric" game ever to be developed on a home computer, the first being ANT ATTACK by Sandy White. HIGHWAY, though, was much faster than either of the first two as well as combining both puzzle and action elements. After HIGHWAY Costa wanted to come up with something completely different again. Since I was now working full-time for VORTEX it was decided that I should write ALIEN HIGHWAY whilst Costa developed his new ideas. I had previously written ANDROID ONE for the Amstrad CPC (in my spare time at University) and then converted HIGHWAY ENCOUNTER to the CPC in 8 weeks after graduation. ALIEN HIGHWAY attempted to retain the essence of the original game yet expand the gameplay and introduce a random element into the game. It was also considerably faster than the original. The result of Costa's efforts was REVOLUTION, an abstract isometric puzzle game. It was designed with lastability in mind -- each time the game starts the puzzles are shuffled between levels as well as their locations within the level. "Shifting the puzzles round and creating a new landscape, or set of levels, each time you start play - it’s trying to make the game something more than other games on the market" Luke would say at the time. "Even with our old games, you always had the first level, second level, third level, and so on. ALIEN HIGHWAY, the remix of HIGHWAY ENCOUNTER started us thinking that way, and with REVOLUTION I think the changes in the puzzle and landscapes are the main attraction. If someone picks up the game and can't get past the first level, then the game can be played on level one and the player still gets thirty new puzzles - so you can still enjoy it, even if you never get past the first level!". REVOLUTION also marked the first game that would be published outside of VORTEX. Unfortunately although critically acclaimed it did not receive the success it deserved. After REVOLUTION I left VORTEX to pursue my own career but Costa continued to produce (albeit slowly) some excellent games. Next on the list would be DEFLEKTOR, an completely original abstract puzzle game. Based around a very simple concept, DEFLEKTOR like all great puzzle games has an enormous depth of gameplay that proves extremely addictive. It was inspired by a science program that Costa had seen about lasers. DEFLEKTOR was published by Gremlin Graphics who also converted the game to the 16-bit Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. However, those conversions simply did not stand up against the original Spectrum version. Costa’s last adventure into games programming would be HOSTILE ALIEN TERRAIN ENCOUNTER or H.A.T.E for short. A remarkable piece of programming, H.A.T.E. pushed the Spectrum to limit - a smooth-scrolling diagonal play area with lots of aliens to fight. Another great game that was well received but unfortunately did not receive the success it should have. The next two years would be quiet time for VORTEX -- Costa was “burned-out” from his many years of programming and spent the time deciding where he wanted to go from there. I had always kept in touch with Costa and Luke, and in the summer of 1990 VORTEX was reborn with the intent of once more becoming a premier software developer. Our initial plan was to develop a game for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga that would then fund us to develop something really exciting. We embarked upon producing a much enhanced version of HIGHWAY ENCOUNTER for both the machines. This time I was the sole programmer, Costa designing the graphics, with all three of us designing the gameplay. Three months later the Atari ST version was finished -- a conversion to the Amiga took just three days. Not bad for a game written completely in machine code! The game used the machine capabilities well - it was fast, used lots of colour and was much more challenging than the original. Unfortunately the state of the software industry at that time meant that we were unable to find a publisher for the game. I had also started to convert the game to the IBM PC, which remains unfinished. A little disheartened we decided to start work on yet another game. Having seen the lacklustre conversion of DEFLEKTOR to the 16-bit machines, we started work on a new variation that would include a scrollable play area, mouse usage, and lots more features! Alas, it was not to be. Several months later we were making progress but financial considerations made it impossible to continue. Subsequently I was offered a position as a programmer for a company in Southern California which I took. Costa no longer programs games but has turned back to his original profession, Mechanical Engineering. Luke decided to leave England for the sunnier climes of Cyprus, where Costa’s and Luke’s family originate. So what does the future of VORTEX hold? I’m investigating the possibility of a version of DEFLEKTOR for the SEGA Genesis, or perhaps the IBM PC under Windows. Another thought was to do a version for the Psion 3a pocket computer. Then there was always the idea of doing a first-person view version of HIGHWAY ENCOUNTER... Regardless, the spirit of VORTEX remains alive thanks to the wonderful emulators that are now available. VORTEX is dead, long live VORTEX! What did they do and where are they now? Costa Panayi Costa was the main programmer, game designer and graphic artist at VORTEX. His knowledge of the Spectrum was unparalleled and he had a talent for consistently designing unique and distinctive games. He is currently working as a Design Consultant for Fisher Price Toys in Southern England. Luke Andrews Luke handled the business affairs for VORTEX, but he also had a fair amount of creative input on the game's design and graphical appearance of all the games. Whenever we had a difficult bug that was eluding us, Luke would offer this advice: “Check your numbers!”. He is now living on the island of Cyprus where he teaches English. Crete Panayi Costa’s brother, he handled the advertising side of VORTEX. He was also a partner in the company. He now runs his own advertising agency. Mark Haigh-Hutchinson I mainly acted as an Assistant Programmer to Costa, which was a great way to learn about writing computer games! Mostly I converted his titles from the Spectrum to the CPC, although I did write ALIEN HIGHWAY for both the Spectrum and CPC. I am currently a Project Leader and Senior Programmer at LucasArts Entertainment Company who are based in Northern California. I continue to program and design video games for various 32 and 64-bit platforms. Some of my more recent work includes "Zombies Ate My Neighbours" (SEGA Genesis), system routines for "Big Sky Trooper" (Super Nintendo) and low-level optimisations on "Rebel Assault" for the IBM PC, SEGA CD, and 3DO. I am now developing high-performance cross-platform 3D technologies using Silicon Graphics workstations. Paul Canter An early partner of Costa’s, he programmed some the first ZX81 and Spectrum titles. His current whereabouts are unknown. Chris Wood An outside contractor who programmed ANDROID TWO for the Amstrad CPC. His current whereabouts are unknown. David Aubrey-Jones Another outside contractor, responsible for programming TORNADO LOW LEVEL on the Amstrad CPC. Last known to be still writing computer games as well as tape and disc protection schemes (Speedlock). How to reach us If you'd like to contact VORTEX, please send email to:- mhh@linex.com, or mhh@kerner.com (until August 1995), or 75112,1545@compuserve.com Alternatively, you may send snailmail to:- VORTEX SOFTWARE Mark Haigh-Hutchinson 1725 Marion Avenue, K-10 Novato CA 94945 U.S.A.