 

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 - its 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.
Costas 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 Costas and 
Lukes family originate.
So what does the future of VORTEX hold? Im 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
Costas 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 Costas, 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.


