An interesting game demo finding on Ashley Routledge’s disks recently came in the shape of Quantarallax, which is an early Delta sort of clone that never seemed to get released.
The game was developed by Quantum Designs, consisting of Richard (Froodle) Hawkins and Shane (Chain) Mussell for this particular project. We are not sure if it was ever intended to be pitched to a publisher.
It probably ended up with Ash and Dave as Shane lived just around the corner from Ashley in Eastbourne, whilst Richard was from Surrey and used to speak to Ash and Dave regularly at the time.
This preview is very early and simply allows you to shoot waves of ships, with not much else to do. As it turns out though, this was very much intentional. Shane recalls that Quantarallax was really just a technical demo to prove that he could handle sprite movement, controls and collision detection. By this point he had already realised that a good game needed more of a challenge and was instead using the work here as a stepping stone towards a much more ambitious project called Inertia.
Inertia featured far more fluid gameplay, including enemies that detached from buildings after the player had passed them, along with effects such as flowing water and energy pipes created by cycling character graphics. Collision detection was also improved over Quantarallax by using character checking instead of sprite detection.
Richard produced the graphics for Quantarallax, whilst Ian Crabtree created the music. Sadly, although Shane believes he may still have the Quantarallax source code somewhere, he describes it as “bad”, and the source code and binaries for Inertia have unfortunately been lost over the years, with only some graphics surviving.
Shane also admits that he doesn’t even remember giving a copy of Quantarallax to Ashley, explaining that at the time he was rather embarrassed by his coding when comparing it to the work that Ash and Dave were producing.
Although Quantarallax never became a full game, it remains an interesting glimpse at an early technical demonstration that ultimately helped pave the way towards a far more ambitious unreleased project.
Contributions: Ashley Routledge, Shane Mussell
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Preview_Quantarallax (zip)
Gallery
Creator speaks
Shane Mussell talks to GTW about the game:
“So it was me, Shane, that used to live around the corner from Ashley. He lived in Priory Road and I was around the back in Great Cliffe in Eastbourne :).
I think Richard did all the graphics for the game. I probably still have the source code somewhere too (it was bad).
The game was more of a demo, as by this time I had worked out that you needed a challenge to make a good game. This was really just some tests that were working towards Inertia, another game that was much further along, with more fluid gameplay and rather nifty enemies that would detach from buildings once you had gone past them. At this point I was using character blocks and cycling the bits through to create a flowing water effect (as in pipes with fluid/energy etc).
So yeah, this was never intended to be anything more than a demo to show I could handle sprite movement, control and collisions (which we changed for Inertia, using character checking rather than sprite detection, as it wasn’t the best).
Ian Crabtree did the music for sure. He also did some for Inertia, which was amazing. Sadly, all that source code and the binaries have been lost, although I did recover some GFX.
And in all honesty, I don’t even remember giving a copy to Ash. I think at that time I was rather too embarrassed by my coding compared to Ash and Dave’s work.”
Update history
25/06/26 – Coder speaks to GTW regarding the game (see creator speaks + comments)
Sorry not sure how so many spelling mistakes crept in there, it almost reads like my old demos from the C64 days !
The Game I was working on was called Inertia (how could I spell it wrong so many times).
Quantarallax was just a stepping stone, with test code thrown together.
No worries at all Shane, and thank you so much for sharing details about both games. I’ve updated Quantarallax accordingly, but also added a quick new entry for Inertia.
If you have any graphical assets that we can showcase on the page, then we’d love that. Hopefully some day something may turn up of it in similar circumstances to Quantarallax – if it does, we’ll let you know.
One last correction although Richard met Ash and Dave a few times, he lived quiet far away in Surrey.
Thanks Shane, all fixed :)
Hi Frank,
So it was me Shane that used to live around the corner from Ashley, he lived In priory road and I was around the back in Great cliffe in Eastbourne :).
I think Richard did all the Graphics for the game, probably have the source code somewhere around still too (it was bad).
The game was more a demo as by this time I had worked out that you needed a challenge to make a good game, this was some tests which was working towards Inertia another game that was further along having a more fluid gameplay and rather nifty enemies that would detach from buildings once you had gone past them. At this point I was using character blocks and cycling the bits through to create flowing water effect (as in pipes with fluid/energy etc).
So yeah this was never intended to be anything more than a demo to show I could handle sprite movements, control and collisions (which we changed for Inertia having character checking rather thank sprite detection as it wasn’t the best).
Ian Crabtree did the music for sure, he also did some for inertia which was amazing, sadly all that source code and the binaries have been lost, although I did recover some GFX.
And in all honestly I don’t even remember giving a copy to Ash, I think at that time I was rather too embarrassed by my coding compared to Ash and Dave’s works.