 Previous Messages |
Posted By
gerliczer
on 2025-09-28
13:05:16
|  Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Although it was only with an emulator, yesterday I tried the tape loading experience with the game. I found it truly liveable. The loader worked excellently. I think the music playing and the countdown made the waits tolerable. Compared to that, the stonewalling in Donkey Kong is unbearable. So, kudos to TLC and Csabo for this remarkable feat.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2025-09-24
17:21:58
 | Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
@BSZ ah probably I wasn't clear enough: it was not a comparision, it's about an attempt of historical record about it on this system.
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Posted By
GeTE
on 2025-09-24
16:26:25
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Great news to see such an ambitious game being released. 
In the past I was happy to buy the big box with bells and whistles later at Psytronic but they ran out of disks. Seems to me he will only go on selling C64 games on SD-Card (for newer kind of systems) or cartridges. Polyplay.xyz might still have disks but he releases only multi-system-games and/or text adventures.
Therefore it's great to see the effort in bringing games back to tape. RTM still produces new cassettes so this path will not end that soon. Well, but I see the expense in cover artwork. Will there be a version I can buy some day? Or is the intention for everyone to print for himself? The last option would be a pitty regarding this artistic quality.
If there will be a tape version this had to be delivered on printed tapes, not with badges (We are not Lego!). The question will be, are we enough people/customers for making a production run? Par example TapeMuzik needs 50 cassettes as minimum for printing (four colours):
https://tapemuzik.de/
Ok, for real I would prefer to play the game as enhanced TCBM2SD-version but the more I would love to buy a full featured box with everything (and tapes that run on the standard machine) to embellish my shelf and at least to support you (and yes, it doesn't have to be cheap).
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Posted By
BSZ
on 2025-09-24
16:18:33
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
@Luca: The first two DirArt somehow got left out, even though I saw the demos. The rest is more or less classic beautification.  They don't even come close to the Death Sector DirArt in terms of sophistication/beauty. 
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Posted By
Luca
on 2025-09-24
07:05:22
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
@BSZ the dirart's affair is a very very interesting topic, because there are some things that you can do on C64 and don't works on Plus/4, and some specific features which work on Plus/4 exclusively. Of course, the additional features I refer to, are the ones driven by the functionality of the Escape key.
Thinking about the past era, few examples come to my mind, and among these, Techno Trance and Xmas Demo 93 are the ones whose come first.
 
I often play with the directory, and my intents have minimalism and neatness as main objectives, e.g. Freescaped and Taskforce +4GD show several usual details typical of the Commodore DOS which have been removed. The objective here, is to have a line printed on the screen where to go and press Return to load, mindlessly.
 
...And I dared to test a very basic animated dirart in 2048 Octaluxe.
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Posted By
BSZ
on 2025-09-21
15:14:59
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
...and the DirArt is amazing too! I've never seen anything like this anywhere else.
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Posted By
Mad
on 2025-09-19
18:19:23
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Wow, utterly impressive. The pixel perfect collisions and all the great details all over the game. Nice work.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2025-09-19
17:45:43
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Thank you to everyone for the kind words, I'm really glad you enjoyed the game. @TRP I'm especially glad you gave it another go. So... you've escaped the Death Sector, but have you mastered it?
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Posted By
TRP
on 2025-09-19
17:08:43
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Finally...
I enjoyed every moment of it. It's truly a great and unique game.
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Posted By
Ati
on 2025-09-19
14:03:37
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
A pixel perfect collision detection! How cool is that! Thank you guys, amazing work.
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Posted By
gerliczer
on 2025-09-18
15:43:00
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
It was super fun watching it closely how it turned into its final glorious shape. Thank you guys. This is so cool. <3
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Posted By
Rachy
on 2025-09-18
00:37:01
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
I dare to say this is one of the most complex original games ever released for Plus/4.
The amount of work went into the details is just insane.
Congrats guys!
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Posted By
Epy
on 2025-09-16
16:43:43
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Really great game, that means all together: game play, graphics, levels and music. Congratulations
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Posted By
George
on 2025-09-16
15:18:42
 | Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
You also could do a small artbook/aryflyer like in early japanesegames
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Posted By
Luca
on 2025-09-16
14:08:43
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
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Posted By
Unreal
on 2025-09-16
11:20:56
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Just a FUN (?) DeathSector T-Shirt Mockup Artwork (Image is illustration this is not Csabo :)
And I am also working on a DiskCover for D64 file, it will be upload to the server, some limited prints will be coming....
 
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Posted By
retroscener
on 2025-09-14
20:09:29
 | Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Sent
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Posted By
TRP
on 2025-09-14
16:23:39
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Congrats guys! Another brilliant game with a great atmosphere for the plus/4. Maybe one day I'll find the third energy cell...
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2025-09-14
16:20:16
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Who wants to listen to an old nerd ramble on about a game?
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Posted By
retroscener
on 2025-09-14
15:41:04
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
This looks great. I've messaged you about a physical release Csabo.
I shall wait until then so I can experience it for the first time the old fashioned way.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2025-09-13
14:13:57
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Death Sector looks like another significant milestone in the field of the Plus/4 game scene, because it seems to represent a sort of compendium of all the positive features we've found in bigger and smaller slices, into the latest successful projects that we've had the luck to play. If KiCHY's Adventures In Time has been the beginning point of the Plus/4 games' new trend, Death Sector is the point of reached maturity.
Let's have a brief list of the contents boasted by this game.
scene history's witness: Death Sector promotes a scene prod of the late golden era, which would have been lost forever otherwise. But, instead of slavishly "complete" it as supposed to be and not a tad more, it improves the basic idea of the original game, then gets enriched with a whole series of contents from a modern era's gameplay.
a gripping narrative: in spite of the linear nature of an flip-screen action game, the engine of Death Sector has been based on the storytelling – either by event, and by location – which counts a lot into it, and the story itself simply works, decisely works for the best!
collisions shut you up: this is the major point, the most important, and puts the whole gear to worth playing. In a game where your skills in driving your ship thru the narrow passages and the differentially moving obstacles literally make the difference between your play sessions' scores – prolonging the game's overall longevity – fair collisions truly are the most important feature amongst all. Usually one can have some good results using sprites in bitmap mode; but here we have charmode, and I perceive a very careful and not at all easy work here, to obtain the most precise collision routine.
movie-like musical score: Csabo has been spoiling us for years now, constantly improving TED music, both technically and in terms of composition. But this time, the project is in his hands, not an external commission, and this is a situation where he can fully leverage his long-standing experience, giving the game's soundtrack a profound overall cohesion. It features 21 tracks, the majority of which are in-game, and it achieves three things: it respects a main theme, enriches the flow of the narrative, and highlights the game's events. His best work yet.
readable and inspired graphics: the 1992 original stole some cool sprites from C64 (Armalyte I guess, as in Terra-X), the current release shows some very nice brand new sprites, moving into a sci-fi landscape of desolate googie technology and lost nature with toxic colors. Nonetheless, the game starts showing some initial screens which seem to be not that distant from the former mechanics previously used by Beast – shooting mushrooms! – declaring a certain form of respect to the parent game, in a tangible connection between past and present.
variety first: I said action game, but I didn't mention that the game breaks the monotony of traditional flip-screen games with many unexpected graphical touches and the occasional logic minigame. Once again, it takes a simple genre and evolves it into something with its own personality.
fully equipped: all the accessories imaginable are present. The game is distributed on disk and tape, has a physical distribution on cassette, a dedicated IRQ loader that plays music while loading (tape), a giant logo directory (disk), a text prologue, four difficulty levels, bitmaps of the titles, ending(s?), and it provides both the music box and the remains of the original game on disk. I don't know, what more do you expect? For me to bring you hot coffee in bed in the morning?
Clearly, this is the kind of game where interest wanes after a while, and the gameplay itself has its own weaknesses. But before you abandon it, the four difficulty levels are a great way to make sure you're gonna spend more time than one can expect.
However, this does not at all affect the symbolic value represented by the production of Death Sector, which aims to be a new standard of quality on the Plus/4. Well done Csabo KiCHY and Unreal, my congratulations!
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Posted By
Csio
on 2025-09-13
10:24:03
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Wow! Fantastic! Well doned game! Congrats! The controls are easy, the animation is beautiful, the game is not hard-core, so it adapts to my abilities. Best! <3
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Posted By
gerliczer
on 2025-09-13
08:22:25
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Read this again carefully: "Hey fellow Plus/4 World members For a short while (until 21st, Sunday) the game is only available to you."
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Posted By
robc16
on 2025-09-13
08:00:47
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Problem with the link to the game? It says "No found".
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Posted By
George
on 2025-09-13
14:18:24
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Very surprised when playing this game the first time, since you wrote is a puzle game and i had no expectations.
But the concept really works, and it gets never boring and the graphics/music are amazing.
Great game Csabo. Its a masterpiece and really deserves a physical release. Congratulations!
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Posted By
Ko-Ko
on 2025-09-13
02:17:12
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Wow, what a fantastic surprise! The game looks absolutely brilliant – huge congratulations to you guys!
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Posted By
Luca
on 2025-09-13
02:09:15
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Does it mean that the available material copy is an exclusive for members only, or it might be an option for outer users too?
The D64 zip includes both D64 and TAP files, is it intentional?
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2025-09-12
23:04:18
| Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Enjoy the game!
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2025-09-13
23:04:18
| The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
 You've seen the trailer, you watched the review, and after a long, long road, the game is here. Introducing Death Sector, a sci-fi themed arcade puzzler for your Commodore Plus/4 or 64K expanded C16/C116.
Your spaceship miraculously survives a crash during warp speed, and you find yourself in an unknown sector with no signs of life. Can you pilot through this desolate place, uncover its mysteries, and perhaps find a way back to safety?
Death Sector offers unique challenges and atmospheric, story-focused gameplay. Enjoy!
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