SENDESCHLUSS
An adventure for the Commodore 64
retro-modern.net


THE STORY

Regional radio, the night leading into 1 November 1986. You are hosting
the night shift, alone in the station. At 3:14 the phone rings, and
somebody says something he cannot possibly know.

Eight rooms, a good half hour on a first run.


WHAT YOU NEED

sendeschluss-en.crt is an EasyFlash cartridge image (type 32) and runs on
any C64 with a SID:

  Emulator      VICE 3.x:  x64sc -cartcrt sendeschluss-en.crt
  Ultimate 64   load the cartridge from the menu or via FTP
  1541 Ultimate start the cartridge
  Kung-Fu-Flash copy onto the SD card and pick it from the menu
  EasyFlash     burn onto a real EasyFlash cartridge

The German original is sendeschluss.crt, a separate download on
retro-modern.net.


CONTROLS

The game is played with the mouse. A Commodore 1351 mouse in port 1 is
the default; a joystick works too.

  S     cycles the input device:
        joystick -> mouse in port 1 -> mouse in port 2
  F3    pointer sensitivity (four steps)
  F5    save
  F7    load

  click        pick a verb, then click the object
  click        during text: skip to the next line
  right button looks at a thing at once
  space        dismiss a full-screen picture
  return       the same - so you get through without a mouse

Saved games are written into the cartridge flash. This works in the
emulator and on the Ultimate 64.

IN THE EMULATOR: VICE only reports the mouse button while the mouse is
grabbed. If the pointer moves but clicks do not register, grabbing is
off - Cmd+M (Mac) or Alt+M toggles it. And the ports have to be right:

  x64sc -controlport1device 3 -controlport2device 1 -mouse \
        -cartcrt sendeschluss-en.crt


BUILT WITH

FABULA, an adventure engine and workshop for the C64: paint rooms,
place things, write scripts, compose music - out comes a cartridge like
this one. FABULA comes out on 16 October 2026; SENDESCHLUSS ships with it as a
complete example project, to take apart and rebuild.

  https://retro-modern.net


CREDITS

Story, graphics (pixel art), music   Claude & retro-modern.net
Production and direction             retro-modern.net

The game may be passed on freely, unchanged and together with this
file. The EAPI flash library inside the cartridge is by Thomas "skoe"
Giesel, under the zlib licence.

The character set is taken from your C64's ROM at start-up - it belongs
to Commodore and is therefore not included.


VERSIONS

  3 October 2026, ninth release
    New engine, and SENDESCHLUSS is now available in English too
    (sendeschluss-en.crt). The title picture is painted and still in
    German. On a C64 from the USA or Japan (NTSC) the game now runs at
    the right speed and with the right notes - the cartridge adjusts
    itself at power-on. The note you pocket in the control room no
    longer reappears in the room after playing the tape, and looking at
    it in your pocket is now spoken by the character instead of the
    narrator. Clicking a verb only picks the verb; the sentence runs
    when you click a thing - as in the classics. The closing picture
    sits four pixels higher, where it belongs, and nothing flickers
    below the room any more when the pointer is at the very bottom.

  12 September 2026, eighth release
    New engine, and this time you notice it. RUN/STOP skips a cutscene
    - skipped does not mean cancelled, everything in it still happens.
    The space bar now really dismisses the title picture.
    NOTE: saved games from older releases are refused. A save now
    carries more information, and an old one would have been misread.

  12 September 2026, seventh release
    New engine. The capital umlauts sat one line lower than the other
    capitals; they are now drawn on the same baseline. None of them
    appears in SENDESCHLUSS - the cartridge is new anyway, so that
    everything runs on the same engine.

  12 September 2026, sixth release
    New engine. The sentence line and everything the character says
    now line up with the verbs below - before, they were indented by
    one character. The inventory sits in three columns below the verbs,
    six things at a time, and the whole column is clickable, not just
    the name.

  11 September 2026, fifth release
    The note can now be read properly from your pocket too: looking at
    it again later plays the same scene as in the control room - not
    just its first line.

  11 September 2026, fourth release
    After a right click, "Look at" lights up yellow in the bar while
    the character walks over and the answer is shown - so you can see
    what the right button is doing.

  11 September 2026, third release
    The right mouse button looks at a thing at once, without picking
    "Look at" first. And the last thing you touched now stands in the
    sentence line as long as the pointer is not on anything else - so
    you can see what the next verb will act on.

  11 September 2026, second release
    A calmer start: after the title picture the control bar no longer
    flashes over it for a moment, and "Walk to" no longer stands
    above the intro before its first sentence appears.

  11 September 2026
    The character now turns to what they are dealing with: at the
    wall clock you see their back, at the mug on the table their
    side - as in the classics.

    And the last thing you touched stays picked: look at the mug,
    then click "Take", and it goes into your pocket without clicking
    it again. A click on the floor forgets it.

  7 September 2026
    A verb you click now appears in the sentence line at once, even
    while an answer is still standing - it used to stay invisible for
    a few seconds. In the cellar the crates are in front of the
    character again. And in several places the game says more
    clearly what to do next - no answer sends you off to a step that
    is not possible yet.

    "Use" is back to how it originally was: the "with" only appears
    once the pointer is over a second thing. In exchange, a thing you
    can use on its own now reacts on the very first click - before,
    the game always waited for a second one.

  6 September 2026
    The sentence line stayed blank after loading a saved game. And
    with "Use", the "with" now appears as soon as the first object is
    picked.

  2 September 2026
    First release.

  Saved games live inside the cartridge itself. Replacing the file
  means starting with empty save slots.
