Sector 13

Sector 13 is a third-person space shooter video game developed by Reactor Interactive. At the time of this writing, it has not been officially published by a third party, though there are plans for a limited commercial release sometime in 2007 for the PC, and later, pending publisher or investor funding, Xbox 360 via Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade.
Story
Sector 13 is a multiplayer space combat game. It takes place in an area of space known as Sector 13, which is completely controlled by gargantuan mega-corporations with fleets of starships that could rival that of the Galactic Confederal Navy. These four corporations, Ptolaman-Triton Defense Systems, Daetrexx Enterprises, Inc., Scuvelli StarTech Corporation, and Reinaare Consolidated Industries, have battled for ultimate control of the sector for generations. The player is a starfighter pilot for one of the corporations, and finds himself sent on numerous melees and dogfights to gain control of small pockets of space, defend convoys, capture and recapture solar systems, and generally try to reduce the value of the competing companies' stock.
The competition is fierce between the corporations. The fate of entire solar systems lay in the violent battles that rage throughout the region. Because of the distance from the centrality of the Galactic Federal Government, the corporations rule over their respective systems like small governments in and of themselves. It is a very incoherent system of rule, and full of political inconsistencies that only add to the turmoil that engulfs the lives of every being in Sector 13. Everyone who lives in Sector 13 is in one way or another employed by one of the four major conglomerations. The outcomes of the battles significantly affect the livelihood of all of the beings in the area.
Long ago, when the Galactic Confederal Government consolidated its power over the entire known galaxy, the scientific community found itself baffled by the mystery of the area of space dubbed Sector 13. For no known reason, this arm of the galaxy was found to contain hundreds of thousands of habitable star systems rich in resources, yet not one of them boasts a single sentient species. For this reason, the Galactic Confederal Government decided to not waste resources in establishing a governing presence there. Instead, the government agreed to give the region over to corporate development with the guarantee of complete autonomy granted to the companies chartered therein. After hundreds of years of hostile takeovers, military conquests, and large scale consolidation in the area, the Galactic Confederal Government continues to honor the original charters given to the various corporations in Sector 13 space and has not interfered in any way with the internal politics and conflicts of the Sector. Therefore, the wars will continue as long as there is profit to be had and solar systems to conquer.
Version Zero
The first version of Sector 13 was a simple technical and gameplay demonstration designed to show off the game's potential as a marketable title. The game and its engine was developed entirely in-house by Drew Clark and Ryan Buhr, the founders of Reactor Interactive and creators of Sector 13. This version has since been dubbed "Version Zero", as it was never intended for commercial release, and the entire codebase for it has been scrapped in favor of building the game from the 3rd party Ogre 3D graphics engine.
Version Zero was very successful demonstration of the game's playability and fun factor. It won the 2005 "Summer Shootout" independent game competition sponsored by ATI and Caligari, and was a finalist in the 2005 Bawls "Big C" Slamdance independent games competition. Version Zero was also featured on the show floor at the 2005 Game Developers Conference alongside GameDev and Caligari's trueSpace and gameSpace booths. The success of this demo prompted Drew and Ryan to build a larger team of developers to re-engineer the game around the Ogre 3D graphics engine and create a full-featured version of their original vision for the game. Development was officially halted on Version Zero in June, 2005, when development on the Ogre 3D version of Sector 13 began.
Status
Sector 13 is nearing completion. It is being actively tested by a dedicated alpha testing crew who are providing feedback and bug reports on an almost daily basis. Although there is no official release date for Sector 13, a beta version will available for testing sometime in May, 2007.
Most of the information above originated from the Reactor Interactive website.
Credits
Sector 13 is a product of Reactor Interactive.
*Producer: Drew Clark
*Technical Director: Ryan Buhr
*Designers: Drew Clark, Ryan Buhr
*Senior Programmer: Timothy A. Graupmann
*Programmers: Mike Vasily-Cioffi, Doug Reisinger II, Liam Graham, Gilad Eisenberger
*Artists: Chris Sekorski, Ernesto Llamas, Jim Burchfield, Paul Nurkowski, Luis Cabrera, Karl Diaz
*Musicians: Evan Arnett, Amit Yadav, Mike Watts, Chanda Dancy, George Shaw, Tom Gersic, Michael Huang
*Writers: Jay-Dev Karunaratne, Chris Dailey, Bruno Dias

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