Welcome to the Conquest Homepage.

Last Updated: 09/13/2008

This page is dedicated to Conquest, a real-time, multi-player space warfare game. Both curses and OpenGL (version 8.1 or better) clients are provided. Since version 8.3, sound support is also provided in the OpenGL client using SDL and SDL_mixer.

Conquest

The Almighty Tallest Cataboligne has put up a Tutorial page for Conquest - It has pictures and everything! :) Check it out!

Version 8.4.1 is the current stable release.

Currently active servers

Conquest is a real-time, multi-player space warfare game that was originally written in RATFOR for the VAX/VMS platform by Jef Poskanzer and Craig Leres. It was the early predecessor to Netrek. This page concerns itself with the Unix/C rewrite I completed in 1997. With conquest version 8.1 or better, an OpenGL based client is provided as well, which looks a heck of alot better than the 20th Century curses interface it started with :).

Conquest runs on the following operating systems:

• Linux (2.0.x or greater kernel)
• Intel/Sparc Solaris 2.6 or better with gcc 2.7.2 or better
• FreeBSD 2.2 961006-SNAP (or better)
• Alpha/Digital Unix V4.0 (OSF1) using native compiler. Thanks to Jim Anderson for providing this port
• MS Windows (XP, at least) using the Cygwin environment.
• Unixware (SVR4.2MP), all versions (including 7.x. Note this hasn't been tested in years.)
• Hopefully any posix'ish unix can run conquest. If you port it to something, send me the patches so I can include it in the next release. Note, I have not built the OpenGL version (8.1) on anything other than Linux and Cygwin systems.

If you want to build the OpenGL client conquestgl, you must have working OpenGL 1.1 or better and GLUT libraries and headers present. To run conquestgl, your X server must support OpenGL rendering (with an alpha buffer), preferably in hardware - though software rendering is (barely) adequate if your CPU is fast enough.

If you want to build sound support (OpenGL client conquestgl only), you must have SDL and SDL_mixer libraries and headers installed. Your SDL must support OGG Vorbis format sound files.

Screen Shots

Here's a few screen shots from the latest GL client conquestgl.

Short Range View	Long Range View

War!	The Doomsday Machine

The Negative Energy Barrier	The Dance Begins...

Conquest News

09/13/2008

8.4.1 (stable) is now available.

This version corrects some minor bugs - conquering users can leave their Last Words again, and some issues with ship-slot starvation were addressed, along with some more minor code cleaning.

See the HISTORY file for more information.

07/21/2008

8.4 (stable) is now available.

This is a fairly big revision - several significant enhancments and bugs were fixed. A lot of internal cleanup was done as well. New suns, exciting deaths - it just doesn't get any better.

See the HISTORY file for far more information.

11/03/2007

Conquest now has a project on Source Forge.

The project page is here.

The Conquest SVN repository formally hosted here, has been moved to Source Forge. In addition, all of the file packages that were hosted here, are now hosted on Source Forge's download servers. See Downloads and Documentation for the new SVN and Conquest source package URL's.

A new Source Forge mailing list called 'conq-commits' has been created. People subscribed to this list will be notified whenever a commit is made to the source repository. This would probably only be of interest to developers and maintainers. You can subscribe here.

10/07/2007

The telnet-able conquest server at radscan.com has been disabled. Please use a client to play - the experience will be better anyway.

09/03/2007

8.3 (stable) is now available.

This version is a major upgrade for 8.2. It adds full sound support via SDL and SDL_Mixer, magfactors (zoom in/out on LR/SR scan), and several fixes and improvements to the GL client. TCP Wrappers is now optionally supported in conquestd and conqmetad.

See the HISTORY file for detailed information on this release.

9/1/2006

8.2 (stable) is now available.

This version represents a major update to Conquest, primarily in the GL client, conquestgl.

A variety of new enhancments and bugs fixes are present.

By far the most work went into the GL client. There were several important server fixes as well, so please upgrade your servers to this release if you run one :)

See the HISTORY file for detailed information on this release.

7/17/2005

A Subversion repository for Conquest is also now available. See Downloads and Documentation for the svn URL's.

12/28/2005

8.1.2 (stable) is now available. See the HISTORY file for detailed info. This version corrects a potential futex deadlock in the conquestd server, fixes a case where the client could get stuck in Murisak on entering a ship, and adds a fullscreen capability to the GL client conquestgl. Due to the potential severity of the first 2 items, a stable release was warranted.

8/10/2005

8.1.1 (stable) is now available. See the HISTORY file for detailed info. This version corrects a UDP keepalive issue seen with the client, and many firewalls, and corrects a few minor issues. It also adds new explosion, phaser, and Negative Energy Barrier rendering (GL client only).

12/30/2004

8.1 (stable) is now available. See the HISTORY file for detailed info. This is the first 'stable' release that includes an OpenGL client. The were *many* bugs fixed and other enhancements made since the last stable release. Though I'm not sure anyone is still running that anymore :)

Conquest Mailing lists

• conquest - This is a low volume general purpose discussion list for conquest. To subscribe, send an email message to majordomo@radscan.com with a single line in the body: subscribe conquest. The mailing list archive can be found here here.
• conq-commits - This is a mailing list for people who want to be notified whenever a commit is made to the Conquest source repository. To subscribe, go to here. The mailing list archive can be found here here.

Conquest Requirements

Hopefully Conquest's requirements aren't too arduous.

At a minimum:

• a C compiler. GCC is the one I use, though I try not to introduce gcc-isms.
• bison or yacc.
• flex or lex
• a decent curses implementation

For building the OpenGL client 'conquestgl', you will need:

• X11 (or xorg) libraries and header files (all of them :)
• OpenGL libraries and header files.
• glut or freeglut libraries and header files.

For sound support (OpenGL client only) you will need:

• SDL libraries and header files ( http://www.libsdl.org/ ), with OGG Vorbis support (pretty much standard I think).
• SDL_mixer library and header files ( http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_mixer/ ).

For TCP Wrappers support (conquestd and conqmetad) you will need:

• tcpd.h header file and libwrap, the TCP Wrappers library. TCP Wrappers support is not enabled by default.

Conquest Documentation and Downloads

Text Documentation.

• Conquest README (Lots of tips and playing info!)
• INSTALL
• Conquest History
• README.cygwin
• Conqinit (CQI) documentation

Manpages

• conquest(6)
• conquestd(6)
• conqoper(6)
• conqinit(6)
• conqdriv(6)
• conqai(6)
• conqstrat(6)
• conquestsh(6)
• conqmetad(6)

Current Stable Release

• conquest-8.4.1.src.tar.gz (7.1MB Sep 13, 2008)
• conquest-musicpak-8.3.tar.gz (15.1MB Sep 3, 2007) This is the optional musicpak. Unpack this tarball in your ~/.conquest/ directory and you will have some great Star Trek music to go along with the effects.

Subversion Repository access

• http://conq.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/conq/trunk - [Browse] current (possibly unstable) development
• http://conq.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/conq/tags/ - [Browse] tagged (official) releases

To check out the latest version of the project into a subdirectory named 'conquest', you would use a command like:

svn co https://conq.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/conq/trunk conquest

Some Conquest Recording (.cqr) files.

Use something like conquestgl -P demo.cqr to view these (8.0.1j+). If you create your own cqr files, and would like them listed here, feel free to send them to me.

NOTE, these are gzip compressed files, so your conquest must have been compiled with libz support in order to play them directly. If not, then uncompress them with gunzip first before trying to play them.

• jon-cs-demo.cqr - A demo recording of me flying around and killing a couple ships. This recording was made on the new client/server development version of conquest. (replayable on v8.0 or better).
• Z-personalrec-conquest-rec-11242004-1507.cqr. A server recording by 'Z' fighting off fed robots (14 in one case). It pays to have a few hundred kills :).

Here is an unkind analysis of John's play after one of our robo smashing events. He didn't have a good night at all. Unfortunately, only the curses replay client was available at the time.

Note, on some browsers you may have to use a key sequence to download the packages... On netscape for example, [SHIFT]Button1 does it for me.

Conquest Servers

This is where Conquest Servers can be found. If you are running a conquest server, then simply follow the directions in the Conquest Daemon manpage to ensure your conquest server updates the metaserver.

• Click here to see a list of the currently active conquest servers. This data is generated from the Conquest Metaserver running at conquest.radscan.com.

Contact Me

Questions? Comments? Send me some at jon@radscan.com