conquest is a Freeglut OpenGL based client that is used to connect to a conquest server to play.
Conquest is a multi-player, real-time space combat game. It was originally written in RATFOR (Rational Fortran) for the VAX/VMS system in the mid 1980's and is a predecessor to Netrek. It has been ported/rewritten to C/C++ for Unix systems, and uses a client/server model for Internet play.
The object of the game is twofold. The short-range goal is to accumulate "kills" by shooting down enemy players. You get one kill point for each enemy ship shot down, plus some extra if the enemy had kills too. The major weapon used to shoot down ships is the photon torpedo. Phasers are handy for close-in work, so don't neglect them.
The long-range goal is to conquer the universe for your team by taking every core planet. You take planets by killing off the enemy's armies via bombardment, and then beaming your team's armies down. When all the planets have been taken, the game ends, a new game begins, and the player who actually took the last planet gets his/her name up in lights. Core planets are highlighted by a '+' sign in the planet list.
The first time conquest is run, a directory called ~/.conquest/ will be created in your home directory. This directory cantains your 'user options' data as well as the logfile. Additionally, texturesrc (.trc), soundrc (.src), and texture image data (in ~/.conquest/img/) can be stored there. See CONQINIT.TXT for more information on what texturesrc, soundrc and texture image files are.
If the -s option is not specified, the client will connect to the metaserver to gt a list of servers you can connect to.
It's not really much of a 'benckmark' yet as it does not currently emit any rendering statistics on exit.
This section lists the basic commands of Conquest. The next section lists the more advanced / obscure commands, and at the end of this document there is a summary list. The list is also available in the game via the h command.
You cannot bomb a planet down to less than 3 armies. Once you have reduced a planet's army count to 3, you must beam down your own armies in order to kill the remaining armies and conquer the planet.
This command is useful for bothering the experts and asking them annoying questions. It is also useful for trading insults. If you type RETURN or TAB as the target of a message, the message will be sent to the last person(s) you sent a message to.
When in the long range tactical display, you can use SPACE to toggle the center of the map beteen your ship and the Murisak (the sun at the center of the universe).
The easiest and quickest way to change direction is with the direction keys, keypad, or the mouse (middle button by default). However, when using the keyboard to enter a direction, for example to fire phasers, or set course, you can use the letters "qweadzxc" on the left-hand side of your keyboard, called "direction keys" for historical reasons. The keys are assumed to be arranged as follows (if you have a Dvorak keyboard, you are in trouble):
Q W E
\|/
A--+--D
/|\
Z X C
You can use them singly, e.g. 'd' would be 0 degrees, 'q' would be 135, etc. You can also use them in combination: "ed" would be halfway between 'e' and 'd', which is 22.5 degrees; "edd" is like 'e' + 'd' + 'd' / 3, or 15 degrees.
There are several special strings you can use when setting course or getting information:
All of these can be abbreviated to their shortest unique string. Also, for the planets, you can type a number after the special string to specify an army threshold; that is, planets with less than that number of armies won't be considered. For example, na8 specifies the nearest planet with 8 (eight) or more armies, nf14 is the nearest fuel planet with 14 or more armies, nep1000 is the nearest non-scanned planet.
You can find info out about the second nearest object by terminating your information request with a TAB instead of a carriage return. For example, to find out about the second nearest planet type inp<TAB>.
You can't use these when firing weapons - that would be too easy.
Macros are sequences of Conquest commands that are issued when a Function Key (Fkey) or mouse button is hit. These are the F1-F12 keys and the Shifted F1-12 keys (F13-F24).
Support for assigning macros to mouse buttons is also provided. Modifiers like Alt, Control, and Shift can also be used with the mouse buttons. Up to 32 buttons are supported with any combination of the 3 modifiers (or no modifiers) giving you a maximum of 256 assignable mouse macros. If you have a 32 button mouse that is :)
Mouse and Key macros are defined in your ~/.conquest/conquest.conf file. Users can edit their macro keys from within Conquest using the (O)ptions Menu.
Here is an example for the F1 function key
macro_f1=dP\r
Which makes my F1 key detonate enemy torps d, and fire a spread of 3 torps in the last direction I fired P\r.
The mouse only works when playing the game (in the Cockpit) and the cursor is within the viewer window in the GL client.
Three default mouse macros are provided to give you a taste, and will be saved in your conquest.conf file the first time you run an 8.1.2f or better version of the client. They are:
mouse button 0 (left): Fire phaser at <angle>
mouse button 1 (middle): Set course to <angle>
mouse button 2 (right): Fire Torp at <angle>
Of course you can redefine these, as well as add others. With mouse macros, a special character sequence, \a can be used to represent the angle of the cursor relative to the center of the viewer (your ship) when the button was pressed.
See the mouse macro comment block in your conquest.conf file for a description of the format.
There are many other interesting and useful combinations that I won't detail... After all, choosing the right macros and using them well is an important part of the strategy you employ against your opponents.
Here is a quick command reference.
0-9,= set warp factor (= is 10)
A change w/e allocations
b beam armies
B bombard a planet
C cloaking device
d,* detonate enemy torpedoes
D detonate your own torpedoes
E send emergency distress call
f fire phasers
F fire phasers, same direction
h this
H user history
i information
I set user options
k set course
K try a coup
L review old messages
m send a message
M strategic map toggle
N change your name
o come into orbit
p launch photon torpedoes
P launch photon torpedo burst
Q initiate self-destruct
r refit your ship
R enter repair mode
S more user statistics
t engage tractor beams
T team list
u un-engage tractor beams
U user statistics
W set war or peace
- lower shields
+ raise shields
/ player list
? planet list
^L refresh the screen
RETURN get last (i)nfo. (like 'i<RETURN>')
TAB get 'next' last info. (like 'i<TAB>')
conquestd(6), conqoper(6), conqdriv(6), conqmetad(6), conqinit(6)
See README in the conquest distribution (usually installed in <conquest install prefix>/share/doc/conquest/) for information and tips on how to play.
See INSTALL for instructions on unpacking, compiling, and installing conquest and other system specific issues.
See README.cygwin for information on building/using conquest on MS Windows systems.
See HISTORY for the latest news and modification history.
See CONQINIT.TXT for information on CQI, and the format of the conqinitrc, soundrc and texturesrc files.
Copyright (C)1994-2018 by Jon Trulson <jon@radscan.com> under the MIT License.