Esterian Conquest was my favorite game of all time. We are a long way from 1992, but I fondly remember many months battling with my friends and family via my trusty 2600 baud modem over local BBS lines. The memories were epic and they don't make games like that anymore.
Log in, read reports, make your moves, log out, and carry on with your life. Touch grass. Most of the action took place in your imagination offline, studying paper maps and plotting you next move.
One can still play EC via DOSBox-x on modern systems, but the drop files right are a PIA. The combat results were always opaque. I wish EC had lived on past the DOS era.
For some reason I decided to write the entire game from scratch in Rust. Maybe it will introduce EC to the next generation and make it accessible again.
I'm calling my version Nostrian Conquest.
There are three ways to play: classic Telnet hosted BBS, localhost hot-seat, or on an SSH server where player ID's are authenticated via the Nostr protocol (no web stuff).
I've tested Syncronet, Mysic, Enigma, and WWIV on Linux. On the Windows side (Win11) I've verified Syncronet, Mystic, Enigma. I could not get WWIV working in my Win11 machine.
I've posted x64, x32, and x32-Win7 binaries on my github page. Also Linux x64. For SSH play, players can join a server with "nc-connect." I've posted Linux, Mac, and Win64 binaries. No command line required. The Sysop sends you an invite code, you paste it in, and off you go.
Github repo:
https://github.com/greenm01/nostrian-conquest
Screenshots:
https://www.nostrian-conquest.com/screenshots.html
I've been working in a silo for awhile and could use some help play-testing. It's not perfect, but it could be good. submitted by /u/greenm01 [link] [comments]
