Conquer GS 2 - the campaign against the Red Legion

Conquer GS 2: light tanks, artillery and flame troopers attacking the enemy base, the build menu on its UNITS page

CONQUER.GS 2NEW: 2 MB EDITION

NEW ORDERS● COMING SOON

Commander. The Red Legion has crossed the border.

Two campaigns of eight missions, each with a briefing and a goal of its own: destroy their base, hold out until help arrives, mine the ore we need, or knock out one key building.

Nine kinds of units - light tanks, artillery, flame troopers and engineers that take over enemy buildings - on sixteen maps more than twice the size, with three save slots.

A repair bay for your vehicles, a command center you can build again, and a map editor: paint the land, set out both bases, and play your own battlefields.

SOON ON ITCH.IO MANUAL (PDF) WATCH IT SEE IT FREE VERSION 1

16 MISSIONStwo campaigns

16 MAPS48 x 36 tiles

MAP EDITORmake your own

9 UNITSengineers capture

APPLE IIGSROM 01 or 3, 2 MB

IN ACTION

REC 00

VIDEOThe computer against itself - watch on YouTube

DEMO MODEREC 00

Leave the title alone for 10 seconds, or the mission setup for 30, and the computer plays both sides - on brutal, a different map each time.

Both bases build up, harvesters bring in the ore, and tanks and troops march out in waves. The view follows the fighting.

Ten minutes in MAME, with the game's own music and sound. A click or a key, and you take over.

CONQUER GS 2

WHAT'S NEW

Everything in version 1, and a lot more. Click a picture for a closer look.

The briefing of mission 1, First Strike: the map Green Valley, the story, the objective and the locked units — REC 01Eight missions, each with its briefing

A campaign mission with HOLD OUT 4:58 in the top bar — REC 02Goals of their own: hold out, mine ore, take out a target

Our tanks and soldiers attacking the Red Legion's barracks; the radar shows the whole bigger map — REC 03Maps more than twice the size, the radar shows them whole

The sidebar's UNITS page with the tag ARTILLERY 900 — REC 04Light tanks, artillery, flame troopers, engineers

A repair bay with a tank beside it, its health bar and a blinking wrench; the BASE page has nine buildings — REC 05The repair bay: damaged vehicles beside it are mended

The cursor over open ground is a gold flag, a second flag stands where the barracks' new units will gather — REC 06Rally points: a flag cursor, a flag on the spot

The mission setup screen: the difficulty, a column of buttons, the Iron Guard and Red Legion emblems — REC 07The mission setup: campaign, skirmish, load, settings, editor

The SKIRMISH page: a list of maps on the left, the chosen map's preview and name on the right — REC 08Skirmish or survival, on every map, with its preview

The SETTINGS page with rows for music, effects, scroll, mouse and colours — REC 09Settings: volumes, scroll and mouse speed, colours

The CONQUER GS MAP EDITOR title picture: a battle map on a field table at sunset — REC 10The map editor: start it from the game or from GS/OS

The map editor showing the enemy base on the Islands map, the BASE page with the enemy's buildings in the panel — REC 11Paint the land, place both bases, save, play

The map editor's overview of the Islands map: water, roads, ore and both bases — REC 12The whole map at a glance

The map editor's LOAD dialog listing four saved maps — REC 13Load your maps and keep working

The load panel with three save slots — REC 14Three save slots, saved from the pause panel

The campaigns

Sixteen missions against the Red Legion with briefings and goals of their own. Campaign 1 works up from easy to hard, with new units unlocking as you go; win it and campaign 2 opens - eight more missions on the skirmish maps, at brutal. The game remembers how far you got.

New units

Fast light tanks, artillery that out-ranges turrets, flame troopers, and engineers that walk into an enemy power plant, war factory or refinery and take it over. The enemy uses them too.

Bigger maps

Sixteen maps of 48 x 36 tiles - more than twice the ground of version 1: Forest Run, Islands, Canyon and The Lake join the four from version 1, and eight more for skirmish: Crossroads, The Delta, High Ridge, Badlands, North Woods, The Bridges, Ore Fields and Fortress. Units turn to face eight ways, and up to 96 units and structures fight at once.

Map editor

Paint grass, roads, water, trees, rocks and ore, set out your base and the enemy's, place both sides' units, name the map and save it - up to 16 of your own - and load it again to keep working on it. An overview shows the whole map at once. Start it from the mission setup or from the GS/OS Finder; your maps show up in the skirmish list.

Repair bay

A ninth building on the BASE page: damaged vehicles parked beside it are mended, a few hit points for a few credits, with the wrench blinking. Click it with vehicles selected to send them there.

Rebuild your base

Lose the command center and the game goes on - until every building is gone. Build a new one on its old pad for 1000 credits. It has 800 hit points, and health bars show on any building under the mouse or clicked.

An enemy that fights

Its waves march together and go for your refinery, power plant and harvesters; hit its base and its nearest units come after you. It trains troops while it rebuilds, repairs its buildings, and on your own maps builds its whole base from a command center - campaign 2 throws the brutal enemy at you.

Rally flags and icons

Setting a rally point turns the cursor into a flag and plants one on the spot. The game and the map editor show the Iron Guard's fist in the GS/OS Finder.

Settings

Music and effects volume, scroll speed, mouse speed and three colour schemes - standard, desert and high contrast - kept on the disk for next time.

Stars and survival

Every mission win earns up to three stars - for the win, few losses and speed - and your best shows on its briefing. Survival never ends: the enemy grows with every wave, and your best time is kept.

Saved games and groups

Three save slots from the pause menu, unit groups on Control-1 to 9, and five music tracks on the Ensoniq chip.

What you need

An Apple IIgs (ROM 01 or ROM 3) with at least 2 MB of memory and a mouse - or MAME. One 800K ProDOS disk image, the map editor on it.

SOON ON ITCH.IO

VERSION 1 VS 2

SIDE BY SIDE

Version 1 stays free. Version 2 builds on it - here is what each one has.

Feature	Conquer GS	Conquer GS 2
Price	Free, open source	Soon on itch.io
Memory	1 MB	2 MB
Campaign	-	2 campaigns, 16 missions with briefings and goals
Maps	4	16, and up to 16 of your own
Map size	32 x 24 tiles	48 x 36 tiles
Map editor	-	Yes - save, load, overview; from the game or GS/OS
Kinds of units	5	9
Engineers take over buildings	-	Yes
Units face	4 ways	8 ways
Units and structures at once	48	96
Repair bay	-	Yes - mends vehicles
Rebuild a lost command center	-	Yes - 1000 credits
Health bars on buildings	-	Mouse over or click
Rally points	Yes	Yes - with a flag cursor and a flag
Enemy AI	Defends, keeps its waves together, goes for your economy	The same, and builds its own base on your maps
Enemy harvesters	1	2 (3 in the toughest missions)
Saved games	-	3 slots
Unit groups (Control-1 to 9)	-	Yes
Music tracks	2	5
Settings	Music and effects volume	Volumes, scroll and mouse speed, 3 colour schemes - saved
Difficulty	Easy, normal, hard	Easy, normal, hard - hard at brutal strength in a skirmish; campaign 1 from easy to hard, campaign 2 at brutal. Waves grow every time
Fog of war, radar	Yes	Yes
Quits to ProDOS or GS/OS	Yes	Yes

SOON ON ITCH.IO MANUAL (PDF) FREE VERSION 1

ARSENAL

NEW UNITS: 4

Conquer GS 2 adds four units to the five of version 1 - and the enemy builds them too. The build menu now has two pages, BASE and UNITS: click a tab or press Tab.

READY

LIGHT TANK

$5006 s

ARMOR90

RANGE3

Faster and cheaper than a tank, with a lighter cannon - quick to the front, quick to the ore fields.

NEEDS A WAR FACTORY

READY

ARTILLERY

$90010 s

ARMOR70

RANGE5

Shells from beyond a turret's reach: deadly to infantry, weak against armor - keep it behind your tanks.

NEEDS A WAR FACTORY

READY

FLAME TROOPER

$3004 s

ARMOR50

RANGE1

Burns soldiers and buildings at close range, but does little to vehicles.

NEEDS A BARRACKS

READY

ENGINEER

$5005 s

ARMOR30

RANGE-

No weapon: sent at an enemy power plant, war factory or refinery, it walks in and the building is yours.

NEEDS A BARRACKS

VERSION 1

FREE - OPEN SOURCE

Conquer GS - real-time strategy for the Apple IIgs

CONQUER.GSSUPER HI-RES 320x200

MISSION BRIEFING● LIVE

Commander. Our scouts report enemy activity across the valley.

Build a base. Harvest the ore. Train an army - and wipe out every last enemy unit and building.

A real-time strategy game for the Apple IIgs, written from scratch in 65816 assembly.

The radar: Green Valley, our base in gold in the south-west, the enemy's in red in the north-east

VIEW INTEL ARSENAL DEPLOY SOURCE

65816pure assembly

60 FPSscrolling battles

48 UNITSand structures at once

ENSONIQsound and music

APPLE IIGSROM 01 or 3, 1 MB

INTEL

SAT.RECON

Straight from the Apple IIgs: Super Hi-Res, 320 x 200, 16 colors. Click a picture for a closer look.

The start of a game: the command center, two tanks, a harvester and two soldiers — REC 01The start: a command center and your first units

A built-up base with a power plant, radar center, barracks, refinery, guard tower and turret — REC 02A base with a radar center, a refinery and defenses

Enemy tanks and soldiers attacking the base, explosions near the ore field — REC 03The enemy attacks; the defenses fire back

The enemy base in red: barracks on a concrete pad, a war factory, a refinery, a power plant and guard towers — REC 04The enemy's base, scouted

Gold tanks and soldiers fighting red units at the enemy base — REC 05A fight at the enemy base

The River Crossing map with a refinery next to an ore field and harvesters at work — REC 06River Crossing: a refinery by the ore

The sidebar's build icons with a name tag showing REFINERY 1500 — REC 07Twelve build icons, each with its name and price

The mission setup screen: difficulty, a map preview with arrows to pick one of four maps, music and effects volume, START and HOW TO PLAY — REC 08Mission setup: difficulty, map, volume - and HOW TO PLAY

ARSENAL

UNITS: 5

Every unit faces the way it moves. Weapons are strong or weak against infantry, vehicles and buildings - pick the right tool for the job. Units fire at what they pass on the move. Soldiers, vehicles and harvesters each have their own build queue, so all three can be under way at once - up to 5 of a kind lined up.

READY

TANK

$8008 s

ARMOR120

RANGE3

The backbone of any attack: a cannon that hits everything equally hard.

NEEDS A WAR FACTORY

READY

BUGGY

$3005 s

ARMOR90

RANGE2

Fast, with a rapid-fire machine gun that shreds infantry.

NEEDS A WAR FACTORY

READY

SOLDIER

$1003 s

ARMOR40

RANGE2

Cheap and quick to train. A rifle, and plenty of friends.

NEEDS A BARRACKS

READY

ROCKET SOLDIER

$3005 s

ARMOR30

RANGE4

Long-range rockets: double damage to vehicles, slow to reload.

NEEDS A BARRACKS

READY

HARVESTER

$100010 s

ARMOR400

CARGO500

Mines ore on its own and brings it to the nearest dock. Heavily armored: no harvester, no credits.

FROM THE COMMAND CENTER

STRUCTURES

BUILD: 7

Place them on open ground near your base, sell them for half their price or repair them. Mind the power: run short and everything builds at half speed - and the radar goes dark.

COMMAND CENTER

+100 POWER 400 hit points

Your headquarters: new harvesters roll out of it, and they unload at its dock. You start with it alone: build a barracks first, then a war factory for your tanks and buggies. If it falls, the mission is lost.

READY

POWER PLANT

$3006 s+100 PWR

Two cooling towers' worth of electricity. Build one before you need it.

READY

BARRACKS

$5008 s-30 PWR

Trains soldiers and rocket soldiers; they march out of its door.

READY

REFINERY

$150010 s-30 PWR

A second dock for your harvesters - and a harvester of its own. Build it near the ore.

READY

WAR FACTORY

$100010 s-30 PWR

Tanks and buggies roll out of its big door.

NEEDS A BARRACKS

READY

RADAR CENTER

$8008 s-40 PWR

Turns the radar on: the whole world at a glance, and one click to jump anywhere.

READY

TURRET

$6008 s-40 PWR

A heavy cannon on a concrete base: 200 hit points, range 4. Holds off the early attacks.

READY

GUARD TOWER

$4005 s-10 PWR

Cheap, with a machine gun on its platform: deadly against soldiers.

THE ENEMY

THREAT: HIGH

The enemy has a base like yours, mines ore with a harvester of its own, and sends its army against you in waves that grow bigger over time - marching together and going for your refinery, power plant and harvester. Hit its base and its nearest units come after you. It rebuilds what you destroy once it has the money and repairs what you damage - so hit it where it hurts, and keep hitting:

Destroy its harvester - no money until its refinery has made a new one, 30 seconds later.
Destroy its war factory - no more tanks and buggies.
Destroy its refinery - no more money.
Destroy its power plant - it builds at half speed.

	EASY	NORMAL	HARD
First attack	3 min	2 min	90 s
Then every	80 s	60 s	45 s
Wave size	2-4	3-5	3-6
Ore share	16%	24%	36%

FIELD MANUAL

MOUSE + KEYS

CONTROLS

HOW TO PLAY	On the mission setup screen: three pages of instructions
CLICK	Select a unit
DRAG	Select several units with a box
SPACE	Unselect; stop placing, selling or repairing
CLICK GROUND	Move there (a green cross)
CLICK ENEMY	Attack it (a red cross)
ARROWS / EDGE	Scroll the battlefield
CLICK RADAR	Jump there (with a radar center)
BUILD ICON	Build; click again when READY, then place it. Click a unit again to queue up to 5
OPTION-CLICK	Cancel a build, money back
RALLY POINT	Click your barracks or war factory, then ground: its rally point
SELL / REPAIR	Then click one of your structures
REST THE MOUSE	See what something is - and what it costs
M	Music off or on (the volume of music and effects: on the mission setup screen)
ESC	Pause - the panel lists the controls; resume, or quit the mission

STANDING ORDERS

1Keep the ore flowing. Your harvester mines on its own: 25 credits a scoop, 500 a load. Each ore tile holds 600, and mined-out ore slowly grows back. A refinery near the ore shortens its trips.
2Barracks first. You start with a command center only: a barracks lets you build a war factory, and the war factory your tanks and buggies. Harvesters come from the command center. Infantry, vehicles, harvesters and structures build in four queues, all at the same time.
3Mind the power. Your command center makes 100, each power plant 100 more. Too little, and everything slows down.
4Scout ahead. The fog hides the enemy until one of your units has seen it.
5Defend early. A couple of turrets and guard towers by the command center hold off the first waves.
6Match your weapons. Rockets against tanks and buildings, machine guns against soldiers.
7Finish the job. You win when every enemy unit and building is gone. The debriefing shows units built and lost, enemies destroyed, ore mined and your time.

UNDER THE HOOD

65C816 @ 2.8 MHZ

Pure 65816 assembly

No compiler, no engine: every routine written by hand for the IIgs's 16-bit CPU and assembled with Merlin 32.

60 frames a second

Sprites are compiled into code, only changed screen cells are redrawn, and the view is copied with the stack - fast enough for 48 units fighting at once.

A world twice the screen

Four maps that scroll in every direction - Green Valley, River Crossing, Twin Lakes and Stone Pass - with fog of war, pathfinding around rivers, lakes and rocky ridges, and a radar.

Ensoniq sound

Recorded weapon sounds and two original music tracks played on the IIgs's wavetable sound chip, in time even while the view scrolls.

Original pixel art

Hand-drawn units and buildings modeled in tiny 3D, all in the 16 colors of Super Hi-Res.

Boots from ProDOS

One 800K disk: the program, its packed graphics, the sounds and the title picture.

DEPLOY

STATUS: RELEASED

THE DISK

Conquer GS comes on an 800K ProDOS disk image that boots straight into the game. The latest version, with its release notes, is on the GitHub releases page: download the .po disk image there.

DOWNLOAD ON GITHUB SOURCE ON GITHUB

The game is open source: the 65816 assembly, the tools that draw every sprite, tile and map, the music and sound generators and the MAME test scripts are all in the repository.

CONQUER.SYSTEM .. the game
CONQUER.DATA .. packed graphics and maps
CONQUER.SOUND .. sounds and music
CONQUER.TITLE .. the title picture
CONQUER.HELP .. the instruction pages

REQUIREMENTS

An Apple IIgs (ROM 01 or ROM 3) with at least 1 MB of memory, and a mouse.
On real hardware: a 3.5" disk, or a FloppyEmu, BlueSCSI or similar. The files also run from a folder on a hard disk.
Or an emulator: MAME (on a Mac most easily through Ample), Apple IIgs with 1 MB or more.

CREDITS

Game, graphics and music: Walter Tengler.
Weapon sounds (CC0): from "The Free Firearm Sound Library" and "cannon fire" by Thimras, both on OpenGameArt.
Built with Merlin 32 and Cadius, boots ProDOS 2.4.3, tested in MAME.

THE BOX

DRAG TO TURN