Minor Bug Fix in Conquest Game

A game that I play, Conquest, occasionally crashes because of some bad input, so I ported it from Borland C to Visual C++ to compile and debug it. Some minimal changes required were:

• Use double instead of float types.
• Reimplemented clrscr() and gotoxy() functions using Windows Console functions.
• Change function names in proto.h: _cprintf(), _getch() and _putch().

In the VC++ debugger, I found that the problem occurs in the get_token() function, which parses the user's input. For some reason, when I type too fast, an illegal character is entered. Changing the get_line() function, called by get_token(), to only allow 7-bit ASCII characters in the input, seems to fix the problem.

See Also

• Conquest 4X Turn-based Game

OpenGL for ATI Mobility Radeon in Vista

This is way annoying. I installed an OpenGL game on my Asus notebook and it ran abysmally. When I tried to test the OpenGL interface with glview, that program crashed. The ATI's Catalyst Control Center (CCC) reported that OpenGL Version was Not available.

It turns out that I have to update the driver for my notebook's ATI Mobility Radeon X1700 card and enable OpenGL support. ATI does not support any Mobility Radeon cards but I found an updated driver on the Asus site. Then I used Mobility Modder tool and it enabled OpenGL. Now my system has OpenGL version 6.14.10.7275 and glview runs to completion.

Whew! Thank goodness Mobility Modder worked since I wasn't looking forward to hacking .INF files without knowing anything about configuring video adapters.

Conquest 4X Turn-based Game

Playing Conquest brings back memories of the Amiga 1000. Conquest is a simple turn-based 4X computer game set in a 26-star galaxy (stars are named A to Z), four types of space ships (scout, transport, cruiser and battleship), technology tree (velocity or speed, range and weapons) and a computer opponent. The computer opponent is pretty aggressive so even after many games, you can easily lose if you weren't careful. Each game took about 20 minutes to play, making it possible to play between assignments or while waiting for some computing task to finish (multi-tasking in the 80s was wonderful).

I first discovered the game, written by Bob Shimbo, on Fish Disk 24 then found a Windows version last week on Tim Walker's web site. Thanks Bob and Tim!

See Also

• Minor Bug Fix in Conquest Game