Entropy, The Blog

Do you think you could do better than the Prime Minister of Israel? The year is 1997. The PLO are planning terrorist attacks. Syria is moving troops on your border, they say it is just ‘maneuvers’ . Jordan has just signed a military pact with Iraq. A spy satellite has spotted a nuclear reactor in Egypt, the Egyptians deny this. What do you do? Move soldiers into Palestine? Escalate the tension by moving your troops to the Syrian-Israeli border? Order an air-strike on the Egyptian reactor? Sponsor rebels in Jordan?

Conflict was written by David Eastman and it’s graphics library by Shahid Ahmad. Despite being published by Virgin Interactive over 15 years ago, in 1990, it is still lots of fun and relevant. Prepare to be addicted!

From Wikipedia :

“The game is set in 1997. The prime minister of Israel has just been assassinated, leaving the player to run the Country as the new prime minister. The player’s objective is to stay in power while beating the surrounding Arab countries, either by direct military action or by supporting insurgent elements within the opposing countries. The Arab countries in Conflict are Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. Israel can build up her armed forces by buying from USA, UK, France or from private arms dealers. The player can fund development (and later deployment) of nuclear weapons. Problems can be fomented in other countries by funding rebel organizations. If you keep well with the US you can ask them for money. You also need to tackle the “Palestinian Problem” (Israel’s own internal insurgent group) using either soft or hard tactics.”

Download

Conflict for Mac is a wrapper for Conflict and DOSBox conveniently packaged up for Mac OS X into a universal binary. Conflict for Mac is compatible with Mac OS X 10.3.9, 10.4.x and 10.5, both Intel and PowerPC.

Conflict For Mac version 0.2

1. Read the manual
2. No really, read the manual!!!
3. Enjoy the game
4. Read the manual, I know you didn’t ;)

FAQ

Middle East? This looks like Israeli / Syrian / Lebanese / [Insert Country Here] propaganda?

Conflict is game, nothing more. It was published 15 years ago. Any similarity to recent events is coincidental.

Did you create Conflict?

No. I only created a wrapper and packaged it up for Mac OS X. David Eastman along with Shahid Ahmad created conflict.

Is Conflict for Mac open source?

The source code for Conflict does not exist anymore (please do not ask David Eastman for it as he does not have it). Aside from Conflict, Conflict for Mac is open source. I have released the source code under the GPL and is included within the package. DOSBox is also open source as is Platypus which was used in the making of the wrapper.

Are you distributing pirated software?

No. I have permission from David Eastman, the current copyright holder, to distribute Conflict within Conflict For Mac

Credits

* Conflict : David Eastman, the genius behind the game and Shahid Ahmad, the mastermind behind the graphics library.
* DOSBox : The DOSBox crew and Aubin Paul for his universal port.
* Platypus : Sveinbjorn Thordarson.
* Conflict for Mac : Paul William.

Links

David Eastman’s Conflict page.