Conflict: Middle East Political Simulator

Conflict was written in the 1990s, while game genres were still fluid and expectations for graphics were still relatively modest. A team of two or three people could quite reasonably produce a game. I was lucky enough to start working with my friend and colleague Shahid Ahmad, who was already an established professional developer. The PC version can be downloaded from abandonware sites.

I had always been fascinated by strategy games, and I remember being impressed by Chis Crawford’s "Balance of Powers". This proved that a game could combine politics and strategy. But I wanted something that didn't treat other countries purely as statistics.

I had little useful knowledge of assembly language, but Shahid wrote a small graphics library for me and guided me towards the relatively new 'C' language.

The early success of the software games industry ensured the interest of big business and the decline of small scale development. So Conflict is both a product of the period, and probably irreproducible in a modern commercial environment.

Below are some answers to the few direct questions and message boards comments I've encountered. These are usually from software graduates,