====== Ember Reach ======

Ember Reach is a space strategy door game for BBSes, written for the Kalgoorlie Retro BBS in Free Pascal. Players run noble houses across a cluster of star systems joined by travel lanes that open and close over time. They settle worlds, build fleets, research, trade on the Exchange, make treaties and fight the Hollow, a hostile faction that raids from its nests.

Every player gives orders during the day; the whole game moves forward one day at once in the nightly maintenance. A game runs 60 days by default (or with no last day), for up to 12 houses. Computer houses can join, so a small BBS still has rivals.

The current version is **0.5** (1 November 2026).

===== Play it =====

On the Kalgoorlie Retro BBS any registered user can play: telnet to ''bbs.theiguru.au'' (port 23), press **X** for the games, choose **Games Hosted by Kalgoorlie Retro** and pick **Ember Reach**. See [[emberreach:playing|How to play]].

===== Pages =====

^ Page ^ What it covers ^
| [[emberreach:playing|How to play]] | The menus, ships, worlds, buildings, research, fighting and winning |
| [[emberreach:installing|Installing]] | Setting the game up on Synchronet (Linux or Windows), Mystic and DOS BBSes |
| [[emberreach:settings|Settings and reachcfg]] | Every setting in REACH.CFG, and the set-up program |
| [[emberreach:computer_houses|Computer houses]] | Adding computer houses, peace days and difficulty |
| [[emberreach:maintenance|Maintenance and files]] | The nightly run, ermaint's commands and the files in the game folder |
| [[emberreach:lua_bot|The Lua bot]] | emberbot.lua, a SyncTERM-Lua script that plays a day for you |
| [[emberreach:building|Source and licence]] | Building from source; the GNU GPL; credits |
| [[emberreach:history|Version history]] | What changed in each version |

===== Downloads =====

From [[https://games.theiguru.au/emberreach/]], or the **Heisenbergs Files** area on the BBS:

^ File ^ What it is ^
| ''REACHL05.ZIP'' | Linux: ''reach'', ''ermaint'', ''reachcfg'', and ''reach.sh'' / ''reachmaint.sh'' for Synchronet |
| ''REACHW05.ZIP'' | Windows (64-bit): ''reach.exe'', ''ermaint.exe'', ''reachcfg.exe'' |
| ''REACHD05.ZIP'' | DOS: ''REACH.EXE'', ''ERMAINT.EXE'', ''REACHCFG.EXE'' |
| ''REACHB05.ZIP'' | ''emberbot.lua'', the bot for SyncTERM-Lua |
| ''REACHS05.ZIP'' | The source code (GNU GPL version 2 or later) |

The game files are the same on every system, so a game folder can be moved between Linux, Windows and DOS.