Rogue (computer game)

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Rogue is a dungeon-crawling computer game dating from 1980. It inspired a class of derivatives known collectively as roguelikes. Some of the popular members of this gaming genre include Hack, NetHack, Larn, Moria, ADOM, UltraRogue and Angband.

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Overview

Image:RogueScreenShot.png

The basic premise in Rogue is that the player assumes the role of an adventurer typical of fantasy games such as Dungeons & Dragons. The player starts out at the top level of a massive dungeon, filled with a myriad of monsters and treasure. The goal is to fight one's way down to the bottom of the dungeon, retrieve the Amulet of Yendor on level 26, and make it back to the top. Until the amulet is retrieved, the player cannot go back up stairs which he/she has taken down. Rare was the adventurer who would ever again see the light of day. Each level was progessively harder than the proceeding level as far as the type of monsters that could be encountered. Unlike most contemporary adventure games at the time it was written, the dungeon and everything in it was randomly-generated, yielding a different game each time it was played.

In the original version, all the aspects of the dungeon, including the character and the monsters were represented by letters and symbols, making the game appropriate to play on a dumb terminal. Later ports of the game allowed replacing the characters with graphical tiles, but the gameplay remained the same. The basic movement keys (h, left; j, down; k, up; and l, right) are the same as the cursor control keys in the vi editor (see also HJKL keys). Other game actions also used a single keystroke- q to quaff a potion, w to wield a weapon, e to eat some food, etc.

Rogue had quite a following in the early to mid-1980s across college campuses that used UNIX systems. Monsters were represented by unique letters (such as Z for zombie) and as such there were 26 types. Each dungeon level had a 3 room by 3 room grid, or a deadend hallway where a room should have been. Later variations include "mazes" in the place of rooms as well. While archaic by the gaming standards today, the strategy necessary to play and succeed was quite complex. With an assortment of potions, scrolls, wands, weapons, armor, and food, there were many ways to succeed and many ways to die. It was extremely rare for the rogue to become so powerful that he could walk through monsters, or, if he could, that would usually change a few levels down. Maximizing one's character's survival potential was always a challenge.

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Authorship

The original authors of Rogue were Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, and Ken Arnold (of JINI and JavaSpaces fame). Rogue was one of the first widely used applications of the screen control library curses. Originally written on Unix, it was ported by its original authors to many platforms, including the PC, Macintosh, Amiga and Atari ST. After attempting to sell these versions on their own, they eventually handed marketing over to established video game publisher Epyx.

Numerous freeware clones now exist for modern operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and BSD-derived variants.

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A.I. Players

Because the input and output of the original game was over a terminal interface, it was relatively easy in Unix to re-direct that into another program. Such a program, Rog-O-Matic, described in the paper below, was developed to play and win the game. It was an interesting study in expert system design.

This has led to the development of other game-playing programs (typically called "borgs"), including some for Rogue variants especially Angband.

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External links

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Ports, clones, and remakes

es:Rogue fr:Rogue (jeu vidéo) it:Rogue (videogioco) ja:ローグ pl:Rogue fi:Rogue

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