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Rogue (computer game)
Encyclopedia
Rogue is a dungeon crawl
ing video game first developed by Michael Toy
and Glenn Wichman
around 1980. It was a favorite on college Unix
systems in the early to mid-1980s, in part due to the procedural generation
of game content. Rogue popularized dungeon crawling as a video game trope, leading others to develop a class of derivatives known collectively as "roguelike
s". For example, it directly inspired Hack, which in turn led to NetHack
. Roguelikes have since influenced commercial games outside the genre, such as Diablo
.
of early fantasy
role-playing game
s. The game starts at the uppermost level of an unmapped dungeon with myriad monster
s and treasure
s. The goal is to fight one's way
to the bottom level, retrieve the Amulet
of Yendor (Rodney
spelled backwards), then ascend to the surface. Until the Amulet is retrieved, the player cannot return to earlier levels. Monsters in the levels become progressively more difficult to defeat.
The game's setting was influenced by the text game Colossal Cave Adventure
as well as Dungeons & Dragons
, from which most of the monsters were, initially, closely modeled. Wichman has stated the monsters were soon altered "to avoid getting in trouble" with the creators of Dungeons & Dragons.
In the original, all aspects of the game, including the dungeon, the player character
, and monsters, are represented by letters and symbols. Monsters are represented by capital letters (such as Z for zombie), and as such there are twenty-six varieties. This type of display makes it appropriate for a non-graphical terminal
. Rogue was one of the first widely used applications of the curses screen control library
. Like all programs using this library, the game uses the termcap database
to adapt to the capabilities of terminals made by different vendors. Later ports
of Rogue apply extended character sets
to the text user interface
or replace it with graphical tiles
.
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. Other game actions also use single keystrokes—q to quaff a potion
, w to wield a weapon, e to eat some food, etc. In the DOS
version, the cursor keys
specify movement, and the fast-move keys (H, J, K, and L) are supplanted by use of the scroll lock
key.
Each dungeon level
comprises a grid of 3 rooms by 3 rooms, or dead end hallways where rooms would be expected. Later levels include maze
s in the place of rooms as well. Unlike most adventure game
s of the time, the dungeon layout and the placement of objects within are randomly generated
.
, Glenn Wichman
, and then Ken Arnold
. The earliest versions were written on the Unix system at UC Santa Cruz
and later coding moved, along with Michael Toy, to UC Berkeley
. The game became popular enough to be distributed with Version 4.2 of BSD (Berkeley Standard Distribution) UNIX. Rogue was ported by Michael Toy and Jon Lane to the IBM PC in 1984, and then by Michael Toy to the Macintosh. Toy and Lane formed the company A.I. Design, which marketed these versions. According to Lane, Dennis Ritchie
was quoted as saying that Rogue "wasted more CPU time than anything in history."
Later, marketing was handed over to established video game publisher
Epyx
, who contracted A.I. Design to port the game to Amiga
, Atari ST
and CoCo
personal computers.
In 1988, the budget software publisher Mastertronic
released a commercial port of Rogue for the Amstrad CPC
, Commodore 64
, Atari 8-bit
and ZX Spectrum
computers. (However the Spectrum Version came with a bug
which could be used to produce identical items within a room)
Numerous clones exist for modern operating system
s such as Microsoft Windows
, Mac OS X
, Palm OS
, Linux
, BSD OSs
and iOS.
, was developed to play and win the game. Ken Arnold said that he liked to make "sure that every subsequent version of rogue had a new feature in it that broke rogue-o-matic." Nevertheless, it remains an interesting study in expert system
design and led to the development of other game-playing programs, typically called "borgs" or "bots". Some target roguelikes, in particular Angband.
#112 by Hartley and Pattie Lesser in the "Role of Computers" column. In a subsequent column, the reviewers gave the IBM and Mac versions of the game 3 1/2 out of 5 stars. Rogue was named #6 "Ten Greatest PC Game Ever" by PC World
in 2009.
Dungeon crawl
A dungeon crawl is a type of scenario in fantasy role-playing games in which heroes navigate a labyrinthine environment, battling various monsters, and looting any treasure they may find...
ing video game first developed by Michael Toy
Michael Toy
Michael Toy is an American computer programmer. He was one of the developers of the 1980s dungeon-crawling computer game Rogue. He later became an employee of SGI and followed its founder Jim Clark when he left to form Netscape...
and Glenn Wichman
Glenn Wichman
Glenn R. Wichman is a software developer who is best known as one of the original authors of the computer game Rogue, along with Michael Toy, Ken Arnold and Jon Lane. Wichman has also contributed to many other commercial software programs, including Microsoft Bookshelf, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing...
around 1980. It was a favorite on college Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
systems in the early to mid-1980s, in part due to the procedural generation
Procedural generation
Procedural generation is a widely used term in the production of media; it refers to content generated algorithmically rather than manually. Often, this means creating content on the fly rather than prior to distribution...
of game content. Rogue popularized dungeon crawling as a video game trope, leading others to develop a class of derivatives known collectively as "roguelike
Roguelike
The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement. Most roguelikes feature ASCII graphics, with newer ones increasingly offering tile-based graphics. Games are typically dungeon crawls, with many...
s". For example, it directly inspired Hack, which in turn led to NetHack
NetHack
NetHack is a single-player roguelike video game originally released in 1987. It is a descendant of an earlier game called Hack , which is a descendant of Rogue...
. Roguelikes have since influenced commercial games outside the genre, such as Diablo
Diablo (video game)
Diablo is a dark fantasy-themed action role-playing game developed by Blizzard North and released by Blizzard Entertainment on December 31, 1996....
.
Gameplay
In Rogue, the player assumes the typical role of an adventurerPlayer character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
of early fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
role-playing game
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
s. The game starts at the uppermost level of an unmapped dungeon with myriad monster
Monster
A monster is any fictional creature, usually found in legends or horror fiction, that is somewhat hideous and may produce physical harm or mental fear by either its appearance or its actions...
s and treasure
Treasure
Treasure is a concentration of riches, often one which is considered lost or forgotten until being rediscovered...
s. The goal is to fight one's way
Hack and slash
Hack and slash or hack and slay, abbreviated H&S or HnS, refers to a type of gameplay that emphasizes combat. "Hack and slash" was originally used to describe an aspect of pen-and-paper role-playing games , carrying over from there to MUDs, MMORPGs, and video games in general...
to the bottom level, retrieve the Amulet
Amulet
An amulet, similar to a talisman , is any object intended to bring good luck or protection to its owner.Potential amulets include gems, especially engraved gems, statues, coins, drawings, pendants, rings, plants and animals; even words said in certain occasions—for example: vade retro satana—, to...
of Yendor (Rodney
Wizard of Yendor
The Wizard of Yendor , commonly known as “Rodney” , is a powerful enemy in the roguelike computer game NetHack. He lives in the valley of Gehennom in his tower and holds the Book of the Dead. He can curse the player's items, cast powerful spells, and has the ability to return from the dead...
spelled backwards), then ascend to the surface. Until the Amulet is retrieved, the player cannot return to earlier levels. Monsters in the levels become progressively more difficult to defeat.
The game's setting was influenced by the text game Colossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure gave its name to the computer adventure game genre . It was originally designed by Will Crowther, a programmer and caving enthusiast who based the layout on part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky...
as well as Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...
, from which most of the monsters were, initially, closely modeled. Wichman has stated the monsters were soon altered "to avoid getting in trouble" with the creators of Dungeons & Dragons.
User interface
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
, and monsters, are represented by letters and symbols. Monsters are represented by capital letters (such as Z for zombie), and as such there are twenty-six varieties. This type of display makes it appropriate for a non-graphical terminal
Computer terminal
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system...
. Rogue was one of the first widely used applications of the curses screen control library
Curses (programming library)
curses is a terminal control library for Unix-like systems, enabling the construction of text user interface applications.The name is a pun on the term “cursor optimization”. It is a library of functions that manage an application's display on character-cell terminals .- Overview :The curses API...
. Like all programs using this library, the game uses the termcap database
Termcap
Termcap is a software library and database used on Unix-like computers. It enables programs to use display computer terminals in a device-independent manner, which greatly simplifies the process of writing portable text mode applications...
to adapt to the capabilities of terminals made by different vendors. Later ports
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
of Rogue apply extended character sets
Extended ASCII
The term extended ASCII describes eight-bit or larger character encodings that include the standard seven-bit ASCII characters as well as others...
to the text user interface
Text user interface
TUI short for: Text User Interface or Textual User Interface , is a retronym that was coined sometime after the invention of graphical user interfaces, to distinguish them from text-based user interfaces...
or replace it with graphical tiles
Tile-based video game
A tile-based video game is a type of video or computer game where the playing area consists of small rectangular, square, or hexagonal graphic images, referred to as tiles. The complete set of tiles available for use in a playing area is called a tileset...
.
The basic movement keys (h, left; j, down; k, up; and l, right) are the same as the cursor
Cursor (computers)
In computing, a cursor is an indicator used to show the position on a computer monitor or other display device that will respond to input from a text input or pointing device. The flashing text cursor may be referred to as a caret in some cases...
control keys in the vi
Vi
vi is a screen-oriented text editor originally created for the Unix operating system. The portable subset of the behavior of vi and programs based on it, and the ex editor language supported within these programs, is described by the Single Unix Specification and POSIX.The original code for vi...
editor. Other game actions also use single keystrokes—q to quaff a potion
Potion
A potion is a consumable medicine or poison.In mythology and literature, a potion is usually made by a magician, sorcerer, dragon, fairy or witch and has magical properties. It might be used to heal, bewitch or poison people...
, w to wield a weapon, e to eat some food, etc. In the DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
version, the cursor keys
Arrow keys
Cursor movement keys or arrow keys are buttons on a computer keyboard that are either programmed or designated to move the cursor in a specified direction....
specify movement, and the fast-move keys (H, J, K, and L) are supplanted by use of the scroll lock
Scroll lock
Scroll lock is a keyboard button on some computer keyboards. The key is not frequently used and therefore some keyboards lack Scroll Lock altogether....
key.
Each dungeon level
Level (video gaming)
A level, map, area, or world in a video game is the total space available to the player during the course of completing a discrete objective...
comprises a grid of 3 rooms by 3 rooms, or dead end hallways where rooms would be expected. Later levels include maze
Maze
A maze is a tour puzzle in the form of a complex branching passage through which the solver must find a route. In everyday speech, both maze and labyrinth denote a complex and confusing series of pathways, but technically the maze is distinguished from the labyrinth, as the labyrinth has a single...
s in the place of rooms as well. Unlike most adventure game
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
s of the time, the dungeon layout and the placement of objects within are randomly generated
Random dungeon
A random dungeon is a dungeon in a role-playing video game which is procedurally generated by the computer using an algorithm, such that the dungeon is laid out differently every time the player enters it, and a player often never plays through quite the same dungeon twice. Random dungeons are...
.
Development
The original authors of Rogue are Michael ToyMichael Toy
Michael Toy is an American computer programmer. He was one of the developers of the 1980s dungeon-crawling computer game Rogue. He later became an employee of SGI and followed its founder Jim Clark when he left to form Netscape...
, Glenn Wichman
Glenn Wichman
Glenn R. Wichman is a software developer who is best known as one of the original authors of the computer game Rogue, along with Michael Toy, Ken Arnold and Jon Lane. Wichman has also contributed to many other commercial software programs, including Microsoft Bookshelf, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing...
, and then Ken Arnold
Ken Arnold
Kenneth Cutts Richard Cabot Arnold is an American computer programmer well known as one of the developers of the 1980s dungeon-crawling computer game Rogue, for his contributions to the original Berkeley distribution of Unix, for his books and articles about C and C++ Kenneth Cutts Richard Cabot ...
. The earliest versions were written on the Unix system at UC Santa Cruz
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...
and later coding moved, along with Michael Toy, to UC Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. The game became popular enough to be distributed with Version 4.2 of BSD (Berkeley Standard Distribution) UNIX. Rogue was ported by Michael Toy and Jon Lane to the IBM PC in 1984, and then by Michael Toy to the Macintosh. Toy and Lane formed the company A.I. Design, which marketed these versions. According to Lane, Dennis Ritchie
Dennis Ritchie
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie , was an American computer scientist who "helped shape the digital era." He created the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the UNIX operating system...
was quoted as saying that Rogue "wasted more CPU time than anything in history."
Later, marketing was handed over to established video game publisher
Video game publisher
A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer....
Epyx
Epyx
Epyx, Inc. was a video game developer and publisher in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. The company was founded as Automated Simulations by Jim Connelley and Jon Freeman, originally using Epyx as a brand name for action-oriented games before renaming the company to match in 1983...
, who contracted A.I. Design to port the game to Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
, Atari ST
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
and CoCo
TRS-80 Color Computer
The Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer was a home computer launched in 1980. It was one of the earliest of the first generation of computers marketed for home use in English-speaking markets...
personal computers.
In 1988, the budget software publisher Mastertronic
Mastertronic
Mastertronic was originally a publisher and distributor of low-cost computer game software founded in 1983. Their first games were distributed in mid-1984. At its peak the label was the dominant software publisher in the UK, a position achieved by selling cassette-based software at the £1.99...
released a commercial port of Rogue for the Amstrad CPC
Amstrad CPC
The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where it successfully established itself primarily in the United Kingdom,...
, Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
, Atari 8-bit
Atari 8-bit family
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers manufactured from 1979 to 1992. All are based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU and were the first home computers designed with custom coprocessor chips...
and ZX Spectrum
ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd...
computers. (However the Spectrum Version came with a bug
Software bug
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
which could be used to produce identical items within a room)
Numerous clones exist for modern operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s such as Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, Palm OS
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...
, Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, BSD OSs
Comparison of BSD operating systems
There are a number of Unix-like operating systems based on or descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution series of Unix variants. The three most notable descendants in current use are FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, which are all derived from 386BSD and 4.4BSD-Lite, by various routes...
and iOS.
Automated play
Because the input and output of the original game is over a terminal interface, it is relatively easy in Unix to redirect output to another program. One such program, Rog-O-MaticRog-O-Matic
Rog-O-Matic is a bot developed in 1984 that plays the computer game Rogue.Described as a "belligerent expert system", Rog-O-Matic performs well when tested against expert Rogue players, even winning the game. Because all information in Rogue is communicated to the player via ASCII text, Rog-O-Matic...
, was developed to play and win the game. Ken Arnold said that he liked to make "sure that every subsequent version of rogue had a new feature in it that broke rogue-o-matic." Nevertheless, it remains an interesting study in expert system
Expert system
In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning about knowledge, like an expert, and not by following the procedure of a developer as is the case in...
design and led to the development of other game-playing programs, typically called "borgs" or "bots". Some target roguelikes, in particular Angband.
Reception
The game was reviewed in 1986 in DragonDragon (magazine)
Dragon is one of the two official magazines for source material for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and associated products, the other being Dungeon. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, The Strategic Review. The...
#112 by Hartley and Pattie Lesser in the "Role of Computers" column. In a subsequent column, the reviewers gave the IBM and Mac versions of the game 3 1/2 out of 5 stars. Rogue was named #6 "Ten Greatest PC Game Ever" by PC World
PC World (magazine)
PC World is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal-technology products and services...
in 2009.
External links
- The History of Rogue: Have @ You, You Deadly Z's from GamasutraGamasutraGamasutra is a website founded in 1997 for video game developers. It is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb , a division of United Business Media, and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer...
by Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton