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A History of Rogue
Posted by
Soulskill
on Wed May 06, 2009 03:51 AM
from the not-rogue-origins dept.
from the not-rogue-origins dept.
blacklily8 writes "Gamasutra has published "The History of Rogue: Have @ You, You Deadly Zs." Despite only the most 'primitive' audiovisuals, Rogue has continued to excite gamers and programmers worldwide, and has been ported, enhanced, and forked now for over two decades. What is it about Wichman and Toy's old UNIX RPG that has sent so many gamers to their deaths in the Dungeons of Doom, desperately seeking the fabled Amulet of Yendor? This article covers the history of the game, including the Epyx failure to make a ton of cash selling it in 1983. It also goes into rogue-like culture and development."
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Imagination. (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite only the most 'primitive' audiovisuals, Rogue has continued to excite gamers and programmers worldwide, and has been ported, enhanced, and forked now for over two decades.
Despite? Given how easily we could at least put a simple tileset on the game to make things more realistic, I'd say that Roguelikes' ongoing popularity must be at least in part _because_ of the primitive graphics. A high-rez animated monster can only ever be a high-rez animated monster, exactly as you see it on the screen. But the dashing asterisk can be whatever you imagine it to be, and that makes it better. It's just like the way books are satisfying in a way that movies can never quite be.
Re:Imagination. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you set up traps, use polymorphic spells in unpredictable ways, suffer from hallucinations or become randomly invisible in 3D RPG/FPS these days ? I heard that in WoW, it sometimes rain but it does not change a single thing to the gameplay : things keep burning, fire elemental still have a good time and no spell is affected.
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Re:Imagination. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh c'mon, you know just as well that as soon as anything had any ever so tiny effect in WoW, the cry to NERF RAIN would be deafening.
Sometimes I wonder if players want change in that game at all.
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Re:Imagination. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the difference is not in the ascii vs graphical question but rather in the singleplayer vs multiplayer ?
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Re:Imagination. (Score:4, Interesting)
She looked at me blankly and claimed that she didn't know what Rogue and Angband were. When I showed her, she laughed and claimed that it was completely different because of the graphics.
I maintain the similarities are there - certainly with the stats and so forth. But obviously it is a bit more advanced. As you'd expect in twenty years.
I for one welcome our new @ symbol overlords.
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Re:Imagination. (Score:4, Insightful)
I maintain the similarities are there
They are.
You are a braver man than I am, I will not show my wife the older games and expect her to understand why they are important. Gaming history is perhaps the least important aspect of history.
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Re:Imagination. (Score:4, Funny)
"and expect her to understand why they are important."
I think we just learned where the real problem lies.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
WoW is deeply immersed in the old text games, but also in the old text Internet. In some real ways it's a graphical IRC client with a game bolted on. You ccould essentially play the whole thing with /command type syntax if you could type fast enough (and remember the commands).
Re:Imagination. (Score:5, Interesting)
Rogue/Nethack/etc. have perma-death.
I love perma-death.
WoW gets boring because you level up to a certain point and "then what?"
Perma-death is awesome, and too few games utilize it.
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Re:Imagination. (Score:4, Informative)
There was a multiplayer 'rogue' like game at the time 'nethack' came out. I can't remember the name, but it was like a multiplayer ASCII version of 'rogue' where people could collect wands and gold while traveling through a maze. The ultimate
goal was to find the "Teluma of Rodney" and escape the maze. Players were rendered as diamonds or eyeballs. There were monster characters, "The Others" that were AI controlled with the number depending on level.
Having other people to compete against did change the dynamics of the game as people would form teams to find the quest item and act as bodyguards for each other, rather than simply "yourself vs. the rest of the game world".
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Imagination. (Score:4, Insightful)
When all you have to entertain a player is a bunch of ASCII character, you know that you can't cheat on shiny effects. All that is left is game mechanics, sensible relationships between objects, and a thing that seems to go out of the game when the graphical cheesecake goes in : meaning.
Not only are you kept from cheating, it also frees up a lot of resources. When a program isn't storing landscape data, character models, textures, etc. in memory, and using at least some processor time in keeping track of them, it means you can have much more complex AI/more instances of the AI, larger areas in memory at one time, and a wide range of ongoing effects all at once.
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True , but... (Score:5, Insightful)
... if the graphics are simpler the developers can spend more time on the AI. And if theres only a few developers this is a big deal. Its probably why most text based MUDs were generally more imaginative than WoW and its clones.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
True, but on a MUD you need good builders. I've seen too many vanilla mobs that had great descriptions, but which were just walking bits of XP to the players because the builders didn't know how to make them fight in an interesting manner.
And it's sad, too. Long ago, when I was a low-level admin on a very large, old MUD once, I went through and fixed so many mprogs, it was absurd. If you understand the mprogs, you can make mobs that actually work as a team, which can be deliberately weakened by use of pl
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We banned death progs... for just such a reason. You could have them if the admins tested and approved them.
I remember once as a junior immortal I was building an area, and set one of my mobs to load some weapons from a different area since I hadn't built any of my own yet. I managed to send the mud into a huge death spiral the next reboot as my area was loaded before the other area. That meant that I was trying to load objects which didn't exist yet... *kaboom*
I continued to be an immortal there for a long
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually you can perform any action in the game using a /command sequence in WoW. It's primarily used for scripting, as it would be insanely difficult to play that way, but in theory you could fight a battle with "/target Kobold, /attack target, /cast fireball target, /cast frostnova..." I don't know about moving though. You may have to do that with the actual movement keys. Not that this invalidates you point, you still can't add actions or change their affects, but it is interesting to note.
About WOW and a game like rogue (Score:3, Informative)
Along the same lines as Rogue, it is probably one of the reasons for a strategy game I still like Empire. All pieces are the same on both sides and all cities are equal. It is a game of strategy with chance rolled in; that being the frequency of finding cities or the enemy. No gimmicky special powers (read : wtf ) that one side has that the other does not.. no fancy animations to get in the way of what something does.
Simple games can be the best games... I am still waiting for someone to replicate Sta
Re:Imagination. (Score:5, Insightful)
I just realized, after my own ode to rogue, that we are now those old cranky guys...
"In my day, we didn't have any a that sissy graphics stuff, we just had ASCII and we liked it that way. We weren't like the kids these days that save their games before fighting some weak underling. In our day, if we wanted to save our game before we dropped to the level where there be Balrogs, we had to write batch programs that would back up the game files. Colors? We didn't have colors. If you wanted colors in my day, you had two choices: black and white. Oh, there were some sissies who liked green or amber but those were the rich kids who had big name systems like Kaypro or Compaq. Us real men used old black and white televisions that were sitting in the basement and built our computers from Heath kits. I bet they don't even know what an RF converter is anymore.
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Re:Imagination. (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a certain amount of justification for the crankiness, at least short-term. When a new capability comes along, whether that's 3D effects, computer animation in movies or whatever, that is all we get for a while. Other necessary ingredients to a good product go out of the window. It's only after the makers have finally got it out of their system that they start using things judiciously. Look at a film like the recent "Let the Right One In". Excellent special effects but used very sparingly to add to the creepiness of the film as needed. Whereas you look at a vampire film ten years ago and the same technology of morphing people's faces is used everywhere and the basis of what they sell the movie on.
I'm not much of a gamer, but I'd say that computer games have been stuck in this phase for a while, but maybe it's starting to end. Perhaps it has been prolonged because graphics cards keep getting better and better so quickly. If you can keep on wowing people with graphics year after year, then you don't need to stop and look at the other ingredients for a good game. But crankiness is also misplaced. There always will be good games even if the majority just depend on the latest technological gimmicks and sooner or later, the industry settles down and relegate these gimmicks to just being one tool of many. Just some thoughts.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Imagination. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would not even call ascii primitive audiovisuals. It is more of a abstraction. And it enourages developers to work on important stuff: gameplay. And if game is fun without graphics, you just hit jackpot.
But of course awesome things happen if someone manages to take that roguelike core and adds fitting graphics ( Diablo series. )
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Re:Imagination. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There is no real adventuring - despite the randomized maps, there's very little to explore (because there's very little to find, except more monsters). There's no discovery - the identify system is token and adds nothing to the game. There's no problem solving (apart from figuring out how to blast a bunch of monsters before they blast you) because there's no depth - your options are a) attack, or b) attack.
If
Re:Imagination. (Score:4, Interesting)
Diablo is, of course, simplified because of visuals versus verbosity conflict. But it still retains core - Randomized adventure, dungeon discovery. atmosphere.
There is nothing bad at throwing out kitchen sink and doing spring cleaning. Away with steep learning curve, leave core of game.
Problem solving, for example - typical problem solving in RL basically consists of having the luck of having right item in inventory. (and remembering to pray if everything else fails) There are gonna be lots of nuances, obscure mechanics that can be abused, lots of different options to dealing with something. But it all can be condesned to "was i lucky enough to have x in backpack?". Might as well just simplify it. For example, condesate all the "equipment rusting/melting/breaking" events to simple durability loss, or all the harm character in interesting way effects to health loss, etc ...
Discovery another - in heart, discovery in roguelikes is as shallow as in Diablos - just uncover level to find enemies/loot, proceed to next level. But it works.
Depth of roguelike is in player imagination, rich enviroment that adds event to trigger more imagination (meeting rust monster beating it with wooden sword), its not just that enviroment alone - without player imagination it is just pointlessly overcomplicated dungeon crawl slash roulette.
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Re:Imagination. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say that Roguelikes' ongoing popularity must be at least in part _because_ of the primitive graphics.
I would have to agree. I've played both Rogue/Hack/Nethack for curses and Nethack for Qt and I prefer the curses version.
the dashing asterisk can be whatever you imagine it to be, and that makes it better. It's just like the way books are satisfying in a way that movies can never quite be.
You're right, but for the wrong reason. Books are a far, far better medium for laying out a rich story.
I enjoy playing World of Warcraft, but nothing I've encountered there has excited me more than killing the wizard of Yendor and beginning the dangerous ascent back up to victory.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
One word: "Performance"
Unlike many current games, you didn't need to have a special system to play rogue. It would practically run on an abacus (or at least a TI-80). No matter how slow your system, that little guy would still run like a demon.
Except for those fucking ants. I hated those ants. Rooms full of ants. Multiplying ants.
Primitive visuals the main selling point (Score:4, Funny)
Indeed. I can play Rogue all day at work, and everyone else assumes that I'm working at something really complicated and "techy."
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Re:Primitive visuals the main selling point (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Imagination. (Score:4, Funny)
Such a sentence seems, at first glance, crass and offensive. However, underneath the words themselves lies a statement of beautiful grammatical ambiguity and meaning. The author of this profound statement, anonymous, has long been considered one of the greatest writers in the history of modern literature. The depth and meaning of this sentence only cements this reputation, and lifts him to new heights of literary esteem. Meanwhile, surrealism is highly prominent in this work. Truly, this sentence is in full accord with René Magritte's famous statement, "Allez manger des merdes baiseurs."
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Imagination. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Imagination. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well if you prefer your ascii graphics rendered a bit more fancifully, there's always the opengl/smooth-scrolling ascii GoblinHack [sourceforge.net].
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Re:Imagination. (Score:5, Funny)
So yes, while movies *ahem* may be more visual, a vivid imagination will always furnish a better scenario.
And you like THAT? *THERE*? Wow, you filthy minx, I never would have guessed!
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Actually your second option sounds pretty similar to what happened too.
You would think that after two decades (Score:5, Funny)
Modern version (Score:3, Interesting)
So as a young noob I quite like these old games, but I have to admit I prefer tilesets over text, can anybody recommend a gui frontend for rogue?
Best I've found for nethack was a qtnethack* which really sucked in some areas, is there something similar for rogue? Hell is there something that can act as a frontend for both?
*I know there if flacon's eye but I found it much harder to see whats going on in 3D
Re:Modern version (Score:5, Informative)
While this isn't answering your question, I'd like to point out my favourite Nethack interface:
http://glhack.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
GnomeHack was a very nice version of the game... But the GUI-ness of it (popup windows, scrollbars, etc..) really wasn't to my taste. So I started work on glHack, to make it feel very similiar to the text-terminal version (nice & snappy). but with graphical tiles.
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Re:Modern version (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway a lot of neat little tweaks were made to the formula without messing up the core game: new equipment and magic, some animations, secret characters (that have unique abilities and starting equipment), and an online leaderboard to compete with dungeon crawlers all over the world.
Come by my website http://www.chronosoft.com/ [chronosoft.com] to see a video and check out the forums and leaderboards.
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Multiplayer (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Still... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Still... (Score:4, Funny)
Are you telling me I can't win in NetHack? After all these years, now you tell me!
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nethack ghosts (Score:5, Funny)
While porting nethack, 'way back when, we wanted to be sure that all of the levels worked, so we added a terminator-like character for the test players. Immune to poisons, more robust, ... Then one died down about level 23, and, of course, came back as a ghost. Made the game much tougher to win when playing as a tourist or whatever.
No, we didn't purge it from the system. That would be cheating.
Still thriving (Score:4, Interesting)
The DS is a roguelike gamers paradise at this point. I'm amazed how many commercial ones that are out there. You've got something for the hardcore [wikipedia.org], the weeaboos [wikipedia.org], the kids [wikipedia.org] and the computer nerds [gno.org]. The nethack port is worth the price of a flash cart alone. It's better than the wince/wm port!
I know there's ones I've missed. There's also a ground-up game coded for the GBA and ported to the DS.
ADOM (Score:5, Interesting)
Poor sales? (Score:3, Funny)
What more can you say? (Score:3, Insightful)
Without Rogue there would be no Nethack [nethack.org] and no Dwarf Fortress [bay12games.com].
And I could probably have used all that time to write a frakkin' book or something, instead of zapping ghosts with a wand of polymorph or dropping merchant caravans into lava just to see what would happen.
The Best Early Rogue Player in the World (Score:5, Interesting)
The first version of Rogue that was widely circulated became quite a time sink for a lot of people at Caltech. This version was considerably harder than subsequent versions. It was extremely rare for anyone to actually win the game, by getting down deep, getting the Amulet of Yendor, and making it out alive.
One undergraduate, however, had no trouble beating it. Within a couple days of his starting playing, he had all the spots on the top score list, and all of them were total winners.
He then stopped playing, except when anyone else dared to take a spot on the top score list. Then he'd come to computing center, sit down, and 30 minutes later, the interloper would be pushed off the list.
Naturally, we all wondered how the hell this guy was so much better than the rest of us (and, based on what our contacts at other schools told us, better than anyone at their schools, too). He didn't do anything to hide when playing--he didn't play in an office with a private terminal. He played right out in the main terminal room, where anyone who wanted could stand behind and watch.
As far as anyone could see, he didn't do anything significantly different than the rest of us, other than he died a lot less than we did.
Finally, he told us the secret, and we all learned an important lesson. There was no big secret--he just made every little decision correctly. For example, if he had to explore a dark room, he did it in the minimum number of steps necessary. The rest of us would use the "run until you hit something" funciton and sweep the room, which made us step on more locations, which made us have a higher chance of springing a trap.
Traps usually weren't fatal. They just put you down a few hit points for a little while. But in that little while, a monster that he would barely survive, we would barely lose to.
After he got the Amulet and was on the way up, he would only step on locations he'd already stepped on while descending, and so he NEVER sprang a trap on the way up.
He knew the odds of everything (based on observation while playing, not based on looking at the code), and would use potions or scrolls at the time when they had the maximum expected utility.
He did this for EVERY decision point in the game. He made the decision that, based on all the data available at the time, was the best decision.
None of the things I listed above, or any of the other things he did perfectly that the rest of us only did 99% perfectly would make a noticeable difference by themselves. But put them all together, and all our tiny mistakes added up to losing for us, and the lack of any mistakes added up to winning for him.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Offtopic? Idiot moderator.
I never got a playable Moria compiled on any of my systems. Basically, it was a VMS only game. The Unix ports never worked all that well.
Or maybe just the game play sucked. I never seemed to get past the rooms of spreading lice.
Re:Wake me when WoW has puking bears (Score:4, Insightful)
No. What Dwarf fortress needs, desperately, is a better UI. I'm not just talking about proper graphics, though that would be a part of it. Even the developers have admitted that they have streched the limits of what is possible with ASCII characters.
Currently, Dwarf fortress is like a rocket ship, with literally hundreds of knobs, buttons and switches. It's frequently impossible to figure out what is going on and how to do anything about it. Which is tragic because almost everyone who sees the game _wants_ to know what is going on and to interact with the world as much as possible.
Something like Falcon's Eye shows the way. Meaningful graphics which convey the maximium amount of information in the least time, and context sensitive menus, which only display relevant options. Better still would be the creation of a system that relied on only a few "verbs", with objects in the world as nouns. As the saying goes "Complexity is Easy. Simplicity is Hard."
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