A History of Rogue

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."

Still...

[morazor]

Despite only the most 'primitive' audiovisuals I'm still addicted to its descendants. They have some features not easily found in modern games, above all the difficulty and the challenge. Modern games often seem to be designed to let the player win.

Re:Modern version

[TeknoHog]

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.

Re:Imagination.

[mumb0.jumb0]

Diablo is an "action rpg". That basically means it's space invaders with character development.

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 you think Diablo is basically a real-time Rogue-like, then you've misunderstood what is so great about Rogue.

About WOW and a game like rogue

[Shivetya]

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 Starflight

As for WOW and weather....

or at least someone on a message board somewhere else did, the weather effects do not affect NPCs nor their property because they have the weather effects slider set to off. Spells are not affected because their "magic". mmmmkay?

Re:Imagination.

[griego]

In Final Fantasy XI, the weather (and day of the week, which are all named after elements) does affect spell resist rates, as well as crafting success rates. Thunder-based spells cast during lightning storms will more often land for full damage; crafting an item using a Fire Crystal on Watersday (and/or during rainy weather) will more likely result in critical failure, causing you to lose some or all of your ingredients.

Re:Imagination.

[PopeRatzo]

I'd say that Roguelikes' ongoing popularity must be at least in part _because_ of the primitive graphics.

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.

Re:Modern version

[CommanderData]

Well, If you'd like a more modern rogue implementation with tilesets, and have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you could give Rogue Touch a try. I wrote this version from scratch in my spare time over last fall and winter as a way to fill in downtime from consulting. Borrowed some graphics from public domain tilesets, and drew others myself. It's a tribute to the Atari ST and Amiga versions of Rogue, and it's gained quite a following lately... as a matter of fact one of my players alerted me to this story (I used to post here regularly, but have been away for a while... had to quit reading so I could get some real work done!!).

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.

Re:Imagination.

[fractoid]

The problem was more that you can turn off weather effects (for performance reasons) so people didn't want it to be "spend $4k on a gaming rig or your opponents will have a competitive advantage". Of course the latest dungeon will apparently stress out any computer more than a year old, so that does slip sometimes... then again a good mate of mine cleared Sarth3D in both 10 and 25man versions (if you understood that go take a shot of vodka and talk to a girl) using onboard video on a 4-year-old computer. I'm glad I gave him my old 6800 Pro. >.>

Re:Multiplayer

[Varka]

http://www.t-o-m-e.net/main.php?tome_current=1 [t-o-m-e.net] TomeNET is a multiplayer fantasy dungeon exploration game based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is a game that emphasizes intricate, challenging, and varied gameplay over graphics. Hundreds of different monsters in randomly-generated, unpredictable dungeons will strive to slay you by various means, and you counter - if you survive - by developing the skills of your choice and wielding mighty artifacts. TomeNET was originally based on Mangband 0.7.0, and it is now the leading multiplayer Angband variant! The current server is TomeNET.net, select it when the client asks you which server you want to use. TomeNET was formely known was PernMangband, but the name was changed due to copyright issues.

Re:Rogomatic

[Varka]

Angband Borg: http://www.thangorodrim.net/borg.html [thangorodrim.net]

Re:About WOW and a game like rogue

[Novus]

Simple games can be the best games... I am still waiting for someone to replicate Starflight

Have you tried The Ur-Quan Masters [sourceforge.net]?

However, I'd hesitate to call Starflight or Rogue "simple". Many of these games have quite a lot of depth compared to the FPS of the week.

Re:Imagination.

[Sobrique]

I am reminded of Dwarf Fortress [bay12games.com] - a game which I saw the graphics, and assumed 'oh, old game' until I realised that it was possibly the most intricate 'simulation' style game I'd ever run into. And the graphics are ascii, although I believe it has coloured text too :)

Re:Imagination.

[mikael]

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".

Re:Multiplayer

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this: http://www.mangband.org/