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."

Comments

You would think that after two decades

[Norsefire]

People would have figured out how to spell it.

Re:Imagination.

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Re:Imagination.

[FiveDozenWhales]

Oh no! A yeti, floating eyeball, giant ant, dwarf, ooh look a scroll! wight, another floating eyeball, a couple of leprechauns...

Re:Still...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you telling me I can't win in NetHack? After all these years, now you tell me!

nethack ghosts

[dltaylor]

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.

Re:Imagination.

[jank1887]

"and expect her to understand why they are important."

I think we just learned where the real problem lies.

Poor sales?

[Sockatume]

I guess you could say it's an... *sunglasses* ... Epyx fail.

Re:Imagination.

[fractoid]

See, thanks to my imagining that you're a voluptuous redhead whom both my wife and I find irresistible, and with whom we both ended up spending the evening performing UNSPEAKABLE and yet very pleasurable acts, I actually found that quite hot.

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! ;)

Re:Imagination.

[fractoid]

Dude, no. Just no. That's not a screenshot from a Rogue game, it's Perl source. Sheesh.

Re:Imagination.

[fractoid]

Hey, I did my years of Lonely Driver Fractoidaru, then I got pounced (about 4 months after I honestly, genuinely had stopped looking) by a gorgeous young lady who decided I was going to be hers. It's rare but it does happen, and when it does... I dunno, I guess I just rolled all natural 20s that night. ;)

Actually your second option sounds pretty similar to what happened too. /rawr ;)

Primitive visuals the main selling point

[BForrester]

Indeed. I can play Rogue all day at work, and everyone else assumes that I'm working at something really complicated and "techy."

Re:Primitive visuals the main selling point

[fractoid]

I now feel compelled to post this.

Re:moria

[mikael]

I played that a couple of times - my first character ended up on a level with some kind of rapidly multiply dungeon lice unable to progress any further.

The second time I played, my level 3 character stepped on top of a trapdoor, fell all the way to the bottom level (a dark maze), landing on top of the balrog, giving it some damage, walked blindly into the balrog again, killing it, and winning the game.

Re:Imagination.

[david_thornley]

When I worked on Cthangband (Angband, a roguelike, with stuff from the Cthulhu mythos), somebody asked me about graphic tiles. I explained that, if they didn't cause insanity in the players, they wouldn't fit into the game.