Advanced Rogue 7.7

Rogue grown into a full role-playing game

Date of birth1984 7.7 in 1986

CreatorsMichael Morgan · Ken Dalka AT&T Bell Labs

LanguageC ~34,200 lines

PlatformUnix + curses AT&T Toolchest

Lineage

Advanced Rogue started from the Rogue 3.6 source with additions from Super-Rogue. Version 5.8 came first; 7.7 (1986) is the last Advanced Rogue, with more than twice as many classes. Its code went on into XRogue in the 1990s. See the family tree.

Credits

Michael Morgan	Lead developer
Ken Dalka	Lead developer
AT&T Bell Labs group	Development, 1984–86
Roguelike Restoration Project	Restored 7.7.1 (arogue7.7 @ 976b5bb)

Screenshots

Choosing one of nine classes — The start: nine classes, then 72 points to spread over six abilities.

The starting trading post — First steps: a new character begins in Friendly Fiend’s Equipage with gold to spend.

A thief defeats a kobold — A fight: “You smacked the kobold. You have defeated the kobold.”

Inventory with a cursor — Inventory: our thief spent nothing and found a scroll titled ‘bubit’.

Trivia

AT&T distributed Advanced Rogue through its Toolchest software service. (RogueBasin)
A new character is dropped into a shop first: “Welcome to Friendly Fiend’s Equipage”. Later shops greet you as “Friendly Fiend’s Flea Market”. (source: trader.c)
The game has a slot for release news shown while you build your character. In 7.7 it says: “You no longer fall into trading posts. They are now entered like going down the stairs.” (source: init.c)
The quest can be any of 16 relics, among them the Eye of Vecna, the Quill of Nagrom (Morgan backwards) and the Amulet of Stonebones. (source: rogue.c)

What's unique

Nine classes with their own magic: magicians cast spells, clerics pray, druids chant; rangers, paladins, assassins and monks get their own tricks.
Point-buy characters: 72 points over six abilities (Escape fills in the maximums).
A random quest relic to bring back to the surface, and a starting shop to kit out your hero.
Outdoor levels, mazes, trading posts, 125 monsters and 22 kinds of miscellaneous magic.

Code dive

Language: K&R C, about 34,200 lines. Monsters, spells, prayers and chants are tables; a character class C_MONSTER lets monsters use the same code as players.
Environment: AT&T Unix and BSD on terminals via curses.
This port: X11 and WebAssembly via a curses shim, NetHack tiles. Source: memmaker/arogue7.7.

Stats

Thing	Count	Notable ones
Classes	9	Fighter, ranger, paladin, magic user, cleric, thief, assassin, druid, monk.
Monsters	125
Spells	20	Magic user.
Prayers	18	Cleric.
Chants	16	Druid.
Relics	16	Eye of Vecna, Axe of Aklad, Quill of Nagrom, Amulet of Stonebones, Ring of Surtur, Horn of Geryon, …
Misc. magic	22
Potions	18
Scrolls	20
Rings	26
Wands & staffs	20
Weapons	19
Armour	10

Manual

“The Dungeons of Doom”, the Advanced Rogue guide shipped with the source (aguide.mm): read it here (text).

Getting started

Open the game and pick a class. At the point screen press Escape to fill in the maximums, then y.
You start in a trading post: stand on an item, $ shows its price, # buys it. Buy armour and a weapon first.
Press > to leave for the dungeon. x explores, Enter lists every command.
Remember your quest relic from the first messages.
All keys: the in-game guide.

Help

No walkthrough exists. Tips:

Spend all your starting gold: armour matters more than anything else early on.
Fighters and paladins are the easiest; magic users are fragile until they have more spells.
Relics are deep; sell loot at later trading posts to keep upgrading.
More: RogueBasin and the manual.

Cheats

Wizard mode needs a password: not reachable in this build.
At character creation Escape sets every remaining ability to its maximum (a feature, not a bug).
Save scumming: Export save / Import save.