Grog ships no manual: this is its online help (h / ?), as in the original grog.exe 1.0.2 (the HelpText table in Constants.cs of the decompiled source), before our port added g explore, stairs walking and the Enter menu. © 2018–2023 Dr.-Ing. Thomas Biskup, all rights reserved; quoted here as the game’s own reference.
Grog is controlled by case-sensitive key presses: <Ctrl> + q ................ Quit the game Q ......................... Save & quit o ......................... Configure options w or Cursor-Up (*) ........ Move north a or Cursor-Left (*) ...... Move west s or Cursor-Down (*) ...... Move south d or Cursor-Right (*) ..... Move east <Shift> + <Movement-Key> .. Move quickly <SPACE> ................... Wait for one turn . ......................... Wait until fully healed <ENTER> or r............... Interact (e.g. use stairs) e or i .................... Manage your inventory c or , .................... Pick up items f or u .................... Use item z ......................... Zap wand x or t .................... Throw an item p ......................... Pray for help m ......................... Enemy (monster) list <Ctrl> + r ................ Redraw the screen h or ? or <ESC> or <HELP> . Show the help menu v ......................... Display game version (*) Cursor keys behave weirdly on some terminals.
At various places in the game '---more---' prompts show up. They are inserted to give you the time needed to consume the information presented. Passing these prompts in the message line at the top of the game screen can be sped up by pressing ENTER which skips all further prompts.
Your name, gender and type deterministically generate your initial attributes and starting equipment. Feel free to experiment to find an adventurer that suits your particular needs.
Your character is described by a number of statistics shown in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. These are: * Armor Class (AC): How hard it is for monsters to hit your character. Higher is better. * Hit Points (H): Your life energy. When they drop to zero your character dies and is gone forever. * Strength (St): Raw physical might. Affects the number of items you can carry as well as hit probabilities and damage in melee combat. * Dexterity (Dx): Affects Armor Class (AC) and how fast you move in comparison to monsters. * Constitution (Cn): Health and toughness. Affects your Hit Points (H). Additionally the game shows your current dungeon level (D), the amount of gold carried ($), the number of moves executed so far (M) and your experience (XP). Experience shows your current level, followed by a slash followed by the number of experience points needed to advance to next level. Experience is gained from killing monsters. Finally 'Piety' is shown - which basically is an indicator on whether the player character can safely utter more prayers (via the 'p' command) or not.
The enemy list shows data for all enemies in sight. Depending on your experiences with the monster in question the following data might be available: * Name * AC (Armor Class, how hard it is to hit the monster) * HD (Hit Dice, the number of dice thrown to determine the hit points of the monster * H: the actual and maximum hit points * #A: the number of melee attacks made by the monster during a single turn * D: the amount of damage caused by the available melee attacks
* Run if you can't win. * Think smart. There are surprisingly many strategies available to get out of tight situations. * Pray in times of need. But pray sparingly because your god might get annoyed when pestered too often. * Carrying items for prolonged periods of time will identify them. * Remember that you also can throw stuff at monsters.
* Thanks to the organizers of Roguelike Celebration
for allowing me to experience the original Rogue
on an original PDP-11 (during Roguelike Celebration
2018). It was a marvelous experience and the
morning afterwards Grog was born as a nod to this
amazing game.
* Slashie (Santiago Zapata) for being the torchbearer
of the roguelike world, many great discussions about
game design and friendship across continents.
* Ignacio Bergkamp for his lightning talk at Roguelike
Celebration 2018 (there you go again ;-) ) providing
the idea of allowing players to add custom flavor
texts to highscore entries - Grog probably was the
game to deliver on this idea.
* Andrew Clifton for his talk at Roguelike Celebration
called 'Don't generate, hash!' from which I took
inspiration and code in order to create grog player
characters in a stable and platform-independent
manner.
* Krzysztof Dycha for relentless play testing, bug
squashing and invaluable design discussions.
--- Axes High!
Thomas Biskup, { [Ultimate] ADOM | Grog } Maintainer