Rogue 3.6

The Rogue that spread across the world's Unix machines

Date of birth1980 (Rogue) · 3.6 in 1981

CreatorsToy · Wichman then Arnold

LanguageC ~14,000 lines

PlatformUnix + curses VAX, terminals

Lineage

Rogue has no parent game. Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman wrote it at UC Santa Cruz around 1980, after Colossal Cave Adventure, the mainframe Star Trek game and Dungeons & Dragons, on top of Ken Arnold's curses screen library.

3.6 is the version that first spread widely (1981). It is the common root of the family: Super-Rogue and Advanced Rogue were built from its code, while the 5.x line (Rogue 5.4, Rogue PC) continued at Berkeley. See the family tree.

Credits

Michael C. Toy	Co-creator, main programmer
Glenn R. Wichman	Co-creator, game design, named the game
Kenneth C. R. C. Arnold	Author of curses, later co-developer
Roguelike Restoration Project	Preserved this source (rogue3.6 @ f36912c)

Screenshots

The full game screen — Rogue 3.6 has no title screen: it drops you straight into a room. This is the whole screen at the start.

A room and a corridor — First steps: a lit room, and a corridor of `#` (drawn as rings) leading away.

Fighting a jackal — A fight: “You swing and hit the jackal.”

Inventory with a cursor — Inventory: food, ring mail, a mace, a bow and arrows.

Trivia

Dennis Ritchie joked that Rogue was the biggest waste of CPU cycles in history. (Wikipedia)
“The name ‘Rogue’ was my idea,” writes Glenn Wichman in his history of the game. (wichman.org)
Rogue went out with BSD Unix and spread over ARPANET to universities everywhere. (Wikipedia)
The source of 3.6 checks the machine's load: too_much() can refuse to start the game when the shared computer is busy, unless you are the wizard or the author: “Sorry, … but the system is too loaded now. Try again later. Meanwhile, why not enjoy a slime-mold?” (source: main.c)
3.6 still uses Dungeons & Dragons monsters — floating eye, rust monster, umber hulk, xorn, quasit — that the later 5.x versions replaced with new ones like the aquator and xeroc. (source: init.c, compared with Rogue 5.4)

What's unique

The template for a genre: random levels, permanent death, items identified by use, a letter for every monster.
The D&D bestiary: unlike later versions, the monsters are straight from the Monster Manual.
Small and pure: one fighter, one goal (the Amulet of Yendor on level 26), no shops, no classes, no spells.

Code dive

Language: K&R C, about 14,000 lines. Monster and item tables are plain arrays in init.c.
Environment: BSD Unix on DEC VAX computers, played on video terminals through curses.
Wizard mode is started with an empty first argument and a password compared against a crypt() hash.
This port: the same C through a curses shim, to X11 and to WebAssembly. Source: memmaker/rogue3.6.

Stats

Thing	Count	Notable ones
Classes	1	A fighter fresh from the guild.
Monsters	26	Giant ant, floating eye, violet fungi, invisible stalker, mimic, purple worm, rust monster, umber hulk, xorn, yeti — one per letter.
Potions	14
Scrolls	16
Rings	13
Wands & staffs	14
Weapons	12
Armour	8
Levels	26+	The Amulet is on level 26.
Spells, skills	0	Magic lives in items only.

Manual

“A Guide to the Dungeons of Doom” by Michael C. Toy, shipped with the source: read it here (text).

Getting started

Open the game: you start in a room with food, ring mail, a mace, a bow and arrows.
Move with hjklyubn or the arrows; walk into monsters to fight. x explores.
Enter lists every command; i is the inventory.
> takes (or walks to) the stairs down.
All keys: the in-game guide.

Help

No walkthrough exists: the dungeon is new every game. Tips:

Fight in corridors and doorways; rest to full hit points between fights.
Keep the armour off near a rust monster. Don't melee a floating eye: its gaze freezes you.
Test unknown potions and scrolls when you are healthy and alone.
More: RogueBasin and the manual.

Cheats

Wizard mode (^D/^U change level, ^T teleport, ^F show the map) needs a password and a special command line: not reachable in this build.
Save scumming: Export save before a risk, Import save after a death.