Rogue 5.4

The Berkeley Rogue · the game that named a genre

Date of birth1980 (Rogue) · 5.4 in 1985

CreatorsToy · Wichman · Arnold

LanguageC ~16,400 lines

PlatformUnix + curses BSD, VT100 terminals

Lineage

Rogue has no parent game. Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman wrote it at UC Santa Cruz around 1980, inspired by the text adventure Colossal Cave Adventure and the mainframe Star Trek game, and by Dungeons & Dragons. They wanted an adventure that was different every time. What made it possible was Ken Arnold's curses library, which could put a character anywhere on a terminal screen.

Version 3.6 (1981) was the first to spread widely. Toy then moved to UC Berkeley and continued the game there with Ken Arnold, through 5.2 and 5.3 to 5.4, the version shipped with 4.3BSD Unix. Its children: Rogue PC (Epyx), Super-Rogue and Advanced Rogue came from 3.6; Hack, and through it NetHack, borrowed its ideas. 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; co-developer of the Berkeley versions (5.x)
Jon Lane	Epyx PC port (a sibling of this version)
Roguelike Restoration Project	Preserved the source this port is built from (rogue5.4 @ 9d0dccc)

Screenshots

The Rogue tombstone: Rest in peace, killed by a hobgoblin — Rogue has no title screen: its most famous screen is the tombstone. Ours came three turns in.

A lit room with items and monsters — First steps: a lit room, food, potions and a scroll on the floor.

Fighting a hobgoblin — A fight: “The hobgoblin scored an excellent hit on you.”

The inventory with cursor — Inventory: the starting kit of every Rogue hero.

Trivia

Dennis Ritchie, co-creator of Unix, joked that Rogue was the biggest waste of CPU cycles in history. (Wikipedia)
Rogue shipped with 4.2BSD in 1983 and spread over ARPANET to universities everywhere. (Wikipedia)
Glenn Wichman tells the story of the game, its name and the Epyx deal in “A Brief History of Rogue”. (wichman.org)
Epyx found that its own staff were playing Rogue at work and paid for the PC, Mac, Amiga and Atari ST versions (1984–86). (Wikipedia)
“The name ‘Rogue’ was my idea,” writes Glenn Wichman. (wichman.org)
A whole genre is named after it: “roguelike”. The 2008 Berlin Interpretation used Rogue, NetHack and ADOM as its yardsticks. (RogueBasin)

What's unique

A new dungeon every game. Nine rooms in a 3×3 grid, joined by corridors, all generated fresh: nothing to memorise, so every game is a first game.
Death is final. The save file is deleted when you die. The tombstone is the end.
You learn items by using them. Potions have colours, scrolls have gibberish titles, wands are made of woods and metals, and the names change every game. Drinking the unknown potion is the game.
Everything on one screen. The map, drawn in letters, is the whole interface: @ is you, A–Z are the monsters.
A goal and a way back. Take the Amulet of Yendor from level 26 or deeper, then climb back to the surface alive.

Code dive

Language: K&R C, about 16,400 lines in 37 files. rogue.h holds the whole game state as global structs and linked lists (THING is both a monster and an object).
Environment: 4.xBSD Unix on VAX machines, played on VT100-style terminals through curses. The machine-dependent parts (locking, the score file, the save format) sit in mach_dep.c and mdport.c.
Save files are encrypted (encwrite() in save.c) and checked against the inode and time, so a copied save would not load on the original system.
Wizard mode exists only when compiled with MASTER and asks for a password checked against a crypt() hash (main.c).
This port: the same C, with a curses shim drawing to an X11 window, and compiled to WebAssembly with Emscripten for the browser. Source: memmaker/rogue5.4.

Stats

Thing	Count	Notable ones
Classes	1	Everyone is the same fighter, fresh from the guild.
Monsters	26	One per letter: the Aquator rusts your armour, the Leprechaun steals gold, the Nymph steals a magic item and vanishes, the Xeroc poses as an item, the Venus Flytrap holds you, the Ice monster freezes you, the Wraith and Vampire drain levels, the Jabberwock and Dragon wait deep down.
Potions	14	Hallucination turns every monster into a random letter; levitation, see invisible, raise level.
Scrolls	18	Scare monster must never be picked up twice; aggravate monsters; and “food detection”, which finds your next meal.
Rings	14	Adornment does nothing at all; aggravate monster is cursed.
Wands & staffs	14	Polymorph, teleport away, drain life, cancellation.
Weapons	9	Mace, long sword, two-handed sword, bows, crossbows, darts, spears.
Armour	8	From leather armour to plate mail.
Traps	8	Trap door, arrow, sleeping gas, bear trap, teleport, poison dart, rust, mysterious.
Levels	26+	The Amulet lies on level 26; the dungeon goes deeper.
Spells, skills	0	Magic lives only in items.

Manual

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

Getting started

Open the game. A new hero starts on level 1 with food, ring mail, a mace, a bow and arrows.
Move with hjklyubn or the arrow keys; walk into a monster to attack. x explores on its own.
Press Enter for a menu of every command, i for the inventory.
Find the stairs % and press > to go down (it walks there if you have seen them).
Eat when you are “Hungry”. The full key list is in the in-game guide.

Help

There is no walkthrough: every dungeon is different. These rules of thumb get most players further:

Fight in corridors and doorways so only one monster reaches you. Rest (s search, or .) back to full hit points before going on.
Try unknown potions and scrolls when you are healthy and nothing is around. Read unknown scrolls before wearing new armour: one of them may be “enchant armour”.
Take off armour near an Aquator, or it rusts. Kill Leprechauns and Nymphs from range with the bow (throw… fire).
Don't dive too fast: level 1–3 monsters give the experience you need for the Trolls and Centaurs of levels 10–20.
More: RogueBasin on Rogue and the strategy notes in the manual.

Cheats

Wizard mode (+ toggles it; debug commands: create objects, see the map, teleport) exists in the source but is compiled out here, as it was on public systems; it needed the MASTER build flag and a password.
Save scumming works in the browser: Export save before something risky, Import save if it goes wrong. Purists will frown.