Umoria

The Dungeons of Moria · kill the Balrog, 50 levels down

Date of birth1983 Moria 1.0 · Umoria 1987

CreatorsKoeneke · Wilson

LanguageC / C++ ~32,400 lines; first VMS Pascal

PlatformVAX/VMS → Unix curses

Lineage

Robert Alan Koeneke played Rogue on a PDP-11 at the University of Oklahoma and, when the new VAX had no games, wrote his own: first in VMS BASIC, then in 1983 in VMS Pascal as Moria, with Tolkien's mines as the setting. In 1987 James E. Wilson converted it to C for Unix: Umoria. Umoria is the parent of Angband, and so of most games in the lower half of the family tree; BOSS is a sibling from VMS Moria.

Played here: Umoria 5.7.15, the restoration by Michael R. Cook, compiled as C++.

Credits

Robert Alan Koeneke	Creator of Moria (1981–86)
Jimmey Wayne Todd Jr.	Character generation, races, classes, backgrounds
James E. Wilson	Creator of Umoria (1987–94)
David J. Grabiner	Umoria maintainer
Michael R. Cook	Umoria 5.7 restoration (Windows, macOS, refactoring)

Screenshots

The Moria splash screen — The splash screen: “Robert A. Koeneke’s classic roguelike”.

The town at night — First steps: the town, with six numbered shops and the stairs down.

Fighting a grey mushroom patch — A fight at 50 feet: a Grey Mushroom patch confuses you with its spores, then dies.

Inventory and equipment — Inventory: a dwarf warrior with food, torches, a stiletto, soft leather armour and a cloak.

Trivia

Koeneke vowed Moria was unbeatable; a week later a friend won. His character Iggy went into the game as Evil Iggy, and the trick was fixed. (Koeneke, history.md)
For the copy sent to the University of Texas before a football game, the town beggar became “An OU football fan” who multiplied at full speed. Texas had to call for a fix. (Koeneke, history.md)
Koeneke got letters from behind the iron curtain from players on VAXes that export laws said could not be there. (Koeneke, history.md)
The name Umoria came from the comp.sources.games moderator, who shortened “UNIX Moria”. (Wilson, history.md)
The hardest part of the Pascal-to-C conversion: off-by-one errors, because Pascal arrays start at 1. It took Wilson years. (Wilson, history.md)
Wilson almost decompiled UltraRogue instead, to fix its bugs, before he found the Moria sources. (Wilson, history.md)
Diablo’s credits name Umoria as an inspiration. (Wilson, history.md; Wikipedia)

What's unique

A town with shops you return to: sell loot, buy potions and scrolls.
Races and classes with a generated family background.
Levels are forgotten: every staircase makes a new level, so you can dive or stay as you like.
One goal: kill the Balrog at 2,500 feet (level 50). No amulet to carry home.
Monster memory: the game remembers what you have learned about each monster, across characters.

Code dive

Moria: VMS Pascal with some VAX assembler, on a VAX-11/780 at the University of Oklahoma.
Umoria: C, for Unix and curses; later MS-DOS, Atari ST, Amiga, Mac. 5.7 is C++ with the same data tables (data_creatures.cpp, data_treasure.cpp).
Wilson did most of the Pascal-to-C syntax conversion with Emacs macros.
This port: curses shim with tiles, WebAssembly, auto-explore on g. Source: memmaker/umoria, upstream dungeons-of-moria/umoria.

Stats

Thing	Count	Notable ones
Races	8	Human, half-elf, elf, halfling, gnome, dwarf, half-orc, half-troll.
Classes	6	Warrior, mage, priest, rogue, ranger, paladin.
Monsters	279	From the Filthy Street Urchin and the Blubbering Idiot in town to the Vorpal Bunny, the Quylthulg, Creeping Gold Coins, Evil Iggy and the Balrog.
Spells	31 + 31	Mage spells and priest prayers; rangers and paladins use them too.
Objects	420	Including the shop stock.
Shops	6	General store, armoury, weaponsmith, temple, alchemist, magic shop.
Levels	50	Town, then 50 feet per level down to the Balrog.

Manual

“The Dungeons of Moria”, the full Umoria manual from the source: read it here (Markdown text).

Getting started

Open the game: choose race, sex and class, Escape to accept the stats, then a name.
Wear your gear: w and a letter (armour, cloak, weapon; a torch as light).
Movement is on the digit keys 1–9 (the original keyset), or the arrows. Walk into a shop number to trade.
Find the > in town and press >. g explores on its own.
? lists commands; the in-game guide has them all.

Help

No walkthrough exists. The manual’s advice, plus the usual:

Buy Flasks of oil in the general store and throw them (v): 2d6 fire damage each, the strongest early attack for any class.
Read Scrolls of Word of Recall to go back to town and return to your deepest level.
Get free action, see invisible and resistances before 1,000 feet.
More: the Moria FAQ in the source.

Cheats

Wizard mode: Ctrl+W, answer yes. No password. The game is no longer scored. Then Ctrl+A cures everything, Ctrl+D jumps to any depth, Ctrl+F kills every monster in sight, Ctrl+L lights up the map, + gives experience. On Windows and Linux the browser may close the tab on Ctrl+W.
Save scumming: Export save / Import save.