Messages

1

Classic Roguelikes / Re: For those who have played unix Rogue a lot

« on: February 14, 2016, 05:46:24 PM »

True, I could try what amount works best. It's just that I'd like to make the experience as "authentically Rogue" as possible, while still making it playable of course. So for a start, I'll go with 5 or 6 miniatures of each kind. You know, if I'm gonna buy miniatures, I'd rather buy 5 or 6 at once, instead of having to go back and add later.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: For those who have played unix Rogue a lot

« on: February 14, 2016, 02:05:58 PM »

Thanks a lot elwin, for the friendly reply 

I think you're right about not modelling the mechanics too closely. As long as the feel and spirit of the game is right that should be fine.
Thanks for the tip!

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: For those who have played unix Rogue a lot

« on: February 14, 2016, 01:28:46 PM »

Hi Krice,

Thanks for replying. 
I'm not quite sure what you are asking. I'm not a bot. And I'm not coding an automated Rogue-playing program, if that's what you meant.
Let me explain why I ask.

I heard about Rogue (and roguelikes) quite a few years ago, and have finally started playing it recently - command-line version 5.4.4 to be exact.
I like it a lot, and I had the idea to make a kinda table-top version to play with friends - and for that I'm trying to get an "appropriate" amount of suitable miniature figures. (think D&D or Warhammer figures)

Having looked through the source codes (or binary, in the case of MacRogue) I have the following monster lists, though I don't yet know which version I'd like to base the "boardgame" on:

Code: [Select]

ROGUE 3.5            ROGUE 5.4.4     EPYX 1985 GRAPHICAL MACROGUE
-----------------------------------------------------------------
giant ant            rattlesnake     rattlesnake
bat                  bat             bat
centaur              centaur         centaur
dragon               dragon          dragon
floating eye         ice monster     ice monster
violet fungi         venus flytrap   venus flytrap
gnome                -               -
hobgoblin            hobgoblin       hobgoblin
invisible stalker    phantom         phantom
jackal               emu             emu
kobold               kestrel         kestral
leprechaun           leprechaun      leprechaun
mimic                xeroc           xeroc
nymph                nymph           nymph
orc                  orc             orc
purple worm          jabberwock      jabberwock
quasit               quagga          quagga
rust monster         aquator         aquator
snake                snake           slime
troll                troll           troll
umber hulk           medusa          medusa
vampire              vampire         vampire
wraith               wraith          wraith
xorn                 black unicorn   ur-vile
yeti                 yeti            yeti
zombie               zombie          zombie
-                    griffin         griffin

But reading the code, and trying to statistically infer how many monsters of a given type can reasonably be expected to occur on the screen (board) at the same time, is not a simple task. I assumed there would be players who have a lot more experience playing Rogue than I do, and for whom it would be easy to give a quick guess, whether the guess would be 3 or 5 or 10 or whatever. As I said I've only just gotten into Rogue, so I don't know what is statistically "common", to phrase it that way.

I'm a newbie in the Rogue world, sorry if I'm asking stupid questions.

4

Classic Roguelikes / Re: For those who have played unix Rogue a lot

« on: February 14, 2016, 11:39:16 AM »

Maybe no one here has played the console unix Rogue, haha 
Let's expand the question to those who have played any version of Rogue then, console or graphical.

What's the maximum amount of any particular monster you have ever seen on the screen at the same time?

Thanks guys

5

Classic Roguelikes / For those who have played unix Rogue a lot

« on: February 13, 2016, 12:18:05 PM »

Hey guys,

If you've played the shell/command-line/console based unix Rogue a lot,
what would you guess is the maximum amount of the same kind of monster you have ever seen in one level?

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Earliest graphical depictions of Rogue-invented monsters

« on: February 12, 2016, 08:20:45 PM »

Yeah that one looks really nice, and is also made by A. I. Design which, according to
http://www.wichman.org/roguehistory.html
was co-founded by one of the inventors of Rogue (Michael Toy). And as the same source says that the other of the two inventors of Rogue, Glenn Wichman, coded the Atari ST version, the ST-version of the graphics should also be what the inventors imagined the monsters looked like - including what they imagined the colors to be like. (and as the Atari ST had 512 colors, this should not be a limitation).

A good sign: the Ice Monster of the ST version is quite similar to the one in MacRogue.

So now I have another quest, haha: to extract the graphics from the Atari ST Rogue somehow...

7

Classic Roguelikes / Re: Earliest graphical depictions of Rogue-invented monsters

« on: February 12, 2016, 03:26:31 PM »

Come to think of it... 18 pixels is a weird width (or height, depending on how the gfx is stored)... It would make sense for such old computers to store 8 monochrome pixels as 1 byte to save space, as I know it is done on the C64. But 18? Would make more sense with 16. And yet the grid in MacRogue is indeed 18 by 18 pixels. The Ice Monster on that screenshot uses 17 by 17 of those pixels.

But I have no idea whether the two-color graphics on such an old Mac system stored one pixel as a bit or a whole byte...

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Earliest graphical depictions of Rogue-invented monsters

« on: February 12, 2016, 03:09:23 PM »

That explains why the game's title screen says "A. I. Design".

I think you're right about converting the entire file to a bitmap.
Preferably one would convert to a 18 pixels wide bitmap (with a 1-18 offset) and then scroll through the entire file (it's only 150K) to spot the graphics.
I've done something similar with success on the C64 once.

Now I'm just hoping there's some software to do that kind of conversion...
Anybody knows about that?

9

Classic Roguelikes / Re: Earliest graphical depictions of Rogue-invented monsters

« on: February 12, 2016, 09:09:19 AM »

Aha! This guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM07TO699oc
says the Epyx 1985 MacRogue was the first graphical version of Rogue, and furthermore it was made by Michael Toy, one of the two guys who did the very first Rogue. So that should be how they imagined the monsters to look like.

In the MacRogue executable, I've found the following text:

Code: [Select]

aquator        0d0/0d0
bat            1d2
centaur        1d6/1d6
dragon         1d8/1d8/3d10
emu            1d2
venus flytrap  %%%d0
griffin        4d3/3d5/4d3
hobgoblin      1d8
ice monster    1d2
jabberwock     2d12/2d4
kestral        1d4
leprechaun     1d2
medusa         3d4/3d4/2d5
nymph          0d0
orc            1d8
phantom        4d4
quagga         1d2/1d2/1d4
rattlesnake    1d6
slime          1d3
troll          1d8/1d8/2d6
ur-vile        1d3/1d3/1d3/4d6
vampire        1d10
wraith         1d6
xeroc          3d4
yeti           1d6/1d6
zombie         1d8
2d4 1d3 3d4 1d2 1d1 1d1 1d1 2d3 1d6 1d4 4d4 1d2 1d1 1d3 1d1 1d1 1d2 2d5 2d3 1d6

So it seems Michael Toy added a couple more Rogue-specific monsters: the Slime and Ur-vile.
Now we just need to get to the graphics of the monsters - and I expect playing the game in an emulator, and taking screenshots, would not be the way to go, as some monsters are probably not encountered until very deep levels.

So I wonder how to extract the graphics from that old mac executable...
Any ideas?

10

Classic Roguelikes / Re: Earliest graphical depictions of Rogue-invented monsters

« on: February 12, 2016, 07:33:19 AM »

Very interesting!
Epyx's MacRogue is from 1985, so that Ice Monster must be atleast one of the earliest!

From the files at http://rogue.rogueforge.net/
we can see that unix Rogue 5.2 (from 1982) did not yet have the Rogue-specific monsters (it used D&D monsters).
And we can also see that the monsters of unix Rogue 5.3 (from 1983) have now changed into the Rogue-specific ones.

So if Epyx's MacRogue is not the very first graphical version of Rogue (with Rogue-specific monsters), then the first one must have been released in either 1983, 1984, or 1985. (Between unix Rogue 5.3 and MacRogue)

From http://www.lemon64.com/?mainurl=http%3A//www.lemon64.com/games/list.php%3Ftitle%3Drogue
we can see that C64 Rogue was released in 1988, so that's not the first graphical.
I have no idea when the first graphical Rogue for PC was released...

11

Classic Roguelikes / Earliest graphical depictions of Rogue-invented monsters

« on: February 11, 2016, 06:23:10 PM »

Hi guys,

This could be the right place to ask.
I'm wondering:

Do we have any idea what the original creators imagined that the Rogue-invented monsters look like?
I mean the Aquator, Emu, Ice Monster, Kestrel, Quagga, and Xeroc?

I know the Kestrel is a real bird, and the Quagga is a real kind of horse, but I wonder whether they visualized it as an especially monstrous version... and the same goes for the Emu btw. But I'm of course wondering most about the Aquator, Ice Monster, and Xeroc...

Do there exist screenshots of these from the first graphical version of Rogue?