Messages

1

Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: June 21, 2018, 12:28:44 AM »

Wasn't there some weird thing about Rogue though? Bots can beat it consistently but it seems highly random to people.

Rog-O-Matic did consistently better than the humans at the time, but if I remember correctly, it still only won about 1 game in 50.

Hey elwin - I noticed my scores log stopped as of April of this year.  Is that because I've maxed out?

It appears the score-updating script has not run correctly since April.  Very sorry about that.

*drags out rusty mace of bug squashing*

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: February 04, 2018, 10:25:55 PM »

Today I got the closest I've ever been in V5.  I found the Amulet and got back up to level 21.

I had a lot of luck.  Early on, I found a two-handed sword, banded mail, and scrolls of enchant armor.  There was a treasure room or two.  Later on, I got wraithed several times, but gained back more max HP than I lost.  I think I was in the 90s by the end.  I also found and identified several wands, and got a scroll of protect armor.

This was the first time I consistently used the tactic of staying at the door when first entering a room, and waiting for the monsters to come to me.  I think it helped.  It didn't protect me from Medusas as much as I hoped.  They have a way of sneaking up behind you.

The bottom 5 or 6 floors were harrowing, even with wands of polymorph and slow monster, and 11 (!) points of armor.  I nearly got killed by Dragons twice, got backed into a corner by a Griffin and beat it by one shot, and somehow escaped from being caught in a passage between a Phantom and something else nasty.

Eventually I got down to level 26 and quaffed a potion of magic detection.  The first few objects weren't the Amulet, and I was afraid it was hidden under a Jabberwock, but then... there it was, a plain simple comma.  (Couldn't the developers have picked a more glamorous symbol?)  I grabbed it and ran for the stairs.

Going up wasn't any easier.  Once I stumbled across the stairs while running from a Jabberwock.  That percent sign was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.  By this time, I'd used up most of my wand charges and had no other escape items left.  On level 22, I used a scroll of magic mapping, just to get through faster.  I thought level 21 would be better.  In retrospect, I should have used my last scroll of magic mapping and gotten out of there.

Anyway, I once again made the mistake of thinking I could take on a Griffin head to head.  This didn't work, so I ran, and ran into a Troll.  That was not a good time to discover that my wand of slow monster was empty.  A moment later, there was my tombstone.

I was carrying a +2 ring of protection the whole game, but never used it.  I was often short on food and didn't want to risk starvation.  I should have taken a chance with it on those last deadly levels.

XL 13, 5305 points (my luck did not extend to plentiful gold.)  TTYRECs are here.  I'll make it out, one of these years.

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Programming / Re: Dummy guide for compiling source?

« on: November 24, 2017, 10:15:11 PM »

Be aware that NetHack is particularly complicated to build, though 3.6 has improved things a little.  Don't be surprised if there are a few problems.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Wondering how to play "Hack" on Linux?

« on: November 23, 2017, 02:18:20 PM »

The package you're looking for is called "bsdgames".  RPM-based distros seem to spell it "bsd-games".  In addition to Hack, it contains classics like "wumpus"; "hunt", a multi-player shooter with a roguelike interface; and "sail", a complex naval combat simulator.

There's also "bsdgames-nonfree", which contains Rogue Clone.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: August 07, 2016, 01:30:47 AM »

I get what you're saying but it should be clear if the original intention was for monsters to get the bonus all the time there wouldn't be any test against ISRUN flag.

I know.  Sometimes I think I should have fixed the broken flag instead of excising it.  I'll experiment and see how much difference it really makes.

Regarding historicity of it, it seems to me you give too much credit to some random people I think we don't know who they actually are, and I don't see a reason why should their version of the game be taken as the reference.

Why not Epyx DOS version be the reference? Even better, Mac or Atari ST versions as they came later and likely were more refined and more bug-fixed, plus they were made by the actual original authors of the game.

There is one good reason to use Unix Rogue, and that is that we have legitimate copies of its source code.

I also think this shows your reasoning regarding historical preservation is flawed. You could just as well say you want to preserve this bug for the same reasons you want to preserve the first bug. The flaw is not in your desire to keep it historically accurate, the problem is in choosing which version to take as a proper historical reference.

I would not say that trying to preserve Unix Rogue as it was distributed with BSD is an inherently flawed goal.  It is a real historical game, as much as PC Rogue, Mac Rogue, or Atari Rogue, though it differs from them.  Transforming it into one of them is an ambitious project, and probably a valuable one, but it's a different project.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: August 06, 2016, 12:09:35 PM »

There are two possible issues here.

1. Monsters always get a to-hit bonus when attacking the player.

If you work through the numbers in the Vade-Mecum's sections on fighting and armor, you'll see that it describes the +4 bonus.  See in particular the part about how much AC is needed to block all hits from Hobgoblins.  If the mechanics have always been that way, to the point where they're described in the Vade-Mecum, I'm not going to call it a bug.

While the authors may not always have understood why their code did what it did, a 20% increase in monster accuracy has a significant effect, one that they and their lab of playtesters would have noticed.  It may have been introduced by accident, but it remained deliberately, and became part of the balance of the game.

2. The player never gets the bonus, even when attacking a sleeping monster.

If this is happening, it is definitely a bug.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: August 05, 2016, 11:19:07 PM »

After spending a day digging through the tombs of long-dead source code, I have unearthed a few facts:

If an elemental bolt is working properly, it will hit a monster 50% to 80% of the time, depending only on the monster's level.

Rogue V5 contains the bug found by LazyCat, where the bolt's launcher is an uninitialized variable.  If this uninitialized value turns out to be positive, the bolt will do no damage.  The value is often the same throughout a whole game, so either the bolt always works properly, or all elemental staves are useless.  I suspect the compiler and its settings have the most influence over which happens.

This bug appears in our version of Rogue V5, but is not in PC Rogue, which makes me suspect someone introduced it at Berkeley after the original authors left.  It is definitely not intentional, and is not the behavior described in the Vade-Mecum.

There may be other bugs affecting elemental staves in other versions.

I intend to fix this.  The game will not get any easier than it often is.

Code: [Select]

.
.
            else
            if (weap->o_launch < 0)
                cp = weap->o_hurldmg;
It is puzzling to me why is there that test for o_launch being less than zero at all. Without it would work, if it was just like this:

Code: [Select]

.
.
            else
                cp = weap->o_hurldmg;
Let me know if you figure out more about it.

That test is there to rule out weapons which need a launcher that you don't have equipped.  Otherwise o_hurldmg would be used for all thrown weapons.  There would be no difference between shooting arrows with a bow and throwing them by hand unless the bow had an enchantment.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: August 05, 2016, 01:14:02 AM »

@LazyCat: I think you're right about the elemental staves.  I'm going to run it through the debugger to make sure, but the fix should be online soon.  Thanks for reporting this.

@Squeeealer: Ever tried HyperRogue?  The geometry is counterintuitive, and the mechanics are very different from Rogue, but the overall gameplay has some similarities.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: July 31, 2016, 03:28:26 PM »

The real disadvantage of the IBM version is that nearly every room is dark even in the early parts of the game.

I didn't know that.  It sounds quite annoying.  Rogue Clone did the opposite, and abolished dark rooms entirely.

Squeeealer, I saw you walking around the treasure room with stealth, but I missed the ending.  A sad tale.  I can't think of anything you could have done differently either.

I recently got killed between two Centaurs, which could probably have been avoided if I'd used my two scrolls of enchant weapon on my long sword instead of waiting to see if a two-handed sword got generated.  I still try to conserve items too much.

+A, +B weapon

First enchant parameter (A) increases chance to hit, second (B) increases damage. With no enchants your weapons would have their default chance to hit %, which is apparently quite poor against deeper level monsters. Factors that influence chance to hit are: weapon chance to hit, your strength, and monster's armor.

Thank you for this!  I never knew!  So is it random which one gets the increase when you read a scroll of enchant weapon? Does anyone have an opinion about which is preferred? I think I would much rather have the chance to hit over damage.

Yes, it's random.  Usually I prefer the to-hit bonus, but when enchanting your original mace, you need some of both.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Advanced Super Turbo Rogue Plus

« on: July 30, 2016, 01:05:01 AM »

I notice you have wisely password-protected the shell escape feature.

I don't think the security is actually an issue, but the real hole seems to be 'scp'. How do you allow ssh access and yet deny scp file transfer?

scp depends on support from the shell.  I use dgamelaunch as the login shell, and it doesn't support copying.  You probably want to use the ForceCommand setting in sshd_config to make sure the shell only runs that one command.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Advanced Super Turbo Rogue Plus

« on: July 29, 2016, 03:53:31 PM »

The latest Web version looks neat.  But I think you have an off-by-one error somewhere in the mouse click processing.  There was an Emu on my left, and when I clicked on it, I rested.  I had to click two cells to the left to hit the Emu.  When I click on my @ sign, I move right.

I notice you have wisely password-protected the shell escape feature.

I'm glad you're starting to call it Rogue Plus now.  "Advanced Super-Turbo" is long and complicated.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: July 29, 2016, 03:38:18 PM »

The bug I mentioned with hallucination and levitation is fixed now.

Is this available for download? Where do you keep most recent version? It seems download from rlgallery is different than the one on bitbucket.

The newest source code is always in the Bitbucket repository.  Official releases (both source and binary) are on the rlgallery.org download page.  That bugfix is currently the only difference.

I'm currently playing the IBM port of 1.1.  Is there any particular reason to prefer another version over this one?

That is the original authors' last and most polished version.  Its disadvantages are needing DOS to run it and its questionable legality (unless you bought the floppies back in 1985).

I did not realize CTRL+arrow does not work reliably.  Another item for my list of things to do...

Rogue V5 at rlgallery.org is the "real" rogue right? It's by Glenn Wichman, Michael Toy, and Ken Arnold, and the mechanics/items/monsters haven't been tinkered with by others?

Yes, it's the real thing, based on the code Ken Arnold put on SourceForge.  The Roguelike Restoration Project and I have only made maintenance updates.  None of the mechanics have changed.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: July 27, 2016, 11:02:17 PM »

Now that you've beat Rogue, what will be the fate of this thread? Will you tackle a separate game like nethack or a rogue derivative like Hexrogue? Or something else?

The thread will go on, most of us still haven't beat it.

***Almost forgot - the most frustrating part of this run was how poor my... hit% (?) was. Against the tougher enemies I would miss over and over again. My experience level was about right and my strength was in the 15-17 range, so I don't know what the problem was.

On most good runs, you have strength at least 18 by the time you're down deep.  And there were no enchantments on the sword.  That makes a big difference.

The bug I mentioned with hallucination and levitation is fixed now.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: July 17, 2016, 12:58:26 AM »

Hey, just realized something. I saved my scroll of food detection for Floor 26 and I don't think it detected the Amulet. It did detect the food that was like two spaces away. Hmm.

That is because the Amulet is not edible.  You need a potion of magic detection to detect it.

What should I play next? Are any of the other Rogues on your site good?  They look a lot more complicated.

V3 and V4 are earlier versions, probably slightly easier.  Super-Rogue makes the dungeon deeper, adding more monsters and items, but with few big changes.  The others are a lot more complicated.

Let's say the whole dungeon is generated at the beginning and the game knows in advance all the items that will be in there. So now we have dungeon A where you get 2hand-sword on the first floor, and dungeon B where there is not one at all.

Dungeon A is easier than B, but does that make your victory in dungeon A cheap?

Now, make the dungeon B compensates with few extra enchant scrolls. Yes, you could say that kind of mechanics would overall make the game easier, but I think that's a wrong way to look at it, and it would really make it just more balanced.

You could say the game overall is more balanced, but the game in dungeon B has become easier and the game in dungeon A has not gotten harder.  So while it may be more balanced, it is also balanced somewhere easier.


WARNING!  I found another bug.  If you save the game while levitating or hallucinating, the effect will not wear off after you restore the game.  I plan to get this bug fixed in a few days.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Advanced Super Turbo Rogue Plus

« on: July 16, 2016, 07:39:11 PM »

Yendor moved the project off of Sourceforge sometime around 2003, because Sourceforge didn't support Subversion back then.  The RRP's most recent releases are only on rogue.rogueforge.net.  (And maybe on the Internet Archive.)  Not many people noticed 5.4.5: most Android/iOS ports were based on 5.4.4.

I fix all the bugs I can find.  I'm also trying to improve Windows support and modernize the build system.  Code rewrites are done to make compilers complain less.  Readability and elegance are hopeless causes for a codebase created when K&R C, 1st Edition was hot off the presses.