Roguelike

The roguelikes are usually superficially two-dimensional dungeon crawling computer games, most with simple text or ASCII "graphics" and many with "tiles" which replace the rather limited character set with a wider array. The genre is named after the first well known game of the genre, Rogue (1980). The first games of the genre were Dungeon (1975 on PDP-10 mainframes), and dnd (1974), under the PLATO system on CDC computers.

Overview

Traditionally, the hero is represented by an "@" sign, and other characters (usually enemy monsters) are represented by letters of the alphabet. Rogue itself only made use of capital letters, but modern roguelikes utilize different capitalization of letters to represent different monsters. A dog, for example, may be represented by the letter "d", and a dragon by a "D". Also, to further distinguish various creatures, a modern roguelike game will display different colored letters. For example, a Red Dragon might be represented by a red "D", whereas a Blue Dragon might be represented by a blue "D", each with their own abilities and required strategy by the player. Further dungeon features are represented by other ASCII (or ANSI) graphics. A traditional sampling is below.

------                                                                 |....|      ############           #  Unlit hallway  |....|      #          #           .  Lit area  |.$..+########         #           $  Some quantity of gold  |....|       #      ---+---        +  A door  ------       #      |.....|               #      |.!...|        !  A magic potion               #      |.....|               #      |..@..|        @  The adventurer    ----       #      |.....|    |..|       #######+..D..|        D  A dragon    |<.+###    #      |.....|        <  Stairs to the previous level    ----  #    #      |.?...|        ?  A magic scroll          ######      -------

The hero is controlled by short commands of one or a few keypresses rather than using a mouse or typing long sentence-like commands. For example, in NetHack a player would press "r" to read a scroll, "d" to drop an item, and "q" to quaff (drink) a potion.

Roguelike games feature randomly generated dungeon levels, which give them more replay value than games in which the levels are the same every time. Many have static levels as well. Usually these are used as some kind of special, unique level.

The appearance of magical items also changes randomly from game to game. Roguelike games typically use a Dungeons & Dragons-like turn-based combat system instead of a real-time system. Diablo is almost unique in its use of real-time. There is a great deal of variance between different games in appearance, commands, plot, and strategy.

Most roguelikes are single-player games. This is mainly due to tradition, but also due to the difficulty of extending a turn-based system to support multiple players. However, some multi-player roguelikes such as TomeNET and Crossfire exist and are playable online. Also, on multi-user systems controlled by appointed administrators and having the required security features, the scoreboards are often "shared" between players playing the same rules, without the opportunity to cheat by changing the game or savefiles. Some also allow traces of former players to appear in others' games in form of ghosts or grave markings.

Traditionally in roguelike games, "death is final". Once a character is dead, the player is expected to start over again at the beginning of the game. A game will usually provide a "save game" feature, but this is only intended to allow splitting a game across multiple sessions, and the save file will be deleted automatically when the character dies. A skilled user will usually be able to bypass this mechanism and restart after a death, but this would be considered dishonourable (or cheating) by many players, and is often known as "save scumming". The game may provide a "wizard mode" which allows exploring the dungeon without risk of death, but again it is not possible to win honourably using such a mechanism.

There are many communities dedicated to roguelike games, most notably the rec.games.roguelike hierarchy in Usenet.

It is also worthy of note that there are some modified roguelikes in existence which use party or encounter systems, which greatly deviate from the normal roguelike gameplay in those regards, but still stay true to the general idea of roguelikes.

List of popular roguelikes

• 3059 (futuristic roguelike with music and sound)
• Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM)
• Alphaman
• Angband (with over sixty variants, some not actively maintained)
• Avanor
• Castle of the Winds
• Crossfire
• Diablo (Roguelike-inspired action-RPG)
• DungeonDoom (Roguelike Doom3 modification)
• dnd Dungeon crawl game written in 1974.
• Dungeon Dungeon game written in 1975 at Claremont Graduate University, first documented use of line of sight dungeon maps
• Dungeon Crawl (or just "Crawl")
• Sword of Fargoal (featuring primitive graphics and realtime combat)
• GearHead (a mecha based Roguelike)
• Hack
• Hengband (heavily modified Angband variant)
• Iter Vehemens ad Necem (IVAN)
• Larn
• The Minstrel's Song
• Moria
• NetHack (A descendant of Hack)
• Omega
• Ragnarok
• Rogue
• The Legend of Saladir (or just "Saladir")
• Troubles of Middle Earth (ToME - heavily modified ZAngband variant, perhaps the closest to Tolkien in some regards)
• Tower of Doom (or just "TOD")
• Tyrant (A graphical Java roguelike)
• Slash'EM ("Super Lotsa Added Stuff Hack - Extended Magic")
• The UnReal World (URW)
• Zangband - heavily modified Angband variant
• Zapm

Roguelike Family Tree

Roguelikes branched in three main directions:

• The Rogue/Hack/NetHack school, where levels are saved after being left. Other notable examples include Slash'EM, Linley's Dungeon Crawl, and Castle of the Winds.
• The Moria/Angband school, where levels are regenerated after being left. The main occupents of this branch are Moria, its variants, and Angband and its variants.
• The overworld school, where there is more than one dungeon (or, in the case of The UnReal World, no dungeons at all (only caves)). Notable examples of this school are Omega (dungeons are regenerated after being left), ADOM (every dungeon but one is preserved when left), ToME, and later versions of ZAngband.

Note that there are other attributes that distinguish branches; for example, starvation is a major threat in the Hack branch of roguelikes, while in the Moria branch it is rare to die of starvation.

See also

• List of Angband variants

External links

• Guide to Roguelike Games
• The Google Groups rec.games.roguelike hierarchy
• Roguelike Development - a good starting point for aspiring roguelike developers, containing articles, files, and helpful links.