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 game of the genre was dnd.

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.

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.

List of popular roguelikes

• 3059 (futuristic roguelike with music and sound)
• Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM)
• Alphaman
• Angband (with over sixty variants)
• Avanor
• Castle of the Winds
• Crossfire
• Diablo (Roguelike-inspired action-RPG)
• dnd Dungeon crawl game written in 1974-76
• Dungeon Crawl (or just "Crawl")
• Fargoal (featuring primitive graphics and realtime combat)
• GearHead (a mecha based Roguelike)
• Hack
• 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 Angband variant)
• Tyrant (A graphical Java roguelike)
• Slash'EM ("Super Lotsa Added Stuff Hack - Extended Magic")
• The UnReal World (URW)
• Zangband - heavily modified Angband varient
• Zapm

External links

• Guide to Roguelike Games (http://www.hut.fi/~eye/roguelike/index.html)
• Genealogy & Chronology of Roguelike games (http://www.mo.himolde.no/~knan/roguelike)
• The Google Groups rec.games.roguelike hierarchy (http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=rec.games.roguelike)
• Roguelike Development (http://www.roguelikedevelopment.org/) - a good starting point for aspiring roguelike developers, containing articles, files, and helpful links.

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