Rogue was originally written by Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, and Kenneth C. R. C. Arnold at UC Berkeley. It is designed to run on Unix systems and smart ASCII terminals, so if you're a Mac user expecting menus, mouse controls, and fancy graphics, you may be disappointed. On the other hand, if you're an ex-Unix user pining for one of the most addictive computer games in existence, rejoice!
This game is a simple port of "Rogue" to the Macintosh. It is based on Rogue 5.3, but was modified for general Unix portability by Timothy C. Stoehr, then further modified for play on Apple Macintosh systems by Rick Holzgrafe.
While this release is generally faithful to the original, there are a few discrepancies.
Changes Made for the Macintosh
Pressing the RETURN key is the same as pressing control-J. (Normally the RETURN key would do nothing, while control-J is a movement command.)
There is no "environment" on the Macintosh, and therefore no ROGUEOPTS environment variable. So instead, you can place the contents of the ROGUEOPTS variable in a text file named rogue.options and keep it in the same folder as the Rogue application. The file should contain only the contents of the variable, and should not contain any newlines or carriage returns. For example:
fruit=fermented mango,name=Pookie the Destroyer
The standard Rogue commands for saving games and quitting work as usual. You can also save and quit by using the menu items.
You can resume a saved game by double-clicking it, or by dragging it onto the Rogue icon and dropping it. You can view the Top Ten Scores by double-clicking the rogue.scores file that will be created after your first game.
You can supply command line arguments to Rogue: Hold down the command key as you start the game, until a dialog appears asking for Argument:. Type in your arguments and press RETURN or ENTER, or click the OK button. You can resume a saved game in this way, among other things.
Any score that's high enough will appear in the Top Ten Scores. This is different from the usual behavior on multi-user systems like Unix, where a given user's name can appear only once in the Top Ten. The Top Ten Scores also record the date on which each score was made.
The "Rogue Manual" is the one that comes with the Unix version of this releae of Rogue, translated from nroff "-man" format into SimpleText format but otherwise unchanged. Accordingly it has not been edited to match this Macintosh version of the game.
Differences from Rogue 5.3
(The following list of differences between this release and Rogue 5.3 is compiled from notes made by Timothy C. Stoehr.)
The -d option not implemented.
The -r option not implemented.
Strength is between 1 and 99, not 3 and 32.
The D command is not implemented.
Only scrolls, potions, wands, and rings may be "call"ed something.
The ^P command may be used to go 4 messages back, instead of just 1.
The @ command is not implemented.
There are no dark rooms.
ROGUEOPTS Only the following are implemented:
file,jump,name,askquit,tombstone,passgo
while flush, terse, seefloor, askme, inventory are ignored. 'askquit' is added to prevent ^\ from terminating the game accidentally. If 'noaskquit' is found in the ROGUEOPTS string, the ^\ kills the game, otherwise, the player is asked if he really wants to quit. In either case, no score file processing is attempted.
There should be NO bugs with any severe consequences. Absolutely NO game-stopping, or game-winning bugs should be present.
Traps fail occasionally, that is, they sometimes are sprung but miss.
The ^A command prints out some stuff you're probably not interested in.
The '&' command silently saves your screen into the file 'rogue.screen'.
Any inventory selection command that takes '*' as a request to list all appropriate items, can take one of "=?:)]!/" to list only rings, scrolls, or whatever.
Scrolls and potions, once used, become identified. All other objects become identified only by scroll of identification.
There is only one scroll of identification, and it works on any item.
You may drop objects in doorways.
Prints a picture of a skull, not a tombstone, upon death.
The save/restore game function is faster and machine-independent, but sometimes requires modification when new variables are added to the source.
The potion of detect monster lasts for the whole level.
