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A Guide to the Dungeons of Doom
Michael C. Toy
Computer Systems Research Group
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720
ABSTRACT
Rogue is a visual CRT based fantasy game
which runs under the UNIX timesharing system.
This paper describes how to play rogue and gives a
few hints for those who might otherwise get lost
in the Dungeons of Doom.
24 October 2009
A Guide to the Dungeons of Doom
Michael C. Toy
Computer Systems Research Group
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720
1. Introduction
You have just finished your years as a student at the
local fighter's guild. After much practice and sweat you
have finally completed your training and are ready to embark
upon a perilous adventure. As a test of your skills, the
local guildmasters have sent you into the Dungeons of Doom.
Your task is to return with the Amulet of Yendor. Your
reward for the completion of this task will be a full mem-
bership in the local guild. In addition, you are allowed to
keep all the loot you bring back from the dungeons.
In preparation for your journey, you are given an
enchanted sword, taken from a dragon's hoard in the far off
Dark Mountains. You are also outfitted with elf-crafted
armor and given enough food to reach the dungeons. You say
goodbye to family and friends for what may be the last time
and head up the road.
You set out on your way to the dungeons and after sev-
eral days of uneventful travel, you see the ancient ruins
that mark the entrance to the Dungeons of Doom. It is late
at night so you make camp at the entrance and spend the
night sleeping under the open skies. In the morning you
gather your sword, put on your armor, eat what is almost
your last food and enter the dungeons.
2. What is going on here?
You have just begun a game of rogue. Your goal is to
grab as much treasure as you can, find the Amulet of Yendor,
and get out of the Dungeons of Doom alive. On the screen, a
map of where you have been and what you have seen on the
current dungeon level is kept. As you explore more of the
level, it appears on the screen in front of you.
Rogue differs from most computer fantasy games in that
it is screen oriented. Commands are all one or two
keystrokes and the results of your commands are displayed
graphically on the screen rather than being explained in
-----------
As opposed to pseudo English sentences.
- 1 -
A Guide to the Dungeons of Doom
words.
Another major difference between rogue and other com-
puter fantasy games is that once you have solved all the
puzzles in a standard fantasy game, it has lost most of its
excitement and it ceases to be fun. Rogue on the other hand
generates a new dungeon every time you play it and even the
author finds it an entertaining and exciting game.
3. What do all those things on the screen mean?
In order to understand what is going on in rogue you
have to first get some grasp of what rogue is doing with the
screen. The rogue screen is intended to replace the "You
can see ..." descriptions of standard fantasy games. Here
is a sample of what a rogue screen might look like.
---------------------
|...................+
|...@...........[...|
|........B..........|
|...................|
--------+------------
Level: 1 Gold: 0 Hp: 12(12) Str: 16 Ac: 6 Exp: 1/0
3.1. The bottom line
At the bottom line of the screen is a few pieces of
cryptic information, describing your current status. Here
is an explanation of what these things mean:
Level This number indicates how deep you have gone in the
dungeon. It starts at one and goes up forever.
Gold The number of gold pieces you have managed to find
and keep with you so far.
Hp Your current and maximum hit points. Hit points
indicate how much damage you can take before you
die. The more you get hit in a fight, the lower
they get. You can regain hit points by resting. The
number in parentheses is the maximum number your hit
points can reach.
Str Your current strength. This can be any integer less
than or equal to eighteen. The higher the number,
the stronger you are.
Ac Your current armor class. This number indicates how
effective your armor is in stopping blows from
unfriendly creatures. The lower this number is, the
-----------
Or until you get killed or decide to quit.
- 2 -
A Guide to the Dungeons of Doom
more effective the armor.
Exp These two numbers give your current experience level
and experience points. As you do things, you gain
experience points. At certain experience point
totals, you gain an experience level. The more
experienced you are, the better you are able to
fight and to withstand magical attacks.
3.2. The top line
The top line of the screen is reserved for printing
messages that describe things that are impossible to repre-
sent visually. If you see a "--More--" on the top line,
this means that rogue wants to print another message on the
screen, but it wants to make certain that you have read the
one that is there first. To read the next message, just
press a space.
3.3. The rest of the screen
The rest of the screen is the map of the level as you
have explored it so far. Each symbol on the screen repre-
sents something. Here is a list of what the various symbols
mean:
@ This symbol represents you, the adventurer.
-| These symbols represent the walls of rooms.
+ A door to/from a room.
. The floor of a room.
# The floor of a passage between rooms.
* A pile or pot of gold.
) A weapon of some sort.
] A piece of armor.
! A flask containing a magic potion.
? A piece of paper, usually a magic scroll.
^ A trap, watch out for these.
% The passage leading down to the next level.
: A piece of food.
A-Z The uppercase letters represent the various inhabi-
tants of the Dungeons of Doom. Watch out, they can be
- 3 -
A Guide to the Dungeons of Doom
mean.
4. Commands
Commands are given to rogue by pressing single letters.
Most commands can be preceded by a count to repeat them
(e.g. typing "10s" will do ten searches) The list of com-
mands is rather long, but it can be read at any time during
the game with the ? command. Here it is for reference, with
a short explanation of each command.
? The help command. Asks for a character to give help
on. If you type a "*", it will list all the commands,
otherwise it will explain what the character you typed
does.
/ This is the "What is that on the screen?" command. A
"/" followed by any character that you see on the
level, will tell you what that character is. For
instance, typing "/@" will tell you that the @ symbol
represents you, the player.
h , H Move left. You move one space to the left. If you
use upper case h, you will continue to move left until
you run into something. This works for all movement
commands (e.g. "L" means run in direction "l")
j Move down.
k Move up.
l Move right.
y Move diagonally up and left.
u Move diagonally up and right.
b Move diagonally down and left.
n Move diagonally down and right.
f Find prefix. When followed by a direction it means to
continue moving in the specified direction until you
pass something interesting or run into a wall.
t Throw an object. This is a prefix command. Follow it
with a direction and you throw an object in the speci-
fied direction. (e.g. type "th" to throw something
left.)
> If you are standing over the passage down to the next
level, this command means to climb down.
- 4 -
A Guide to the Dungeons of Doom
s Search for traps and secret doors. Examine each space
immediately adjacent to you for the existence of a
trap or secret door. There is a large chance that
even if there is something there, you won't find it so
you might have to search a while before you find some-
thing.
(space) Rest. This is the "do nothing" command. This
is good for waiting and healing.
i Inventory. List what you are carrying in your pack.
I Selective inventory. Tells you what a single item in
your pack is.
q Quaff. Drink one of the potions you are carrying.
r Read. Read one of the scrolls in your pack.
e Eat food. Take some food out of your pack and eat it.
w Wield a weapon. Take a weapon out of your pack and
carry it. You must be wielding weapon to use it
(except to throw things). To fire an arrow, you must
wield the bow. You can only wield one weapon at a
time.
W Wear armor. Take a piece of armor out of your pack
and put it on. You can only wear one suit of armor at
a time.
T Take armor off. You can't remove armor that is
cursed. This takes extra time.
d Drop an object. Take something out of your pack and
leave it lying on the floor. Only one object can
occupy each space.
o Examine and set options. This command is further
explained in the section on options.
^L REdraws the screen. Useful if spurious messages or
transmission errors have messed up the display.
v Prints the program version number.
Q Quit. Leave the game.
R Repeat last message. Useful when a message disappears
before you can read it.
S Save the current game in a file. Caveat: Rogue won't
let you start up a copy of a saved game, and it
removes the save file as soon as you start up a
- 5 -
A Guide to the Dungeons of Doom
restored game. This is to prevent people from saving
a game just before a dangerous position and then
restarting it if they die. To restore a saved game,
give the file name as an argument to rogue. As in
% rogue save_file
5. Dealing with objects
When you find something in the dungeon, it is common to
want to pick the object up. This is accomplished in rogue
by walking over the object. If you are carrying too many
things, the program will tell you and it won't pick up the
object, otherwise it will add it to your pack and if the
notify option is set, tell you what you just picked up.
Many of the commands that operate on objects must
prompt you to find out which object you want to use. If you
change your mind and don't want to do that command after
all, just press an escape and the command will be aborted.
6. Light
Rooms in the dungeons are either lit or dark. If you
walk into a lit room, the entire room will be drawn on the
screen as soon as you enter. If you walk into a dark room,
it will only be displayed as you explore it. Upon leaving a
dark room, all objects inside the room which might move are
removed from the screen. In the darkness you can only see
one space in all directions around you.
7. Fighting
If you see a monster and you wish to fight it, just
attempt to run into it. Many times a monster you find will
mind its own business unless you attack it. It is often the
case that discretion is the better part of valor.
8. Armor
There are various sorts of armor lying around in the
dungeon. Some of it is enchanted, some is cursed and some
is just normal. Different armor types have different armor
classes. The lower the armor class, the more protection the
armor affords against the blows of monsters. If a piece of
armor is enchanted or cursed, its armor class will be higher
or lower than normal. Here is a list of the various armor
types and their normal armor class.
- 6 -
A Guide to the Dungeons of Doom
+------------------------------------+
| Type Class |
+----------------------------+-------+
|Leather armor | 8 |
|Studded leather / Ring mail | 7 |
|Scale mail | 6 |
|Chain mail | 5 |
|Banded mail / Splint mail | 4 |
|Plate mail | 3 |
+----------------------------+-------+
9. Options
Due to variations in personal tastes and conceptions of
the way rogue should do things, there are a set of options
you can set that cause rogue to behave in various different
ways.
9.1. Setting the options
There are basically two ways to set the options. The
first is with the "o" command of rogue, the second is with
the ROGUEOPTS environment variable. On Version 6 systems,
there is no equivalent of the ROGUEOPTS feature.
9.1.1. Using the "o" command
When you press "o" in rogue, it clears the screen and
displays the current settings for all the options. It then
places the cursor by the value of the first option and waits
for you to type. You can type a RETURN which means to go to
the next option, a "-" which means to go to the previous
option, an escape which means to return to the game, or you
can give the option a value. For boolean options this
merely involves pressing "t" for true or "f" for false. For
string options, type the new value followed by a return.
9.1.2. Using the ROGUEOPTS variable
The ROGUEOPTS variable is a string containing a comma
separated list of initial values for the various options.
Boolean variables can be turned on by listing their name and
turned off by putting a "no" in front of the name. Thus to
set up an environment variable so that jump is on, terse is
off, the name is set to "Conan the Barbarian" and the fruit
is "mango", use the command
% setenv ROGUEOPTS "jump,noterse,name=Conan the Barbarian,fruit=mango"
% setenv ROGUEOPTS "jump,noterse,name=Conan the Barbar-
ian,fruit=mango"
-----------
For those of you who use the bourne shell, the
commands would be
$ ROGUEOPTS="jump,noterse,name=Conan the Barbarian,fruit=mango"
- 7 -
A Guide to the Dungeons of Doom
9.2. Option list
Here is a list of the options and an explanation of
what each one is for. The default value for each is
enclosed in square brackets.
terse [noterse] Useful for those who are tired of
the sometimes lengthy messages of
rogue. This is a useful option for
those on slow terminals. This
option defaults to on if your are
on a slow (under 1200 baud) termi-
nal.
jump [nojump] If this option is set, running
moves will not be displayed until
you reach the end of the move.
This saves considerable cpu time
and display time. This option
defaults to on if you are using a
slow terminal.
step [nostep] When step is set, lists of things,
like inventories or "*" responses
to "Which item do you wish to xxxx?
" questions, are displayed one item
at a time on the top of the screen,
rather than clearing the screen,
displaying the list, then re-dis-
playing the dungeon level.
flush [noflush] If flush is set, all typeahead is
thrown away after each round of
battle. This is useful for those
who type way ahead and watch to
their dismay as a Kobold kills
them.
askme [noaskme] Upon reading a scroll or quaffing a
potion which does not automatically
identify it upon use, rogue will
ask you what to name it so you can
recognize it in the future.
name [account name] This is the name of your character.
It is used if you get on the top
ten scorer's list. It should be
less than eighty characters long.
fruit [slime-mold] This should hold the name of a
fruit that you enjoy eating. It is
basically a whimsy that the program
-----------
$ export ROGUEOPTS
- 8 -
A Guide to the Dungeons of Doom
uses in a couple of places.
file [rogue3.save] The default file name for saving
the game. If your phone is hung up
by accident, rogue will automati-
cally save the game in this file.
The file name may contain the spe-
cial character "~" which expands to
be your home directory.
10. Acknowledgements
Rogue was originally conceived of by Glenn Wichman and
Michael Toy. The help of Ken Arnold in making the program
easier to use and putting the finishing touches on is
greatly appreciated. I would also like to thank Marty
McNary, Scott Nelson, Daniel Jensen, Kipp Hickman, Joe
Kalash, Steve Maurer, Bill Joy, Mark Horton and Jan Miller
for their ideas and assistance.
- 9 -
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