Description
Rogue Clone is an early variant of
Rogue, the grandfather of all
roguelikes, specifically of the UNIX version 5.3. The first version of
Rogue Clone was first released in 1986 for UNIX.
At first glance,
Rogue Clone is quite indistinguishable from the original: Enter some randomly generated dungeon, bash monsters, grab treasures, evade traps, and find the stairs to the next level, all this to recover that fabled Amulet of Yendor and make it back to the light of day -- alive, preferably... everything in glorious ASCII graphics.
On a second glance, one realizes that
Rogue Clone features some additions and modifications to game play. For example, there are no dark rooms, and the difficulty level is slightly easier -- monsters spawn quicker, but there is much more items to be found. Another very helpful feature is that unknown items are automatically identified after use, so that next time you find them, you'll know what awaits you. The first version of
Rogue Clone also omitted traps and secret doors, later versions have both, but traps may not go off if an inadvertent adventurer steps onto them. Mazes are also drawn differently, and there are other changes in the items and their characteristics.
Otherwise, this version plays pretty much like the original and earns its name.
Alternate Titles
- "Rogue 5.3 Clone" -- common alternative title
- "LinuxRogue" -- title of the Linux port by Steve Wilson and later maintainers
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Trivia
Rogue Clone is based on the original UNIX version of
Rogue and was originally created by Timothy Stoehr for UNIX. He released the first version (then called
i_rogue Version 1.0) on the usenet newsgroup net.sources.games on Feb 26th, 1986. As Stoehr says: "I wrote this code out of disgust for the inexcusable number
of bugs that rogue 5.3 is famous for. I wrote this to eliminate the
bugs as well as to get rid of some other things I didn't care for." When releasing the second version, he wrote: "I personally hate groping around in dark rooms."
Rogue Clone II was released on newsgroup net.sources.games on November 25, 1986, and on comp.sources.games on May 11, 1987. Shortly after, Stoehr posted two
patches to fix bugs and portability issues. The source of this version was often used for ports.
Stoehr donated the last version of the original
Rogue Clone to Berkeley University around October 1987. Berkeley first released
Rogue Clone III in Juni 1988 with the official distribution of 4.3BSD Tahoe UNIX. (The release 4.2 of BSD UNIX had been distributed with
Rogue 5.3 earlier.).
