jensenj@stolaf.UUCP (Joel A. Jensen) (03/31/84)
Having discovered Rogue, the games of games, this year, and heavily addicting
myself, I have begun wondering more and more about how it all got started.
Perhaps someone out there could find the time to satiate my basic curiostity.
My questions are these:
1. When was the first Rogue version made and where? Who did it?
2. Did it catch on immediately or was it another Lord of the Rings?
3. When did the differing versions begin proliferating and what are
they?
4. What can be expected in the near future?
Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Joel YetiHacking Jensen
ihnp4!stolaf!jensenj
zgrw@fortune.UUCP (Glenn Wichman) (04/07/84)
1. When was the first Rogue version made and where? Who did it?
The first version of Rogue was written in the fall of 1980 in
an apartment in Santa Cruz colloquially known as "Camelot".
The original idea for the game came suddenly and simultaneously
to the two roommates, Michael C. Toy and Glenn R. Wichman. The
name "rogue" was given the game by Glenn. It was written in C
under UNIX on a PDP 11/70 at U.C. Santa Cruz. It was one of the
earliest programs to use the "curses" terminal-independent cursor
library developed by Ken Arnold. Later, (winter of '81) development
of the game moved from Santa Cruz to Berkeley, where Ken Arnold
got involved.
2. Did it catch on immediately or was it another Lord of the Rings?
It caught on immediately, like wildfire. It had already become
the most popular game at UC Santa Cruz even before there were
monsters in the game, and all you could do was explore levels.
3. When did the differing versions begin proliferating and what are
they?
I can't give a complete answer to this. The current official
version that is most widespread is 5.3. A group in San Diego
hacked up a version called ad_d, and a group in the midwest
came up with the "Super-rogue" enhancements. There are also
tons of local mutants.
4. What can be expected in the near future?
Rogue is now available for the IBM-PC. Most of our development
energies are going towards the home computer market now. I
won't say anything more except exciting things can be expected
in the future from the rogue people (Michael Toy, Jon Lane, Ken
Arnold, Glenn Wichman).
-Glenn R. Wichman