davidk@dartvax.UUCP (10/15/83)
I just received my copy of Rogue for the IBM PC. The game is marketed
by Artificial Intelligence Design and seems quite sound. The disk is
supposedly copy protected but allows one backup copy to be made. They
do not promise that the backup copy will run and they want you to copy
it back onto the source diskette in the event of lossage. Hmm, sounds
like the program looks for disk markings. Anyhow. The color graphics are
superb! The objects are represented by some of the IBM's special symbols
(you are a small face, an inverted exclaimation point it a potion, a
small ring is a ring.) It is quite fast and very friendly. It will let
you set an option which turns off the need to preface a command with
'f', which can be very nice. It also uses the function keypad, though
I doubt that I will use it for fear or trying to use it when I am on
Unix. It does not have the normal options (it says something like:
"Sorry, I don't seem to have any options!" when you press 'o') but
most of the nice ones are set and the others do not matter since it
is running on a dedicated system anyhow. The one problem, and it is
not their fault really, is that all the monsters have changed. The
old Eye became a Ice Monster (an I on the screen!), the Jackel became
an Emt, the Rust Monster became something beginning with an A (a fact
that cost me several suits of armor), and the Ant is now a Rattlesnake.
Very confusing, but the graphics more than make up for it. It also has
a clock in the bottom corner and a countdown timer for repeat options
that can be canceled with a keypress. All in all, a very nice package.
-David Kovar
...decvax!dartvax!davidk