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From: nelson@ohlone.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,rec.games.rogue
Subject: Re: Rogue by Epyx
Message-ID: <135@ohlone.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 28-Feb-87 21:10:23 EST
Article-I.D.: ohlone.135
Posted: Sat Feb 28 21:10:23 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 2-Mar-87 04:40:48 EST
References: <1465@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP> <21187161@macs.UUCP>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Cray Research Inc., Livermore, CA
Lines: 36
Xref: utgpu comp.sys.amiga:2395 rec.games.rogue:97
Summary: Answers - old hat to most of this news group.

> > 	Has anyone had any experience with Rogue by Epyx for the Amiga?
> 
>I've used Rogue by Epyx for the IBM and I've been very disappointed
>with it.  I like a challenging game, but this is almost impossible.

I am the brother of Epyx's VP of programmimg, and my boss is the mother
of the guy who wrote Rogue, so I suppose I can answer any questions
about this you may have.  It IS a challenging game, and it IS almost
impossible.  Luck plays a large part and nobody (including the author)
can win more than a small fraction of the time.  There are lots of tricks
(like what exactly a scroll of "scare monster" is and how it works)
without which it is virtually impossible to win.

For those that don't know (including probably these two) Rogue was
originally written by Michael Toy (et al) to run under UNIX, needing only
a dumb terminal with cursor addressing.  The game was a big hit, and I
believe it was distributed for a time as part of the "standard" BSD
unix releases (maybe still is?).  Toy formed a company to try to sell
later versions of the game.  He was never able to break into marketing
in a big way though, so eventually turned to Epyx.  They act as a
marketing/distributing agent for the software, and have helped with
some of the ports to other machines, although Michael still does most
of the work.  This is a commercial product, and so source is not
availible.

The Epyx version(s) are fairly close to the original unix game (some
of the monsters have been changed around a bit).  More recent games
(notably "Hack") owe a lot of their look and feel to the original
Rogue, but have added numerous bells and whisles, as well as being
availible in the public domain.

Well, enough of this.  Hope this hasn't been too boring to those of
you who already knew this.
------
Bron Nelson;  {ihnp4, lll-lcc}!ohlone!nelson
Not the opinions of Cray Research