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Brief Roguelike history. (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by The_Snail to c/pixeldungeon
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A brief evolution of Rogue. Thousands of sites exist on the topic, so I won't go into a lot of repeat here, but I thought you might enjoy a quick gaming history lesson.

Tolkein (Lord of the Rings and many other books), inspired the game Moria. Zeb, Cook, and Gygax, creators of Dungeons & Dragons, inspired the game Rogue. Tolkein, from Europe, and Gygax (mainly credited for D&D), from America, detested one another.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon is based upon Pixel Dungeon. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shatteredpixel.shatteredpixeldungeon

Pixel Dungeon is based upon BRogue.

https://pixel-dungeon.en.uptodown.com/android

BRogue is based on Angband. https://github.com/bilgincoskun/brogue-android-port/releases/

Angband is based on Moria and Larn and Nethack. Moria is Tolkein's world, Nethack is D&D'ish, and Larn took a whole different theme. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.rephial.xyangband

This version includes several Roguelikes in one, including Sil-Q, the Android port of Moria.

The Android port of Larn (dLarn) is available at - https://download.appsonwindows.com/b/dLarn_free-v3.3-appsonwindows.com.apk?a=azJIZDl2QyttREIxend4L0tyblQwdz09&b=ZmlJL1paUmowSkdDY25XVy9SbGRlTDdreDhhWFc5WWk5NWJORXNrSWN5L1hOamFkWUZsZ21UVVVhSDlwWWtPa2hiT0VIZmQrQ2drTHZoSXJlZ3p4cjNnVlhvWDFSNnNocU1qM0xwcEVKcFk9&c=VkZzUkZ5QjlwQmxrOFJmSWNqR1EvZ3A5MDlSN3I3ZHk4WDFTZ1ZEVnFmQT0&d=4bf63e00

Moria is based on Rogue. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.rufe.moria

"Roguelike Classic" is the only APK I know to include direct ports of Moria, Larn, and Rogue to Android. Sadly, it uses .SO libraries that are no longer supported since Android 11. Mines of Moria does not hold very true to the original Dungeons of Moria. uMoria is not available for Android. Finally, I found Sil. This is an Android port of Moria that holds very true to Tolkein's work, but it is for x86 hardware only. Fortunately, Sil was redone as Sil-Q (silk), and is included in the above Angband apk.

The original UNIX version of Rogue (1978-1980) will not run on modern devices, and the only 2 known Android ports of the 1984-1985 DOS version stopped working at Android 11. The DOS version can be run in an emulator such as MagicDOSBox on Android. The versions up to 1984 were primarily text based, or, if one had a computer powerful enough they could select an ANSI or ASCII sudo graphics mode. It can also be played online. One must register an account before playing. https://rlgallery.org:8080/

A modern Android port can be found in Dungeon Crawl. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.crawlmb&hl=en

In 2015, one of the largest roundups of Roguelikes took place and more than 700 versions were archived. https://archive.org/details/RoguelikeMegaCollection2015

The anual 7 Day Roguelike Challenge adds about 10 new games each year.

About the same time, Pixel Dungeon was bursting onto the scene for Android and not even mentioned in that archive at the time.

A decade later, and there is now well over 300 version's of Pixel Dungeon! That makes for over a thousand roguelikes.

Dial-up Multi User Dungeon's (MUD's), network roguelikes such as Diablo, and MMORPG's such as World of Warcraft are also evolution's of the original Rogue.

*Edit

Although Nethack wasn't a part of PD, it has been a major influence on all Roguelikes. As I mentioned it, I am posting the Android version.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tbd.NetHack

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[–] Xeroxchasechase 4 points 10 months ago

Very interesting, thank you!

[–] seaQueue 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Holy shit, I haven't thought about Moria in years. I spent so much time losing games of Moria in my preteen years.

Speaking of really old terminal games I'm kind of shocked that no one thought to make a tile based MUD client and stick it on the app store, WoT MUD with a good phone UI would totally slay.

[–] The_Snail 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

A M.U.D. by definition is text based "graphics" in the style of original Rogue (and ANSII Pixel Dungeon).

Discworld still maintains an active M.U.D. that uses a browser based portal.

https://discworld.starturtle.net/lpc/decafmud/web_client.html

A tile based M.U.D. would be called a M.O.R.P.G. such as Diablo. As the internet advanced, M.M.O.R.P.G. became standard such as World of Warcraft or Ragnarock Online.

While title based RPGs add eye-candy, MUDs can be run on anything from Android to Atari with minimal resource requirements.

MUDs were after all originally created for UNIX and dialup B.B.S.s. I was a big fan of Zugg's MUD.

[–] The_Snail 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

January 2024

What started out as a brief history on the evolution of Rogue into Pixel Dungeon left me somewhat annoyed that several games (particularly Rogue itself) are no longer available on Android. Several years ago an app called "Angband Classic" brought Rogue to Android, but ever since the changes in v11, most of those apps no longer work. There are a few other later Rogue-likes that I also wanted from Windows 3.x. Years ago I compiled a version of DOSBox for WinXP that was designed specifically for running Win3x and included over 3,000 games and utilities, but that doesn't run on Android. And thus my quest led me to recreating an Android build of DOSBox. WinBox for Android is a stripped down and modified DOSBox v0.75 with a similarly stripped down and modified Win3x. Special driver's, DOS components removed, this app and data run Win3x on my Samsung Galaxy running Android 13. Now, it isn't a straight forward install, but the setup isn't that difficult either.

Unzip the archive. (I assume you did if you are reading this message.)

Install "DBTurbo v220 for Win3x_mod.apk" Run it. By default it wants to put everything into DOWNLOADS. Press the 3 dots, select Settings, and the first menu option of Configure DOSBox setting's. Scroll all the way down. Select MANUAL mode. Change the location of where you intend to store your Win3x folder. (See images 1 and 2 if unclear). Exit the app.

Move the Win3x folder to where ever you want it, just make sure that the location matches the configuration.

In the Win3x folder is "dosbox.conf" Open it with any text editor. Scroll all the way down and look for MOUNT Change the info to match the location of the folder. (See image 3 if needed.) Save

Start the app back up and you should quickly see Win3x with several installed game's. (See image 4) Rogue - the original game that started all Rogue-likes! Exile 1, 2, 3 - Some of the earliest tile based FRPG's ever, you may see some similarities to the infamous Android game, Andor's Trail. Rogue's Quest - Another very early tile based roguelike. It also includes a dungeon editor. This is not a procedurally generated random dungeon however. This falls between a true Rogue-like and a something like Andor. (When I do the cave quests in Andor, it reminds me of this game.)

And so, we now have Rogue (and a few extra's) running on Android again.

Yes, you can add additional game's. Extended graphic support for 800x600x16K, Win32 bit extensions, and bluetooth keyboard and joystick are included. Touch screen works too. However, as this is a stripped down and tweaked build, it will not run DOS game's, nor will most 32bit programs work.

Snail

https://filetransfer.io/data-package/PAdz3IC7#link 75Mb

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Super interesting. Is it possible to tell how much code has been inherited from one game to another? Or do they start from scratch too frequently?

[–] The_Snail 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Most of the source codes are released on Github. Through Github one can look at the Commits and compare code between version's. I don't know that anyone has ever done a percentage comparison report. That would be interesting, though very time consuming.

Also, comparing the APK's won't do. The Smali code (compiled JAVA) is bundled into DEX files, and that code is archived into zip files. To compare code differences that way, one must unpack and decompile every APK and perform a CRC/MD5/etc type comparison of every file, requiring about 15Gb of storage. A simple change in the use of AAP vs AAP2 compression can result in code changes wherein 100% of the code might look different when it is the exact same code. This tripple (or more) packing process for APK's makes CRC/MD5/etc. comparison nearly impossible to get accurate results.

I know as I did a similar method to create my PD database.

https://lemmy.world/post/10401791

Too, several hundred Github repositories are nothing more than clones of the original with names changed and nothing else.

Years ago there was a DOS tool to do comparison of BIN files for the Atari 2600 roms. It decompiled and examined code changes between thousands of roms and produced a family tree output. However, those files are 4K and not compressed. I will look around and see if a modern tool might be able to do the same for Android files, however, I think the Github data is goint to be the easier route.

[–] The_Snail 1 points 10 months ago

Having done some research into this, I find no tool that will do what you want, at least in the way that you want. Everything I find points to recent additions to Android Studio, the APK Analyzer (and apps like it). The tool has significant drawbacks however for this purpose. It doesn't store results, so they must be manually copied and stored. Also, comparison is one app to a second app, with no option for batch comparison. This leaves one manually bubble-sorting hundreds of Pixel Dungeon APK's. It doesn't take folder structure into account, nor does it take image relocation or resizing into account. It is best used for comparing different versions of the same app.

If anything should come up, I'll post here, but given complexities of modern apps, I don't see this ever being a simple project.

[–] Raxtuss1 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I didnt get anythig after 2nd paragraph... But seems cool

[–] The_Snail 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Do you mean that it didn't load, or that you didn't understand?

[–] grabyourmotherskeys 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think they got lost in the history and detail.

I wanted to thank you for this tour of rogue games. :)

[–] The_Snail 2 points 10 months ago

Trying to cram 45+ years of history of one of the most expansive computer games ever is not easy to do in a few paragraphs.

I didn't even try going into RL genre's, such as Tacticle RL's vs Adventure RL's or Final Fantasy, Gauntlet, Castlevania, Tower Defenders, Rogue-lites, etc.

As this is a PD forum, I kept it to the PD history path.

From my days of working with Tandy and porting Rogue to the CoCo3, to Rogue's Quest on Windows, to the work I do now on PD's, I've always loved the game.

Glad you enjoyed.

[–] Kiernian 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Tolkein, from Europe, and Gygax ... from America, detested one another

Uhh. Where'd that idea come from? I read somewhere that Gygax thoroughly enjoyed The Hobbit, although he apparently thought some of Tolkien's writing was "boring". I don't recall ever hearing Tolkien saying anything at all about Gygax. Gary didn't even get started on the precursors to D&D until right before Tolkien's death.

[–] The_Snail 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Dragon magazine reported on several occassions wherein the two met and banged heads. Although fans rarely saw them argue, it happened.

Dragon articles -

For example, he says:

I found the "Ring Trilogy" . . . well, tedious. The action dragged, and it smacked of an allegory of the struggle of the little common working folk of England against the threat of Hitler's Nazi evil. At the risk of incurring the wrath of the Professor's dedicated readers, I must say that I was so bored with his tomes that I took nearly three weeks to finish them.

And then later on:

Gandalf is quite ineffectual, plying a sword at times and casting spells which are quite low-powered (in terms of the D&D game). Obviously, neither he nor his magic had any influence on the games. The wicked Sauron is poorly developed, virtually depersonalized, and at the end blows away in a cloud of evil smoke . . . poof! Nothing usable there.

In addition, several civil action suits were filed between the two, the most notable when Tolkein sued TSR over copyright infringement.

"During the first few years after the introduction of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in 1973, Gary Gygax, who had the strongest impact on the fantasy elements of the game, denied any direct influences from fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien. Many players recognized immediately that numerous D&D character and creature names came directly from the books. But it took until 1977 for intellectual property lawyers from a firm which had licensed the rights to Tolkien’s work to send a cease-and-desist order, at which point TSR Inc. (then known as Tactical Studies Rules) Gygax’s publishing house, famously changed the names of characters with ties to those works. Thus, in basic D&D “hobbit” became “halfling,” and “ent” became “treant.”"

Beyond the press, media, and courts, we, the members of Evermoore Knight's (a group of people who gamed and playtested with Gygax), and I, who did work for TSR, Paladium, G.U.R.P.S. and other gaming systems, knew at a personal level the arguements that took place. Although to the fans the two systems, LotR and D&D, bare a strong resemblance, what inspired them and the creator's behind them were polar opposites.

(Of course, all that paled in comparison to how much Gygax's wife would come to want him dead, his lifes work destroyed, and D&D burried forever. She nearly succeeded too, creating Wizard's of the Coast and turning D&D and many other board games into indiscernible D20 garbage, wherein if not for a title one can't tell the difference from D&D, Shadowrun, etc. But that is a whole other matter and unrelated to Pixel Dungeon.)

[–] Kiernian 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

in 1973, Gary Gygax, who had the strongest impact on the fantasy elements of the game, denied any direct influences from fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien Died 2 September 1973 (aged 81) Bournemouth, Hampshire, England

Dragon magazine reported on several occassions wherein the two met and banged heads. Although fans rarely saw them argue, it happened.

There's REALLY not a lot of overlap for that to have happened, to say nothing of the distance between Hampshire and Wisconsin.

Also, what is this?

She nearly succeeded too, creating Wizard’s of the Coast

Unless Mary Jo Powell or Gail Carpenter were Peter Adkinson in disguise, that statement seems pretty far off base.

Where are you getting this stuff?

[–] The_Snail 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You are correct in that face-to-face meetings between Tolkein and Gygax were limited. As the articles themself point out, the arguements and lawsuits went well past their meetings and even past their lives.

"Lorraine Dille Williams is an American businesswoman. She was hired as manager of TSR, Inc. by company co-founder Gary Gygax in 1984, and was in charge of the table game company from 1986 to 1997. Williams gained control of TSR in October 1985 when the Blume brothers sold her their controlling shares of the company. It is estimated that as early as 1994, she (and several others) plotted with card game designer, Wizard's of the Coast, to overthrow TSR. In 1996, an "unexpectedly" high cost of returned (unsold) fiction books and an expensive, unsuccessful foray into the collectible card game market caused a cash flow squeeze, and Williams sold TSR to Wizards of the Coast in 1997."

Plenty of news articles have been published on this. Not so widely known is how Gail, Gary's second wife, a materialistic gold digger, was the driving force behind the great killing of board games, and worked with Williams and publicist Rose Estes and Peter Adkinson to take control over all of Gary's assets and run D&D into the ground, replacing it with card games.

Ernie, Gary's son, has given plenty of interviews about how Tolkein and TSR fought, and in company name, continue to fight one another to this day. Too, Luke, another of Gary's sons, has also reported on how his stepmother sold D&D to WotC for $30M (not the publically reported $11M) and converted most of it into WotC shares, making Gail the largest share holder of the company and saving it from failure. In 2015, Gail actually sued Gary's son's over them attempting to keep D&D going in its classic form. Unlike Gary's first wife who support him, Gail just wanted money. Ironically, Gail's hatrid of D&D and her subversive share control of WotC to destroy tabletop gaming backfired as millions of fans worldwide attacked her, Tom DeSanto sued her, and some have even tried to kill her. WotC bought out her shares and although many of the lawsuits were dropped, they left Gail nearly penniless.

Gail Gygax and WotC are world wide atributed with the intentional destruction of D&D (the original format) and many table top games.

A great many backstabbing deals took place that the general public doesn't know about, and most never will.

This however, is getting far off the topic of Pixel Dungeon.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So, is Pixel dungeon still being developed? Or does it have the same developer as Shattered Pixel Dungeon?

[–] The_Snail 4 points 10 months ago

Watabou stopped developement at v1.9.2a. Others have made their own expansions/modifications since he made the code open source. Out of that about a hundred PD's came out, and from those, Shattered and Remixed have (arguably) become the two most developed and used worldwide.

PD, SPD, most (though not all) PD's have seperate developers.

[–] gatopeich 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Long live Nethack!

[–] The_Snail 1 points 10 months ago

I did some hunting around and found something I think you will enjoy.

THIS is a link to an archive of 3 Android APK's including Nethack, UnNethack that expanded on Nethack, and Slash'Em that vastly expanded on both.

There is a minor annoyance however, Google. They love breaking things that work, and when they switched to Android 11 Google broke thousands of game's. In this case, Android prevents these APK's from creating the data folder (unless one is running an older version of Android).

The fix is simple but implimenting it can be annoying. The easiest method is to attach your device to a PC and make the folders (screw Android's security). For those who don't have a PC, you will have to use a File explorer with permission to make folders in the Android\Data folder.

If you get an error that the game can't process the content, it is because Android prevented the installation from making the folder. The 3 folder you "may" have to manually create to run the games are -

com.tbd.NetHack

con.tbd.UnNetHack

com.tbd.slex

That aside, the 3 games will work on Android 13.

[–] The_Snail 1 points 10 months ago

I've been informed that Nethack 3.7.0 was released in 2023 for Windows and a few other systems (not Android). The Android newest release is 3.6.6-2

It includes several popular Tile sets to chose from and the option to load Custom sets.

The tile sets prior to 3.6.0 no longer work in the new versions, however, I was able to locate several more and put them into this archive.

https://filetransfer.io/data-package/xQZmrqad#link

[–] The_Snail 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Another worthy mention is Ancient Domains Of Mystery (ADOM for short). This Rogue-like is attributed with what today is called 2.5D graphics. That is, not flat 2 dimension tiles, but also not quite full 3 dimensional objects. Instead, flat graphic tiles are displayed in a way to give the impression of 3D. This allows for smaller file sizes while also making animation possible.

This is the same process used by Pixel Dungeon.

Too, according to the website, ADOM is the first Roguelike to add quest's. That is something else Pixel Dungeon shares with classic RL's.

ADOM was made for LINUX, ported to DOS/Mac/Amiga, eventually and primarily to Windows, but never for Android.

The official ADOM homepage is - https://www.adom.de/home/index.html

It is now available on Steam and GOG, at a price.

ADOM for DOS can be run via MagicDOSBox on Android, but it is a very old version.

Desktop Dungeon is the closest alternative to ADOM I have found for Android.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.QCFDesign.DesktopDungeonsMobile

*EDIT

Again, frustrated with not finding an ADOM for Android, I did some investigating and have discovered that the main reason most Roguelike are not ported to Android has to do with the CURSES library. This is the code that selects where an object will be located on the screen. It was designed for CRT technology and is incompatible with modern flatscreen XY technologies.

So, once again, I went back to modifying a DOSBox. Stripped down, ambiv7 (no x86 support), removed a bunch of stuff not needed, and reduced it from 52Mb to 15Mb. Easier install than its Win3x counterpart. Install, select the folder you want to place your games, use the same folder for the configuration files, and once running, click on the orange + button to add a game. Enter the name Ancient Domains of Myster, scroll down and select the exe, ADOM.EXE, and it is set. Click the new icon and enjoy ADOM on Android.

https://filetransfer.io/data-package/rtJOVHyt#link

Note: This is the classic ASCII version, the latest as of this post. The tile based version is over half a Gb and won't run smoothly under any emulation I've tested thus far.

[–] The_Snail 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Also, not only is the evolution of Rogue into Roguelike into Pixel Dungeon interesting, you may enjoy checking out 00-Evan's complete Pixel Dungeon ARCHIVE that features every version of the original Pixel Dungeon.

Note that the very first PD does not play well with most devices, it never did.

If you would like to try the first ever Pixel Dungeon that launched a whole new generation of Roguelikes, you can try this modified build that works on Android 13.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tGISfYHVqA-tjIPwe6LXkfqbe-N3e6YO/view

Do keep in mind, this was the first release and lacks a great many things in modern PD's, but it is still playable.