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+ <title>Rogue (1980) (2013)</title>
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+ <h1>Rogue (1980) (2013)</h1>
+ <div style="width: 70%; margin-left: 15%;">
+ <blockquote style="font-style: italic;">
+ what idiot called it roguelike instead of roguehate
+ </blockquote> - <a href="https://twitter.com/pillowfort/status/322083264175144960">@pillowfort (Mat Jones)</a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ (What follows is some mostly unorganized thoughts about
+ designing and playing the game, and then some unorganized
+ explanation of the code changes. The title of this modified
+ game, by the way, is <em>Rogue (1980)</em>, to distinguish it
+ from <em>Rogue</em>.)
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This game was an experiment. Not in the usual sense of
+ "experimental" game design as something mechanically unusual,
+ but rather as a system designed to prod at a particular problem
+ - abundance of violence / lack of romance - when played. It's
+ not trying to be a "correct" implementation of dating in a
+ roguelike setting. Rather I'm considering how "deep" our combat
+ mechanics actually are (they're not, and most modern games are
+ actually less so than <em>Rogue</em>), and what we demand of
+ them vs. what we demand of dating mechanics.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was trying to reverse-triangulate a game design for a
+ universe in
+ which e.g. <a href="http://auntiepixelante.com/triad/">Triad</a> is
+ unexceptional. If comfortable cuddling rather than explosion was
+ the default theming of our puzzle games, what might that games
+ industry have produced during its formative years?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I chose <em>Rogue</em> to start with because its core design can
+ be traced up to many modern titles, often barely changed or even
+ simplified. That's kind of bullshit, isn't it? Thirty years and
+ we're still making games with the same kind of rules about the
+ same kind of violence, then claiming we don't try emotion
+ because it's "difficult" to mechanize. I also chose it because
+ it's a game I enjoy and know well.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I don't want to unpack too much about my own game here
+ because, who cares? I'm no expert at games criticism. But I do
+ want to mention a few things.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Adding flirting to the game made the combat mechanics so much
+ grosser. In roguelikes you kill a <em>lot</em> of stuff, usually
+ unprompted and as an invader. But no one would
+ call <em>Rogue</em> a violent game. Well, when you put in a
+ flirt command, that ends. Just by having a non-violent choice
+ the resort to combat mechanics, otherwise unmodified, becomes
+ more disturbing. I'm convinced if we had made even token efforts
+ towards including this stuff early on, there's no way we'd be
+ looking at such gross shit like <em>Far Cry 3</em> today. The
+ dissonance would be too great.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Similarly the source code is still loaded with references to
+ "kill", "enemy", "attack", etc., even for non-violent
+ actions. Problematic units run through the architecture,
+ content, and output of the program creating a structural,
+ intersecting push back against my attempts to add non-violent
+ options. The age of the code means it's fragile and creaky, and
+ the changes required to fix this would be destabilizing beyond
+ what I could deal with given the time I had to make it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Although you can attract multiple monsters, at the end of the
+ game you can only leave with one. This is my least favorite
+ decision - I'd rather you be able to leave with all nearby
+ monsters when you quit. But again, the base game encodes a very
+ specific (and inaccurate) notion of violence - one specific
+ entity is the cause of killing you. Mapping that system into
+ "non-violence" then forces monogamy.
+ </p>
+ <h2>Mechanical Stuff</h2>
+ <p>
+ <em>Rogue (1980)</em> adds two character attributes and three
+ verbs to <em>Rogue</em>. The first attribute
+ is <em>orientation</em>. It's a set of six on/off flags. Every
+ monster has a randomly-generated orientation. The player also
+ has an orientation attribute, which would maybe better be called
+ presentation - the degree to which the monster's orientation
+ mixes with the player's determines the probability of a
+ successful <kbd>f</kbd>lirt. There's no notion of gender or sex
+ beyond this representation; that may mean there's no notion of
+ gender or sex at all depending on how you interpret it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Successful flirting raises the other new
+ attribute, <em>interest</em>. When interest gets high enough,
+ the monster stops attacking the player and starts
+ accepting <kbd>g</kbd>iven gifts.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Orientation also determines how a monster reacts to gifts, as
+ the item ID is hashed to produce an "item presentation". Gifts
+ raise interest much faster than flirting.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Once interest is high enough, you can <kbd>E</kbd>mbrace the
+ monster to end the game. You get a score bonus proportional to
+ the experience points the monster would have given for a kill.
+ An optimum score is now reliant on getting the amulet and then
+ dating a <tt>D</tt> or <tt>P</tt> on the way back up. Dating
+ them is not actually harder than dating any given <kbd>B</kbd>
+ or <kbd>K</kbd>.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ At one point during development embracing enemies was an
+ alternate method to get rid of them rather than another endgame
+ state. If you succeeded they disappeared and dropped a new kind
+ of food item, a date. It was too goofy, and too much
+ "romance-as-conquest". At another point when I was frustrated
+ with debugging the pre-ANSI C, I was just going to write a much
+ longer false context and release <em>Rogue</em> unmodified, but
+ I'm not a good enough writer and that was too lazy even for me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The source code alternates between calling <kbd>@</kbd> and the
+ player "he" and "she" with a preference for the masculine.
+ There's only one instance of a neutral "him/her". Interestingly
+ it's in the context of <kbd>W</kbd>earing, which is the action
+ most closely associated with real-world gender roles, even
+ though <em>Rogue</em> has no gendered clothing. (Wichmann also
+ says armor was a late addition to the game, so maybe it's just
+ because it's from a different developer than the other
+ comments.) This is years before e.g. the D&D manuals would
+ do the same. In roguelike communities today, I don't think I've
+ ever seen anyone call the original <kbd>@</kbd> a woman.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Do you have a problem with any of this stuff? Cool! I'm just a
+ mostly-conventional cis man who spent my formative years
+ playing <em>Rogue</em>, the real one. Which is to say, I'm sure
+ I'm blinded to a lot of things going on here. Roguelike culture
+ has always been big on remixing and reinterpreting. I would love
+ to see reconstructions of <em>Hack (1985)</em> and <em>Angband
+ (1990)</em> and so on, even just descriptions of what they might
+ be like. Or any feedback / reactions really.
+ </p>
+ <h2>More Reading</h2>
+ <ul>
+ <li><a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4013/the_history_of_rogue_have__you_.php">The
+ History of Rogue: Have @ You, You Deadly Zs</a> on Gamasutra;
+ Ken Arnold and Glenn Wichmann weigh in in the comments.</li>
+ <li><a href="http://www.wichman.org/roguehistory.html">Glenn
+ Wichmann's <em>A Brief History of "Rogue"</em></a>, this one
+ accurate to our universe.</li>
+ <li><a href="http://www.blackgreengames.com/games.html">Black
+ & Green Games</a> publishes some neat things that might as
+ well be <em>Counts and Courtship</em>. (Other people have as
+ well, but those are the ones I'm most familiar with.)</li>
+ </body>
+</html>