3 Jul
2021
3 Jul
'21
4:21 a.m.
Quoting from David Craddock's book, Dungeon Hacks (2015), pages 34-35:
By the time Toy and Wichman started at UC Santa Cruz,
BSD UNIX had entered
widespread usage across UC campuses and was branching out to other schools.
Each new version of BSD, released on cassette tape, included handy programs
written by Joy and other hackers. One program was curses, written by Ken
Arnold. Arnold had written curses according to the UNIX creed: a simple
tool fashioned for a specific purpose. Wielding curses like a paintbrush,
users could place text such as letters, numbers, and symbols at any
location on the screen.
The moment he used curses, Toy saw its potential. In 1980, he went to
Wichman and suggested they use curses to create a
graphical adventure game
with a twist. Unlike Colossal Cave Adventure and its derivatives, their
game would construct brand new environments and challenges every time. An
avid Dungeons & Dragons player, he invented a fantasy-themed setting and
premise. Players would assume the identity of an adventurer who entered the
Dungeons of Doom, a series of levels filled with monsters and treasure.
Wichman loved the idea and dubbed the game Rogue. "I think the name just
came to me. Names needed to be short because you
invoked a program by
typing its name in a command line. I liked the idea of a rogue. We were
coming from a Dungeons & Dragons background, but we were creating a
single-player game. You weren't going down into the dungeon with a party.
The idea was that this is a person going off on his or her own. It captured
the theme very succinctly."
Apropos of UNIX, Toy chose to write Rogue in the C language. C produced
fast code, while BASIC was slower and meant for
smaller programs. Wichman,
still a few steps behind Toy in programming prowess, learned C by watching
Toy program their game. "The early alpha versions of Rogue were probably
all my code, but Glenn [Wichman] made lots of contributions in terms of
design," Toy recalled. "I think it's quite fair to say that the game was
a
pretty straight collaboration between Glenn [Wichman], Ken [Arnold], and me
by the time it was done. I feel pretty good about that."
Toy and Wichman realized they wouldn't be able to stay at school during all
hours to write their game. Fortunately, they
didn't need to. As employees
of the computer science division, they had special lab privileges. Setting
up an ADM-3a terminal in their apartment, they could dial into the VAX
11/780 shunted off in a basement somewhere at UC Santa Cruz. The connection
was established through their 300-baud modem -- a device that would take
several minutes to transmit the text on an average-length Wikipedia page
today -- enabling them to write the vast majority of Rogue from the comfort
of their apartment.
Craddock's notes explain that the quotes of Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman
"come from interviews conducted via phone, Skype, and email over 2012-2014."
I think you must be right about the first machine being something running
BSD UNIX.
Matt
On Thu, Jul 1, 2021 at 8:07 PM Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
What was the first machine to run rogue? I understand
that it was written
by Glenn Wichman and Michael Toy at UC Santa Cruz ca. 1980, using the
`curses` library (Ken Arnold's original, not Mary Ann's rewrite). I've
seen
at least one place that indicates it first ran on 6th Edition, but that
doesn't sound right to me. The first reference I can find in BSD is in 2.79
("rogue.doc"), which also appears to be the first release to ship curses.
Anyone have any info? Thanks!
- Dan C.