iRogue: How to play
Back to the iRogue page
Hopefully you're familiar with rogue (or rogue-like games)
already. They are text-based games which have a familiar premise
--- wander around in a dungeon, collect treasure,
beat up bad-tempered critters, try to finish a quest.
What You See
When you start the application you will see a screen split into
three parts. The top part will display messages (e.g. "you hit", "the
ice monster misses"). The middle part represents a part of the level
you're on. The bottom part contains your status line.
...top part
(Fairly self-explanatory. The message window is cleared when you
move; if there are multiple messages in one turn, they will "scroll"
upward and off the screen. There is a menu item to show the last ten
messages in case you miss something.)
...middle part
The idea is that you're wandering around in a dungeon. You are
represented by an at-sign "@". You are probably going to start out in
a room. Whichever room you are in at the moment is lighted, and other
rooms are dark; you can see what's in your current room, but not in
the other rooms. The lighted tiles appear as ".". The walls of the
room are made of dashes "-" and "|". There is, hopefully, at least
one doorway "+" which leads into a passage "#" which leads to some
other room.
(Are you with me so far?) You may see some other things in the
room you're in, such as "%" stairs. You can go down the stairs; you
can't go up until you have achieved your goal.
Other things you might see include scrolls "?" you can read,
potions "!" you can quaff, food "o" you can eat, weapons ")" you can
wield or throw, rings "=" you can put on or remove, armor "]" you can
wear or take off, and staffs "/" you can zap. These are all objects
you can pick up and put in your pack (this will be done automatically
when you walk over them, so long as your pack is not full.)
Your goal is to find the Amulet of Yendor, which is represented by
a comma ",". You will not encounter it until you go down at least
twenty-odd levels.
From time to time you may run into a trap "^". There are various
kinds of traps, but I'll let you find out about them on your own. You
can find traps (and hidden doors) by searching and generally being
lucky, or unlucky as the case may be.
There are also monsters, represented by the letters A to Z and a
to z. Some may be asleep or unaware of your presence. When awake and
aware of you, they are mostly pretty crabby and will probably try to
kill you.
Your secondary goals are to get experience by killing monsters
(which will make you tougher to kill), and get money "*" (which will
give you a higher score when you die or win.)
...bottom part
L1: This is the level of the dungeon you're
currently on - how far you are from the surface. You start on 1 and
can go down as far as 99 (obviously you don't need to go that far,
since the Amulet starts appearing much earlier.)
HP 12(12): Your current and maximum hit points -
how far you are from being dead. Your maximum hit points will go up
as you advance in experience. Your current hit points will, you hope,
stay above 0.
Str 16(16): Your current and maximum strength -
how hard you hit. You may find a way to raise your maximum strength.
You may find things that reduce your current strength, and things that
restore it.
To the right of the Strength display, you may sometimes see a word
such as "hungry". This should suggest to you that it
is time to eat some food. If you ignore this for too long, you will
start fainting, and that is uncool when there are monsters around to
stomp on you.
Arm: 4: This is your armor rating - how hard you
are to hit. Higher is better, as you will see if you take off your
currently worn armor (you do that via the inventory screen.)
$0: This is how much money you have. (It's not
good for anything except the top-ten list of dead rogues, unlike some
other rogue-like games in which you can use it to purchase items in
stores.)
Exp: 1/0: This is your current experience. The
first number is your experience level (I blame D&D for overloading
the word "level".) The second number is your experience points
(somehow that seems grammatically wrong.)
Moving Around
First, imagine that the screen is a compass. At the top of the screen
is north. Imagine that this compass is divided like a pie into eight
slices: N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW. The slices meet in the center of
the screen. Tap within a slice, and that is the direction you will
move in -- regardless of where you "@" are located on the screen.
Ok. You got the pie? I am going to complicate it now. If you
tap very close to the center of the screen, instead of moving you will
"search" at your current location. (Every time you search, you have
some probability of finding hidden traps and secret doors in the eight
tiles immediately adjacent to you.) Moving outward... If you tap
moderately close to the center of the screen, you will move one square
at a time. If you tap far from the center of the screen (near the
edge of the screen), you will move several squares -- you move until
you are adjacent to something "interesting" (such as an object, door,
wall, stairs, or monster.)
So there's a pie of what-direction-you-move, and there are some
concentric circles of what-happens-when-you-tap. You can adjust the
size of these circles via the Preferences menu
item on the Options menu, depending on what you think is deserving of
more screen real-estate.
Oh, yeah: to attack a monster "hand-to-hand", with whatever weapon
you're currently wielding, you just try to move onto its square. If
it is immediately to your west, tap on the west side of the screen,
etc., and you should see a message such as "you hit".
Menus
Options menu
Map /M
In the middle part of the screen, you can only see a part of the level
that you're currently exploring. The "Map" menu item will display a
map of the entire level.
(Tap anywhere to make it go away again.) It
will show you, the rooms and passages you've explored so far, and the
stairs if you've found them.
Message Log /L
This will display the last 10 messages, which may be useful if you
were tapping away those "--more--"'s too fast or something. (Tap
"Done" to make it go away.)
Scroll View /V
In the middle part of the screen, you can only see a part of the level
that you're currently exploring. The "Scroll View" menu item will
allow you to move your view north / south / east / west. It will move
1 step by default. If you write a graffiti number (1-99) before using
this menu item, it will move that many steps instead.
Preferences /R
The Preferences dialog allows you to customize your iRogue experience
(heh.) I'll go over that below.
Instructions
Very basic instructions, for people who skip the web page.
About iRogue
This is the "About" screen that you find in all normal applications.
Graffiti Help /G
(Probably no one needs this, but it doesn't really cost anything to
put in.)
whatsit? /W
If you see an unfamiliar character on the middle part of the screen,
and you would rather not identify it the hard way (by walking on or
attacking it), you can use the "whatsit?" menu item instead. Select
this menu item.
Then tap on the unknown character (and decide whether to attack it
or slink away.)
(Q) Quit
This will kill your current rogue (after the obligatory "are you
SURE?") and allow you to start over. This dialog can also be accessed
by writing a graffiti "Q".
Wiz menu
Normal/Wizard
This will allow you to switch between normal mode and wizard mode.
The latter will make you more buff, enable you to ascend and descend
without benefit of stairs, reveal the map of the level, and allow you
to create objects at whim. (Wizard mode exists only to help me debug.
Maybe later I will make it slightly harder to access.)
Wiz Create Obj...
Allows me to randomly create objects for debugging purposes. (As a
side effect, allows you to create kick-ass crystalline armor. Assuage
your conscience by reporting to me any bugs you
find.)
Commands menu
The following menu items can accessed faster by writing the graffiti
character that appears in parentheses.
(i) Inventory
This will take you to the inventory dialog. I will describe that more
below.
(.) Rest
Rest (do nothing) for one move. This also takes a numeric argument,
so you can write a graffiti number from 1 to 99 before selecting this
menu item, to rest for 1 to 99 moves (or until your nap is interrupted
by a monster wandering over and hitting you.)
(m) Move
Normally, when you move, you pick up any items that you happen to walk
over. Occasionally you may want to move onto something without
picking it up. To do that, use this menu item and then select the
direction in which you want to move.
(,) Pick up
You can use this command to pick up something that you're standing on.
(Either you moved onto it with the above command, or your pack was
full when you walked onto it but now you've used up some item to make
room.)
(s) Search
Searching will find hidden traps and doors. Each time you search,
there is some chance of finding whatever (if anything) is there. This
command also takes a numeric argument, so you can write a graffiti
number from 1 to 99, then write "s" (or select this menu item) to
search for that many turns.
(f) Fight
If you are tired of blow-by-blow combat, the "fight" command will
quietly run the fight between you and the monster in the direction you
select. The fight will end when the monster moves away or is killed,
or another monster joins in, or you are gravely wounded (and should
consider escape.)
(F) til death
If the "fight" command is not macho enough for you, you can use the
capital-F "Fight" instead. It's just like the other one, except that
you don't stop when severely wounded (only when dead.)
(<) Up
Use this command to ascend stairs. To go up, you must be standing on
stairs and in possession of the object of your quest, the Amulet of
Yendor.
(>) Down
Use this command to descend stairs. To go down, you must be standing
on stairs.
(^) ID trap
If you're lucky enough to reveal a trap by some means other than
setting it off, you may be wondering what kind of trap it is. Use
this command to find out (select the direction of the trap you're
standing next to.)
(t) Throw
There are some monsters that you don't want to get too close to.
(I'll let you figure out which those are.) Use the "Throw" command if
you are in possession of some distance weapon(s). It will pop up a
dialog which allows you to select the distance weapon and the
direction to propel it in.
Note that some are meant to be
"launched" by another weapon and will work better if you are wielding
something appropriate: arrow/bow, stone/sling, etc. (The non-launched
types of distance weapons, if I recall correctly, instead work better
if you first "wield" and then "throw" them.)
(z) Zap
If you have a staff or wand, you can zap it in the direction of a
monster and hope it does something useful. The "zap" dialog is very
similar to the "throw" dialog (no animation though.) You do not need
to be wielding the item.
When you move around, you tend to pick up things (by walking on them.)
Where do they go? Your pack. How do you do something with them?
To do something to an item in your inventory, select "Inventory"
from the Commands menu (or write "i", lower-case I.)
A window will pop up with a list of your inventory. Select any item.
This should cause three or four buttons to appear on the right. The
top one is what iRogue guesses you're most likely to want to do to
that item, and it is selected by default. If you'd rather do
something else to the item, select another button. Then tap "OK" to
perform the action, or "Cancel" if you've changed your mind.
As I mentioned above, there is a Preferences item on the Options
menu which will allow you to set various things, including the size of
those "what am I doing when I tap somewhere" circles.
When you have changed the numbers, you can hit the "Draw" button
to display the three areas. It will draw the middle region in black.
(The "Clear" button will redraw the preferences screen without the
big black donut.)
The preferences screen also allows you to:
-
Turn off "running" altogether, so that you move only one square at a
time no matter how far from the center you tap.
-
Change the name of your rogue. It defaults to (up to 30 characters of)
your hotsync id. This is the name that will appear in the top-ten score
list.
-
Turn on/off "save". If you have save turned off, when you leave the
iRogue application and enter another application, nothing about your
rogue will be saved and nothing will be changed in the top-ten list.
When you return to iRogue, you will be starting all over. If you have
save turned on, iRogue will save a snapshot of your game in the
iRogueDB database (I suppose you could hotsync this database from your
PalmPilot if you want to preserve it for future generations.)
-
Turn on/off "Dave mode". This means that when "running" you will
follow corridors to the end, or until they branch (or you run into
something interesting.) That is, it will make right-angle turns on
its own. This feature can be a little disconcerting in long twisty
corridors, so it is "off" by default. (The check box is labelled Dave
Mode because Dave requested the feature and it was impossible for me to
describe meaningfully in so little space.)
-
Turn on/off "scroll mode". If scroll mode is on, when you tap at the
extreme perimeter of the display (in the top line of the message
window, bottom line of the status window, or equivalently along the
left/right edge of the screen), the dungeon view will scroll as though
you had used the "Scroll View" menu item. You can specify a numeric
argument by writing a graffiti number from 1 to 99, then tapping at
the perimeter. This is off by default, because (like Dave mode) it
can be disconcerting.
Your preferences will be remembered "forever", with the exception
of the name, which belongs to a particular rogue and will revert to
the default when that rogue dies (or, if you have "save" turned off,
when you leave iRogue and that rogue isn't saved.)
help!
Want "spoilers" for iRogue? You will have to read the source. (Congratulations, you have
polymorphed into a white-box tester. Please report any
bugs to me.)
Back to the iRogue page
Bridget Spitznagel
Last modified: Sun Jul 18 22:55:37 EDT 1999