Roguelike Gallery Notes

UltraRogue and Other February Events

March 1, 2017

A few months ago, I said that my plans for 2016 included adding HTTPS support to the website and adding UltraRogue to the games collection. I missed the deadline, but HTTPS has been working for a month or so now, and UltraRogue is on the way.

UltraRogue was the last and largest of the early roguelikes. Active development, led by Herb Chong, lasted into the mid-1990's. It originated as a fork of Advanced Rogue, probably shortly before that game released version 5.8 in 1985. So UltraRogue does not include the new timing system of Advanced Rogue 7 and XRogue, but it has much of Advanced Rogue's content and plenty more of its own.

The user interaction may sometimes feel awkward to players of more recent roguelikes. The variety of content seems to be similar to that of NetHack or Angband. UltraRogue definitely belongs in the time period of those games, rather than with the minimalism of Rogue or the careful design and balance typical of the roguelike revival.

I have come across a few bugs while getting it ready. Saving and restoring is one of the more fragile parts of the codebase. There are also some annoying glitches with the display.

The source code is in Mercurial now. It will be at least two months before the game appears in the Gallery's playable collection. I plan to provide updated builds too.

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