Editing Roguelike (section)

===Early history (1975–1980)===
The creation of roguelike games came from hobbyist programmers and [[hack (computing)|computer hackers]], attempting to create games for the nascent computer field in the early 1980s, particularly influenced by the 1975 [[adventure game|text adventure game]] ''[[Colossal Cave Adventure]]'' (often simply titled ''Adventure'', or ''advent'' on filesystems without long filenames), and from the [[high fantasy]] setting of the tabletop game ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]''. Some elements of the roguelike genre were present in dungeon crawlers written for the [[PLATO system]]. This includes ''[[pedit5]]'' (1975) believed to be the first dungeon crawl game, and featured random monster encounters, though only used a single fixed dungeon level.<ref name="ieee insight"/> ''pedit5'' inspired similar PLATO-based dungeon crawlers ''[[Dnd (1974 video game)|dnd]]'' (1975), ''orthanc'' (1978), ''[[Moria (1978 video game)|Moria]]'' (1978), and  ''[[Avatar (1979 video game)|avatar]]'' (1979).<ref name="Barton 2008 30–37">{{Cite book |first=Matt |last=Barton |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IMXu61GbTqMC |title=Dungeons & Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games |publisher=[[A K Peters, Ltd.]] |year=2008 |access-date=December 19, 2015 |isbn=978-1-56881-411-7 |pages=30–37 |archive-date=May 10, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170510045741/https://books.google.com/books?id=IMXu61GbTqMC |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="ieee insight"/> It is unclear if these PLATO games inspired the roguelike genre as there is no evidence that the early roguelike creators had access to these games.<ref name="Barton 2008 30–37"/> The core roguelike games were developed independently of each other, many of the developers not learning about their respective projects until several years after the genre took off.<ref name="craddock chp4"/>

Roguelike games were initially developed for computing environments with limited memory, including shared mainframe systems and early home computers; this limitation prevented developers from retaining all but a few dungeon levels in memory while the game was running, leading to procedural generation to avoid the memory storage issue. Procedural generation led to high [[Replay value|replayability]], as no two games were alike.<ref>{{cite web|url = http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/procedural-generation-took-gaming-industry/|title = How Procedural Generation Took Over The Gaming Industry|first = Joel|last = Lee|date = November 28, 2014|access-date = November 13, 2015|work = MakeUseOf|archive-date = November 17, 2015|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151117023444/http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/procedural-generation-took-gaming-industry/|url-status = live}}</ref>

====Concurrent variants====
Though the term "roguelike" derives from the 1980 game ''Rogue'',<ref name="essential">{{cite web|url=http://www.1up.com/features/essential-50-rogue|title=The Essential 50 Part 12 – Rogue|last=Parish|first=Jeremy|work=[[1UP.com]]|access-date=March 1, 2009|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130228092550/http://www.1up.com/features/essential-50-rogue|archive-date=February 28, 2013}}</ref> the first known game with the core roguelike gameplay elements was ''[[Beneath Apple Manor]]'' (1978), written by Don Worth for the [[Apple II]]; ''Beneath Apple Manor'' is also recognized as the first commercial roguelike game.<ref name="craddock chp1">Craddock 2015, Chapter 1: "The BAM-Like: Exploring Beneath Apple Manor".</ref> The game, inspired by Worth's enjoyment of ''Dungeons & Dragons'' roleplaying, included procedural generation using a modification of the random maze generator from the game ''Dragon Maze'', role-playing elements for the characters, tile-based movement and turn-based combat.<ref name="craddock chp1"/> Though ''Beneath Apple Manor'' predated ''Rogue'', it was not as popular as ''Rogue'': ''Rogue'' had advantage of being distributed over [[ARPANET]] which many college students had easy access to, while ''Beneath Apple Manor'' was packaged and sold by hand by Worth either at local stores or through mail fulfillment.<ref name="craddock chp1"/><ref>{{cite web | url = http://toucharcade.com/2015/07/16/rpg-reload-file-047-rogue-touch/ | title = RPG Reload File 047 – 'Rogue Touch' | first = Shaun | last = Musgrave | date = July 16, 2015 | access-date = September 1, 2015 | work = [[TouchArcade]] | archive-date = August 26, 2015 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150826115154/http://toucharcade.com/2015/07/16/rpg-reload-file-047-rogue-touch/ | url-status = live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | title= The Game Developer's Dictionary: A Multidisciplinary Lexicon for Professionals and Students | pages = 338 | isbn = 978-1-4354-6082-9 | first = Dan | last =Carreker | date = 2012 | publisher = Cengage Learning }}</ref>

Another early roguelike whose development pre-dated ''Rogue'' was ''[[Sword of Fargoal]]'' (1982), developed by Jeff McCord starting in 1979.<ref name="craddock chp4">Craddock 2015, Chapter 4: "There and Back Again: Retrieving the Sword of Fargoal"</ref> The game was based on ''GammaQuest'', an earlier title McCord had created on the [[Commodore PET]] which he shared locally with friends while a student at [[Henry Clay High School]] in Kentucky; the game itself was based on a ''Dungeons & Dragons'' campaign he had run himself in the prior years.<ref name="craddock chp4"/> Before graduating and attending the [[University of Tennessee]] in 1981, he had started work on ''GammaQuest II'', which required the player to navigate through randomly generated dungeon levels, acquire a sword, and make it back to the surface with that sword through more randomly generated levels. The more advanced computers available at the school, such as the [[VIC-20]], enabled him to expand out the game further from the highly limited memory on the PET. On seeing the prospects of selling computer software, he eventually got a publication deal with [[Epyx]], where they helped him to refine the marketing of the game, renaming it ''Sword of Fargoal'', and giving him access to the more powerful [[Commodore 64]], enabling him to use graphics and sound as part of the game.<ref name="craddock chp4"/> The game was considered a success, and when it was ported to the PC in 1983, it out-shone ''Rogue''{{'}}s PC release the same year due to ''Sword of Fargoal''{{'}}s superior graphics and sound.<ref name="craddock chp4"/>

====''Rogue''====
{{main|Rogue (video game)}}

''Rogue'' was written by [[Glenn Wichman]] and Michael Toy in 1980 while students at the [[University of California, Santa Cruz]]. The game was inspired by Toy's prior experience in playing the 1971 ''[[Star Trek (text game)|Star Trek]]'' game and programming clones of it for various other computer systems.<ref name="craddock chp2">Craddock 2015, Chapter 2: "Procedural Dungeons of Doom: Building Rogue, Part 1"</ref> It was also inspired by interactive fiction ''Adventure''.<ref name="craddock chp2"/> While looking for a way to randomize the experience of ''Adventure'', they came across [[Ken Arnold]]'s [[curses (programming library)|curses]] library that enabled them to better manipulate characters on the terminal screen, prompting Toy and Wichman to create a graphical-like randomized adventure game.<ref name="craddock chp2"/><ref name="gd history">{{cite web | url = https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-history-of-rogue-have-you-you-deadly-zs | title = The History of Rogue: Have @ You, You Deadly Zs | first1 = Matt | last1 = Barton | first2 = Bill | last2 = Loguidice | work =[[Game Developer (website)|Game Developer]] | date = May 9, 2009 | access-date = June 12, 2014 | archive-date = May 12, 2014 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140512011853/http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132404/the_history_of_rogue_have__you_.php | url-status = live }}</ref> They created the story of the game by having the player seek out the "Amulet of Yendor", "Yendor" being "Rodney" spelled backwards, the name of the wizard they envisioned had created the dungeon.<ref name="craddock chp2"/> ''Rogue'' was originally executed on a [[VAX-11|VAX-11/780]] computer; its limited memory forced them to use a simple text-based interface for the game.<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.syfygames.com/news/article/interview-author-david-craddock-on-dungeon-hacks-and-the-fascinating-history-of-roguelikes-stephcarmichael | title = Interview: Author David Craddock on Dungeon Hacks and the fascinating history of roguelikes | date = August 12, 2015 | access-date = August 31, 2015 | first = Stephanie | last = Carmichael | work = [[Syfy]] Games | archive-date = August 15, 2015 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150815234914/http://www.syfygames.com/news/article/interview-author-david-craddock-on-dungeon-hacks-and-the-fascinating-history-of-roguelikes-stephcarmichael | url-status = dead }}</ref> Toy eventually dropped out of school but got a job at the computing labs at [[University of California, Berkeley]], where he met with Arnold. Arnold helped to optimize the curses code and implement more features into the game.<ref name="craddock chp3">Craddock 2015, Chapter 3: "Rodney and the Free Market: Building Rogue, Part 2"</ref>

''Rogue'' proved popular with college students and computer researchers at the time, including [[Ken Thompson]]; [[Dennis Ritchie]] had joked at the time that ''Rogue'' was "the biggest waste of CPU cycles in history".<ref name="craddock chp3"/> Its popularity led to the game's inclusion on [[BSD UNIX]] v4.2 in 1984, though at that time, without its [[source code]].<ref name="craddock chp3"/> Toy and Arnold had anticipated selling ''Rogue'' commercially and were hesitant about releasing it; Toy would go on to meet Jon Lane at [[Olivetti]], and together they would go on to create the company A.I. Design to port the games for various home systems along with publishing support by Epyx, later bringing Wichman back to help.<ref name="craddock chp3"/>