Enter The World of, Crypto Rogue
Join me as I recant the tale of bringing a classic game legacy together with blockchain technology.
Rogue: Exploring the Dungeons of Doom, is a genre-defining game that was created 39 years ago for UNIX by Michael Toy, Glen R. Wichman and Glen Arnold. Rogue is an ASCII (text-based) top-down dungeon crawler RPG with randomly generated levels for each new game you play. Rogue is small in package size and has been ported to several platforms over the years with many feature variations within the game itself or creative platform editions such as the TI-89 Graphing Calculator version aptly named, CalcRogue. In the vein of innovation, the Komodo team are here to build upon the game of Rogue, bring it several new features and prove that exciting new life can be breathed into even the oldest version of a game, with blockchain
…. and so our story begins.
During the first weekend of February 2019, the main developer of Komodo, JL777 decided to add a blockchain to the original version of the game, just to see if he could, and well, he did. This was possible by utilizing one feature exclusive to Komodo, Crypto-Conditions (CC). He and the KMD team have been working with CC smart contracts showcasing what capabilities they have by creating projects that are run with CC at the core of their design. Other recent CC projects we have seen recently released are games as well, specifically KMDice and CC Sudoku. After some time was spent on simple digital games, it seems it was time to take the testing development to the next level and make a CC project with a more complicated gameplay design (and rich history.)
On February 6th, JL777 opened the #CC-rogue channel on the Komodo discord and introduced what he had been working on for the first time publicly. In just under a week he managed to port Rogue to blockchain and show us all the first version of the game working with the Crypto-Conditions-Rogue contract on-chain. The first post was also the first introduction of a new feature for Rogue, the multiplayer competition mode called Roguelander.
Multiplayer is a wonderful new feature to the original Rogue code, so is the new ability of saved gameplay on the chain itself. The combination of these two things makes way for a couple MORE feature possibilities, including a built-in gameplay monitor that can be viewed by others to viewed directly from the chain and then a personal favourite and focus for future efforts, a Worldwide Rogue Competition.
Immediately following the first few posts. the excitement began to take hold of the Komodo developers and community. Discussions about how to interface Rogue’s C code with a GUI were among the first things the devs all looked into to work on. Some members reached out to game devs and studios and put the word out that multiple GUI’s are possible and would be a great way to showcase the tech implemented. After a few days of testing, gameplay (and ultimately dying way too many times because the game is super hard…) a Terminal User Interface (TUI) was added by dev Tonyl. A TUI was a great approach that I feel really captures the initial nostalgia and retro feel of Rogue. This TUI also opened up the door for a few more users to help test the game (and die a lot.)
A basic user guide to start the game was created by dev SHossain which can be found here, https://github.com/KomodoPlatform/komodo/wiki/Get-Started-with-Rogue-Game
A few more days of testing, coding and fun ensued. Then … the worlds first documented player data swap via a decentralized exchange occurred. This means that two people were able to swap characters(which are actually Non-Fungible Tokenized assets on the Rogue chain) with no third party brokerage.
A lot more gameplay occurred during the next bout of testing (and guess what else??? R.I.P.) Seeing everyone banter about — how — to play the game and pass along tips, while doing a lot of heavy lifting debugging made me excited about the project as a whole, it was fun and intense. This was also just about the time they released that they were looking for someone to manage the marketing of the project. I didn’t give it a second thought and jumped right in after discussing with the resident Dungeon Master himself (jl777.) I spent some time digging into the history of Rogue, Roguelikes, and familiarizing myself with some of the Komodo tech. Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing as much of that information as I can with you here on medium and other social media avenues….. but now back to our tale of development and feats of strength!
This is about the time some of the earlier excitement had fully formed into well-written articles by Komodo team members. Mainly Benohanlon (Social Media from Komodo) and Mylo of Komodo Pioneers.
On Friday the 15th Ben had presented us all with this wonderful article.
https://blog.komodoplatform.com/all-the-reasons-to-be-excited-about-komodos-roguelander-the-first-blockchain-based-rogue-game-cbb5b5320606.
Followed shortly on Tuesday by Komodo’s weekly “Tech Tuesday” from Mylo — https://komodoplatform.com/tt2019-8-blockchain-innovations-2019-1/
JL777 then offered a 777 KMD contest bounty to those who wanted to test gameplay and attempt to be the best player to Grind for Gold. This campaign is still going and ends on February 25th! More info is here.
However, if you feel like you missed out on the above bounty, there is no need to, Jl777 said he can offer another one soon, so make sure you stay tuned in! Now… back to our tale.
Upon my arrival, I had gotten started playing Rogue by learning to use the standard style Command Line Interface(CLI) as the method of installation on the Linux OS. In the most recent few days, we began to see the team work through the final testing of multiple operating system installers and a cross-platform installer. They have worked quickly to put together these easier methods for the community. Ca333 polished off the mac osX installer just 2 days ago, shortly thereafter TonyL followed with a Windows installer which was released yesterday. The multiOS pakage should be released shortly.
There is one more implementation of gameplay that is currently being created, a browser-based web app, this is being developed by grewalsatinder. Satinder has recently been creating Go Language documentation for Komodo on a consistent basis, which I believe is incorporated into the app’s design. There is no official timeline for this but I believe it will be released as soon as it is ready.
That brings us to the present moment.
Bringing Rogue together with blockchain tech seems almost like a rite of passage for the industry. While this article is information heavy, there is so much more that can be said about the development and possibilities of this project, many more things yet to be disclosed… but there is only so much time in a day to write a blog, luckily there are many more days to come. I hope you have enjoyed this first story and that you’ll continue to join me as I document the progress of the rogue project & it’s innovators.
Coming soon….
-The History of Rogue
-Rogue: A Complete Gameplay Guide
-RogueCC : The Tech Behind the New Game
Looking for technical information on Crypto Rogue? Have a look at our Bitcointalk announcement here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5113186.
Want to join the development conversation or have questions about the project? Join us in #rogue in Discord! https://discord.gg/ZeefPMD
