After reading a few articles on this genre, I want to give it a try. Any recommendations? I'm trying out Angband right now, and it seems interesting, although i can't figure out how to scroll down in the shops yet. This is truly old-school style gaming.

So if anyone has played any that they would like to recommend for OS X, I would enjoy trying them out.

Blech. they're a little too arcane to figure out all the commands. I need some sort of interface.

On another note, I found Dungeon of Doom from Mac.The-underdogs, or whatever. As I recall, the game was sweet. It supposedly works under something called mini VMac. I went and got that, but it won't load. I don't need some old-ass sytem 6 software or something, will I?

Get ToMe
It's awesome.

www.t-o-m-e.com

I suggest getting one of the older versions (a number under 300) because I found that 300 sucked awfuly.

Other then the newer version sucking, the game is amazing.

You mean http://www.t-o-m-e.net, not .com. ToME is decent, yes. 3.0.0 isn't really released yet; they're overhauling the system and they aren't done yet.

You might also find NetHack interesting. It's much more complex than the Angband derivatives (of which ToME is one), which has its good and bad sides.

Oh, and it's "Rogue", not "Rouge".

No, I was actually referring to the cross dressing games.

Wimp. (Angband's controls are pretty logical and easy to learn, for the record. 'o' to open a door and such.)

I like Angband myself, simply because I learned it when I was a kid and couldn't be bothered to try anything else. I recommend reading the first-timer tutorials at www.thangorodrim.net and downloading the latest version at www.rephial.org Also, print off a key reference and install David Gervais' tiles (on the Thangorodrim download page). Not because they make the game look good, but because they allow you to see much more easily what's going on on the screen.

I found Nethack far too confusing, as it seemed to have a lot of odd systems governing its screens, but then again I never put in too much effort. It is the king of the killing you randomly for no apparent reason genre. A friend of mine is currently working on Zangband, though its difficulty has reduced him to tears on more than one occasion (this guy is an Angband expert) so maybe that's not the best way to go.

I'm still begging on forums for a Universal Binary of Angband. I've managed to compile the source, but a command line version is not really what I'd call ideal.

While 'o' may be to open stuff, there's capital letters, in some of these things, it's q to "quaff" a potion. while grammatically correct, who in their right mind would think. "oh, I need to drink this. d. Drop? what? off to read the help file again. oh, I also need to equip my gear. E. what? that's not right either. off to read the file...again... oh, here's a better Idea. Command-Q. I'll play some Diablo."

But what I'm really referring to is that it's extremely difficult to figure out what you're looking at. Sure, you can do "l," but I would like to actually play a game when I want to, not have to decode everything. I have to figure out cryptic messages at work, so when I play a game, I would actually like to play it.

ToME seems a little better because of the graphic overlay, but it's still a little frustrating to spend half an hour making a character (which includes reading up on what exactly certain classes get as bonuses and such) only to have it die in the first village - hunted down by a "battle-scarred warrior" and killed before he even got to buy anything.

Woo. Fun. But I'll give it another shot at some point. But not now - There's some Protoss out there that need their asses handed to them.

By the way, I spoke too soon about Angband's latest version. Get 3.0.6 off http://www.thangorodrim.net, not 3.0.9. Among other problems, you can't buy lanterns in 3.0.9.

As for keys, just print off a reference chart.

I don't have the time to bother with a game with those controls. Sorry. Looks like it could be interesting, but I don't have the time to devote to that kind of game. A stronger UI and visuals could help it greatly. I know, I know: They're staying true to the "old school" of Rogue, but Diablo is more or less a variant of that game. And you know what? It takes about 2 minutes to figure out. I don't have to print stuff out in order to play it.

But whatever, maybe I'm just turning into a crotchety old man.

Diablo takes about 2 minutes to figure out, and has maybe 10% of the depth of gameplay that Angband has. Those are the tradeoffs you make. The UI is designed to stay out of your way as much as possible; once you've learned which buttons do what, it's a very streamlined experience. As for the visuals, there are limits to what you can achieve when you need to display that many tiles on-screen at once. Using the ASCII character set is actually a fairly clever way to deal with this problem. Things aren't representational, but they wouldn't be anyway with actual graphics - they'd be too small to make out.

Indeed! I've played Angband and the like (anyone remember Moria?) for God knows how long, and once you get the basic commands down, you can jump into pretty much any variant and be comfortable. Zangband was my favorite for quite some time, because if you started as a Mage, you got a Wand of Magic Missile, and you could wander into the nearby wilderness and find a Dragonfly to kill, which would instantly jump you about nine levels. *grins*

But yeah, Rogue-likes are fantastic. I haven't played any recently, since using a laptop keyboard isn't very feasible, but if you guys keep talking about it, I might be tempted to get into it again... damn you.

Did you know there's an "original" keyset that most Angband variants let you use that doesn't depend on the numeric keypad? You can toggle it in the options.

Yeah, but it's pretty weird and ends up moving a lot of other controls. I got so used to the default controls in the Rogue-likes I play that I can't switch to "Rogue-like" controls.

*nods* Although, since it's been awhile since I last played I might be able to start from those controls instead... 'scuse me while I don't leave my apartment for a few days.

I must agree on ToME. It is certainly one of the best Angband varients I've played. Although, I still miss the previous incarnation, before the whole threatened lawsuit thing happened. I miss my firelizards...

It also has special memories for me, as it gave me my first taste of C programming and working with compilers. Granted the output wasn't too impressive, as I didn't know enough about what was going on to fix the bugs I created trying to compile the thing...

I second the motion on Angband's greatness.

So yeah, the rouge-like controls aren't working out for me. Think I might have to go buy a full-sized keyboard now...

/not that anyone cares
//read the comic!