rogomatic.man

.TH ROGOMATIC 6 11/01/83
.UC 4
.SH NAME
rogomatic \- Automatically Exploring The Dungeons of Doom
.SH SYNOPSIS
.I rogomatic
[
.I -cefprstuw
or
.I save_file
]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.PP
.I Rog-O-Matic
is a computer fantasy game with a newer twist.  It is crt oriented and the
object of the game is to automatically survive the attacks of various
monsters and get a lot of gold, rather than having to actually type the
required commands yourself.
.PP
Once you have entered the world of 
.I Rog-O-Matic
you will stay there, passively watching the game unfold before you much
like a catatonic teenager watching television.
Should you wish to intervene, type the 
.B t
command and 
.I Rog-O-Matic
will enter transparent mode. Here you can type several commands, the
most useful of which is the
.B ?
command, which prints out the next help line. Press the 
.B ?
key repeatedly to see all of the help. 
Some useful commands are:
.B h
.B j
.B k
.B l
.B H
.B J
.B K
.B L
.B b
.B n
.B y
.B u
.B f
.B s
.B >
.B <
.B S
.B Q.
These have the same meaning as in normal Rogue. To return to 
.I Rog-O-Matic
mode, type the 
.B t
command again.
.PP
Some useful commands are:
.TP
.B t
.I Toggle,
toggles the setting of the
.I transparent
mode flag. In transparent mode, 
.I Rog-O-Matic
will not automatically attack monsters, pick up treasure, or explore
around.  Unfortunately, there is no way to enter complicated commands
like 
.I quaff
or
.I read
in transparent mode.  Typing any 
.I Rogue
command, or single-step command also enables transparent mode.
.TP
.B Q
.I Quit,
tells 
.I Rog-O-Matic 
to quit the game. The score is logged in the score file, and possibly the
.I Rogue
top ten, and the game is terminated.
.TP
.B S
.I Save,
the game is saved to the default save file, set by the
.I <file>
argument to 
.I rogomatic
or the 
.I ROGUEOPTS
environment variable. The game may be restarted later.
.TP
.B c
.I Cheat,
tells 
.I Rog-O-Matic
to take advantage of idiosyncracies in the
.I Rogue
game to get a higher score. This is unfortunately necessary to allow fair
competition with other human top ten players who take advantage of the same
bugs. Note that this option should only be used on the Unix version
of Rogue, since the VMS version does not exhibit the same bugs.
Note too that when playing against 
.I Rogue 5.2
and
.I Rogue 5.3
no cheating is done, since the bugs are not widely known and used by
human competition.
.TP
.B d
.I Debugging,
toggles the debugging flag, which is useless to non-wizard
players (although it is entertaining if your terminal has reverse video).
.TP
.B e
.I Echoing,
causes a copy of the game to be written to file 
.I roguelog
in the current directory. Typing 
.B e
a second time closes the log file.  When the game is ended, the roguelog
file is renamed to <killer>.<level>.<score> so if a troll killed poor
.I Rog-O-Matic
on level 14 leaving him with a score of 3088, the file would be named
.I trol.14.3088.
Note that only the first four characters of the killer are used.
The
.B -p
option will replay a saved game.  Additionally, a stop action command
(carriage return gives a single step) has been added.  Pigs didn't fly
first!
.TP
.B i
.I Inventory,
dumps the current inventory on the screen.
.TP
.B m
.I Monster list,
shows the current long term memory evaluation of the monsters.
.I Rog-O-Matic
nows keeps a long term memory file (for each version of Rogue) in the
score directory, and records the meanness of each monster it finds.
This command prints out the letter, name, and strength of each monster.
Strength is listed as three numbers: expected damage (scaled by 10) and
maximum damage (unscaled) are shown in parentheses, and the mean number
of arrows required to kill a monster is shown in square brackets.
.TP
.B CR
.I Single step,
a carriage return enables
.I transparent
mode, and causes
.I Rog-O-Matic
to single-step. The command sent is printed at the
bottom right hand of the screen.
.TP
.B /
.I Snapshot,
a timestamp, the current screen, and the current inventory are appended
to file
.I rgm.snapshot
in the current directory.
.TP
.B $
.I Weaponrank,
dumps 
.I Rog-O-Matic's 
current estimate of his weapons rankings.
.TP
.B %
.I Armorrank,
dumps 
.I Rog-O-Matic's 
current estimate of his armor rankings.
.TP
.B =
.I Ringrank,
dumps 
.I Rog-O-Matic's 
current estimate of his ring rankings.
.TP
.B -
.I Status,
prints out a status line indicating various things like whether 
.I Rog-O-Matic
is confused, has red hands, is wearing cursed armor or wielding a cursed
weapon, and which monsters have been genocided.
It also prints the number of turns elapsed in the game.
.TP
.B `
.I Summary,
a backquote prints a short summary of the game.
.TP
.B ~
.I Version,
prints the version of
.I Rogue
and
.I Rog-O-Matic
being used. It also prints the current goal score.
.TP
.B R
.I Replay position,
allows you to skip around in a log file when replaying an old game.
This key must be followed by either
.B f, p, c, n,
or
.B l.
These indicate you wish to see the
.I first, previous, current, next,
or
.B last
levels of the game.  The first time you enter the
.B R
command, there will be a pause of several seconds while the whole log
file is digested.  After this initialization, there should be no delay
when skipping around in the log file.  After you have skipped once, the
program won't terminate at the end of the file until you enter the
.B Q
.I (quit)
command.  This way you can replay the last level over (and over...).
.IR
.PP
When the game ends, either by your death, when you quit, or when 
.I Rog-O-Matic
dies horribly of some bug, you will not get a list of the top-ten scorers.
The scoring is based entirely upon useless criteria anyway.
.I Rog-O-Matic
does keep a list of its games. To see the best 
.I Rog-O-Matic
games, use "rogomatic -s" which dumps the current scores in reverse order.
.PP
For more detailed directions, read the source.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.B -c
Turns on cheat mode. See also the
.B c
command in transparent mode.
.TP
.B -e
Turns on logging. See also the
.B e
command in transparent mode.
.TP
.B -f
File command. The next argument is the file name of the 
.I Rogue
executable to use.
.I Rog-O-Matic
will playe versions 3.6, 4.7, 5.2, and 5.3;
.I rogomatic -f /usr/games/rogue
Would run 
.I Rog-O-Matic
against the standard system 
.I Rogue
game.  You can run Rog-O-Matic on modified rogues using this option,
but be warned that the interface must be completely compatible with
one of the standard versions of Rogue listed, and the version number
printed must be either "3.6," "5.2," or "5.3."
.TP
.B -p
Replay option. Typing 
.I rogomatic -p
will replay log file 
.I roguelog.
Or use
.I rogomatic -p <file>
to replay a specific file.
.TP
.B -r
Restore option. Plays the game saved in the default 
.I Rogue
save file.
.TP
.B -s
Scores. Lists the 
.I Rog-O-Matic 
scoreboard.
.TP
.B -t
Terse mode. In terse mode,
.I Rog-O-Matic 
will only print a summary after each level explored.
.TP
.B -u
User mode. Tells 
.I Rog-O-Matic 
to start up in transparent mode, so the user can type commands before
.I Rog-O-Matic
starts exploring level 1.
.SH FILES
There are two executable files: rogomatic and player.  Rogomatic
is a small program which forks and execs the Rogue process and then execs the
player process.  Thus you must have access to all of these files.  These are
available as
.PP
	/usr/mlm/bin/rogomatic on the GP-Vax
.br
	/usr/mlm/bin/player on the GP-Vax
.PP
If you are moving these files to another machine, you must either edit the 
rogomatic module to change the name of the player process, or run rogomatic 
from a directory containing the player module.
.PP
The score file is kept in /usr/mlm/games/rlog/rgmscore5.2. If this file does
not exist, it is created.
.SH SEE ALSO
rogue(6)
.SH BUGS
Occasionally 
.I Rog-O-Matic
will dead-lock waiting for input from 
.I Rogue.
When this happens, type an interrupt and enter the
.I t
command again. This usually wakes it up enough to re-start the game.
In completely unusual cases, try interrupting and then entering the
.I S
command to save the game, and then re-start with "rogomatic -r". Sometimes
you will have to use transparent mode to get it down to the next level
before turning it loose again.
.SH HISTORY
.TP
14-Oct-81  Andrew Appel (awa) and Guy Jacobson (guy) at CMU
Created.
.TP
12-Jan-82  Andrew Appel (awa) and Guy Jacobson (guy) at CMU
Added breadth first search.
.TP
21-Mar-82  Michael Mauldin (mlm) at CMU 
Added termcap support.
.TP
11-Apr-82  Michael Mauldin (mlm) at CMU 
Added searching for secret doors.
Modified breadth first search to avoid traps and prefer known safe squares.
Added detection of potions of blindness.
.TP
22-Apr-82  Michael Mauldin (mlm) at CMU 
Added cheating mode and enhanced magic handling abilities.
.TP
26-Apr-82 Michael Mauldin (mlm) at CMU 
Added replay ability.
.TP
18-May-82 Andrew Appel, Guy Jacobson, and Michael Mauldin at CMU
Added running away, level searching, wand and staff usage.
.TP
30-Sep-82 Michael Mauldin at CMU
Added improved Invisible Stalker code, modified strength management,
Amulet handling, improved cheating. Was a total winner on Level 26 with a
score of 14,655.
.TP
27-Oct-82 Appel, Hamey, Jacobson(2), and Mauldin at CMU
Added support for Rogue 5.2, and various other improvements and fixes.
.TP
07-Nov-82 Mauldin at CMU
Added archery, homogenous ring handling, removed the keyact kluge.
.TP
23-Apr-83 Hamey, Mauldin at CMU
Version XII, replaced
.I replay
command with an option which causes input to come from a log file, and
not from the Rogue process.  This removes the necessity of a standalone
replay command.
.TP
16-Apr-83 Hamey at CMU
Added ability to infer unseen halls and use them in searchto without
having trodden on them first.  Modified exploration algorithm.
.TP
16-Jun-83 Mauldin at CMU
Added error logging, single-step mode, fixed several small bug fixes,
modified title animation to display correct version number.
.TP
31-Aug-83 Mauldin at CMU
Modified the replay command to allow skipping around and replaying
individual levels over and over.
.TP
01-Nov-83 Mauldin at CMU
Modified to include long term memory, and to play Rogue 5.3.