David L. Craddock - Dungeon Hacks: How NetHack, Angband, and Other Rougelikes Changed the Course of Video Games

First Edition published 2022
by CRC Press
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CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

2022 David L. Craddock

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ISBN: 978-1-032-05240-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-05154-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-19671-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro
by Straive, India

Books by David L. Craddock

Fiction

Arthur and the Knights of the Cafeteria Table (2021)

The Dumpster Club

Heritage: Book One of the Gairden Chronicles

Point of Fate: Book Two of the Gairden Chronicles

Firebug: War of the Elementalists

Nonfiction

Stay Awhile and Listen: Book I How Two Blizzards Unleashed Diablo and Forged a Video-Game Empire

Stay Awhile and Listen: Book II Heaven, Hell, and Secret Cow Levels

Arcade Perfect: How Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat, and Other Coin-Op Classics Invaded the Living Room

Monsters in the Dark: The Making of X-COM: UFO Defense

Beneath a Starless Sky: Pillars of Eternity and the Infinity Engine Era of RPGs

Rocket Jump: Quake and the Golden Age of First-Person Shooters

Break Out: How the Apple II Launched the PC Gaming Revolution

Dungeon Hacks: How NetHack, Angband, and Other Roguelikes Changed the Course of Video Games

Shovel Knight (Boss Fight Books)

Bottomless Pit: Bottomless Pit: Running and Jumping Through Platform Games - Volume 1

GameDev Stories: Interviews About Game Development and Culture

GameDev Stories: Volume 2 More Interviews About Game Development and Culture

Once Upon a Point and Click: The Tale of Kings Quest, Gabriel Knight, and the Queens of Adventure Games

One-Week Dungeons: Diaries of a Seven-Day Roguelike Challenge

Making Fun: Stories of Game Development - Volume 1

Angels, Devils, and Boomsticks: The Making of Demons with Shotguns

Anything But Sports: The Making of FTL

Red to Black: The Making of Rogue Legacy

Everybody Shake! The Making of Spaceteam

Stairway to Badass: The Making and Remaking of Doom (TBD 2021)

Ascendant: The Fall of Tomb Raider and the Rise of Lara Croft (TBD 2021)

Bet on Black: How Microsoft and the Xbox Changed Pop Culture (TBD 2022)

Better Together: Stories of EverQuest (TBD)

Dungeon Hacks consists of three primary sections: the Main Book, Side Quests, and Bonus Rounds.

Main Book

Dungeon Hacks comprises ten chapters. You can skip the Side Quests and Bonus Rounds if you like, but youll miss out on lots of behind-the-scenes stories and information if you do.

Side Quests

Side Quests collect bonus material. At the end of select chapters, youll find Side Quests related to content discussed in the chapter. You can read them, or skip ahead to the next chapter and save the Side Quests for later.

Bonus Rounds

Bonus Rounds are extra chapters that expand on people, events, and games related to the Main Book. You can read the Bonus Rounds whenever you choose, but they are best absorbed after finishing the Main Book.

Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM) is the newest roguelike role-playing game youll read about in Dungeon Hacks, and its over twenty years old. The oldest of the bunch is nearing forty. So whats the point? I hear you ask. Just what is a roguelike? Whats this book all about? And who is Rodney, anyway?"

Youll meet Rodney in due time. Meanwhile, allow me to answer your other questions.

Although the definition of roguelike is up in the air, the gist of it is a game featuring tactical play, procedurally generated levels, and permanent death. Tactical play usually means turn by turn, like chess. Procedurally generated means built by following an algorithm, causing levels to be baked from scratch every time you play. Permanent death should be obvious: One life, one chance. Die, and you start over from the beginning.

The oldest roguelike games featured primitive graphics. Instead of pixels and polygons, these primordial creations are displayed using text: capital letters for monsters, special symbols like ! and # for treasures, items, and architecture, and the @ sign for little old you. And heres the kicker: in many ways, those text characters were more evocative than the slickest, most modern graphics engine on the market today.

Dungeon Hacks is a story about people. While Ive devoted plenty of pages to discussion of design, I focused on the founders of the roguelike genre: who they are, where they came from in terms of motivations and influences, and how their backgrounds and the culture of the day informed their creations. By reading Dungeon Hacks, youll gain an understanding and appreciation for how they influenced other game developers down the line. Some of those developers probably went on to create some of your favorite games, and youve got roguelikes to thank for them.

Determining which games to cover in the book was tough...and yet simple, too. I knew I couldnt write a book about roguelikes without covering Rogue, and NetHack and Angband are arguably as popular today as they were twenty years ago.

In order to keep the books scope manageable, I had to let some games go. Youll find no mention of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Larn, Brogue, Tales of MajEyal (TOME), or others within this TOME because they fell outside the eras I decided to concentrate on and/or because another game came along first and set the mold in which they were baked.

The omission of these games does not indicate a lack of importance on their part or due diligence on mine. The books dance card was full, thats all.

Roguelikes may never be a mainstream, big-budget genre able to go toe to toe with Call of Duty on sales chart, but they don't have to be. Browse the Steam storefront and youll peruse hundreds of roguelikes, as well as roguelike-likes, games influenced by Rogue and its offspring.

By the end of Dungeon Hacks, I think youll agree that the roguelike genres contributions to virtually every type of game you enjoy are undeniable. There are many people to thank for that, and Im excited for you to meet a few of them.