Rog-O-Matic

Rog-O-Matic is a program developed in 1984 that plays the computer game "Rogue".

Described as a "belligerent expert system", Rog-O-Matic performs well when tested against expert "Rogue" players, even winning the game. Because all information in "Rogue" is communicated to the player via ASCII text, Rog-O-Matic has automatic access to the same information a human player has. Although many years have passed, the program is still the subject of some scholarly interest; a 2005 paper said

cquote|Rog-O-Matic differs from traditional expert systems in that it has the ability to work within a dynamic environment, for example the randomly generated terrain and adversaries. More importantly, the system was designed to operate in spite of limited information, recording and integrating knowledge about the environment as it is discovered. [cite web
url=http://pubs.drdc.gc.ca/PDFS/unc48/p525121.pdf
title=Dynamic Asset Protection & Risk Management Abstraction Study
author=G. Henderson, E. Bacic, M. Froh
month=November | year=2005
publisher=Defence Research and Development Canada
accessdate=2007-11-09|format=PDF]

"Angband", a descendant of "Rogue" (see roguelike), has a computer player called "APW-Borg" which has successfully completed the game. Although "Angband" is considered an easier win than "Rogue", it is a much more complex game and still very difficult.

One of Rog-O-Matic's authors, Michael Loren Mauldin, would go on to write the Lycos search engine.

Notes

References

*cite web | url=http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/papers/rogomatic.html | title=ROG-O-MATIC: A Belligerent Expert System | author=Mauldin M., Jacobson G., Appel A., Hamey L. | date=1984-05-16 | work=Carnegie Mellon University Department of Computer Science | accessdate=2007-10-02

External links

* [http://www.roguelikedevelopment.org/archive/index.php Archive] of "Rogue" and Rog-O-Matic source code.
* [http://itctel.com/~apwhite/andrew.html APW-Borg homepage]