improve rogomatic so that is works well with rogue 5.4.5

[lcn2]

The goal is to have rogomatic use rogue 5.4.5 well enough that in time, rogomatic can "win" the game (i.e., find the Amulet of Yendor on level 26 and safely exit out of level 1).

Such a "winning" game wil take a while to play for start to finish. To "train" rogomatic to obtain the skill to eventually play a "winning" game will tale much longer: perhaps a much as a few days from start to finish?

As of 2026 February 22, rogomatic cannot be start as it crashes:

./rogomatic
Error opening terminal: rg.
                           zsh: bus error  ./rogomatic

But at east it compiles. 😉

[lcn2]

Issue #3 created as per the "crash on launch" problem.

UPDATE 0

Issue #4 crated as per the automated code scan.

Issue #5 created to deal with the current README.md stub file.

Issue #6 created to address the out of date rogomatic(6) man page.

[jenoola]

visibility ping :)

[lcn2]

visibility ping :)

Welcome @jenoola .. you have been invited to be a collaborator on this repo.

In the mean time see the open issues.

Thank you 🙏 for your help.

[lcn2]

Hello @jenoola ,

Let's discuss what needs to be done to fix rogomatic in this Discord discussion thread.

Also I sent an invite to become a calibrator for this repo.

I do recommend that you also GitHub fork this repo, and star it so you have a GitHub base under which you can work.

[lcn2]

The "rogue version 5.4.5 release 2026-02-27 (chongo was here)" release contains a feature that will probably be useful to rogomatic, where the $ROGUEOPS environment variable will allow rogomatic to specify the:

• rogue player name
• rogue lock file path
• rogue score file path
• rogue save file path

See commit 1c05a87f73c4cfdeb98be86257bdb1d2702ae824 in "the other repo". :-)

[lcn2]

BTW, @jenoola : The authors of the rogue game has fun making tweaks to rogue to challenge the authors of rogomatic to up their game. They had a friendly competition of "add new features" / "code the expert to deal with the new features".

There is likely to be a bit of mismatch between what rogue 5.4.5 presents, and what rogomatic can drive.

Moreover, the rogomatic authors were more on the "academic" side, and less on the "robust coding" side.

So part of the "make rogomatic drive rogue" will involve bug fixing stuff like the current startup crash.

[lcn2]

HI @jenoola ,

The updated release of rogue:

rogue version 5.4.5 release 2026-03-18 (chongo was here)

contains a useful debugging feature. The v rogue command, in addition to printing the rogue version and release date, now prints the rouge dungeon number.

[lcn2]

HI @jenoola ,

As mentioned elsewhere, rogue has been updated to "rogue version 5.4.5 release 2026-03-18" so that the v command, that prints the version number and release date, now also prints the dungeon number (rogue seed). This might make it easier to debug a specific rogue game.

With the new rogue version, rogue -s /some/path/rogue.scr works to print a rogue score file in some non-default path.

Please update and re-install from the rogue 5.4 repo.

=-=

The security issue regarding the use of $RGMDIR has been resolved, and use of that environment variable has been eliminated.
The rogomatic directory is now just a character array that is setup by calling set_rgmdir(). That function will also setup the rogomatic lock file path as well.

The use of rogomatic -d will cause player to call set_rgmdir() so that the UTC date and time sub-directory will be created as well.

To specify a different rogomatic directory, is rogomatic -D /some/path. This works with -d so that rogomatic -D /some/path -d` does the correct thing.

NOTE: The rogue lock file, rogue score file and rogue save file are placed directly under the rogomatic directory, even when rogomatic -d is used.

Please update rogomatic to at least commit 2f594ac for version 14.1.1 20026-03-19

[lcn2]

With commit fa671a0 a new make asan rule can help build rogomatic for the Address Sanitizer (ASAN).

Suggestion, @jenoola , after the Address Sanitizer libraries is installed on your system:

make clobber asan
rm -f asan.log.* ; ASAN_OPTIONS="log_path=asan.log" ./rogomatic ; reset ; cat asan.log.*

[lcn2]

BTW @jenoola ,

See GH issuecomment-4145733698, plus attentional commits thru commit 16ff21e, for a significant update to the source code base.

[lcn2]

BTW @jenoola ,

The "rogue version 5.4.5 release 2026-03-29 (chongo was here)" has been released. And while normal game play is the same, the wizard mode creation of cursed/blessed weapons/armor has been fixed.

These wizard mode fixes will be useful when testing issue #10 .

Please update your rogue accordingly.

[lcn2]

With commit 6f2c87f : Changed ${TMPDIR} make variable to /var/tmp as /tmp gets cleaned out often. The default rogomatic directory is now /var/tmp/rogomatic.

[lcn2]

On using lldb(1)

If after starting the debugger by, say:

lldb -- ./rogomatic -d -S 9

then at your first lldb interactive prompt

make[1]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
(lldb) target create "./rogomatic"
Current executable set to '/usr/local/src/games/rogomatic/rogomatic' (arm64).
(lldb) settings set -- target.run-args  "-d" "-S" "9"
(lldb) 

issue the lldb command:

(lldb) process launch --tty

Then the process will be launched into a separate window, allowing you to watch it execute while allowing you to enter debugging commands.

Of course, before you issue the "process launch --tty" command, you might want to set breakpoints, etc.

[lcn2]

HI @jenoola ,

I have paused on my rogomatic work as I need to work on the IOCCC write-ups.

I made some progress on #10 , the key item that is preventing rogomatic from reaching deep levels.

While the basic stuff to address hanging problems with quaffing potions, and reading scrolls seems to be OK, there are "corner cases" where a message from rogue(6) and seems to confuse player.

See the cases outlined in GH issuecomment-4186436703 for a few examples.

I am not sure if my "quaffing and reading state machine" simply needs tweaks, or if an entirely different approach is needed.

I hope you can make some process on this issue!