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I had a chance to buy DIII the weekend before Launch for $5. I declined.

Instead, I'm playing NetHack. It's infinitely replayable, at zero cost. And I didn't have to upgrade my graphics card to play it.

Specifically, the Junethack Tournament.

But the real event will come in October.

And the other NetHack tournament /dev/null/ has been doing it before Crawl since 1999.

Junethack is loosely based on DCSS' tournament model. We're using existing public servers (we only need access to the xlogfile with all the game information and the options file for verifying the player's identify which on most public servers are public anyway).

We don't think that we are directly in competition neither with the DCSS tournament nor /dev/null. One of the goal of this tournament is raising awareness of NetHack forks (like e.g. my fork UnNetHack), as NetHack hasn't seen a release in too many years, even though the DevTeam still claims that they are working on the mythical next release.

Whereas /dev/null offers vanilla NetHack with some additional challenges where some have to be solved in-game (e.g. Pac-Man level) and others out-game (in Zapm or Kingdom of Loathing).

We are actually on quite good terms with the DCSS DevTeam. I have even met some of them in real life and there are a lot NetHack players enjoying both NetHack and DCSS. I encourage everybody who likes NetHack to give DCSS a try. I will also be playing again in the next DCSS tournament.

I've been playing Eve Online daily for 2 years now, and still haven't managed to complete it. Sandbox games are good like that.
In fact I don't think I've played anything else in that time, except to join the annual Nethack tournamement for old times' sake.

Hmm...

First off, since when is Nethack "forgotten"? Most people I know who still play it, do so on a centralized server like alt.org (mentioned in the article). There are even annual tournaments over at /dev/null/network.

Also, where is the MUD/MMORPG GemStone? (Gemstone II came out in 1988, though Gemstone III gained big popularity in the mid 90's.) Gemstone II predates The Realm, mentioned in the article as "one of the Internet's first MMORPG's", by nearly a decade.

it doesn't explain why I spent the majority of my waking hours for the past month in the devnull nethack tournament!

You mention Nethack and yet fail to mention the 8th Annual /dev/null Nethack Tournament that's going on right now?

Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy game; raise armies and fight battles. Play solo campaigns where you can advance your troops' skills, or play short battles against other players online. http://www.wesnoth.org/

Freeciv is a Civilization clone, also single player or multiplayer online. http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

And if you're willing to go really old-school, nethack is always available; the annual tournament is ongoing in the month of November. Current standings at http://nethack.devnull.net/tournament/scoreboard.shtml or enter for free at http://nethack.devnull.net/tournament/howitworks.shtml ; you can always telnet to nethack.alt.org to play or download from http://www.nethack.org/

There are all kinds of trophies for smaller achievements, so first-time players can hope to get something but it's still competitive for experienced players--I pulled off 6 ascensions in a row at the June tournament and didn't make the top 3 for most consecutive, so the level of play is quite high.

Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy game; raise armies and fight battles. Play solo campaigns where you can advance your troops' skills, or play short battles against other players online. http://www.wesnoth.org/

Freeciv is a Civilization clone, also single player or multiplayer online. http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

And if you're willing to go really old-school, nethack is always available; the annual tournament is ongoing in the month of November. Current standings at http://nethack.devnull.net/tournament/scoreboard.shtml or enter for free at http://nethack.devnull.net/tournament/howitworks.shtml ; you can always telnet to nethack.alt.org to play or download from http://www.nethack.org/

There are all kinds of trophies for smaller achievements, so first-time players can hope to get something but it's still competitive for experienced players--I pulled off 6 ascensions in a row at the June tournament and didn't make the top 3 for most consecutive, so the level of play is quite high.

You seem to be doing pretty well yourself...

http://nethack.devnull.net/tournament/scoreboard.s html

The now-venerable annual International Nethack Tournament starts on 10/31 as always at http://nethack.devnull.net. These guys are the original online NH tourney, accept no imitations :-)

If you click over there you can volunteer to run a game server, which is kind of fun. Nethack probably has the highest ratio of player brain resources to server CPU resources of any current computer game -- I ran a game server a few years in a row and was always bemused to find that 20 people were playing nethack on my [random ancient piece of hardware] without noticeably impacting its load average or even clogging up my DSL line.

Halloween for me always means the start of the annual Nethack Tournament! So hook it up to your big screen TV and put on your +5 Amulet of Geekiness!

wh00t! I always find the news more palatable this way.

Clan EIT is a Nethack gaming clan in the tournament, so the post is definitely on topic.

Cheers, Jouni

Welcome to /dev/null/nethack 2003! If you have any issues or problems, please email us. (And a special welcome back to EIT who, as far as we know, are the first folks to ever have put together a NetHack Clan.

Now, let the games commence! ;-)

Cheers,
-robin

They already did it...

Guess what is coming next?

But I am wait ing for this one.

I wonder if the problem is that vmware's virtual BIOS won't allow you to scrozzle the boot sector?

(VMware is a great product, BTW -- it's a sort of meta-OS that lets you run multiple virtual machines inside one piece of hardware. I used it to host the International Nethack Tournament this year -- very convenient.)

No wonder the GNU people laugh at me when I ask questions about their software.

The only game in the grimoire with a twelve year shelf-life (and counting...). Still fun, hard, rewarding. Best dungeon crawl, hands down.

Remember, the devnull Nethack Tournament begins at midnight.

bort-A, killed by a gas spore's explosion.

Many smurfy users are smurfily not fully aware of the distinction between the kernel, which is smurfily Linux, and the whole system, which they also call ``Linux''.
Smurf GNU.org

...about the Nethack tournament here, starts on Halloween. I've never played the tournament, but all this hype here will probably get me started!

DONE!!!

not sure about the whole shinny thing though...

And the year before that, top honors went to a Tourist... (by an order of magnitude, no less)

Daniel

http://nethack.devnull.net/login.html I'm really sorry about the quantity of posts, I'm just posting new stuff as I find it out. In retrospect this is a stupid thing to do, and if I had any karma I'd be waving goodbye to it right now.

Not at all. Take a look a last year's scores.

The highest score went to a Ranger, and second pace to a Healer. The top Valkyrie was in 15th place overall.

Of course, you're right that they're easy(est) to ascend - lowest scoring ascension was a Valkyrie. But ascending isn't everything in this tournament.

http://www.devnull.net/nethack/

This one works!!

OpenNIC, the Democratic Name System, has a .null TLD that is often compared to alt. of Usenet.
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XPlay Tetris On Drugs!

Well, as a candidate (my page is here), I hadn't prepared a specific recommendation on that. I am of the opinion that the dispute policies should be flexible depending on the charter of the TLD, while they should always try to be fair. Letting the "plaintif" select the arbiter is completely ludicrous, so I think that a set arbitration procedure and body should be included in the TLD charter. OpenNIC, for example, requires that domain disputes be decided by ballot of the registrants within the TLD.

Hi, RomulusNR.

I'm Robin Bandy, the candidate. ;-)

First, I get this a lot, so I'm used to it, but I am actally a guy. It's not a big deal, but I do like to see the correct pronoun get used.

Did you go to my candidacy page? I didn't put any detail in the form for ICANN because they said they would link if I provided URLS. I put several URLs in my post to them, and they are in the text, but they didn't actually make them links which diminshes their usefulness.

If you do have any specific answers (rather than general opinion, which is what I put on the ICANN site) which I don't speak to on my site, please let me know.

Well, here is the list of "campaign promises" on my candidacy page:

• disallow any closed-door meetings
• require real-time broadcast of all meetings and immediate publication of minutes
• all Board positions to be elected (beginning immediately)
• create procedures for referendum and recall by the users
• tie anti-spam enforcement requirements to new TLDs
• withdraw the ICANN claim to global authority
• form a collaborative body with the existing alternate DNS systems for global management
• recognize the TLDs served by any alternate DNS root which will enter the collaborative arrangement
• accept prior public use as the appropriate standard in deciding TLD authority claims
• form an analogous collaborative body to manage IP address assignments

Send me an email if you'd like any of these expanded or if you'd like my position on any other issues.

Thanks for asking. ;-)
-robin

I can't let that go by without mentioning that I'm also a candidate, could I? ;-)

Karl, however, also comes into this from the alternative DNS community, so of all the current nominees, I'd choose him for the position if I weren't running. He knows his stuff and I mostly agree with the sorts of things he'd do on the Board.

So nominate yourself, James! OpenNIC is aiming to have candidates with a single platform running in all 5 regions and we don't have a Euro candidate yet. Check out our site and then the stuff on my candidacy site. If you agree, jump in and we'll all be publicizing each other. "In unity there is strength" and similar ...

I signed up on July 14th and still don't have the PIN either. Since I'm a candidate as well, I sent them an email asking about it and basically was told not to worry. Heh.

There is a Nethack tournament going on right now over at devnull.net. Register, get a free login account, play nethack all night. They're offering retrocomputing prizes for the highest scores. As near as I can tell, there are no strings attached.

There is a Nethack tournament going on right now over at devnull.net. Register, get a free login account, play nethack all night. They're offering retrocomputing prizes for the highest scores. As near as I can tell, there are no strings attached.