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H, J, K, and L what game is that?

These are used by Nethack, an insanely difficult (and great) Roguelike computer game.

I need a medic! I need ammo!

Howdy, fellow ET player..

...will it run NetHack?

It doesn't have nethack or jumpnbump! the GNUstep Live CD also has Firefox 1.0 (which I'd rather call Heavyelephant) and Linux kernel 2.6. GNUstep implements the Foundation and Application Kit defined in the OpenStep specification, released 10 years ago. NetHack really is a fine game, one that is more exciting than any other game I have ever seen. You should give it a try, for a week at least. Another fine game is MTP Target. A lot of great fun, try it in the evenings CET.

Would it be better to have a text based game where all the characters had personalities and could hold a conversation?

maybe someone will write a personality plugin into nethack....

Nethack can be played by the blind, so you might be able to find a way to play it also. The problem is that it is very annoying to play without being able to use a keyboard, so I'm not sure it would be worth it unless you can type at a reasonable rate. If so then you are in luck since it is the best game of all.

Graphics are nice, but gameplay is what counts.

Absolutely. Which is why the only game I have never tired of playing is Nethack.

Of course, I still like playing new games (Katamari Damacy is ingenious), but long-term replay value in new games is rare IMHO.

You pretty much described every game of Nethack that I've ever played. Except Nethack doesn't have any guns (though there is a variant that does). Aside from that, down to the last detail you described pretty much every situation that comes up in Nethack along with your possible options.

On one hand the evil alliance is getting more powerful by the day. On the other hand, ESPN pretty much only covers boring invented-for-tv/radio sports. I guess since I don't play sports games or EA games this doesn't really bother me, although the day they try to buy out the Nethack dev team I'll be outside corporate headquarters with my torch and pitchfork.

After *long* sessions (sometimes 20+ hours) with Nethack (http://nethack.org/), I've actually dreamed in terms of @, G, d, h... but then I've had even longer sessions with other games (40+ hours in a weekend) without the same effect, so I'd imagine that's a test of how good the game is at making you feel a part of it.

Needless to say, my near-flawless GPA from high school changed to something like 'barely passing' in college after I discovered games...

If you are that addicted to world of warcraft, imagine how fucked up your life would get if you tried a good game...like nethack.

Curiously enough, this might make a great home server... think about it

• runs linux... check
• lowpower processor you can keep on all the time... check
• Monitor and keyboard for when you need console access... check

AFAIK both NetHack and CConq (the console version of XConq) are fairly hard to play through screen readers because of the way terrain is represented.

Your milage may vary, though.

Interactive Fiction has no such problem, however.

There's also Nethack.

It's essentially single-player D&D.

The best way to understand is to just play the game. I suggest a non-ascii (graphical) version, since you'll probably strain your eyes (and brain) with the original while trying to figure out what each onscreen character represents.

I started playing Nethack a couple months ago and find myself enjoying it more than most games for two reasons: 1. it's a small complex game, and 2. the dungeon maps always change. In fact, if you load a saved game, the maps of unexplored levels will also change on each reload.

But to answer your question properly, look here

@

... my NetHack experience?

Nethack

Pocket PC Magazine publishes the results of their annual software competition. Among the nominations for best game this year, I really enjoy Bust'em, a complex breakout style game. The GameBox games ( Classics, Gems, and Solitaire ) are also a particularly good value at $10. Finally, don't forget to download Nethack for PPC

Nethack.

NetHack. ;>

I run this on an iMac G3/266

Wow, and they say there aren't any games for the Mac! Counting the little number puzzle game, that makes at least 2 games you can play on your Mac! Ain't life grand?

The story rocks, too.

You'd think they would have instead used one of the all-time classic computer games instead. Yes, it has drawn elements from prior games, but the depth, creativity, and endless playability of Nethack makes it stand out whether considering open or closed-source games...

Will it play Net Hack?

NetHack, rather. Fuck.

Sure they can't own the movie industry...but they can certainly give themselves a stranglehold over its distrobution resourcse.

Mmmm... no. On the one hand, Quicktime is competition; if backed into a corner by Microsoft, the movie industry would be humping up Apple's leg in no time.

On the other hand, "Hollywood" is not the whole of the movie industry. Leaving aside the black sheep of the family (pr0n!), there's also Bollywood, and a shlode of independents. Of course, they won't be spending $70M on production and $50M on marketing, but that doesn't mean that they can't put out good movies. The special effects may be cheezier, but heck, I still play Angband and NetHack.

I suspect that, much like lots of little Indie music bands putting out MP3s on the cheap-and-easy, some people may start putting homemade movies up in [insert favorite format] on the Torrents. They won't get rich, and 90% of everything up there will be poorly made crap... and thus, probably a better ratio than we get today. =)

Now, perhaps M$ can end up in control of Hollywood -- given "reasonable" terms, and perhaps a little backmail ("We've 30 billion lying around... maybe we should start a movie studio? Whadayathink?"); but they don't DARE try to drive Apple out of business-- they've already been a convicted monopolist once, they don't want to deal with that again. Ergo, the little guys will continue to roam wild and free... for a little while longer.

That's funny, the new Nethack binaries released a couple days ago run just fine on my powerbook.

Me on my Commodore 64 with my Microbits 300 baud modem (I was the fastest kid on the block. Everyone else had 110 or baudots). It was like NetHack, but in real life. Learned to get in. Learned to navigate. Learned about these great things called directories...

The only two games that can keep my attention these are Nethack and Go.

I know exactly the game for you. Here.

KSirtet - a tetris clone for KDE
NetHack - text adventure

Nethack, of course. :) You could also include the graphical Falcon's Eye front end on the list.

Jouni

Let's start with the shell--zsh is by far the best one I've used. It has everything.

Moving on, Links (web browser) and Naim (AIM/ICQ/IRC client) rock. The only issue with the former is that Links doesn't support cookies, so I have Lynx in case I want to post on /. or something.

I don't have a console mail client on my machine--I have other methods of getting my email. For accessing my email account with my uni, I ssh into my uni's shell account and use pine from there or I use Links to access the Squirrelmail setup on my web server (over HTTPS, of course). To access my fastmail.fm account, I just use Links to access their web interface (they support both web and IMAP access for free).

For downloading stuff, I use giFTcurs, the btdownloadcurses.py BitTorrent client, and the venerable wget, depending on what I'm looking for and where I'm downloading from.

And, for the part that will generate the most flamage, my text editor of choice: Joe! Its interface is just as simple as nano, but with more features, such as find/replace and decent copy/paste, using text selection. On a related note, I use most as my pager--coloured man pages are good.

And, finally, who could forget NetHack?

Hmm...now I have an urge to find out how to make live CDs, so I can make a ``CLI survival kit'' live CD. Well, maybe not, as I'm too bloody lazy, but it's an idea...

For IRC, I use irssi. It's neat, small, fast, and does what I need it to. Also, I haven't had the need to change any of its stock options yet - I like it the way it is. Other candidates are BitchX (annoying autoaway etc.), ircII (too much configuring, maybe?), or CenterICQ (don't like the interface for IRC).

CenterICQ is my app of choice for IM. It's quirky sometimes, and once segfaulted, but other than that, I have had 0 problems with it. Also, it supports a variety of protocols.

For web-browsing, I use links. I've tried lynx and w3m, but links just "does it" I guess :). It's got support for more stuff. Also, I find the -g option nice, something the other two don't have IIRC.

I've tried Emacs, Pico, Nano, ed, etc. etc. etc., but so far, nothing has replaced my addiction to Vim. Maybe I'm a masochist, I don't know.

When I'm at home in console mode, I usually use Alt+Fx to switch between different apps, and use screen to keep irssi and centericq running. When over ssh, I use screen. Sometimes, I run out of VTs, so I use screen to group things inside the VTs. When in X, I just keep things in separate rxvt windows.

For entertainment, I have either NetHack, fortune -o, or bash.org (aww shit, slashdotted them, they're down enough as it is!) in links. :)

-- Chris

Nethack hands down.

Nethack.

Nethack IS available on Windows CE. I play it in my iPaq 3970 (PDA).

here

Exactly - as soon as they come out with a console that can play Nethack, maybe I'll be interested...

I doubt that anyone would state that simply because a game has outmoded graphics, its gameplay must be excellent. However, it is true that in an era when computers were only capable of simple graphics, pretty boxshots weren't enough to sell a game. Instead, developers had to focus on other elements to make their games sell - gameplay was a prime marketing tool. In addition, when games were small enough to be created by one developer or a small team, it was possible for someone to put years of work into their game - crafting a game to their ideals, not simply completing a product and rushing it out the door. Finally, simple nostalgia comes into play - when comparing today's selection of games to "the classics," people will almost certainly forget about the metric tons of crap games that have always inhabited the market - instead, each new release will be measured against the best of everything that came before. While this isn't exactly fair to the new games, it is nonetheless pervasive throughout all walks of life; people always reminisce about the "good old days" and forget about all the things that made them not so good.

get it at http://www.nethack.org/

"We develop source behind closed doors, and we're making profit!" "That sucks! Let's do development in public!" "Good idea! Hey, looks like your vaguely legal application is under fire. What are you going to do?" "Errrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmm.... P2P?" "Weren't you listening?"

Progress isn't always progress, you know... and P2P still isn't the magic solution to everything.

You can always go "underground" when developing a project distributedly. "Open source" doesn't necessarily have to mean "you can check out bleeding edge code from anonymous CVS" or something!

If you need hints, just ask the Nethack devteam how they manage a gigantic open source application - and as far as I can tell, they don't even use a revision control system. Or maybe they just need to take a few notes on how the proprietary software is developed.

I know, I know, it's completely counter-intuitive. First, we thought that developing open source code had to be open and "bazaar-like", yet it seems that for some projects, like these projects that have questionable legal status, it's better to have an old-fashioned development methodology combined with an open-source license.

Why not use the best of the existing methods for your work - confidentiality of development given by the tried and true "commercial" processes, and free unlimited distribution of the results given by open-source licenses?

And if you insist you can always stick that P2P thing to the distribution part of the development process. That is where it works best right now.

One idea might be to use distributed version control systems like Arch, with each developer's repository published through some semi-secret channel. Not sure how well that thing would work if there would be no "root" repository though...

Someone never played duckhunt.

Or, Nethack.

A computer game can never account for a truly open game play of a human.

Agreed, although Nethack makes a valiant attempt at it. The various interactions between the "rubber chickens" and reading scrolls in various states, and, and, and... make you often cry out, "The DevTeam thought of everything!" Of course, Nethack has thrown in everything, including the kitchen sink, so it's not for everyone, but for many, it is THE computer role-playing game.

Zork, and other *true* text based games have pretty much gone the way of the dodo, but ascii based games such as nethack are still around and kicking. In fact, rec.games.roguelike.nethack is a very active newsgroup, and a lot of new people are showing up and playing for the first time. If you like ascii based games, try nethack.

How can I play a game when I'm blind?
YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!

Nethack has pretty good support for such technologies as screen readers and braille pads.

Oops, missed a couple of good ones: Polygon Worlds lets you drive around on Mars. Planet's Orbits and Partiview are great for general Astronomy education.

...and some more general linkage, because I'm bored:
Educational -
Tuxtype and Droid Battles.
Board/puzzle games -
MahJong (the real four player thing, not the solitaire version), Settlers of Catan - versions here or here, JTEG, a Risk-alike, and Tetrinet (networked T*tris).
General Fun -
Armagetron (definitely have a look at this - I can imagine it being popular with kids), Search and Rescue, Astrobattle, Tower Toppler, MyLink (UpLink clone), Airstrike, XRick, Vegastrike, Stoned (curling simulation), CarWorld, Cannon Smash (virtual Table tennis), Sentry, Noiz2sa, rRootage, PowerManga, Spheres of Chaos, Warblade, Epiar...

More possibilities.

You might also give Nethack or one of its many derivatives a shot.

That enough to keep you busy? (=

How could you forget his contribution to the most replayable computer game ever?

I don't know if it ever came out. I was onto something else.. NetHack, IIRC

Even is still updated updated regularly. It's popular enough, even on our community lan.

December 2003 Nethack

On the other hand, Microsoft seems to have stopped supporting the donkey-crossing-the-street game....

It isn't new, and you can easily argue that it isn't original, but count me as one who thinks that Nethack is still one of the best, and most challenging games around anywhere.

It isn't really a sequel, and it is hardly a franchise. It (3.4.3) just came out in the last few weeks, too.

If I could only ascend once, I'd be happy. My wife came in third in the tournament, in the Tourist category. I should feed her to the balrog.

@=#2&