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/dev/null/nethack Tournament 2001

Posted by michael on from the rogue-on-crack dept.

bakunin writes: "Tonight (Halloween) at midnight Pacific U.S. Time, /dev/null's third Annual NetHack Tournament opens. As with past years, the Tournament is open to anyone who'd like to play. We're also open to anyone who'd like to volunteer to run a game server, since (though we have a T1 hosting the main game server) play can be slow across the transoceanic links." /dev/null is calling for volunteers to run a server; you only need a modest machine but must have good bandwidth. See below for more information. bakunin continues: "/dev/null is a loose association of networking geeks, unincorporated and noncommercial. We make no money from this; we just do it for giggles.

The prize structure going in, as we're open to suggestions to change this during the Tournament, is:

Prizes
The "standard" prizes will go to:

  • Highest Score
  • 1st, 2nd and 3rd Highest Score in each class
The "additional" prizes will go to:
  • Most Ascensions
  • Lowest Scored Ascension

Since we'd appreciate volunteer servers to help speed the game play up for folks not near Oakland, California, here's roughly what you need to host:

Server Requirements
Remember, before volunteering, that anyone with admin level access to a game server box is not allowed to compete. So don't volunteer to host if you want to be a contender.

  • a multi-user NetHack installation (thus, probably, a Unix of some sort; the /dev/null server is an OpenBSD system)
  • sufficient speed/disk/memory to support 250 player accounts and 25 concurrent players (ours is a P133 with 64M of memory and 2.5G of disk)
  • a dedicated Internet connection (our is on a T1)
  • since NetHack needs real user accounts, we'd recommend that it be a dedicated system (the players will need to be entered in /etc/passwd to play on the box)
"

5 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Recommended Reading by Ted+V · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you're going to try this seriously, make sure you read all the spoilers and FAQs. There's a ton of good information in there.

    -Ted

  2. /. thumping by bakunin · · Score: 3, Informative

    About two minutes after this posted,the web server with the Tournament site on it kernel pacicked with an out of memory error.

    It has 3/4G or real memory and over 1G of swap. I think it mis-handled something there. It's booting, so we'll see how long it lasts this time. ;-)

    -robin

  3. Nethack links by image · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi,

    I'm going to unabashedly karma whore for a second because Nethack is my favourite game ever. I can't tell you the number of hours I wasted playing this (or other rogue-like games, such as rogue, larn, adom, or omega).

    Here are some links to get you all started:

    Nethack.org

    One of the first and best Nethack pages, from the legenday Boudewijn Waijers

    another Nethack homepage

    A newer Nethack page

    QT Nethack

    An impressive graphical Nethack

    The google Roguelike directory entry

    the classic rec.games.roguelike.nethack

    Happy hacking!

  4. Working Link by Bubblesculpter · · Score: 3, Informative



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

    This one works!!

    --
    www.Beyond7.com Insane modern art water sculpture.
  5. Re:/. thumping (It's Baaaak) by bakunin · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's a clue for you folks who might ever submit an article: don't do it if you're running a default BSD kernel.

    After booting a few times and getting killed immediately, I booted with no net connection and built a kernel with maxusers, NMBCLUSTERS and NKMEMCLUSERS goosed beyond any reasonable amount and it seems to be holding up now.

    I had not anticipated _that_ many immediate requests from an article ablout NetHack. ;-)

    -robin