/dev/null/nethack Tournament 2001

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)

"

Comments

oh come on!

[GoNINzo]

Here's the real problem, this tournament will favor valks because they are so easy to ascend. They really should have some major prizes for those of us who like a challenge, like ascending tourists. `8r)

I would join if I could kill a week of just playing NetHack. and i've done it too. Because right now, I don't have the 8 hours dedicated to just gem sorting and poly-piling required before i climb the top stairs... heh

The only major question i have is how do they make sure that they are all using the same version with the same options? I mean, someone with -W access can do some serious damage, as well as any server that tweaked the magic lamp distribution number.

Re:oh come on!

[Snibor Eoj]

Here's the real problem, this tournament will favor valks because they are so easy to ascend. They really should have some major prizes for those of us who like a challenge, like ascending tourists.

You mean like offering prizes for the top three scores in each class?

The only major question i have is how do they make sure that they are all using the same version with the same options?

Presumably because we're all playing on the servers that they control, so they know what version they have installed...

Re:That wasn't very nice /.

[diadem]

nethack isn't very intensive to play, just to host. it goes back to the bbs days. I remember hosting something similar to it when my BBS had a 2400bps modem for heaven's sake! And nethack doesn't even have color last i checked.

Re:Huh?

[Spiral Man]

"Now a mud or online massively multiplayer RPG where everyone starts at the same time, at the same level would be pretty cool. Totally ruthless."

in my experience with the mud scene, this would be really stupid. everybody would attack each other immediately, without trying to level up or advance. the few people that would try to play the game inteligently would be killed immediately, and the winner would be the person who got the luckiest with the server's random number generator...

no thanks

Re:Just how much bandwidth...

[Baba Abhui]

I don't think the bandwidth would be a big deal. I think their T1 is much more than sufficient for 25 games.

Internet Nethack is played by telnetting to the server, and the server only sends updates to the screen, not full screens, for each move. The bandwidth requirements for a single game, at least, are pretty minimal. I've played over the internet with a dial-up 33.6 connection, and I imagine a single game could play adequately with even less bandwidth than that. As is so often the case in internet gaming, latency is a bigger issue than bandwidth.

I'm surprised they don't have more processing power for their server, though. A 133Mhz Pentium is overkill for a single game instance, but 25? I'm guessing that will bog down a bit if more than a few people play on crowded levels at once.

But I don't want to sound like I'm complaining - we can't expect them to buy a shiny new computer for the Nethack tournament, so they're just using what they've got handy.