Nethack 3.4.0

Dark_Nova writes "Nethack 3.4.0 - the latest version of the greatest game ever created - has just been released. See the release notes for details about what's new, or go here to download it."

Comments

What's the big deal about Nethack?

[professortomoe]

I mean, sure, it is one of the first real games for the PC (Right?) and it runs on a myriad of systems but I never got the allure of it, and I'm a RPGer myself. Can anyone say what really draws them to this game? I'd like to know.

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[10Ghz]

The game is amazingly deep. There's just so much you can do in it. There are tons of easter-eggs buried in there and lots of references to other works of fiction

I'm sure others who have more knowledge in Nethack will provide more info. I myself am not an expert on the subject.

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[martinmcc]

nethack is one of the deepest, most complete games out. If you think it should be possible to do, then more likly than not you can do it in nethack.

If your given it a go for the first time, prepare yourself to be disappointed. Be prepared to spend the first ~hour or so dying many times mostly from starvation and YASD (Yet another stupid death. But if you get that through hour or so and last beyond around level 10, you will be hooked for life (not neccassarily a good thing!). I would recommend reading some of the many guides on the net, but avoid the spoilers at least for the first while, it will spoil the satisfaction of discovering things yourself (like #dipping your sword into a poition of poison will make your sword poisoned as a small example).

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[NonSequor]

It's also very well thought out. This is in contrast with Slash'em, a Nethack fork. The Slash'em developers basically just add everything they can think of without stopping to think if it really improves the game. There are some good things in Slash'em and I would like to see some of them brought to Nethack. But the Slash'em developers should really try to make the game more balanced. Try playing as a doppelgangen monk to see what I mean (you get polymorph control at level 9 and all sorts of excessively powerful techniques). It's like riding through the dungeon in a wheat thresher.

Nethack isn't perfect though. I think the Monk could use some tweaking (perhaps a slight improvement in fighting ability or the ability to advance beyond the basic skill level in attack spells in exchange for a stricter penalty for eating meat).

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[Sancho]

For me, it's the challenge. Nethack is an incredibly challenging game. A new player is likely to get frustrated, but if they tough it out they can learn quite quickly.

Nethack is also about discovery. Each game, certain elements are randomized so that you never know exactly what potion heals you and what potion is going to make you pass out. You can ID them, sure, but part of the fun is figuring out new and interesting ways of identifying items without using magic.

It's also the thrill of playing against friends for those coveted high-score positions :) And discussing it, talking about new strategies, etc. Man, I can't get enough of this game :)

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[gowen]

There are some good things in Slash'em and I would like to see some of them brought to Nethack.

Many of the have been. There are loads of features in NH3.3 that came from slashem and its predecessors. Besides, when I build slashem, I compile out the many features I don't like (firearms, the black market, a couple of others).

Try playing as a doppelgangen monk ... It's like riding through the dungeon in a wheat thresher.

So don't do it. Nobody forces you to play a monk, and you can configure it so that RNG doesn't give you one. Experienced players hate Monks, but they're great for newbies to get a feel of the game, and the vegetarianism is a nice twist.

(Besides, IMHO its the slashem Drow whos unbalanced. But who cares, its a game.)

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[kometes]

It teaches you vi!

"See, boss, I'm learning editor commands."

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try dipping a potion bottle into itself. :)

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is why I started to play nethack.
I wanted to learn the vi movement keys.

Then my nethack skills outpaced my vi skills,
and I keep getting frustrated by trying to move
diaganally in vi.

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[Boronx]

In my first game of Slash'em, I found a meat market, took my dog in, and he ate methodically every piece of meat in the store. The shop keeper did nothing.

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though your pet can get a free meal like that, it pays for you to get in first and buy all the tripe rations. Then, when your pet picks up something *really* valuable, drop one outside the store and watch your pet speed outside, with whatever loot it has pilfered! :D

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[shannonw]

How many other games have those fun little message combos that leave you chuckling for days?

"Time stands still while you and Barney the dinosaur lie in each other's arms... --More--
...
That was a very educational experience.
You feel more experienced."

(Wow! The Dev Team really DOES think of everything! ;)

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[Boronx]

Neat trick. I've always fed them *after* they stole something, thinking it would reinforce the behaviour.

My favorite steal was as a barbarian, I found a bookstore on the second or third level. Stole and resold everyone of his books three times over.

Wow, I remember way back when

[Cade144]

Wow, I remember way back to my youth, I'd loose all sorts of productive time in college.

Now I get to loose productive time as an adult. At least I'll get paid this time.

Re:Wow, I remember way back when

[Anonymous Coward]

With the way you spell "lose", I imagine you weren't all that productive before.

Re:Wow, I remember way back when

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I remember way back to my youth, I'd loose all sorts of productive time in college.

Now I get to loose productive time as an adult. At least I'll get paid this time.

Looks like you should've spent more time @ college:

loose
adj. looser, loosest
1. Not fastened, restrained, or contained: loose bricks.
2. Not taut, fixed, or rigid: a loose anchor line; a loose chair leg.

lose
v. lost, (lôst, lst) losing, loses
v. tr.
1. To be unsuccessful in retaining possession of; mislay: He's always losing his car keys.
2. a. To be deprived of (something one has had): lost her art collection in the fire; lost her job.

Looks like video games do more than just promote violence in our youth... they apparently contribute to poor grammar & spelling! yuk yuk....

Re:Wow, I remember way back when

[Cade144]

You are correct, I should have spent more time learning how to use spell checkers. Spelling has always been a problem for me, I use double letters when I shouldn't and forget double letters when I should. As far as spelling is concerned, I'm a looser.

Re:Wow, I remember way back when

[jeffehobbs]

As far as spelling is concerned, I'm a looser.

That's "speling".

~jeff

Hurray!

[martinmcc]

I have just finished playing nethack and started browsing the web to find something interesting. Looks like I will be going back to playing nethack again!

I've been playing nethack for many years now, and is the ONLY game I keep coming back to. For those that enjoy it, I would recommend slashem - a game based on the nethack code with add'on - though I am sure that there are many purists who will flame that!

I'll just wave godbye to my weekend now!

Re:Hurray!

[NoBeardPete]

The deal with NetHack is that is has been in development for ~15 years, and almost all of that work has gone into the gameplay. The interface hasn't changed at all in forever, there aren't really any graphics, so all of the work that is put into the game goes into how it plays, not how it looks.

Once I get really into a game, the graphics don't much matter (excepting maybe a few select games, such as Myst). Once I've been playing for very long, I stop really seeing the details of the graphics, and see more of the abstract concepts involved. If new graphical effects are slowly leaked out over time, I may continue to pay them some attention (in Black and White, for example, I continued to pay some attention to how my creature was growing, getting fatter or thinner, and looking nicer or meaner), but it's mostly at the level of mild amusement. As long as I'm just going to see the abstracted version of what's really going on, why waste a lot of time on the interface? Put the time into game play, because that's what I really care about.

The problem, though, is that people are initially attracted to a game by the graphics, even if the graphics don't ultimately have a big impact on how much they enjoy it. I've been playing NetHack since, uhhh, shit, I dunno when. Given modern standards for graphics, most people look at it and snort in derision. I know this happens all the time when I'm playing and someone wanders by and asks what I'm up to. I can try to explain that the gameplay is _way_ more important than the graphics, but it's hard to get people to sit down and put in the effort to learn it.

I'm still happy playing, but this makes me a little nervous. How many new people are finding NetHack these days? I'm guessing it's not many. If NetHack can't keep attracting new blood, it'll eventuall stagnate and die. _Man_, that would suck.

Re:Hurray!

[Anonymous Coward]

If it makes you feel any better, I found NetHack for the first time 8 years back while in 7th grade, and then neatly contaminated at least three people with NetHack or its near relative, Slash'EM, in high school.

As long as geeks keep loving it and sharing it... NetHack is never going to die.

Re:Hurray!

[scrytch]

The interface hasn't changed at all in forever, there aren't really any graphics

Au contraire. http://www.hut.fi/~jtpelto2/nhfeatures.html#SCREEN SHOTS

Yes that is nethack. You can spew all you want about "gameplay is king", but I'm guessing even you don't play chess with scraps of cardboard with letters on them for your pieces. When I go to the symphony, I like to dress nice and see my date dressed nice, even though we're just listening. If you really wanted to cut out all the "irrelevant crap" in life, you'd just get a feeding tube and have your muscles electrically stimulated (something I fear I'll need after playing nethack, yes. I might pick up falcon's eye just for kicks though)

Re:Hurray!

[BLAMM!]

I think the point is that people would rather hear a symphony where the musicians were ugly and dressed in rags than go see a group of beautiful people bang pots and pans together. If you get both the good view and the good content, that's great. But when you have to choose, more people would rather have the good content.

If my choices were playing chess with scraps of cardboard against a knowledgable player, and playing tic-tac-toe with a 3 year old using diamonds and rubies, I'm taking the chess.

Yay, new way to waste time at work

[Dragon218]

Hopefully, this edition will have the Amulet of Yendor in it.

Re:Yay, new way to waste time at work

[ackthpt]

Hopefully, this edition will have the Amulet of Yendor in it.

Ah yes, how many years did I play it before actually finding the amulet for the first time.. :)

There used to be some really great threads on what to add to the game on rec.games.hack It seems as much as players hacked to win the game, authors hacked to put more into the game to figure out.

Mostly I played it on the Amiga, a few versions put out by the Software Distillery, who were kind enough to created little 8x8 pixel drawings of things.

Then there was that Amiga version of Moria with Large Lavender Leprechauns, brrr..

@-/&=
d[=!
*!^.

Marvin picks up a glowing potion-more-
You fall through a pit trap-more-
You leave the store without paying Manlobbi-more-
An alarm sounds throughout the dungeon-more

(as for errors, yeah, I haven't played in a while, but that will no change :)

Re:Yay, new way to waste time at work

[teamhasnoi]

The best thing is you can tell your boss your're doing a defrag.

"The bugs on the floor speed up"

"See, it's working!"

Re:Yay, new way to waste time at work

[hawk]

>Ah yes, how many years did I play it before
>actually finding the amulet for the first time.. :)

It only took me a couple of months. I had it. In my hand. The dragon was hurting me, badly--but I had a wishing ring. No problem--wish for the Scroll of Recall (?) to go back to the first level.

And, (*^(*(*&, my finger slipped and hit the wrong key (what, me sweating?) when I told it which item to use, delaying me one round, cuasing my death rather than escape.

and I never got that far again.

This would have been 1988, so was that version 2?

hawk

Re:Yay, new way to waste time at work

[Bilestoad]

Scroll of Recall? I think you were playing Angband. There is no Wishing Ring in unpatched Nethack.

Re:Yay, new way to waste time at work

[hawk]

It *has* been a long time--but it was definitely the Amulet of Yendor, and I know I also wished for it once and got a cheap plastic imitation.

It's entirely possible that it was a patched version--this was on one of the disks of PD software that came buying a generic PC at a fly-by-night. Or maybe it was a scroll with a wish.

also, isn't nethack the only one with the pet? I assume this must have been nethack in some form . . . and I'm pretty sure it was called that . . . or perhaps some v2 features are long gone???

hawk

Re:Yay, new way to waste time at work

[armb]

> it was definitely the Amulet of Yendor, and I know I also wished for it once and got a cheap plastic imitation.

Been there, done that :-)

I got the Amulet out _once_, and realized I couldn't afford to spend that long again (especially playing at work). But playing in wizard mode, when you can give yourself whatever starting equipment you want, I got it down to 17 moves.

And no, there isn't (AFAIR) a scroll of recall. But if you teleport while confused, you teleport between levels. And if you have a ring of teleport control, you can choose _which_ level you go to - and you can go to level zero, and leave the dungeon.

These days there is much more to it, but I've resisted playing.

Re:Yay, new way to waste time at work

[realdpk]

I've played nethack for about 6 years now. Just this week I got the amulet for the 3rd time ever. I ended up dying in the endgame, on the Air level. I did not know there are such easy ways to get out of creatures that "swallow" you. :-) Learn something new every day. Die every day, too, though. ;)

The nerd litmus test.

[fluxrad]

Just divide the number of people who download the latest version of this game by the number of valid IP's on the internet and you can figure out exactly what percentage of people on the planet earth won't be contributing to the world's "population" problem ;-)

Re:The nerd litmus test.

[GypC]

Hmmm, I'm downloading it right now and I have 3 kids. All the famous hackers I can think of are married, except RMS...

Re:The nerd litmus test.

[squaretorus]

Or if you say:
You hear a monster behind the boulder

and they reply
Perhaps that's why you cannot move it - HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH BWAAA HAHAHAHAHAHA BWA BWA BWAAAAA HAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA A - WATCH OUTT You might DISPLACE MY CAT BWAAA AHAAAA HAAAA HAAAAAA

Before collapsing helplessly into tolk of Shrubberies and 'very naughty boy's

Re:The nerd litmus test.

[Cheshyre]

Sorry, but my husband & I are both avid nethackers. At one point, I checked the logfile at the old college system, and together we were responsible for at least half of the games played.

Besides, Nethack has its romantic undertones... such as the time I was frozen and encountered my husband's ghost. " touches you. touches you." ;}

Re:The nerd litmus test.

[Cheshyre]

Sorry, but my husband & I are both avid nethackers. At one point, I checked the logfile at the old college system, and together we were responsible for at least half of the games played.

Besides, Nethack has its romantic undertones... such as the time I was frozen and encountered my husband's ghost. "(spouse's name) touches you. (spouse's name) touches you." ;}

[resubmitted, because I accidentally used brackets around 'spouse's name' which was somehow interpreted as html tags]

Re:The nerd litmus test.

[Anonymous Coward]

All the famous hackers I can think of are married, except RMS...

...who iz VARY gay. Plz hoze down. Thnx! :)

Re:The nerd litmus test.

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn man, well hopefully nethack will keep you from getting your wife pregnant again. Get some vasectomy on that piece...

Wow

[abhikhurana]

So I guess its a good year for the middle earth fans afterall.

Nethack vs Diablo

[PenguinLord]

When i first played Diablo all i could think was, "Hey this is just hack with a nice interface". All the same elements are there except that nethack has a depth and subtle complexity that Diablo lacks.

Re:Nethack vs Diablo

[sinator]

Nethack and Rogue were placed here by Wumpus to tempt the faithless.

Re:Nethack vs Diablo

[dimer0]

Yup. And there's something to say for using your imagination... OH CRAP! The green "@" and the red "'" are trying to eat me!! Ohhh noo!

Do we need graphics fed down our throat for everything? Anyone remember playing AD&D? Or even D&D? I never walked out of a game saying "Hey, DM, your graphics suck!".

I tell ya what tho - I've spent about 20 hours playing Balder's Gate II, which is fun - but since I've started playing BG2, I've put in about 40 hours of Nethack. I have to keep playing - all for the high score list when I die.

Re:Nethack vs Diablo

[BobRainGod]

Wow, nobody's made that connection before.

oh shit

[isli]

i'm being chased by the @ and the %. Well, at least its not the / and the .

Re:oh shit

[Anonymous Coward]

The isn't as bad. Its just had too many bourbans.

Re:oh shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I find it hard to believe that five people found this funny?

Re:oh shit

[Anonymous Coward]

To translate for those who might find this tricky...

@ is the symbol for a human or sometimes humanoid (shopkeepers, priests, you, Wizard of Yendor, etc.)

% is the symbol for... food. I've been chased by %'s in Slash, but never in NetHack.

And if you're being chased by wands and parts of the floor, you have GOT to stop ticking off those mimics!

Re:oh shit

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmm...you are being chased by a human and some food, but at least it is not a wand or a vacant tile? Too many shrooms, man.

Re:oh shit

[falzer]

Being chased by %? Someone should put that in the game...

Greatest ?

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

nethack is a nice game, but it still falls short when compared to Elite

Re:Greatest ?

[jonr]

Yess.... I can remember countless nights I spent in the computer lab in my high-school, with my trusty old BBC and hijacking Apple II green monitors.
My favorites:
Elite
Repton 2
Labyrinth
Civilization I
Civilization III (sid meyers)
Everything else is just... ok I guess...

Re:Greatest ?

[Happosai]

Ever play Exile?

[Happosai]

Re:Greatest ?

[Kained]

I think someone missed the point...
Nethack has deeper game mechanics than elite ever had... which was essentially resource management with 'ooo' nice spacey bits...

Wompus Hunt anyone?

Re:Greatest ?

[operagost]

Elite's not networked... but this is.

It's graphics vs. gameplay.

Re:Greatest ?

[Jacek Poplawski]

NetHack, M.U.L.E., Civs, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Elite/Frontier - games to play over and over and over and over and over and over again!

Re:Greatest ?

[moheeb]

I used to play Hunt the Wompus on some computer....I can't remember if it was a TI-99/4A or an Apple now. Excellent game.

Slashdot to English Translator

[ReluctantBadger]

1st Official Slashdot to English Translator-matic

• "There's a sourceforge project creating just what you're looking for..."
  "Me and a bunch of people got drunk, thought we could code, submitted the idea and produced a fancy web page. It's now two years later and the project has no files to download and is STILL on Stage 1, Planning."
  
  
• "That's the beauty of UNIX - Lots of little tools which can be used together. Far more flexible!"
  "I've been reading UNIX in a Nutshell for SVR4 and fuck knows what any of this flags stuff is about"
  
  
• "Linux is far more secure than Windows. My box has never been hacked."
  "I can install Red Hat from a bootable CD. The machine is not connected to a network and all I do all day is type ps, pwd and ls. I'm so l33t."
  
  
• "You might want to try going to college and learning about this stuff!"
  "My folks are rich enough to send me off for further education. I am now in an uber-elite crowd of know-it-alls and I am here to belittle you. Fear me."
  
  
• "Microsoft products are soooo insecure!"
  "I've spent the last two years being subjected to biased slashdot propaganda. I couldn't hack into a properly configured windows system if my life depended on it."
  
  
• "We should file an antitrust lawsuit against Sony"
  "I've spent far too much time absorbing bullshit ideals from anarchists. The truth of the matter is, I just don't want to pay for anything whatsoever. Britney CDs should be free because I think that somehow the constitution protects my illegal copying and distribution under some freedom of speech law or fair use act. Even though I don't have to go out and buy luxury items, I'm gonna whinge and bitch anyway"
  
  
• "Have you considered using Linux?"
  "I've only been using it for a week, and now my hardcore wannabe techno friends think I'm a guru. I now recommend it to everybody based upon what I've read at slashdot."
  
  
• "Don't you find that parsing this bitset through the compliation alogirithm that is piped out through GCC on a command line echo really works well for logarithmically sound sine wave matcher?"
  "Somebody please shoot me several times in the head. I am fucking clueless."
  
  
• "If they join all the state drivers licence databases together, they'll be able to track me! How do I change my identity?"
  "I'm too fucking dense to realise that this has been going on for over 15 years already, and I've just finished reading 1984. Go figure."

Don't forget to mod me down!

Re:Slashdot to English Translator

[styrotech]

"I can install Red Hat from a bootable CD. The machine is not connected to a network and all I do all day is type ps, pwd and ls. I'm so l33t."

You think that's exciting? Wait until you figure out 'cd' - you'll wet your pants!

The really cool thing about 'cd' is it adds a whole new dimension of gameplay to 'pwd' and 'ls'. Beware though, you'll waste so much time playing 'cd' that your Xbox productivity will suffer.

Screw Dungeon Siege going gold...

[DirkDaring]

I'm playing ascii nethack instead!

INT, not DEX

[Raedwald]

An advantage that Nethack has over modern video games is that you use your brains, not your hand-eye coordination. It is, in fact, a strategy game. Also, you entirely determine its pace (it is turn based). This is useful if you want to play it while waiting for something else (e.g. a long compile) to finish.

Re:INT, not DEX

[Anarchofascist]

I think the other advantage of Nethack is that things can happen that are completely unscripted. I'll never forget the time I stole from the shopkeeper only to have the Keystone Kops come after me... and run into a pack of orcs while I had on my Ring of Conflict:

Kop throws a pie. Orc is hit by a cream pie. Orc wipes face. Orc throws dagger. Kop is destroyed!

Please please please

[gowen]

Tell me they've got rid of the horrible "configure the thing by editting config.h" and replaced it with autoconf or somesuch. I don't mind picking out the game options by hand, but making sure it uses the right term\(cap|lin\)/ncurses library is a pain in the ass.

(Anyway, I'm a slashem addict myself)

See slashem for example!!!

[ondelette]

I think Nethack has a large following because it is a well-balanced, difficult, and elaborate game.

If you look at something like Diablo... One could argue that Nethack is a more elaborate game. You can be sure though that the Diable developers played Nethack before.

Sure, you don't have fancy graphics... even though some people got good results on that...

http://slashem.sourceforge.net

It is still turn-based... so what? A lot of recent RPGs are turned-based at least in part (Might and Magic, Wizardry...).

Re:See slashem for example!!!

[gowen]

It is still turn-based... so what?

Are you kidding, thats kind of terrible design decision that made Chess such a short lived fad.

Re:See slashem for example!!!

[rkoot]

and don't forget about the very nice looking Falcon's Eye. it's nethack with eyecandy. big improvement if I may say so. worth a try. see for your self....

http://www.hut.fi/~jtpelto2/nethack.html

Nethack is the most diverse and complex game I ever played. 10 years ago I started my first game, and after many frustrating hours I suddenly found myself hooked !

I especially like the numerous hints to famous fantasy/sf like terry pratchet's discworld, tolkien, starwars throughout the whole game. a bit of mythology helps too when playing nethack. like it's very handy to realize you shouldn't look upon medusa....

I'm very glad the nethack team decided to release 3.4.0.

happy hacking

roger

Re:See slashem for example!!!

[dkleinsc]

Actually, the Diablo developers all attribute the idea of that game to Nethack. But having played both Diablo's extensively, I can tell you they have nowhere near the complexity of Nethack.

Nethack is a game that even if you know a lot about it you will still find it difficult. That's the true joy of the game, is that it is never easy, right from the beginning.

And if you'll pardon me, my @ is calling me.

Re:See slashem for example!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not forget that Fallout, arguably one of the best games for the PC ever, was turn based.

Re:See slashem for example!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all.

They've played Angband. :o)

http://thangorodrim.angband.org/

looks like a bunch of...

[night_flyer]

BBS games that are still available on Telnet BBSs nowadays, Arrowbridge immediatly comes to mind, not to mention DoorMud...

Great..

[PepsiProgrammer]

Looks like my AP calculus grade will be driven even further into the ground next grading period than it was this time. Thank god there is no Palm port yet, id *never* get any work done. Thanks Nethack

Re:Great..

[Kev Vance]

That didn't stop me in high school. I used PocketRogue!

Re:Great..

[Anonymous Coward]

calculus is easy.

What is NetHack?

[rtos]

What do you mean you've never heard of Nethack?!

I'm surprised to read quite a few posts from people saying "What's Nethack?" ... well, here's some information to get you started on an answer:

Unsung Heros: NetHack : "NetHack is a spectacular dungeon crawl that has been in development for more than 15 years. It's the only game in this feature that we can refer to in the present tense, because it is the only game still being actively worked on. It features random dungeons, enough monsters to fill an AD&D menagerie, and enough commands to create a programming language."

The Gamespy Hall of Fame : "Here's a game that's been under continuous development for over 15 years. It has no graphics, unless you count the primitive patterns made of ascii characters. And yet is has a huge following -- a very active newsgroup, fans all over the globe, and many instances of major media coverage. There's some kind of magic in NetHack, a world so huge and complex that every game is completely different, where each new item can twist the gameplay in new directions. Mostly we love it for the surprises -- the number of times you try some amazingly obscure action and find out that it works, leaving slump back in your chair and exclaim, 'They thought of everything!'"

Salon: The Best Game Ever : "But as any hacker worth the title will tell you, Nethack is still one of the best games ever made. What's more, it's one of the best open-source games ever made -- meaning anyone who cares can grab ahold of the game's source code and make changes and improvements. The player's guide is even authored by none other than open-source ontologist Eric S. Raymond..."

The Nethack Homepage : "Nethack is a single player, ASCII graphics-based adventure game, similar to the lines of Dungeons & Dragons and similar fantasy games. It is commonly classified in the larger group of Rogue-like Games, which generally are all text-based, solo adventures. Within the game, your character is after the infamous Wizard of Yendor, who has stolen the Amulet of Yendor and plans to use it for his evil purposes. You, a young member of your chosen class, have been blessed by your people and your god to retrieve the Amulet, and to save the world from the Wizard's evil plans."

Variants and Utilities : "One of the most impressive features of Nethack is the amount of 3rd party developed material that either is a varient of the Nethack game, or can be used to enhance your Nethack gaming experience. You'll find both variants and utilites for Nethack listed on this page."

But this one may be (in my biased opinion) the coolest project of all...

Nethack-Palm Porting Project : "The Nethack-Palm porting project is a loosely-knit group of Nethack and Palm enthusiasts who are working to port the classic game Nethack to the Palm platform. The project is well underway, but still far from complete so we welcome any new contributors." (See also Roguelikes for PalmOS)

So there you go. NetHack. What is it? The longest running, most amazing, coolest, open source game in the history of computers.... or something. :) But seriously, if you've never played NetHack, give it a try. It's worth it, if nothing else, just to say you did.

Re:What is NetHack?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot this link

Re:What is NetHack?

[Strog]

That tells a lot about the game but I still can't find *any* screenshots for it.

Re:What is NetHack?

[Kanon]

Here's a picture of the main character

@

And his dog looks like this

d

The orcs are quite good

o

Does that help?

Re:What is NetHack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmm, nice anti-aliasing

Re:What is NetHack?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry. As long as it got no trainer- or God-mode, I can't play it. Besides, text is awful. I need pictures, hardcore pictures. Yum.

Re:What is NetHack?

[PlaysWithMatches]

the coolest project of all... Nethack-Palm Porting Project

And for those like me who have Psion handhelds, the coolest of all would be NetHack for Psion. :) Runs great on my Revo, and is a nice way to kill time like during math classes.

Re:What is NetHack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there is an okay graphical version called falcon's eye. Why can't you play a game that has a trainer or god mode? No will power?

Re:What is NetHack?

[Bilestoad]

Or the best portable Nethack there is:

Nethack for Windows CE

If you currently have a Palm or a Psion and you're really a Nethack fan, this might be enough to make you switch. It's that good.

Re:What is NetHack?

[Jagasian]

Anti-aliasing! Sheesh! You kids can only be satisfied by the latest wiz-bang graphics technologies! In my day, it was monochrome all the way, no anty-aliasing for us, no siree!

Re:What is NetHack?

[Strog]

Thank you for the screenshots.

Maybe I need to adjust my monitor because that doesn't look like 32bit color to me. Maybe you are running with your fog, texture details, etc turned off. Either way it still looks fun. Isn't that what it's all about?

Re:What is NetHack?

[SquadBoy]

You want Nethack with a GUI? Here you go. :)

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/falcon se ye.html
http://falconseye.sourceforge.net/

Re:What is NetHack?

[daeley]

Actually, if you use Mac OS X, you can set font smoothing in Terminal so you get all the anti-aliasing you need. :)

Re:What is NetHack?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it has got a trainer AND a god mode built in.

nethack -X
for discovery mode (AKA "trainer")

nethack -D -u wizard
for Wizard mode (AKA "God mode")

So all you 1337 people have no excuse!

Re:What is NetHack?

[Jaime Herazo B.]

You forgot one link:
The adventures of Spyke Johnson-- Ascii Archaeologist
This is an ...interesting intro to nethack :)

Re:What is NetHack?

[Black Parrot]

> Here's a picture of the main character @ And his dog looks like this d The orcs are quite good o

I've only ever seen the beginner's version, where the dungeon is a single 3x3 level and the only two characters are X and O.

Re:What is NetHack?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought slashdot filters all ascii pictures?

Re:What is NetHack?

[TheAwfulTruth]

This is psychologically interesting. Nethack is a stupid little game. I mean really. Certainly Chess or Go are infinately more qualified to be called "The greatest game ever". Anyone that is new to net hack immediately sees that it is nothing. The only people that say it's "The greatest game ever" are people that have played it a long time and are extremely nostalgic about it, or have heard it's "The greatest game ever" and want to be cool so they play it and call it "The greatest game ever". The Salon article is the best. The authour agrees that it is "The best game ever" (as he calls it) merely on the say so of others... It's a cult and only cult members or cult member wannabes see any greatness in it at all. Non members see nothing. It's a zen test.

Re:What is NetHack?

[Ragica]

Blind fool, how dare you refer to the Goblin King as an orc. Can't you see?! May you be swarmed by Uruk-hai (and kill them all, but then have a * fall on your head).

Re:What is NetHack?

[Aanallein]

The DOS version has actually had the possibility of a 'real' graphical interface for quite some time already. And according to that page, now even the windows version has it.

Ah yes, progress... not like in the old days anymore... :)

Re:What is NetHack?

[gad_zuki!]

It's the only game in this feature that we can refer to in the present tense, because it is the only game still being actively worked on.

That's not true, there are MUDs out there that are still being worked on, features being added, etc.

Re:What is NetHack?

[namespan]

Good gravy. It not working on Mac OS X is probably the only thing between me and loosing the rest of my life. I already blew two years of high school afternoons off that way. I could have learned spanish instead.

Unfortunately, MAME _is_ available for OS X....

Re:What is NetHack?

[landley]

Whaddaya mean no GUI? What about nethack qt?

ftp://ftp.nethack.org/pub/nethack/nh331/binaries /l inux/nh331linQt.tgz

Saw it at ALS. Looked a bit like a precursor to diablo...

Rob

Re:What is NetHack?

[rweir]

Where's the (-1, Dick) mod option when you need it?

Playability

[TimeTrav]

Heres a game that has real playability. You could play nethack for 100 hours+ and still not "master" it. I consider this to be more entertaining than playing some shoot-em-up that can be solved in 10 hours or less. Other games may be pretty, but this game has SOUL.

The infocom games were similar ... many hours of playability. If new game authors would make games with the same appeal and infinite replayability as nethack, I might *never* go outside again! :D

Re:Playability

[Tet]

You could play nethack for 100 hours+ and still not "master" it.

Indeed. In fact, I first played it when it was still just called "hack". Don't know what it is about it, though, but something just failed to grab my interest. I like virtually every other roguelike game on the planet, but hack/nethack never did it for me. Angband (and before it, Moria), on the other hand, I'd probably rank as the greatest game ever written. 100+ hours, though? I've been playing it for 13 years now and it's still as playable as it ever was. And no, I haven't yet completed it. To me, that's the mark of a good game. Most modern games are dumbed down to the point where they're just way too easy to complete. Even Larn (probably the easiest of the roguelike games) still took a fair while to complete.

Re:Playability

[Peaker]

Lets see you master Starcraft in 100 hours of gaming :)

And by mastering, I don't mean finishing the single-player game, but being a master of multiplayer matches..

In fact, most games aren't really "mastered" in 100 hours.. finishing the single-player game isn't mastering, and most modern games are geared towards the multiplayer version (Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, Starcraft, ...)

Re:Playability

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately (fortunately?) for me, I succumbed to searching for cheats on the web after dying the 6th time. Nethack is wonderfully rich, but in it's richness it's also one of the most unforgiving games you can play. There are hundreds and hundreds of things to do...but by the same turn there are just as many ways to die.

For those of you who are not familiar with Nethack, once you're dead...you're dead. This can get especially frustrating if you've invested a lot of time in the character. So after having died so many times within the first hour of gameplay...almost regardless of what I did.(it's very easy to run out of food, die of desease, etc) I decided to check the web:

No sooner than 15 minutes later, I had discovered a 'cheat' for saving character files. This effectively meant that I would never die...provided I kept backup copies of my character which wasn't a problem.

So with this method I happily hummed along, and my wizard gained all kinds of levels and items...and the Nethack world WAS incredibly rich and diverse. But...for whatever reason...I payed another visit to the cheats section on the web. After about 15 minutes of looking I discovered 'Poly-piling'. It involves zapping a 'pile' of your gear with the 'Wand of Polymorphing' transforming it into other random items of the same type. This, coupled with the ability to reload my previous saved games(thanks to my backup copies) effectively gave me the ability to stock my wizard with any item I wanted =(. . I'd just zap and reload until the process prduced the item(s) I was looking for.

So, to make a long story shorter, by the end of about 1 week's time, my wizard had mega gear, and mega levels...but I had lost something...my Nethack innocence if you will..and there was no getting it back.

For the brief time that I played nethack, it was all there was in life. The underlying texture of Nethack was the most wonderful and diverse computer based roleplaying experience I have every had. But, those times are forever passed for me. Sometimes in those fond memories...I try to return to the game, to revel again in that fountain of wonder...but every time I try, the urge to invoke those nasty save/polypiling cheats overpowers me! Alas I cannot...and I end up quiting the game out of shame...rather than doing so.

The Moral of the story...is that the posters here who play for years very likely do not employ these 'cheats'. I chose the dark path...and it forever tainted my Nethack experience...yes, power was quicker, easier to obtain! But ultimately it spoiled me! and I cannot enjoy Nethack for what it was meant to be...trecherous, unrelenting, and vastly rewarding game play!

Re:Playability

[Quill_28]

Comparing apples and oranges. You can "master" starcraft in 20 hours of gaming. You would know all the units, moving them, everything about the game, etc. What you wouldn't have "mastered" is playing against other people.

NetHack on the other litereally takes 100's of hours to master the game.

Re:Playability

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't master Nethack. You can get better than most, but it will always surprise you. comp.sys.games.roguelike.nethack is just full of posts from people who have been playing for all 15 years who don't believe what they just saw.

(and that's why it really is the best game of all time)

Re:Playability

[aardvarkjoe]

If you had looked at the help, you would have realized that pressing 'X' would have done you more service than any savescumming cheats. And it's legit, as well.

Re:Playability

[SomeGuyFromCA]

Beg to differ - that's rec.games.roguelike.nethack.

1 5966142 ___-Wiz-Hum-Mal-Neu ascended to demigod-hood. 261 [361]

Re:Playability

[wildbill2]

I've played Rogue/Hack/Nethack for almost 20 years, and have never "mastered" them.

Re:Playability

[ashtonb]

You started cheating after dying for the 6th time?

When I introduced nethack (in the falconseye variant) to my brother, he had dies over 40 times and gotten to level 16 before he went searching for cheats. Then he found out about debug mode and the wonders it allowed. He only stayed interested for another week.

He hasn't played it for about 2 months now, but with this new versions, I'm going to compile it myself, with every cheating method disabled.

Anyway, why didn't you just read the help files and use the 'explore' mode.

The real fun is in the challenges, like seeing how far in the game you can get without food. Or without ever fighting with a weapon.

Regcodes?

[F.O.Dobbs]

Where can I get a reg code for this? Anybody got a good warez site for this one?

Oh wait, wrong game.

Re:Regcodes?

[WWWWolf]

::drags the offender around the corner and slaps::

Should I fine you for false alarm? =)

(I thought of expanding RGRNCA to Slashdot, but considering Slashdot doesn't post too many stories of Nethack and the reader population is probably well enough educated, I think someone else should do the job. Moderators. Or something. =)

Binaries Hosted on AOL?

[Bartacus]

The binaries are hosted on an AOL account NetHackDotOrg. What a creative way to 'stick it to the man'!

AOLserver/3.4.2 on http://members.aol.com

Then again, if you were a truly l33t player, you'd snag the sources from the nethack.org ftp site.

Am I crazy?

[xenocide2]

Is there even a way to generate an invalid IP?

Re:Am I crazy?

[r101]

1, there is an invalid ip address :)

More seriously, you can't have 127.0.0.1 for example as an INTERNET ip address, as its reservered for private use (in this case localhost, but there are many other private addresses).

damn

[tonyt]

and i was hoping to pass some classes this semester. oh well.

God

[Wind_Walker]

When are the people over at Nethack going to realize that this feature bloat is completely destroying the product? Have you looked at the latest release.txt file? A new Win32 GUI, control-P for a full screen message...

And at a size of 1.1 MB?!?!?! How am I supposed to download that on my dialup connection?

Re:God

[BobNET]

And at a size of 1.1 MB?!?!?! How am I supposed to download that on my dialup connection?

Don't worry. With the Slashdot effect, no one will be downloading this faster than a dialup connection.

Re:God

[Anonymous Coward]

cvs -z9 -d blah:blah@blah co nethack

Release notes

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted anonymously, because I'm not karma whoring.

The NetHack DevTeam is pleased to announce the release of NetHack 3.4.0.

NetHack 3.4 is an enhancement to the dungeon exploration game NetHack. It is a distant descendent of Rogue and Hack, and a direct descendent of NetHack 3.3.

There are a great number of bug fixes in this release, as well as many changes and surprises beyond what you see listed below. Here is a brief overview of some new additions and changes in the game.

• Many, many bug fixes and tweaks to the core code and to several ports
• Enhanced config file processing and player selection prompts for some ports
• Stamina affects ability to throw heavy things
• Objects merge in containers
• Wish for "nothing", and genocide "none" to preserve your conduct
• Several small refinements to race/role separation
• Config file BOULDER option to specify the symbol for displaying boulders
• Riding has been improved
• New travel command which is particularly helpful for mouse navigation on handheld computers
• more feedback about skill advancement from #enhance command
• End-of-game disclose options can be individually tuned to your liking
• Mac: command-key shortcuts in the player selection dialog
• Amiga: screenmode requester
• Win32: new graphical interface contributed by Alex Kompel

We've also included variations of enhancements contributed by members of the NetHack community at large. Among them:

• Scott Bigham's new T-shirt messages and his option to turn off resistance display effects
• Malcolm Ryan's option for "autodig"
• Jay Tilton's full-screen message window display via control-P
• Dylan O'Donnell's patch for optionally starting with no pet
• Tom Friedetzky's blessed/uncursed/cursed selection patch for menustyle:full
• Jason Short's additional lens uses
• Kelly Bailey's Gnomish Mines changes
• Ken Arnold's patch to display prices in your inventory

A fuller list of changes for this release can be found in the file doc/fixes34.0 in the source distribution. The text in there was written for the development team's own use and is provided "as is", so please do not ask us to further explain the entries in this file.

The NetHack 3.4.0 source code supports many different platforms including most Unix versions, Windows, DOS, Linux, Apple Macintosh(tm), Apple Macintosh OS X(tm), OS/2(tm), Atari(tm), and Amiga(tm).

Also, note that the Gnome toolkit interface is still considered an experimental option. We have not enhanced the port ourselves, and so far we have not received any contributions doing so from the NetHack community.

-- Happy NetHacking! --

I don't suppose

[mental_telepathy]

There is a binary anywhere for OS X? Coming from a mac background, I am not up to compiling source yet. And I try to never boot classic.

Re:I don't suppose

[tb3]

Check the OS X page of VersionTracker. It's second on the list.

Re:I don't suppose

[Voidhobo]

It's not really all that hard, and the experience is definately worth it.

I am assuming you want to play the terminal version, and not the X11 version. Unfortunately, fink does not provide a nethack-nox package.

Here's somewhat spartanic instructions; I am not at my Mac right now, else I'd try this myself, but I hope these are at least some pointers in the right direction.

Download the source; I bet it comes with a configure script. In that case, I would do the following:

Fire up Terminal.app and open at least two term windows (unless, of course, like a real geek, you already have them open). cd to the source directory and type ./configure. It will ask you where you want to install; I suggest /usr/local/. It will ask you about curses and other stuff. This is where it gets tricky. You may not have some of the required includes -- get them via fink (fink install ncurses, possibly?). They are put in a new root-level directory called sw. Tell the configure script where these the includes are. Ways of finding out their location are either browsing /sw and /usr in that second term window, or by running things like which less when asked where the less paging command is, or find / -name curses* when asked about include files. (Sherlock could come in handy, too...)

I guess the configure script will ask whether or not you want X support. Answer no, and you should be safe. Another non-standard setting on Darwin is the name of the C compiler; it's not gcc, but simply cc.

Once that is done, run make and watch the errors fly by. As long as the whole shebang doesn't fail completely, ignore them.

Then run sudo make install (or, if possible and desired, sudo make install-strip, that saves some space) and the files will be placed under /usr/local.

If /usr/local/bin is in your $PATH variable, you will be able to run nethack simply by typing nethack at the prompt.

Another possiblity is that instead of a script that takes you through the configuration process you have a file called Makefile with lots of comments guiding you through the process of editing it to your needs. In that case you can open the file in TextEdit.app or whatever your preferred editor is (pico and vi are two CLI possiblities) and fill in the parameters.

It only becomes easier the next time... I hope I was able to help at least a bit.

Re:I don't suppose

[Voidhobo]

Ooops, yeah, you can get it there, too, I guess...

Re:I don't suppose

[dalassa]

I don't seem to have any problems using the classic enviornment under OSX. Try that first see if it works.

The big deal about Nethack?

[ackthpt]

It's a totally engrossing single player RPG which has been character art on a 80/24 display from way back before all 3D accelerators, highspeed processors, great tracts of memory, etc. I got caught up in it on an Amiga and the allure always was trying to just stay alive, figure out all the really neat things built in (which AFAIK beat the hell out of most other computerbased RPG games by shear volume) In short, the pursuit of the game is to get the amulet of Yendor and escape, but the more you 'hack' at the game (i.e. try to figure it all out) the easier it gets, but it's never been easy in all the times I've played it.

Other fun character based games:

Omega

Moria

Larn (particularly 12.0b(?) on the Amiga)

Re:The big deal about Nethack?

[BLAMM!]

Isn't Omega that programmable tank game? I tried that once but the interface was too klunky.

Could you provide more info on Moria? Anything with that name has to be cool.

Re:The big deal about Nethack?

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

There are at least 2 games called Omega.

Here Omega is also the first roguelike game that
has a wilderness and several dungeons and not
a single dungeon.

Omega official distribution page

The Greatness of Nethack

[Anonymous Coward]

Nethack is great for at least 2 reasons (that I can think of in 2 minutes):

1: Interface, even without fancy graphics, There are a huge number of functions easily accessable with 1 keystroke, and a whole bunch more with 2 keystrokes.

2: Bones files/difficulty of game. After playing for years I think that I've only beaten the game 3 times without cheating. If I don't win, I have a chance to recover the previous character's stuff (if I have a blessed scroll of remove curse).

I've never played this game..

[Spraydust]

..so how does it compare to Return to Castle Wolfenstein?

Spraydust

http://www.stumpymoose.com
'so good, you'll enjoy yourself!'

Re:I've never played this game..

[Junta]

Well, for one, the graphics of netHack have always been *so* much more advanced than Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I mean, just take one glance at the detail of a nethack shot and you'll fall in love. Avoid those things like Falcon's Eye, or X11 enhanced interfaces, the original ASCII is truly beautiful..

Plus, there are cute animals in nethack, can't beat that.

Re:I've never played this game..

[Ayon Rantz]

I'd say it's quite a bit more addictive than RTCW at least, although Progress Quest has them both beat hands down when it comes to graphics and gameplay.

Plus, it's multiplayer.

Download Links (karma whore...?)

[davidesh]

Win32

nh340win.zip (by HTTP)(about 1M)

nh340win.zip (by FTP)(about 1M)

Linux

nh340lin.tgz (by HTTP)(about 1.1M)

nh340lin.tgz (by FTP)(about 1.1M)

NetHack 3.4.0 Linux Elf with TTY and Athena-widget-based (traditional X11) graphics interfaces (including tiles). This version requires X11 libraries, which are installed on almost all Linux systems.

This binary has support for tty and X11 windowing systems, but not Qt. This means you will need to have X11 libraries installed on your system to run this binary, even in its tty flavor.

nh340linQt.tgz (by HTTP)(about 1.2M)

nh340linQt.tgz (by FTP)(about 1.2M)

NetHack 3.4.0 Linux Elf with TTY and Qt-based graphics interfaces (including tiles). This version requires the Qt libraries (version 2.2 or 2.3) which may or may not be installed on any particlar Linux system.

Note: Most Redhat installations do not include Qt by default; it must be specifically selected.

Note: If you have KDE 2 installed, you have Qt nstalled.
README.linux Additional details about the Linux binary. If you are not running Redhat, check the System information in this file to see if you need to build from source, instead of using these binaries.

Screenshots??

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are the screen shots??

Dammit! If Nethack is supposedly the 'greatest game ever', why are the authors ashamed to put screenshots on their website! Everybody knows that if this game doesn't utilize the latest in 3D Technology, it's doomed to failure.

Considering how long Nethack's [apparently] been around, I would hope by now they support all the high-res modes, like 1600x1200x32; along with neat effects like a decent particle rendering system, gouraud shading, real-time shadows, reflective surfaces, and all the latest in 3D graphics technology.

Re:Screenshots??

[Punkerbat]

You obviously haven't been listening *knocks on your hollow noggin*. This game may not have the most up to date graphics, but those of us (the intelligent ones) that have enough culture to play this game without the need to be dazzled with 3D effects up the wazoo, are the ones that really appreciate these games, yafoof. (yafoof: What you are, you shaven monkey)

Re:Screenshots??

[Anonymous Hobo]

http://www.nethack.org/common/scrn3b.gif

Neat idea?

[distributed.karma]

What I fancy is a realtime NetHack with a 3D Quake-style interface to the game. Of course you will lose a lot when going realtime, but then you could add things like multiple players over the net. In fact I have the feeling something like this has already been done. Anyone have pointers?

Re:Neat idea?

[RFC959]

Realtime and/or multiplayer NH is a topic that comes up over and over again, but no one's ever found a very good way to make it work. A very large part of what gives NH its feel is that it is a turn-based game. If you want to sit and ponder your next move for ten minutes, you can do that. If you want to examine your inventory carefully while surrounded by angry orcs (to determine what item would best get you out of this fix, perhaps), you can do that. In a realtime game, you'd lose that ability, and it would be a very different game (and probably much worse, IMO).

Can you imagine using a scroll of genocide in a realtime fight? "Uh-oh, the orcs are hitting me! Quickly, I'll a)pply my bag (item T), take out the scroll (item h), r)ead it (it's item n now), answer 'orcs'..." You'd be dead; there's no way you could do it in realtime. The interface would have to change greatly, and again, it would be a very different game.

If, on the other hand, you make it multiplayer but keep it turn-based, what happens if Joe the Barbarian decides to take ten minutes examining his inventory? What if somebody has to be AFK to go to the bathroom? Everybody just has to wait? It would scale poorly and it would go extremely slowly. (By way of comparison, a chess game has maybe 70 moves by each player; a NH game might have 70,000, so anything that extends the length of a turn gets greatly multiplied.)

Falcon's Eye

[BigJimSlade]

Has anyone checked out Falcon's Eye? It's a frontend for NetHack that has 3D isometric graphics and background music, and it's available for Linux, DOS and Windows. It looks fabulous, and I think it's a great way to get new people interested in the game.

Re:Falcon's Eye

[Brian Feldman]

It's a lot more interesting than that; it runs on Unix, too.

Re:Falcon's Eye

[teamhasnoi]

I haven't been able to get it to work on Winblows XP or 98 (under Virtual PC) but I have been able to get it to work on 95 under Virtual PC on OS X. Geez.

Re:Falcon's Eye

[Junta]

What, graphics with netHack? Blashpemer! We get our ASCII and we like it that way. May an @ devour you for even suggesting anything but ASCII :)

Re:Falcon's Eye

[llamalicious]

Having the game core separate from the display layer KICKS ASS. (More accurately, smacking a display engine on top of the thing)

Anyone up for "skinning" NetHack?

Re:Falcon's Eye

[Bilestoad]

Adding graphics loses the point of the whole game. It's like when people started adding pictures to text adventures - they just didn't get it. As Infocom used to say, your imagination is the best graphics available.

Re:Falcon's Eye

[Jagasian]

Falcon's Eye works great on my Windows 98 SE box. There are a few other graphical front-ends for Nethack. It would be interesting to see a front-end for the front-ends. So that I could select which interface I wanted on the fly. For some maps, the traditional ASCII interface, for others the Qt interface, and maybe if I am feeling in the need of even more eye-candy than the Qt interface, I can select the Flacon's Eye interface.

Re:Falcon's Eye

[jackjumper]

But does Falcon's Eye work with the new version? Looks to me like the site hasn't been updated in a while...

Re:Falcon's Eye

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! We need skins of half-naked toddler looking japanime mode Nethack. Get to work, jewboy!

Re:Falcon's Eye

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooo! I wonder if this will compile on OS X as well....?

Re:Falcon's Eye

[CarlPatten]

Bah humbug. Nothing against ASCII itself, but I gave up on NetHack due to eyestrain. Then I found glhack on freshmeat.net which makes it much nicer to look it. Now I'm addicted again.

Hope it's updated to the new 3.4.0 soon.

Re:Falcon's Eye

[NonSequor]

I've become too accustomed to the graphical ports to go back to the TTY port. Every time I try to it always irritates the hell out of me that I have to press space when there is more than one message in a row.

Every port I've tried has some sort of problem. The Qt port has memory leaks (or something, it becomes overwhelmingly slow if I play for too long and I have to save and restore to fix things). In the Gnome port you have to hit enter after making any choice through a dialog. Falcon's Eye and Allegrohack don't let you see enough of the map at once. Lately I've been using the Gnome client. Maybe some time I should go on a crusade to rid it of all of its shortcomings.

Falcon's Eye

[Stavr0]

is the Win32 DirectX port of NetHACK with isometric graphics (a lot like Diablo) and sound effects: Falcon's Eye

Palm Port

[MungoBBQ]

There may not be a complete Palm Port yet, but for those interested, the project is well underway at http://nethack-palm.sourceforge.net/

Re:Palm Port

[dagnabit]

There's also an alternate version, iRogue, at
http://roguelike-palm.sourceforge.net/iRogue/.

Nethack challenged

[CrosseyedPainless]

I have a real disability when it comes to Nethack: I *hate* resuming a saved game. If I can't play it in one sitting, I lose interest. Since hack changed to nethack, this has been a problem for me. Hell, I only ascended *once* on the last release.

Oh well, building a good character is the most fun part of the game for me, anyway. I guess I'll let the new release suck up the precious fragments of my spare time, once again....

Re:Nethack challenged

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but you say you have ascended. There are no higher rungs on the ladder of life. You should be able to die happy now.

Re:Stuff that matters?

[Happosai]

News for nerds.

Fuqwyt

[Happosai]

Has been done. Demise.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe this one has been in developement forever and started out as a roguelike game and they added a simple 3d engine to it, then added multiplayer, then added multiple party members (optional) and I havent played it in like.. 5 years.. But they still keep making it. This might be what you're looking for though.

Click Me

Re:Has been done. Demise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, you dream much. There is no multiplayer mode to NetHack and there likely never will be. Ditto the 3d engine, and we're glad of it! The soul of NetHack rests very much in turn-based gaming and strategy contemplation... more info about this is on the dev site, www.nethack.org.

Re:Has been done. Demise.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a very simple reason why Nethack will never be multiplayer, and that is because it would be incredibly difficult to add multiplayer capability and still allow the players to take as long as they want to think about each move without it being incredibly annoying.

The hard way...

[Big Sean O]

You could get Nethack running by installing XDarwin (thereby getting an X Windows Server on yer machine) and then using fink to install Nethack. It's a long download (mainly because you have to download all the dependencies), but all the compiling is done for you.

It's overkill to install XDarwin just for Nethack, but if you have any interest in theGimp or Civilization then it's purdy durned cool.

Then there is the warm feeling of being a Linux Weenie everytime you start up an X Windows session: priceless.

-----

Get the source here

[millette]

Get the source from here if the original link is too slow:
http://mirrors.waglo.com/slashdotted/nethack-340.t ar.bz2

... aslo try Angband

[*band]

If you like(ed) NetHack - try Angband or one of its variants. After playing NetHack for some time I discovered Angband. It's the same - but differnet... :)

Check out Angband and it's variants here: http://thangorodrim.angband.org/

Re:... aslo try Angband

[Stonehand]

Similar. The end-game is less purely masochistic (the long no-level-teleport walk up, plus the "let's walk around and try all the traps to find which one is the teleporter" Elemental Planes of Nethack are best suited for people with a high tolerance for drudgery), but Angband stat-gain can be pretty tedious, as can be wandering around level 99 stockpiling Healing, *Healing*, Restore Mana, Mass Genocide and other consumables.

Re:... aslo try Angband

[jbellis]

angband is much more one-dimensional than nethack. all you do is hack and slash. people comparing diablo to nethack are wrong; it really has much more in common with angband.

nethack is much more of an immersible universe where you can fill pits with boulders, mix potions, etc.

don't get me wrong; angband is fun and I played it (and its precursor, moria) for years, but it's just not as interesting a game to my mind.

Re:... aslo try Angband

[Anonymous Coward]

unreal world is a fun rogue-like game.

theres no big foozle to kill or anything, its a game of survival, you & your wits vs the world. the goal is to stay alive, & thats harder than youd think come winter

Finally!!! A proper windows version!!!-flame away

[gerald626]

Yes, I use Windows. I have to because of work.

What I really, REALLY like in this release of the windows port is the following.

1. It no longer takes 100% of my cpu!!!! I can play longer on my laptop now!!! YIPPIE!!!!

2. It finally has some half-decent graphics, (for nethack) and I can easily switch between text-graphics and the new graphics.

3. It still has the great playability of Nethack!!! I love it!!

A lot of you were asking why Nethack is so playable and enjoyable. Here's my theory for anybody who wants to read it.

Nethack and all of the other text-based games (Infocom, ZZT, etc...) force the user to READ. By reading what's going on, it allows the brain to use it's imagination. Your imagination (well, mine at least) is far more interesting than anything Blizzard or Hollywood could come up with. The images in my head really out-beat anything else.

That's why Nethack (and other similar games) have so many return players.

The second reason, is that Nethack doesn't have a single goal. If you want to get the amulet of Yendor, go ahead! If you just want to see how far your character develops, you can do that too! It's a really flexible game.

Just my 2c worth.

Gerald.

Bones

[cswiii]

From the site:
(If you have old record and logfile entries from a previous NetHack version, you might want to save copies before they get overwritten by the new empty files; old saved games and bones files won't work with 3.4.0.)

Alas! Without my bones files, how will I ever remember to avoid taking on a floating eye in melee? Or grabbing that cockatrice corpse? Or stuffing myself silly with spinach?

Re:Bones

[gowen]

Without my bones files, how will I ever remember to avoid taking on a floating eye in melee? Or grabbing that cockatrice corpse?

Thats not what bones files are for. Thats record files. Bones files are saved levels on which you can find the corpses of previous characters, kill their ghost and loot them of their (now cursed) booty.

Re:Bones

[cswiii]

Yes. Corpses of previous characters.... corpses, because I presumably ran in a floating eye. Or stumbled blindly into a cockatrice corpse. Or tried to suck down a can of spinach into my already satiated body.

Don't forget...

[pongo000]

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

One of the greatest games

[Blue23]

A few months back I listed by top three games of all time in regards to how much time I spent on them. (No indication if they were the "best" games I played, just the ones with the most hours logged.

#3 was the Diablo series and expansion.

#2 was the Civ series. Each one grabs me and doesn't let go. I've played for 24 hour blocks of time.

#1 was Nethack. It's so incredible, so in depth. And so easy to die and have to start again.

If you haven't tried this yet, and you have enough imagination not to need fancy graphics, give this a try. Then go read some strategies on the web, get completely overwhelmed by possibilities, and try again. 8) "Hmm, if I engrave Elbereth on the floor with this unidentified wand, what will that do..."

=Blue(23) a/k/a iamBLUEhearmeroar

Re:One of the greatest games

[Elf-friend]

No indication if they were the "best" games I played, just the ones with the most hours logged.

Probably best that way, so as to avoid warfare. I think I will follow your lead.

#3 was the Diablo series and expansion.

Same here, probably, though SimCity might be close. Dunno, it was around first, but I haven't played it much since I got Diablo. If only Winblows were more stable and I had a faster machine (I have a P-MMX 233 w/ 64MB of RAM), this would be higher.

#2 was the Civ series. Each one grabs me and doesn't let go. I've played for 24 hour blocks of time.

Yup, same again. Even if I haven't gotten anything newer than II yet. Same problem as Diablo, though, it forces me to boot to Win. I haven't done 24 hours, but have done 8 straight, and maybe more. I remember at least one near all-nighter session (I think I quit at 6 a.m.), but the same tends to happen with:

#1 was Nethack. It's so incredible, so in depth. And so easy to die and have to start again.

Yeah, I have to admit to playing Nethack for hours on end, too. It was Linux that got me adicted :-). Never even HEARD of it before I got that. I stumbled over it looking for games to play while separated from Diablo I and II, Civ II, SimCity 3000 (yes, I know, Loki had it, and I should have bought it), etc.

Some will complain about the lack of real-time and of graphics, but real-time isn't a be-all-end-all, and graphics are less important than gameplay. Nethack certainly has gameplay; I love the re-playability. Then again, I grew up playing Zork (though in the late '80's/early '90's, not the '70's), so I understand (and even like) games which devote insane amounts of time to inside-jokes and tributes to predecessors. Those who post-date Zork and it's ilk may not be so inclined, but they are missing out.

Nethack isn't Diablo II with expansion, or anything like it; but it can be a wildly fun (if frustrating) game to play. When I finally ascend, it will be a moment far greater even than beating Diablo II (though I haven't done that just yet either), because it is so hard to do.

Rogue-like games

[nrc]

I still prefer the simple elegance of the original Rogue. I'm afraid the original is pretty much extinct due to copyright issues, but there are some very close clones here.

Re:Rogue-like games

[teamhasnoi]

What about LARN? I played that on my first XT PC. Here's the cheat code if I recall: _PVNERTx

I know its those characters, I'm not sure about case.

I used to play Moria on my Apple 2GS, too - it would crash all the time :(

If there was a Nethack/Autoduel I would probably lose my job.

Re:Rogue-like games

[nvainio]

Nobody has mentioned Adom! In Adom you can also wander above the ground, in cities and woods. (Oh well, it's closed source though free (beer).)

Really, I haven't played Nethack since I found Adom and Angband. Angband is themed much better than others and it's easier to get into a fantasy mood in Angband than in others. (Think of Nethack: dragons, tourists and Keystone cops in the same game? Come on.)

By the way, has anybody yet found a good sci-fi roguelike? I've seen some in development but none of them were playable yet.

Re:Rogue-like games

[Anonymous Coward]

mission thunderbolt=sci fi roguelike. Played it on a mac in early 90s. not as much depth as nethack but it was still really fun.

red & green

[hawk]

OK, how do I get the color turned back on? I know I had it ages ago, but I just can't find the options under FreeBSD to do this.

I recall that I used to play on consoles rather than in an xterm under debian . . .

hawk

p.s. The foreground color should be set to green, and bg to black--this shows that you have the status to get a green-screen vt100 . . .

:)

Re:red & green

[dasunt]

Under linux:

/home/dasunt/.nethackrc includes the following lines:

OPTIONS=DECgraphics,color

Then I always do an 'export TERM=xterm-color' (even on the command prompt), and then run nethack. That way, I get colors and the pretty walls (like in the windows version by default).

Re:red & green

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm not on a freebsd station right now but here's what to do :
in the xterm : export TERM=linux
startup nethack
press O for options
press d for color (atleast i think it was d but it has a description next to it)
(you can also enable the keypad if you want)

Re:red & green

[hawk]

>in the xterm : export TERM=linux

ah-hah! this did it. The above (xterm-color) isn't sufficient under freebsd . . .

now If only I can find a way to do this on the console instead of X (you just can't make an xwindow full screen :()

thanks

hawk

Re:red & green

[Chris Burke]

TERM=ANSI seems to work as well, btw. That's what I use.

Re:red & green

[hawk]

ahah. that did it on the console.

Now I just need to figure out setting text color (to green, of course) and mapping the evil capslock key to ocntrol in the console (i fixed it under X years ago . . .)

hawk

Re:red & green

[balloonpup]

Well, if you install 'screen' and run it at the prompt, it will give you colour by default (IIRC).

kay...

[einer]

I'm an idiot... I have to be... I can't get this damn game to run... I've tried the binaries... seg fault... I've tried building from source... nothing... I want to be mindlessly addicted to a text based game too!!! Anyone else having problems getting this game to run? Well, if you are, here's a thread you can bitch in. Any insight or help would also be appreciated... ;)

Re:kay...

[gregor]

Just a guess, but are you running out of the correct directory? I *think* /usr/games/lib/nethack is the usual install directory, and if you're not there then change the nethack.rc file to say so.

I had a similar problem running out of a winzip window on a pc, then I realized my stupid mistake. :-)

Re:kay...

[einer]

Thanks for trying to help, but I think that I may have other issues... I'm getting a seg fault preceded by other ugliness...

[andrew@tybalt nethackdir]$ ./nethack
./nethack: Symbol `__vt_11QPushButton.12QPaintDevice' has different size in shared object, consider re-linking
./nethack: Symbol `__vt_6QFrame' has different size in shared object, consider re-linking
./nethack: Symbol `__vt_11QPushButton' has different size in shared object, consider re-linking
./nethack: Symbol `__vt_6QFrame.12QPaintDevice' has different size in shared object, consider re-linking
./nethack: Symbol `__vt_6QEvent' has different size in shared object, consider re-linking
Segmentation fault

Re:kay...

[gregor]

Let me have one more shot- it seems like you're configured to a GUI interface (and judging by your first posting, it seems that's not what you're trying to do. ASCII or death for me too! :-)

Have you tried changing off IBM_Graphics in your defaults file? Or any other references to other settings?

And, of course, there's always the free nethack servers floating around on the net. If you can't get a local install working, then you can always create an account at http://nethack.devnull.net, or any other free site. This gives you the added benefit of being able to use other players' bones files, which can make the game much more interesting. Getting an ascension feels that much better too- the whole world can be a witness.

THat's why . . .

[hawk]

you have to be careful about your day job.

be a student or a professor. That way, you start right after class on tuesday, and you have until thursday morning if you arranged your schedule properly!

:)

hawk, who has never stayed up past 11p.m. with a game. OK, would you believe not past midnight? 2am? . . .

but what about . . .

[hawk]

> and the vegetarianism is a nice twist.

but how about a belligerent carnivore--now there's a twist. Penalized for eating anything *but* a vegetarian . . .

hawk, a belligerent carnivore and also a belligerent evangelical pacifist

Re:but what about . . .

[gowen]

but how about a belligerent carnivore--now there's a twist. Penalized for eating anything *but* a vegetarian . . .

Well slashem has the vampire character race, that can't eat any normal food, but only suck the blood from very fresh corpses (and IIRC living baddies).

BBS-style games still live and grow on the net...

[Sun Tzu]

Starship Traders is normally thought of as a web mode game, but it has its history in Czarwars, a BBS door game. It still supports telnet on port 23 for the 'Continuum of Chaos' persistent-universe game at StarshipTraders.com.

Nethack is playable because...

[GodSpiral]

It is not designed such that the player is ensured to eventually win. Almost every commercial game uses the same psychological feedback formula of "optimal" reward that essentially makes every game blend into each other.

Although Diablo/Diablo2 might perfect that formula such that playing all the way through is very engaging, the replayability is low due to the fact that you know the game is designed for you to win.

Nethack is a universe that is vast enough that winning is exceptionally difficult, even if you read all the spoilers. Yet you still have the impression that it is easy throughout.

Maybe though if there is one hint to take to heart it is to learn how to use and make holy water.

Re:Nethack is playable because...

[TCaptain]

Nethack is a universe that is vast enough that winning is exceptionally difficult, even if you read all the spoilers. Yet you still have the impression that it is easy throughout.

That is the BEST description of Nethack's feel I've yet to read. Nethack is addictive because its so easy to actually PLAY while making it hard to win and also giving you amazing depth without having you read tons of manuals etc..

Heh, Nethack cost me a year of my life

[Baki]

In 1985 (while 'studying' physics) I spent a whole university year playing nethack in the computer rooms. I should hate this game, but I cannot help to still occasionally play a game and love it.

Even though after all that time I have not once played the game until completion :(

Am I the only one who doesn't see the appeal?

[drsquare]

I've played it before, but within 15 minutes I'd lost interest. 90% of the game consisted of walking around corridors trying to find secret doors, kicking walls and doors to try and get out. Hardly interesting stuff. When an enemy did come, all there was to do was walk into them a few times until they died. Add to the fact that whenever you walk over something it automatically picks it up, and you have a dull, frustrating game.

If you want an interesting, RPG style game with no fancy graphics, then play a MUD.

Re:Am I the only one who doesn't see the appeal?

[juuri]

It takes far longer to get into and appreciate the wonder that is nethack. You can turn off autopick up and the game becaomes incredibly more complex as you go. I finished nethack a few times, my shortest overall time was around 19 hours. The first time it took me about 45 hours of playtime.

How many other games can you do this?

Run from a pack of monsters you can't possible beat. So as you approach an open stretch of water you fire a wand of cold, or spell and freeze the top of the water. You skoot across the water (possibly slipping if wearing metal shoes) to the other side. Then you wait on the other side for the monster's to approach. After they are over the water, on the ice, you send them so fire. Okay boom it hits them. Maybe it hurts them a lot... but that doesn't matter because the fire melts the ice and if they can't swim then you can watch 'em drown. This is just one of dozens of cool things you can do in nethack.

My favourite nethack memory was wearing a ring of conflict and watching the four horseman of the apocolypse kill each other over and over again as I sacrificed the Amulet on the wrong alter and laughed as my god tried in vain to kill me for this blasphemy.

Nethack R00lz!@#!E :)

Re:Am I the only one who doesn't see the appeal?

[NonSequor]

That reminds me of my favorite way to get rid of trolls as a monk. For those who don't know, trolls come back from the dead, over and over and over. Most of the time you keep them from reviving by eating their corpses. But monks aren't supposed to eat meat. The solution is to chuck them into a pool of water. When they revive they drown. The only problem is that pools of water aren't that common and this doesn't work on water trolls. I haven't tried it on Slashdot trolls, but I imagine it should work.

Re:Am I the only one who doesn't see the appeal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Other ways to get rid of trolls.

Sacrifice them

Use a Tinning Kit and make cans of troll meat

Put them in boxes, bags.

Elliott

(+1, Offtopic)

[Chris Burke]

Not the funniest thing I've read, but funny enough for 9am. :)

This whole (-1, Offtopic) thing is a bunch of bullshit. Yes, it may be offtopic, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't be able to see it! A lot of times, the offtopic stuff is better than the topic at hand. But not this time... we're talking about nethack!

Re:(+1, Offtopic)

[nvainio]

Yes, it may be offtopic, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't be able to see it!

People are able to see it even if it is at -1. Just change your settings.

Re:(+1, Offtopic)

[Chris Burke]

I browse at -1 myself, but the majority (so Taco says) aren't logged in at all, and thus have the default set to 0.

And I was just acknowledging the fact that the fact that the fundamental purpose of moderation is to keep you from having to see stuff that gets modded down.

I just don't get this game.

[Remus Shepherd]

I still just don't get the appeal of this game. I think I must suck at it.

They say the game has replayability. But every game I've played is the same -- my dog dies around level 3, and I die around level 6, usually to a gnome in the caverns with the 'natural' design. By that time I've found one or two magic items which I usually cannot use.

They say you can do lots of things in this game; use cockatrices as weapons to stone monsters, etc. But every weird trick I've tried hasn't worked. I've never even seen a cockatrice (It would probably kill me quickly, anyway.) As far as I can tell, there's nothing to do in this game except bash monsters, collect treasure, and get killed. I can't even figure out how to cast spells.

I'm sure it's an okay game once you figure out the obtuse interface. But I just don't understand why people keep claiming it has such appeal.

Re:I just don't get this game.

[scrytch]

You're not required to like the game. Some people who are actually good at it do. Some people like me who still suck at it like it. Move on, it does take all kinds.

You do have to try all kinds of different things. If you keep playing the game the exact same way, you will always die the exact same way.

I don't think anyone finishes the game with the pet they started with. Let it go, move on, feel sad for a moment, then wish for a blessed figurine of an archon, or polymorph your pet with the first polymorph wand you find.

"Mister Asindihopo? Say hi to muffin"
"RAARRRR!!!" *MUNCH*
"BAD MUFFIN! Oh well, free loot."

I do find myself wanting to hack on the game, but find there's way too much that's hardwired. Want to add extra states besides confused and hallucinating for messages to change, but found that those flags are basically hardwired, the message structures aren't really extensible. Stuff like that. Maybe someone could port nethack to the zangband engine, which is supposedly scriptable in python.

DAMMIT!

[PlaysWithMatches]

I'm just 4 weeks from the end of the semester, with a high A average, and here you bastards go releasing another version of NetHack... *sigh* Better kiss my GPA goodbye. :)

I feel your pain...

[Hrothgar The Great]

But you just haven't given it sufficient chance. It only seems clunky at first because people are not used to the game's key ideas:

A. You don't need flashy graphics
B. You only have one life

Perhaps you are frustrated by other things as well, but these two things seem to turn off the most people, as far as I can see. People who get hung up on the game's difficulty and/or interface often fail to notice the hundreds of things that can actually happen in the game that make you stop and say "I can't believe they thought of that!" My wife was playing one time; she read a scroll of Punishment and was outfitted with a ball and chain. Later, she fell in a pit trap, and while attempting to climb out, the ball rolled in and hit her character in the head, ending the game. I find that completely funny and cool. Or the fact that you can get rings from kitchen sinks. Makes sense, right? Discovery is everything in Nethack...

Re:I feel your pain...

[Hairy Dude]

You only have one life

You've obviously not seen this then:

You destroy the Uruk-hai! But wait...--More--
The Uruk-hai's medallion begins to glow!--More--
The Uruk-hai looks much better!--More--
The medallion crumbles to dust!

The "standard" method of identifying the amulet of life saving.

Elite?

[ackthpt]

When I played Elite on my C64 I thought it was ok, but rather one dimensional and hardly much of an RPG, unless being a rocket jock catches your fancy...

Or are you refering to some other game called Elite?

It sure does beat the living (and undead) heck out of any Ultimas I've played.

Re:What is NetHack

[ackthpt]

My least favorite is the xan

x

Followed by the cockatrice

c

Last time I looked, there was a really nice explanation of what a xan was, quoted from some mythology of literature. Knowing a bit of monster lore can help in dealing the the cockatrice, too. The depth of monsters was always intriguing, including their many uses after death.

No way

[Jagasian]

You don't get it, if you think that changing the interface to Nethack lessens the game. Nethack is about gameplay, graphics aren't a consideration. However, if you put icing on the cake, it doesn't make it less tasty.

Re:No way

[Bilestoad]

You've obviously never had wedding cake with almond icing :-(

To each their own

[ackthpt]

As another poster noted, getting into the game, the interface is insignificant. It could have 1280/1024 3D 24bit graphics, 5.1 sound and a joystick interface, but it wouldn't be the same. Quite possibly the inflexibilities of such dolling up the interface would interfer with gameplay. I'm perfectly happy with ascii, or even the colored ascii I played several years back.

I just took a look at the Win version with tiles and, though it looks very nice, I'm immediately distracted by trying to relearn things. So if new players use graphics and old players use ASCII, they'll hardly be able to speak the same language.

"If you're lucky you'll eventually find a shop full of ?"

Ancient ASCII games - Hunt?

[jdaily]

On the subject of ASCII games, does anyone still play the great multi-player shoot-'em-up game, hunt?

Stab 'em or nuke 'em; all it takes is a bit more ammo.

Unfortunately, even google can't get around the fact that "hunt" is a rather generic word, so I've been unable to track down any active servers. I have found lots of references to hunt the wumpus.

Re:Ancient ASCII games - Hunt?

[Anonymous Coward]

The way ever to learn the VI keys. hehe.

I've beat Nethack... once upon a time.

[Yekrats]

You know you're getting a bit long in the tooth when you beat Nethack on mainframe dummy terminals in the computer lab during the 80s. I guess I'm one of those longtooths. I think it was version 1.[3?] that I beat. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to beat it since.

Call me a whiner, but I think the damn game is too hard to win. ("Whiner!") Even with careful resource management, knowing all of the tricks, pouring over all of the spoilers, I still can't seem to beat the stupid thing again. Lord knows I've tried.

Too often Nethack will lead you too a impossible situation. You poke your head around a corner and get blasted by a Black Dragon or a major bad-ass demon without recourse. Maybe fairness is overrated in games, but instant death after hours of work isn't fun. Winning Nethack takes truly a herculean effort.

So that's why I don't play it any more. I can't imagine winning without cheating. I sure as heck won't download this version. Well, maybe I'll download it just to look at it, but I'll delete it right after. Honest! :-)

Re:I've beat Nethack... once upon a time.

[kevinl]

I already downloaded it, but probably won't play it. (sure...) I was astounded that the server was not slashdotted. I guess there are not as many nostalgic slashdotters as I thought.

I agree that the game is awfully hard now. I find it harder and harder to invest the time towards winning. I guess I need more sleep now than I used to.

It takes certain genius to devise a game this fun that can be played on a simple terminal. I probably spent most of my nethacking hours playing on a VT100 (with a gold colored GOLD key even) over a 1200 baud dial-up. Ok, maybe it was 2400 baud. I still have the VT100 if anyone wants it...

Re:I've beat Nethack... once upon a time.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've beaten the game 11 times in 7 years of playing. It's hard, but it's
not impossible. You _do_ have to think about what you're doing.

Re:I've beat Nethack... once upon a time.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've beaten Nethack 11 times in the last 7 *months* -- but I could not have done it once without the spoilers. Even with the spoilers you have to be really lucky and you have to think carefully, or you'll be just another bones pile.

Re:I've beat Nethack... once upon a time.

[Anonymous Coward]

By the time you get to levels with Black Dragons you should have telepathy. And a towel.

You had a towel, right? ;)

There is a better roguelike

[Anonymous Coward]

nethack is ok... but ADOM rules! http://www.adom.de check it out it is just like nethack only it is like 293824y7 times as deep

The big deal

[eru]

Things I like about Nethack:

- It's complex. there are myriad commands (The DevTeam thought of everything), more weapon, item and monster types than most CRPGs, way more types of player-item interaction than any other non-roguelike CRPGs, and the random number generator keeps each game different and interesting. The number of unique predicaments you can find yourself is astoundingly high.

- It's turn-based. You are (quite often) forced to think before you act.

- It doesn't aspire to be what it can't. It is purely hack-and-slash dungeon crawling, without the pretense of linear dialogue trees and "role-playing" (which has yet to be achieved in a CRPG, according to me and Steve Jackson).

- The game is small, and will fit on a 1.44M disk. Playing Nethack on my Psion handheld while on the BART is an unparalleled joy.

- It's challenging. No coddling in Nethack. Death is permanent - unless you cheat. You have one save-game per character, and when you save, you exit the game.

- There's always something to come back to. Even if you manage to ascend with every character class, there are still lots of challenges - can you ascend without genociding any races? Can you win as an atheist, without the help of the gods? Can you win adhering to the strictest of monk conduct rules? Can you win as a pacifist? Et cetera.

- It's open-source, and there are versions for a *lot* of OSes. It also has the most active user/dev community of all the roguelikes.

- Lots of catering to geekdom, ostensibly due to its having been designed by geeks :) Want to play a clueless Tourist (perhaps named Twoflower), stumbling through the dungeon with nothing but a credit card and an annoying camera? Or how about dungeon-hacking with a fightin' archaeologist (perhaps named after the dog)? Stop a few monsters dead in their tracks by scribbling "Elbereth" in the dust...

Re:The big deal

[Boronx]

- It's challenging. No coddling in Nethack. Death is permanent - unless you cheat. You have one save-game per character, and when you save, you exit the game.

This is the *best* part of nethack, and the reason I keep going back. There is real tension in the game.

Re:The big deal

[professortomoe]

Wow, after reading your points and others, it really makes me wanna go back and give it another shot. Thanks.

Re:The big deal

[NonSequor]

Tension? That's a bit of an understatement. It's brought me to tears on more than one occasion. Before anyone makes fun of me, I would like to see you get all the way to the bottom level as a vegetarian monk only to have your quest artifact stolen (thus removing my only source of magic resistance) and your robe vaporized (thus preventing you from successfully casting any spell which might help to improve your situation) and NOT cry. I've also died on the astral plane while holding a couple of amulets of life saving (I forgot to take off the amulet of magical breathing after the plane of water). This game isn't just tough; it will break you. You die hundreds of times and then you finally get a character that you think can make it, but all of a sudden, at the time calculated by the game to be most devestating to you, your character meets up with something that you're not quite prepared for, or that you wouldn't expect to give you any trouble and your character is dead.

Ok, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

...does it work with aalib?

ehm....

[alapalaya]

the greatest game ever created
...do you mean the greatest videogame, I hope... (you know... I can think to better games to play :) ).

Re:What is NetHack

[armb]

> Followed by the cockatrice
>
> c

I used to know someone who claimed that playign Nethack improved his vi-movement skills a lot. Except that he had a nervous twitch whenever the cursor got close to a "c".

> The depth of monsters was always intriguing, including their many uses after death.

A dead cockatrice is effective in special cases, but it certainly used to be too easy to starve if you used it regularly. I gather the game has changed hugely since played it though, and some characters are encouraged to be vegetarian, so maybe that's not so much of a problem now. I assume you still have to be careful about tripping on stairs though.

Every time I see a new Nethack release I'm tempted to play again, but I remember how much time I - well, wasted might not be exactly the right word,
but I think it's the one my manager used.
These days I have a computer or two at home, but I also have a wife and children.

you're being chased by food?

[jbellis]

man, I can't even imagine how you ticked off the gods THAT much :)

Interface issues Re:Falcon's Eye

[jes5199]

Falcon's eye has some problems... there are some concepts that work fine with keyboard/ascii that just dont translate to a mouse driven game. For example; casting spells takes a directional parameter; instread of just clicking in the general direction you want to shoot, you have to click the arrow for that direction that pops up in a dialog box.

Worse, the keyboard doesnt behave like ASCII or tile nethack, which is offencive to habitual players.

Re:Interface issues Re:Falcon's Eye

[Anonymous Coward]

Why on earth are you clicking in Falconseye for directions? The num pad keys work much better. I play Falconseye (and regular nethack) using only the keyboard, the mouse is just a distraction, so don't use it.

Re:Interface issues Re:Falcon's Eye

[hazyshadeofwinter]

> Worse, the keyboard doesnt behave like ASCII or tile nethack, which is offencive to habitual players. IIRC, the keyboard does behave the same as far as keybindings go, or at least it's configurable to do so. The biggest gripe I've got with Falcon's Eye's keyboard support is it doesn't always buffer keys, so if you're used to wacking keys quicker'n the interface can respond, it's annoying. At least you probably die less floating-eye related deaths.

Problem is, I haven't been able to compile NH with both Falcon's Eye *and* TTY graphics options...
br

FreeBSD users will get updated port in a few days

[Anonymous Coward]

Check it here

Oh No!

[farrellj]

There goes another few thousand hours of my life!

ttyl,
Farrell

What???

[PhotoGuy]

What, no sed version available???

Re:What???

[nvainio]

What, no sed version available???

Just copy-paste the screen to a text file and start sed'ing.

To move left:
$ sed s/\.@/@\./ nethack.txt

To move right:
$ sed s/@\./.@/ nethack.txt

To get yourself in trouble:
$ sed s/\.\.\.\.@/\.\.\.D@/ nethack.txt

Wizard mode included.

Adom

[Anonymous Coward]

NetHack is sure a nice game, but I prefer ADOM. The two games are very similar, but I love all the little things that make Adom different :)

FPS Nethack, turn based, single player

[sheilagh]

Ok, I totally love Nethack and can't be won over to Emacs due to being trained by Nethack in the smooth moves of VI. (There have been attempts to convert me..)

But! I would still enjoy seeing a turn based, first person, single player interface for Nethack. A different sense of discovery would be offered to the player, and the Myst-like quality would add interesting variety. Same gameplay, same strategy opportunities, but show me the little dog that I'm about to kick.

The saddest part is that it took me years to figure out that it was "Net-Hack". I was so into Elvish funky words that I pronounced it to myself as "Neh-Thack". Ah, the pitfalls of being turned loose on an Xterm with no real mentor to tutor me in the proper way to speak about the game...

blarg....

[Raxxon]

It seems that the Winbloze builds have reached the infamous /. effect... they're comming up 403 now...

Poor provider attempting to save their bandwidth from the ravenous NetHack hordes that are suck in corp America with no way to play it on a proper system till they get home and compile it... ;)

A Nethack Veteran Reminisces

[Wise Dragon]

I'll never forget when Harmony-W encountered an incubus on the 1st level and died of exhaustion.

I'll never forget the time I raised Sam-S 15 levels by succubus dancing.

Or filling a room with nymphs with a cursed bell (3.1.3), polypiling their mirrors into magic markers, and writing scrolls.

All told, I've ascended 8 times, including a tourist and a knight. I think the knight is my favorite character class because it can jump in an L shape!

Sid-W ascended to demi-godhood

Re:Finally!!! A proper windows version!!!-flame aw

[rsborg]

The images in my head really out-beat anything else.

So you could say that you're dynamically loading the gerald626 graphics/media library when playing nethack. Good analogy, I like that :-)

Bones aren't portable

[WWWWolf]

The save game files and bones files are not portable! As far as I know, they never have been.

Actually, I think the bones files have always been build-dependent; If you recompile same version of the game for same architecture it will refuse to load the game. (I think it depends on build options...)

Yeah, I particularly miss that bones file of mine from 3.2 in which I had tons of artifacts and stuff from two characters in the bottom of the Gnomish Mines... Due to Technological Progress it's gone forever. =(

NetBSD users have updated package now

[Dahan]

Get it from CVS.

BTW, ever notice how if you have NETHACKOPTIONS set in your environment, screen's messages are all Nethack-like? Stuff like "You start writing on your scroll of logging named 'screenlog.0'" :)

My favorite .sig of all time

[eaolson]

Used by Dave Meringer, then of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory:

Now I am become NetHack, the destroyer of graduate students.

My favourite NetHack message

[wjr]

"The bite-covered troll rises from the dead."

Trolls regenerate, even after you kill them. You can kill a troll, turn away, and it will come back to life ans start beating on you. You have to destroy the body completely. There are a number of ways to do this (of course) but the simplest is to eat it. Eating it takes time, and sometimes the troll regenerates first...

Re:My favourite NetHack message

[grytpype]

My favorite dirty NetHack message:

"The nymph is covered with your goo!"

To get this you have to polymorph yourself in to an ochre jelly and attack a nymph.

One megabyte

[nvainio]

And at a size of 1.1 MB?!?!?! How am I supposed to download that on my dialup connection?

Shortly after I got my first modem (2400 bps), I found Nethack in a BBS. I was enthused about it, because I had read about it in a magazine. So after some thinking and planning, I decided to use one hour to download it. The file was 1 MB.

Those were the days (and you had to pay the phone company for each minute spent online).

OS X QT port?

[Watts Martin]

Okay, are there any binaries for Mac OS X? Yes, I'm a wimp, but I don't want to have to go through all the "guess the #define" config files and install a developer evaluation version of QT/Mac just to get NetHack running. The QT runtime is royalty-free, right?

Re:OS X QT port?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to Versiontracker, Nethack is out for OS X.

Re:OS X QT port?

[Warwick Allison]

Sorry, my fault - I didn't get the package available in time. Check back at www.nethack.org RSN.

--
Warwick

Yeah, a great game, but when will we see a game...

[DrunkenPenguin]

with true human emotions envolved? Just think about these lyrics (taken from a song called "Sugared" by a Finnish band called The Crash: "Jeans, I love you, you keep me warm. Love you give me content and form. Oh, you feed me and keep me strong, strong. And I'll be allright, and I don't mind being sugared. 'Cos oh, without my love, I'd be incomplete. And without my love I'd be all empty. So, without my love, I would not be me." . I would very much like to see a game which would touch me emotionaly.

pocketPC version?

[tcc]

is there a PocketPC version? I'm reading all your reviews and personnal experiences here and I'd feel like giving it a try, right now I am always playing MilleCE or Card games on my pocket pc before going to sleep, I'd like something different and more "strategic", I'm sure there's a lot of PocketPC users here that would just love that too.

Re:pocketPC version?

[Arkem Rainbreeze]

http://shurik.11net.com/nethack/nethack.html

WinHack 3.3.1 for PocketPC and Windows, it has a tile interface and the traditional ascii. It is much better when played in conjunction with a Targus keyboard IMHO.

Unfortunatly a PDA screen isn't ideal for nethack but its still the same old addictive nethack.

I tried!

[eaddict]

I already downloaded it, but probably won't play it. (sure...) I was astounded that the server was not slashdotted. I guess there are not as many nostalgic slashdotters as I thought.

Honest I did try my best to get a copy! Except the site is blocked by my work so I have to wait till I get home.

nettrek holds the same allure for me

[Anonymous Coward]

man do i love nettrek.. same deal in that the graphics come later..the real treat is finding how deep the game actually goes.. teamwork, decision making, strategies... any game that requires the entire keyboard to be used is okay by me!! hah

It's games like Nethack...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that propagate violence. Well do I remember getting dragged to the principal's office for ripping the capital letter "I" off the wall in Mrs. Smith's classroom and repeatedly stabbing it with a Pencil (+2, +2).

DUNGEON HACK?

[gonzocanuck2]

Does anyone remember this game? I am happily playing it on my PC after so many years...I really enjoy it :-) Pixelated graphics can still compete for my attention :-)

Best,
Christine

nethack bot

[ssoringg]

Is there any nethack bot, similar to the angband one?

Ask for help then!

[gregor]

If you're having problems advancing, then don't try to tough it out alone- it's okay to ask for help. There are a host of people in the rec.games.roguelike.nethack (r.g.r.h) newsgroup who would love to help you!

I dare to call myself an experienced player, and honestly, many of my characters don't survive much longer than yours do. I have a piece of advice if you like: don't go into the Gnomish Mines so quickly! Wait till your level seven or eight, and even then, don't necessarily press your luck and visit any deeper than Minetown until your character has the equipment to do so.

The more you play, the more you'll gradually learn and you'll really start to appreciate the depth of nethack. I certainly haven't mastered everything there is to know, and I've been going on nethack binges for over four years now.

Happy hacking!

Let's not forget about Empire

[Anonymous Coward]

Empire, www.empire.cx, rec.games.empire, has been around forever.

It is great multiplayer game focusing on strategy and not appearance. It is said that it's easier to develop a program that will be the best chess player in the world (it's been done actually) than to create a bot that will win in Empire.

The depth of the game and military genius of the famous players are amazing. Modert online RTS's are way more primitive.

Some NetHack History

[John Whitley]

Many have asked (and answered) "What is NetHack?" -- so I'll give the answer to a different question. "How" is NetHack? Here goes:

In The Beginning there was Rogue. That was okay, but the source wasn't generally available, and thus was born Hack. The old net.gods looked upon Hack and saw that it was Good, but that it lacked the Kitchen Sink, that the dog needed a bit of obedience school, and a bazillion other minor deficiencies. So the old net.gods hacked Hack and thus were created The Patches.

Needless to say The Patches were often incompatible. Including everything and the Kitchen Sink made the Compiler cranky. Thus a great army was raised and set to the task of unifying Hack and the Patches into a new work named NetHack. NetHack was so named for its birth out of networked collaboration (which was a very novel thing at the time).

Last but not least, let us not forget the Moria descendents in the Roguelike family of games: Angband and ZAngband. Have a look-see at http://thangorodrim.angband.org/ and http://www.zangband.org/

Oracle: "You owe the Oracle the first set of NetHack shar archives."

Neophyte: "What's a shar archive?"

Oracle: "ZOT!"

nice try. :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try at trolling. :)

Re: Here's the first thing I did when I downloaded

[deinol]

Thought I'd give the new riding features a try, here's what happened:

58 5 Elwin-Kni-Hum-Mal-Law died in The Dungeons of Doom on level 1. Slipped while mounting a saddled Red. - [16]

Guess I'll need to practice that a bit first.

Saving files is cheating... But I remember some...

[Mr. Flibble]

You can always enter explore mode as another poster pointed out....

However, many of the "Cheats" such as poly-piling are not really cheats. Those are legit techniques. I still miss the really old "cheats"... Er, I mean "features".

I remember years ago when it was still called "hack" and I used to play it on the new MS-Dos machines at my high school. (I had a TRS-80 at home, and had never heard of Unix at the time.)

My friends and I discovered lots of "Features" in the game. I must say I miss them. The following "Features" were fixed in nethack quite some time ago.

If you entered "beginner mode" (All items were identified on the first level) as a wizard, and then left the dungeon on your first move, then chose a wizard again and repeated...

Eventually a loop in the program would add more and more wands to your inventory. With every 3 or 4 "new" wizards the total number of wands would increase by one. If you kept this up, you would eventually start with 64 wands. Then, if you tried it a few more times you would end up with 65 wands.... (Can you say overflow? I knew you could. ;)

With 65 wands the program broke. One of two things would happen. A new item called a "Glorkum.S" would be created in your inventory, and if you wore it it had an AC of around -30 to -40.

The other thing that could happen is that one of the wands would become armour - and you could wear it. It was -10 AC plus for each charge the wand carried it added another minus to your AC. Since you had so many wands, one of them was a wand of polymorph (poly-pile time!) or of charging... And you could charge your newfound armor.

Wearing a fully charged wand you could only be hit by Killer Bees, Demons and the Wizard of Yendor.

Of course, the worst "cheat" was a wand of wishing. As soon as you aquired one of these, the game was over. You could not wish for a wand of wishing, nor could you wish for more wishes. However you could wish for a wand of cancellation, and then a wand of charging... (And as a third wish, usually a +3 crysknife or 3 tins of spinach). The next step was to charge the hell out of the wand of cancellation, because it was about to become your new best friend.

Once the wand of wishing was at zero charges, you just kept zapping it over and over. Finally you got the message: "you wrest one more spell from the worn out wand. What do you want to wish for?"

Now, you could not charge the wand of wishing, but you could cancel it, and bring it back to zero charges... and you could zap it again and again until it went to (-1), then you cancelled it....

A great deal has change with the game since then (sometime around 1985 IIRC). When I first started Ascending did not exist. You just got the amulet somewhere around level 30, exited the dungeon, and you won.

Nethack is still a wonderful game, and I started playing the new version again recently. I still polypile stuff, but none of my other favorite tricks work. As for the depth, it does not hurt to read the cheats and walkthroughs. I don't use the cheats, but I do use the walkthroughs because some of the designed levels lower down get really tricky, and I always forget the layout. I also forget things like blanking and writing spellbooks, or making multiple potions of bless out of potions of water.

So, have you "not" enjoyed it? I don't think so. I was poking at the game ever since I started playing it. I still poke at it. (And yes, every now and again I copy/save a very amusing character for posterity.)

The moral of the story about nethack is that it should be fun. You don't need to cheat, but if you are having fun, I am not one to judge. (But in the newer versions, Explore mode is a much better option IMO.)

Looks like a diablo rip off to me!

[Tom Davies]

And it isn't even real time!

Seriously, my favourite monsters were the Keystone Kops, and the 'wipe eyes' command you needed when fighting them...

Tom

CE/PocketPC version

[ManxStef]

OK so I'm posting this far to late to get it modded up, but anyway....

For those of us Pocket PC owners who've seen that it's been ported to Palm and are upset with the lack of a PocketPC version, well there is one!!:

Nethack 3.3.1 for Windows (98/NT/2000/CE)

This kicks ass! Handheld support for ARM, MIPS, and SH3, good job Alex!

Here's a mirror of the ARM version, but please don't hit either of 'em too hard, or the boys might get some bandwidth bills from their ISPs.

For more general PocketPC gaming news, check out Pocket Gamer

There's also an OpenGL version of Nethack which looks pretty damn cool (for the heretics who don't want to play in ASCII). Screenshots are here.

As for other cool retro stuff for the Pocket PC, check this out: FreeCiv port of Pocket PC, not yet released but coming soon hopefully. Here are a few screenshots to keep you going 'til they give us something to download (watch out for the popups though)

Happy gaming,

ManxStef

Re:What is NetHack

[rm-r]

but it certainly used to be too easy to starve if you used it regularly.

Just make sure you don't eat it yourself, as I did in my newbieness ;-)