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

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: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).

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?

[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.

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! --

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.

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.)

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: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

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!

Re:Great..

[Kev Vance]

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

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: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.)

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.

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