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

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

[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: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.

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!

[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

[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. "(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]

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

[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.

oh shit

[isli]

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

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 ?

[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!

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!

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)

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).

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

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!

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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

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

[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.

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: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).

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?

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! --

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)

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?

[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.)

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

[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

[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

[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.

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/

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: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.

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

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

[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

[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

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:I don't suppose

[tb3]

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

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 :(

(+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)

[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.

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 :)

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.

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.

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:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[kometes]

It teaches you vi!

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

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.

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

[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.

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.)

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.

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.

Oh No!

[farrellj]

There goes another few thousand hours of my life!

ttyl,
Farrell

What???

[PhotoGuy]

What, no sed version available???

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.

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.

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?

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: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.

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!

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!"

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.)

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.

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