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Nethack 3.4.1 Released

fatquack writes "Almost a day ago the DevTeam wrote: The NetHack DevTeam is pleased to announce the release of NetHack 3.4.1. 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. Get your copy at nethack.org now! (and it fixes the boulder/landmine bug)."

12 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. NetHack is cool because you can play it at work by Make · · Score: 5, Informative

    NetHack is cool because you can play it at work... nobody will notice you're playing a game, it just looks like ascii/binary garbage.. :)

  2. Wow, simultaneous worldwide release. by luggy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Infogrames (UK) could learn a thing or two from these people.

    They had a simultaneous world release for Master of Orion 3, er, except for the UK, which gets it 10 days later.

  3. To download or not to download... by Max+Romantschuk · · Score: 4, Informative

    I figured I won't donwload Nethack. Why? Because I know how damn good it is and I know I'll be lost forever if I start playing it for real.

    For the ones who don't know what Nethack is: The GameSpy Hall of Fame has a really good piece on Nethack.

    --
    .: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
  4. Re:Dying Bug by kubla2000 · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are many, many, many ways of cheating at nethack. But why in the arse would you do it? If you want to make it easy, go into explorer mode.

  5. Don't worry--There are GUIs by SexyTr0llGal · · Score: 5, Informative

    I first tried playing Nethack a few years ago, and I couldn't stand it. I'm a huge fan of RPGs and MUDs, but I just couldn't get the whole nethack thing. For those of you who don't like it either, try Falcon's Eye (or another Nethack GUI--there's many!)

  6. Re:Am I the only geek who HATES Nethack? by pnot · · Score: 3, Informative

    Starving? Pray to your diety! Makes perfect sense!

    Or eat some food. Or kill an animal, then eat it. Or drink some fruit juice. Larry Wall didn't invent TMTOWTDI, you know.

    As for praying to your deity... well, if you believe in an interventionist deity, and you're starving to death, what would *you* say the natural response is? I find it quite realistic to have prayer as a last resort when you are cursed, starving, or dying by violence, and the system of sacrifices to placate the gods certainly has parallels in a lot of belief systems.

    As to the realism of prayer actually *working*, I think maybe I'll leave that can of flames unopened for now :-).

  7. Re:Misleading title by WWWWolf · · Score: 5, Informative
    I know I might sound completely moronic when I say this, but I think the title 'NetHack' is almost, but not quite, entirely misleading to the actual theme of the game.

    Yeah. First there was 'Hack', which was a logical name for a game about hacking monsters to pieces. Then they added a prefix that had nothing to do with the theme of the game, but rather a technicality - hey, it's a game that's developed in the 'Net'. The result is logical in its own way, but completely misleading to those who don't know this.

    - WWWWolf, who should get back to the Usenet any week now

  8. For anyone who's interested ... by Ignorant+Aardvark · · Score: 5, Informative

    The boulder/landmine bug was a serious problem that was identified with release 3.4.0 a few days after it was released. Unfortunately, the release had already been shipped, and so everyone had to either patch it on their own (which involved a re-compile, something Windows users simply seem to lack the skill for) or wait for 3.4.1.

    In the game of Nethack there are many things ... these things happen to include boulders that block your path and can be pushed around, as well as rare traps called landmines. When a landmine explodes, it leaves a pit behind. Boulders fill up pit. When you push a boulder onto a landmine, it triggers a panic in the program, which dumps out on you without the possibility of even recovering your saved game.

    If anyone is interested in playing Nethack but you don't want to go through the trouble of setting it up for yourself, you can simply play on my public server. SSH or telnet into fyre.sytes.net with username "yasd", password "yasd". You'll be able to set up a username, preferences, and get started playing Nethack. Good luck with your 'hacking!

  9. Re:Dying Bug by peter · · Score: 4, Informative

    disassemble! Are you some kind of masochist? I just read the source when I'm playing. (I like thinking about programming and design as much as just playing, so I'm consciously doing this to have more fun, not just because it makes it easier.) When "You sense a faint wave of psychic energy", you can just grep -r for it in /usr/local/src/nethack/src, and find out that there's a mind flayer on the level.

    BTW, the nethack source is beautiful. Normally, C code that has to deal with lots of text looks really bad because it can't trust the string to fit in a buffer, etc. Nethack's UI paradigm seems to work really well with C, and the availalbe C library functions. I love some of the global variable names; There's code like
    if (u.have.amulet ) {
    Stuff if you have the Amulet of Yendor
    }

    The other great thing about reading the source code is that you can be entertained by the messages that would be printed if you did certain things, without actually having to spend a lot of time playing to do them. Some of them are corner cases that you might not think of doing. (Read the code for dealing with getting seduced by succubi/incubi. Best message printed by nethack: You sit on the sink. You feel very attracted to the incubus ... :)

    --
    #define X(x,y) x##y
    Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes , .ca)
  10. Re:Dying Bug by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nope. The angband home page is here:

    www.thangorodrim.net

    The page you linked to is that of the old maintainer, who hasn't coded on the game for a few years now.

  11. Re:Dying Bug by LastToKnow · · Score: 3, Informative

    I died a lot of starvation too, before I realized that you could save yourself by praying once you became Weak from hunger. My problem is that often I breeze right by Weak and into Fainting without realizing it until mosters jump halfway across the level and kill me instantly.

  12. Re:Dying Bug by Jimmy_B · · Score: 3, Informative
    The question is, does this release fix the "DAMN this game is IMPOSSIBLE!!" bug, or the "Holy crap, I keep dying for no reason." Bug?
    Actually, it does. NetHack 3.4.0 was much harder than 3.3.1 because it made an AI change which allows spellcasting monsters to cast spells when not in melee range, causing priests (especially at the minetown altar) to go from pushover to deadly, with their insect-summoning, and all monsters which cast the Summon Nasties spell (titans, * liches, most demons, and Rodney) suddenly became absurdly dangerous, because they could summon other summoners. 3.4.1 fixes both of these, making the late-game as easy (in four ascenscions, I never lost a character past the castle) as it was in 3.3.1.