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)."

Comments

Dying Bug

[Overand]

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?

Re:Dying Bug

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard

Re:Dying Bug

[kubla2000]

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.

Re:Dying Bug

[peter]

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 ... :)

Re:Dying Bug

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Dying Bug

[LastToKnow]

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.

Re:Dying Bug

[wishus]

You can't use the "dot" in C, only C++. You have to dereference the pointers manually.

Wait until later in the semester when they teach you about structs.

Re:Dying Bug

[Jimmy_B]

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.

NetHack is cool because you can play it at work

[Make]

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.. :)

Re:NetHack is cool because you can play it at work

[tunah]

PHB: What's that you're doing? Me: Err... I'm hexediting the new project, just working out a couple of bugs. Me: There's one! PHB: Nice work! I should give you a raise! Me: How 'bout an office with a door? PHB: No, people play games if I can't see them working. Me: I guess that's a good point. I should get back to my work...

Re:NetHack is cool because you can play it at work

[jabapi]

So true.

Boss: "What are you doing, anyway?"
Me: "Am trying to get rid of all those annoying grid bugs we have in our system. Now please, leave me alone, will you?"

Ulch.

[Mr. Flibble]

That download was slashdotted.

You feel deathly ill.

(Improperly formatted because of lameness filter)

Re:Ulch.

[pcbob]

Come on, try to hack my 31337 firewall[127.0.0.1]!

haha, the joke's on you, i just deleted all of your fil

Noooooo!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was planning to graduate in a couple of years!

Wow, simultaneous worldwide release.

[luggy]

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.

You are lost...

[philovivero]

You are lost in a twisty maze of Hack and Rogue versions, all the same. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Re:You are lost...

[troc]

You said I was going to be eaten by a grue....

Do the literalists bite the heads off so the grues can get to work?

man these dungeon games are more complex than I thought, symbiotic relationships between monsters - whatever next?

You are in a maze of .......
>w
You go West (where the air is sweet etc)
In the dark you have your head bitten off by a literalist. The grues feast on your remains. The literalists all go to a cocktail evening.
Yor are dead. Get over it.

Troc

To download or not to download...

[Max Romantschuk]

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.

Net...hack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Net...hack? Rogue? Sounds suspicious to me. How can I get in touch with John Ashcroft?

Don't worry--There are GUIs

[SexyTr0llGal]

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!)

W00t

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that this release is going to push my Radeon 8500 hard.

Misleading title

[ascii]

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.

I've stumpled upon NetHack here and there and always thought it to be something along the lines of the ancient Neuromancer Amiga game that I loved so much.

Why don't they call it something like "[insert D&D'ish sounding name]: The legacy of [insert other D&D'ish sounding name]

Example:
Crangrall: the legacy of Wanhall
Forthrall: the legacy of Krilltorr

You can all troll me or flame me to pieces now for not getting it.

Re:Misleading title

[WWWWolf]

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

Re:Misleading title

[zatz]

What a savings!

Re:Misleading title

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people make this mistake. People see two syllables that form unrelated words and simply decide to pronounce it NET-HACK, when those of us who have been playing it for years know that it is, in fact, NETH-ACK, a far more D&D-ish name, i'm sure you would agree. It was named after the ancient eunuch sorcerer Nethack The Great, Controller Of Daemons. Sheesh, kids these days...

Re:Misleading title

[cgreuter]

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.

That's just part of Nethack's charm.

Back when I was a quasi-regular in rec.games.roguelike.nethack, we'd get about one confused skr1pt k1dd13 per week looking for cr4kz and w4r3z. My absolute favourite of these was the one who said (paraphrased),

Would somebody please mailbomb $EMAIL_ADDRESS. He says I'm not elite.

I tell ya, you don't get that grade of comedy with Diablo II.

Re:Misleading title

[troc]

With his cronies:

Sang-Band, a group of mystics who always stopped singing just before you entered the room;

Zang-Band, a Dutch parody of the above;

R. O. Guelike (gooey-lickie), a strange, twisted individual who steals time and productivity from apparently intelligent people.

Angband is, as we know the only way to utter (DON'T say this aloud) Danbg'na, patron saint of all things blue and prickly.

But, as explained abouve in a previous posts it's the Literalists that you have to be careful of, they are always on the prowl and will drag you away at a moment's notice for a quick flogging.

No, I don't know why they like to be flogged by strangers either.

Troc, who is in a weird mood today, sorry.

Am I the only geek who HATES Nethack?

[BadmanX]

I'm serious. I'm a huge computer game buff, but Nethack has always left me cold. The interface is awful, the game is deliberately user-hostile, and you die constantly in ways you can't possibly prevent (boulder trap on level 1, for instance). Most "puzzles" have completely non-logical solutions. (Starving? Pray to your diety! Makes perfect sense!) It feels far too much like playing a paper-and-pencil RPG against an adversarial GM. They thought of everything? Everything but the fun.

Re:Am I the only geek who HATES Nethack?

[pnot]

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 :-).

Re:Am I the only geek who HATES Nethack?

[doubleyewdee]

I always have to remind myself that this game isn't technically about having fun in the sense most roleplaying games define "fun". This is more like Diablo for people with some parts of the brains still active.

I can't really agree there. I've played nethack. I've retrieved the amulet. I feel I've "beaten" it for my intents and purposes (please, god, don't flame me about this). I also basically got this far because I stubbornly refused to be beaten down by the game.

I can see the Diablo comparison. They're both hack and slash games. The thing Diablo does not do to you, though, is leave you stranded and basically screwed at the beginning of the game. It doesn't, through lack of balance, force you to continually cycle through characters because the game gave you bad breaks.

The thing is, as a player of both games, I think Diablo is a hell of a lot more fun. Diablo is like nethack with balance. I think, in fact, that people who like to kick back and do some hacking for a while, are much better served by Diablo. Wasting time trying to beat (yeah yeah) nethack was probably a very poor decision on my part. It was a very smart decision on my part to never touch it again.

What I'm saying is, if all you want to do is hack and find treasure and use it on your quest to hack, Diablo is probably going to be more enjoyable. It's easier to get in to, much more friendly and intuitive, and much less likely to leave you in a completely unsalvageable game.

If, on the other hand, you enjoy the randomness of being potentially screwed in every other game you play, well, go nuts with nethack. Some people seem to really enjoy this. That's fine, but it's sure not for me, and I don't think it is for most people. Including those of us with "some parts of the brain still active."

And please, don't tell me about how you can always "work through" problems in nethack. I know, I've played it enough to know the tricks. What you fail to see is that often "working through" will just leave you screwed down the road, even if your immediate problem is solved. I honestly don't find that challenging, I find it irritating.

A game with really excellent balance *will* allow you to screw yourself, but it won't force you to abandon a game you've put hours (or days!) into. It will provide means by which to salvage your game. Even if it means hard work on your part, you'll still be able to do it. Plus, the game won't screw you through ridiculous arbitrary randomness. Sure, you can get yourself killed if you're careless, or stick your neck out too far, but you don't die from "starvation" well into the game because you can't get a bite, or you get poison meat, and your deity decides it's his day off, or whatever. That's just arbitrary and irritating. It isn't fun.

Re:Am I the only geek who HATES Nethack?

[juuri]

If, on the other hand, you enjoy the randomness of being potentially screwed in every other game you play, well, go nuts with nethack.

This is why, when people ask, I say "nethack is more of a life simulator".

Re:Am I the only geek who HATES Nethack?

[foxtrot]

I can see the Diablo comparison. They're both hack and slash games. The thing Diablo does not do to you, though, is leave you stranded and basically screwed at the beginning of the game.

This is actually one of the beauties of Nethack. If you play, for example, a Wizard, the early game is tough. Really tough. You can't melee, if you use spells too much you starve, you're just screwed at the beginning.

If you play, say, a caveman, you're pretty well off at the beginning-- you can melee anything you meet, and eat most of it once it's dead.

If you survived as a Wizard, the endgame is much easier. Give ol' Rodney the finger and he doesn't bother you so much.

If you played a caveman, the endgame is notably tougher. Your lack of spell-fu means you're pretty much forced to melee everything you meet, which gets old after a while.

Each character is balanced, and has a tougher or easier time in the beginning, middle, and end of the game.

-JDF

Re:Am I the only geek who HATES Nethack?

[namespan]

The thing that really gets me is monsters that attack faster than you can, because they can outrun you and attack you and there's nothing you can do. (Or is there?)

If you have the misfortune to run into an air elemental, leacrotta, or even rothe before you're prepared, about the only thing you can do is use the E-word (Elbereth) or some other repeatable method to try and scare them away repeatedly. It's a bit tedious, but it can work. I've used it to keep a crowd of 8 orcs, 2 rothes, a mean kitten, and an iguana off of an inexperienced healer's back -- and eventually chop them all up.

Otherwise:

(1) Get speed intrinsic (wand of speed monster, some corpses). Get speed boots if at all possible (right after magic resistance).

(2) Wand of Teleport. Best, because you can use it on you, or on the monster.

(3) Scroll of teleportation.

(4) Wand of digging. Fast escape through the floor.

And of course, a good AC and good weapon. But everybody wants that.

What do we need a new version for?

[pnot]

At one point, NetHack had everything but the kitchen sink. Then they added the kitchen sink. What more could you want? :-)

Actually, Falconseye is a significant improvement

[expro]

The game stands on it's own, but the added graphics don't need to be anywhere near perfect to make the game immensely more usable by non-techies. My six-year-old has played it again and again, and loves it, which never would have happened with the text-only version.

Re:A good plan?

[wodon]

If they do, I can't wait to see the fully raytraced, mip-mapped hi rez @ sign brutally attacking the letter Z.

I think bullet time would go down well too!

Today

[IanBevan]

This is my week.

1. Found out wife is pregnant.

2. Our rental has been sold and we have 42 days find a new place/move out.

3. Starting a new job on Monday

4. New version of nethack released

Oh, the inhumanity of it all...

Re:A good plan?

[Des Herriott]

When will this game be brought a decade forward in multimedia quality?

When someone feels like doing it.

Personally, I like the game for its playability, not any so-called "multimedia quality". Hell, I still play in ASCII mode (albeit with colour). I'm not a luddite, though - I've played Eye of the Beholder, Diablo, Dungeon Siege etc., and found them reasonably enjoyable for a while, but Nethack is the one that keeps me coming back. 15 years since I first played it (back in the 1.0 days) and it's still fun.

If Nethack is as good as I've heard, it could turn out to be a killer game.

It already is a killer game... lord knows it's killed me enough times :-) But seriously, it's a game developed by a group of people for fun, without the expectation of profit, and it has an intensely loyal following. If you don't like it, don't play it, or do something by contributing to it. But standing at the sidelines and bitching isn't going to do you, or anyone else, any good.

only if you play the ascii version

[Xtifr]

And I admit, it's nice that the ascii version still works, but the graphic tiles (added in, what, 1992?) make it even nicer, IMO. (Although not quite as safe to play at work, I admit.)

But be careful -- the PHB may not have a clue what all that odd text on your screen really means, but the technical manager probably played it in college himself, and will know at a glance what you're doing. The game has been around for nearly two decades, and in that time, a lot of people you might not expect have probably run across it here or there.

Also, if you're running it on a shared machine, you might want to rename the binary. Any sysadmin who sees "nethack" in a process list will either a) know you're playing games on company time, or b) assume the machine is under attack and panic. Either option may result in effects you may not enjoy.... :)

Nethack Question

[epsalon]

Anyone know where I can find a playable recording of a successful NetHack game? I want to see a Master play.

Re:Nethack Question

[Des Herriott]

Not sure why that got modded as Funny, I'm guessing it was a serious question... not sure if there are any recordings, but there are a few sites where you can connect and watch games in progress (or just connect and play a game yourself).

Try this index.

For anyone who's interested ...

[Ignorant Aardvark]

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!

If you want to ruin someone's life...

[nonos]

... learn him how to play Nethack.

Even better...

[Des Herriott]

Try this site.

Modern 3D-Accellerated Version!

[RPoet]

If you don't like the traditional ascii rendering of the game, there is now a complete port of nethack to use a 3D-accellerated, high-resolution display engine which will keep you on the edge of your seat! See screenshot, and drool!

Nethack? duh...

[archeopterix]

I would play it, but the user interface is too bloated. I'd like something like that:

You find yourself on an empty tile.
Looking northwest you see a large chest.
A grid bug approaches you from southwest.
There's a curved wand 2 squares to the north.
>

Direct Descendent?

[SlashdotLemming]

"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."

Does anyone know if NetHack 3.5 will be a descendent of NetHack 3.4? Someone told me that it was going to be a spreadsheet application.

Been there & vi training wheels

[xixax]

Not only don't they notice, they peer in over my shoulder exclaiming,
"Whow, you guys are always doing such techy stuff, it's amazing..." (spoken with absolute naivety)

And hjkl is why I picked up vi so quickly. So I also describe it as a vi training module. :o)

Xix.