Interview with SLASH'EM Developers

MilenCent writes "The O'Reilly Network posted an interview with super-deluxe Nethack variant SLASH'EM's Warren Cheung and J. Ali Harlowe last month talking about the impending beta release of v0.0.7E2. (Don't you just love incredibly provisional version numbers? In development for years and not even a 0.1 yet!) There's another recent O'Reilly article on the game too."

Comments

Re:Network Play!

[Tomble]

There have been multiplayer roguelikes, but not many, and they've generally not got that far. Because roguelikes basically aren't suited to multiplayer games.

They could keep the gameplay the same, if you don't mind the possibility that you'll have to wait maybe a few hours (or strictly, forever) between each single step; otherwise, you have to fundamentally change it (eg, stop it being turn based). Then other gameplay details would start to look odd, and before you know it, you've changed it into Quake.

Re:In development for years and not even a 0.1 yet

[Gr33nNight]

*lifts up the rock*

Hey down there, some game called Duke Nukem Forever called, they want 5 years back.

Re:OT -- how to kill Lichs?

[Repton]

It's a while since I last played nethack, so my sk1llz are probably out of date ...

But the first advice is to make sure you are standing on the up stairs. Monsters which teleport at will (including the tougher lichs) always 'port to the up stairs when they get in trouble. And if you catch them there, they escape up to the previous level. So you need to make sure you're standing on the stairs...

Other than that, I think you can just whack them until they die. It might help if you are using Magicbane (which absorbs curses) (preferably at +2). Otherwise, try to get hold of a decent artifact (Frost Brand and Greyswandir used to be the artifacts of choice) and enchant it up to +5, or +7 if you can manage it. If memory serves, Stormbringer isn't all that hot a weapon, and +2 isn't much of an enchantment.

[generally, you should stock up on useless potions and scrolls in the early levels.. then, use boots of water walking and a moat to turn the potions to water and blank the scrolls. Bless the potions (you can #dip 10 potions of water into one potion of holy water and end up with 10 potions of holy water). Then get a magic marker, bless the magic marker, bless the scrolls, and write lots of scrolls of enchant weapon and of enchant armour. Modulo the disclaimer in the first line :-) ]