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Annual Nethack Tournament

Posted by Cliff on from the tis-the-season-for-a-dungeon-crawl dept.

jvarsoke notes: "After the last little goblins leave your porch tonight, sit on down at your old-school terminal and light up your favorite dungeon crawl. The annual /dev/null/ Nethack Tournament starts tonight. Or, if Nethack is too easy (or Marvin too intimidating) for you, slide over to the public Slash'EM server."

8 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. If it's good enough.... by Naffer · · Score: 4, Funny

    Nethack is one of my all-time favorite games, one I've been playing since 1200 baud was smokin' fast. -- Actor Wil Wheaton

    If it's good enough for will wheaton, then it's good enough for me. I'll have to give it a try. Anyone else tried it out?

    1. Re:If it's good enough.... by Pentagram · · Score: 4, Informative

      My God(s)! If you haven't tried it out yet, then download it now. Provided you don't mind losing a few months, that is.

      NetHack is the one of the most vicious, amusing, intelligent, fun games of all time. It has its own insane rules that it follows to their illogical conclusion and more cool ideas and quotable lines than you can shake a wand at. It's also extremely challenging and requires considerable dedication to beat even if you take all the easy options.

      Example: there is a cockatrice monster that can turn you to stone if it hits you. But if you kill one, you can hit monsters with its corpse and turn them to stone (assuming you're wearing gloves, naturally). But what happens if you get swallowed whole by a huge worm and then you hit it from the inside with a cockatrice corpse? Try it and find out.

      Just try not to read the spoilers - the most fun part of the game is working out how it works.

  2. I would.... by GigsVT · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was planning on playing, but I ate some meat earlier and I feel deathly sick.

    --
    I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
  3. Hey boys... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    FREE PR0N!!!
    &
    n
    &
    n
    &

    FREE LESBIAN PR0N!!!

    n n
    n
    n

    FREE BEASTIALITY PR0N!!!

    @ @
    u
    @ @

  4. Ughh.... by smoondog · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Last year, after the /. nethack post, I tried nethack. That game is the most ridiculously addictive frustration fest this side of thumb cuffs. I don't understand how some (rare) people can ascend so often. I'm always falling through the floor, pissing off of shopkeepers, getting poisoned by snakes, running out of food, pissing off my god, or getting turned into a were-something. (Those were-somethings deaths are particularly annoying, especially when praying doesn't work) I generally play a dwarf Valkarie, because the mines are really much easier when everything isn't trying to kill you.

    Is there any place for watching logs of successful games, to get an idea of how to play certain aspects of the game? For example, I still have trouble with spells and scrolls. They usually do something bad to me, and I never find out what they do (until I die).

    Heh,

    -Sean

    1. Re:Ughh.... by bakunin · · Score: 5, Informative

      The tournament offers players the option of recording their games as VT ASCII animations, and the option of making these files publicly available.

      Once we've launched, you can go to the gamefiles section to see whether any of the mor successful players have this turned on and (if so) you can re-run those games as terminal movies. Some of them can be incredibly edifying.

      -robin

  5. Re:Just started by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Wow, talk about an undeserved up-mod. To put off the inevitable "overrated," howzabout I actually say something interesting?

    I think what makes it fun (and I haven't gotten very far yet) is the anachronisms and humor. BG is fun, but it's very locked in its D&D rules and can get a bit tedious. Yeah, there's a fairly decent sense of humor at times, but overall, the game gets repetetive quickly. The monsters get harder, so you ge tmore stuff. Buy a bigger sword, kill a bigger monster, get more stuff, ad infinitum.

    Nethack, on the other hand, seems to me to have a great sense of humor, a lot of background in both popular and geek/cult culture, and enough anachronisms (credit cards?) to give it a ha-ha-only-serious feel.

    I guess what I'm saying is that the game doesn't take itself too seriously. That's the biggest difference between NetHack and most other RPG/D&D style computer games I've played-- that NetHack realizes it's a game, and doesn't try to force total-life immersion. Does that make sense? Anything's in as long as it gives the game some added value. It's a blast, and I can't wait to put in some serious dungeon time.

  6. Re:Not my favorite... by Moghedien · · Score: 3, Informative

    Have you tried ToME?

    --
    I've come to... anesthetize you!