Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

2006 NetHack Tournament

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the may-those-who-are-about-to-die-salute-you dept.

robin writes "With another Halloween here and gone, the fall NetHack season is open once again. The 8th annual /dev/null/nethack Tournament started at midnight on November 1st, and will last through the rest of the month. You may wish to read the instructions and see what trophies are available this year before registering to compete."

14 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Porn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    n@n

    1. Re:Porn by Fjornir · · Score: 2, Informative
      That's hawt.

      And whoever modded this offtopic has clearly never played nethack.

      --
      I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
  2. I *heart* nethack by joe+155 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nethack is an ace game, I usually play as a male human neutral ranger, and over my few games I've gradually been getting deeper - so far I could win one award, well, I say award it is "Killed By A Trickery", which happened to me today... all the word text from pick ups got stuck on parts of the screen so I couldn't tell what was an enemy and then I was killed very slyly by something random like a cyote...

    By the way, what is a good level to get to on nethack for a short game after having been playing for a little while?

    --
    *''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
    1. Re:I *heart* nethack by AdamTrace · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think completing the Gnomish Mines and Sokoban are good goals for a newbie player... Afterwards follow the Quest, Medusa, and the Castle...

  3. Re:Just started by wertarbyte · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are many gui frontends for nethack, I especially like this one for my Nokia 770 :-)

    --
    Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
  4. Re:Just started by pla · · Score: 3, Informative

    If something like this could ever be made graphical I would eat it alive.

    Although I think, based on that statement, that you might not quite "get" the charm of NetHack...

    Falcon's Eye does exactly what you ask for, a fully (isometric) 3d interface on top of core game engine.

  5. If stuck... by ZzzzSleep · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you need some help, here are some of the best places to visit.
    rec.games.roguelike.nethack.
    Dylan O'Donnell's nethack spoiler page.

    Enjoy and good luck everybody!

    --
    Emerald Astrology
    1. Re:If stuck... by ZzzzSleep · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It may sound strange, but your skills will improve once you stop savescumming. I used to savescum, but wouldn't be able to keep motivated to keep playing. Once I stopped, my playstyle improved and I was able to ascend. When you savescum, there is no need to constantly improve your character, because you can always restart at the last save point.

      --
      Emerald Astrology
    2. Re:If stuck... by jandrese · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I second that thought. One thing I've never much liked about Nethack is that as you get better you can often make games last for hours before finding a situation you've never encountered before, but handling the situation wrong (and the proper solution isn't correct) basically just dumps you back at level 1 with nothing. That gets disheartening real fast because there are a lot of dangers on the lower levels that can kill or screw you over in a single action and basically stop your 12 hour run right on the spot. I also get kinda tired of fighting the same low level enemies over and over again just to get to the parts of the game I havn't seen yet.

      The "death is final" aspect of Nethack (and in fact almost all roguelike games) is both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because it means the game has a ton of replay value, because you'll need thousands of hours to discover everything in it (because you have to grind the low levels so many times), but it's a curse that keeps the game on the fringe because most people will shut it down and not start it again if they get 5 hours into the game and then lose everything to what is basically an unavoidable situation.

      I'm not sure if there is any real solution to this. You could have a set number of lives, but that will make the game too easy for people who have spent 20 years mastering it (and really, these are the people who do the most development). I have a sneaking suspicion that if this were the case then they would feel compelled to make some other aspect of the game even harder. That said, there are certainly no lack of extra-hard nethack clones available (I played on once on the Mac where spells would "burn out" if you used them too often (20 casts was enough to burn out the "fireball" spell, but even just 50 Magic Missiles would burn it out, and once it was burnt out you had no way (that I found) of ever casting that spell again), which make Wizards really hard to play.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
  6. Re:Just started by hurfy · · Score: 2, Informative

    Semi-informative perhaps...

    Appears Falcon's eye is a couple versions old with no updates in many years :(
    Vulture's Eye is a *nix GUI replacement for current version.

    Appears you have to hack em together yourself for a current windows GUI :(

    Darn sounded interesting...always liked the play of nethack and moria.

  7. Re:Just started by pla · · Score: 2, Informative

    Appears you have to hack em together yourself for a current windows GUI :(

    Strangely enough, thanks to this Slashdot FP rekindling my ancient almost-beaten addiction to NetHack, I discovered Vuture shortly after I posted.

    The newest version (2.1.0) actually supports Windows directly, and runs windowed as well (Falcon's would only run fullscreen). You can grab it from here.

  8. Re:Just started by HanClinto · · Score: 2, Informative
    I see that many other people here have suggested Vultures/Falcon's Eye. That one's okay, but I don't like the fixed isometric perspective or the way it handles mouse navigation. My personal favorite has been [url=http://www.darkarts.co.za/projects/noegnud/]n oeGNUd[/url] -- it's got fairly recent builds for Windows, the text-based pseudo-graphical tile sets that are available are well done (like a little red "d" with a white tip for a fox). I also really like the way it does 3d, with letting you spin the camera around with the mouse and check out the field of play from different angles. I highly recommend it.

    Happy hacking!

  9. On the contrary, by patio11 · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... "eat it alive" is exactly the NetHack mentality. Just don't do it to a cockatrice. Bad idea unless you've been polymorphed into something with immunity to stoning, have a ring of anti-petrification, etc. Oh, don't eat Pestilence alive, either. Save that for trolls, it stops them from regenerating. (No, really, I swear: this is Informative, not Funny.)

    --
    Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
  10. Re:Just started by grumbel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The problem with Falcon's Eye and virtually every other NetHack GUI is that they basically only replace the ASCII characters with graphical tiles, they neither change the interface nor gameplay, which however would be needed to have a good looking and well playable graphical client. The result is that the graphic clients still look ugly (no animation, no smooth scrolling, walls don't differ from unexplored terrain, ...) nor play well (gtk dialogs are not what you want to use to navigate nethack, mouse interface is there, but basically unplayable so you need keyboard, ...).

    I would love to see a nethack version/fork that adds real current day graphics and interfaces, while staying true to the core of the original game, but so far none of the GUI additions come even close to that, they don't even try.