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10th Year of the International Nethack Tournament

Posted by Soulskill on from the why-did-this-potion-eat-my-legs dept.

Dr. Zowie writes "The 10th annual Nethack Tournament just started over at nethack.devnull.net, so put on your Hawaiian shirt, grab an expensive camera, and head for the dungeon. The tourney runs through the month of November each year, with volunteer game servers dotted around the world. Fewer than 1% of contestants actually finish the game by retrieving the Amulet of Yendor and ascending to demigodhood, but take heart: there are many prizes for intermediate goals, and prizes for team effort. For those too young to remember games older than Halo, Nethack is the apotheosis of the Roguelike genre of role-playing games, rendered in ASCII. Gameplay is phenomenally complex, and the game is somewhat sadistic; there are no 'checkpoints,' so if you manage to kill yourself somewhere in the dungeon you must start over from the beginning. The dungeons are quasi-randomly generated, so every game is different."

7 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Great! by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Funny

    Good luck to both of you still playing nethack!

    --
    My blog
  2. For those too young... by rob1980 · · Score: 4, Funny

    For those too young to remember games older than Halo...

    Get offa my lawn!

  3. I've said this before but... by slaker · · Score: 5, Funny

    I ascended with a wishless tourist once, and I consider that more of an accomplishment than my bachelor's degree.

    --
    -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    1. Re:I've said this before but... by syousef · · Score: 4, Funny

      I ascended with a wishless tourist once, and I consider that more of an accomplishment than my bachelor's degree

      So do I.

      Signed,

      Your boss. ;-)

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
  4. Re:three four three by tzot · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, they still answer to bug reports. Sometimes :-)

    The last update to the bugs page has been in August.

    But what's taking them so long for a new version, nobody knows.

    I've heard that they had issues switching to a new graphics engine.

    --
    I speak England very best
  5. Best nethack moment ever by bertok · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's just amazing how many strange combinations of items and effects have been thought of by the dev team.

    My favorite Nethack moment ever was when I had used a blessed scroll of genocide to permanently wipe out all dragons from the game, but I was still wearing a suit of silver dragon scale mail I had acquired earlier. I stepped on a polymorph trap, and discovered a little known game mechanic that if you're wearing dragon armor while polymorphing uncontrollably, you turn into that kind of dragon. However, dragons were already wiped out, so I couldn't. The message the game gave me was:

    "You feel slightly silver dragon-ish."

  6. Re:three four three by glittalogik · · Score: 4, Funny

    What, Times New Roman?