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NetHack 3.6.0 Released After a 12-Year Wait (nethack.org)

Posted by Soulskill on from the onward-and-upward dept.

An anonymous reader writes: For the past 12 years, NetHack 3.4.3 has been the most recent version of the classic roguelike dungeon exploration game. On 7 December 2015, the official NetHack DevTeam announced the release of NetHack 3.6.0. While the release contains some new features, the most exciting part of the announcement is perhaps the DevTeam's move toward a more open development model: "We've migrated our internal source repository to Git, with plans of providing a publicly available 'current maintenance version' in the future." Bugzilla will be used for defect tracking.

NetHack 3.6.0 is dedicated to the memory of the author Terry Pratchett. Besides the Tourist character class inspired by his stories, NetHack now contains "a huge number of quotes from many of the Discworld novels."

44 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Just in time... by i.r.id10t · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Released just in time for the Hogswatch sales season! Yay!

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
  2. Celebrate!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    This calls for a round of the NetHack Song!!!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlPgy0ysoJk

  3. has the lawyer knocking yet? by Lead+Butthead · · Score: 2

    NetHack now contains "a huge number of quotes from many of the Discworld novels."

    Has the estate lawyer come knocking yet?

    --
    ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
    1. Re:has the lawyer knocking yet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Terry was a fan of Nethack. I think his surviving family members will have no objection against honoring his memory in a game he loved.

    2. Re:has the lawyer knocking yet? by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Informative

      Quotes are protected under fair use principles in all Berne Convention signatory countries. They couldn't come knocking even if they did want to.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    3. Re:has the lawyer knocking yet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Claiming "opinion as a fact" when no such identification is implied. Welcome to slashdot.

    4. Re:has the lawyer knocking yet? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

      Open source game. Who do they sue?

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    5. Re:has the lawyer knocking yet? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      you think...

      Opinion as fact, welcome to slashdot.

      You do realise that the very words "I think..." are exactly what mark that out as an opinion, and not a statement of fact?

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    6. Re:has the lawyer knocking yet? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      You clearly have credentials to access that .gif, but the rest of us get:

      "Forbidden

      You do not have permission to access this document."

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    7. Re:has the lawyer knocking yet? by ackthpt · · Score: 2

      As Terry's daughter is overseeing his properties I expect she won't go all Rowling-Warner on something like this.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    8. Re: has the lawyer knocking yet? by deek · · Score: 1

      This is one of the most entertaining AC threads I've read on Slashdot for a long time. And I've been reading Slashdot for a long time.

    9. Re:has the lawyer knocking yet? by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

      Lawyer are those licensed to extort you, not people who enforce the law.

      If someone asks you for money they have no claim to and you pay up, then it's your own damn fault.

      --
      I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  4. I smell a wumpus by OzPeter · · Score: 3, Funny

    Good thing I have my quiver of crooked arrows.

    --
    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    1. Re:I smell a wumpus by ackthpt · · Score: 1

      Good thing I have my quiver of crooked arrows.

      I've had a Scroll labeled FOOBIE BLETCH, waiting for this day.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    2. Re:I smell a wumpus by hackwrench · · Score: 1

      I have a wumpus repository for a BASIC implementation that can be compiled with QB64 here: https://github.com/hackwrench/...

  5. Happy the game is in still Development... by ZiakII · · Score: 1

    Happy the game is in still Development.... I really thought all work stopped completely and 3.4.3 was going to be the last version ever made by the Dev Team.

    1. Re:Happy the game is in still Development... by ackthpt · · Score: 1

      Happy the game is in still Development.... I really thought all work stopped completely and 3.4.3 was going to be the last version ever made by the Dev Team.

      I'd still fire up the old version and play it. So many happy memories. I also was lucky enough to enjoy the color versions of NetHack, Larn and Moria on the Amiga.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  6. Eric Raymond did the initial conversion to Git by steveha · · Score: 1

    It's good to see the veil lifted on Nethack development. Give ESR a little bit of credit for helping them out.

    http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6389&cpage=1#comment-1207141

    --
    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
  7. Finally some real news on slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Yeah, this is actually newsworthy. And with actual link to the devteam's page, without 3 levels of blogspam indirection.

    1. Re:Finally some real news on slashdot by truck_soccer · · Score: 1

      "blogspam indirection" (whatever the fuck that is, I assume you mean content aggregation) usually happens when a story is popular enough to generate clicks. This is nethack, it isn't a story about donald trumps pubic hair.

    2. Re:Finally some real news on slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "blogspam indirection" (whatever the fuck that is, I assume you mean content aggregation) usually happens when a story is popular enough to generate clicks. This is nethack, it isn't a story about donald trumps pubic hair.

      Different AC here: I think what the parent is suggesting is that Slashdot submitters collectively endeavor to up their game and link to the source of the information. He's being a bit of a dick about it, but I think the idea is sound.

      Submitters: If it's a science post, link to the paper in the summary, not some StartsWithABlog clickbait that requires Javashit to be enabled to get past the Forbes interstitial. If it's about Trump's pubes, spend five minutes clicking through Gawker's hat tip to Buzzfeed's hat tip to DailyFail's IFRAME of some Some Doofus On Twitter's picture of Trump's junk.

      Once upon a time, Slashdot was not merely a content aggregator, it was the content aggregator. We'll never regain our former glory, but we can, and should, do better.

    3. Re:Finally some real news on slashdot by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      What he means by "blogspam indirection" is the process of linking to an ad filled "article" that does little more than expose the reader to more advertising before it finally links you to the real content that the original submitter could have linked to directly.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  8. Re:bugzilla is an ok choice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    NOTABUG, WONTFIX, PEBCAK.

  9. VR Support by ArsonSmith · · Score: 5, Funny

    Will they be adding VR support soon?

    --
    Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
    1. Re:VR Support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's In Your Imagination.

      Beats any R-based VR.

    2. Re:VR Support by Zedrick · · Score: 1

      Perhaps not the Nethack developers themselves, but I bet somebody will do some kind of VR-version of noteye just to prove it can be done once OcR is out.

      Pretty pointless from a gameplaying perspective though. A red & in ADOM (not sure if there are Balors in Nethack?) is way more scary than anything that can be done in VR or any graphical layer.

    3. Re:VR Support by chispito · · Score: 3, Informative

      Will they be adding VR support soon?

      Yes, you can now play Nethack in VR http://www.vrdesktop.net/

      --
      The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
    4. Re:VR Support by blazer1024 · · Score: 1

      Hrmmm... I have a DK2 and I almost want to do this...

    5. Re:VR Support by mikael · · Score: 1

      There are various variations - Vultures Claw presented 3D isometric view.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    6. Re: VR Support by bestweasel · · Score: 1

      I have that on Linux and UnNetHack on Android.

  10. Kind of sad, really by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Honestly I had hoped that nethack would rest easy. After all, the game was essentially finished. There wasn't anywhere left to go and things were great. There's something to be said for a stable game that doesn't change no matter how often the players do. Unfortunately there is a rather loud group of people who want new, new, new and if it's old it sucks. "If it's not being developed, then it sucks!" and this attitude is a real problem IMO. ESR himself states quite plainly "I am pissed at them for being secretive and doing fuck-all with the codebase" as if there was a problem with that. This is the same attitude that led to Mozilla Firefox going off the rails, developing for the sake of developing instead of doing what's needed.

    I've already heard nethack referred to as "an early, brutal roguelike, not recommended" which put a dagger in my heart. Now they're putting a bunch of Pratchett quotes in? Sheesh.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    1. Re:Kind of sad, really by SQLGuru · · Score: 1

      Who says the players change? I've had it installed on one device or another since I first found it (early 90s.....before that it was Rogue).

      Pet name: WandTester
      If he lives past level 4, he's usually especially powerful. Also, it sucks to run into him and my ghost.

    2. Re:Kind of sad, really by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You have a sad feeling for a moment, then it passes. --More--

    3. Re:Kind of sad, really by mikael · · Score: 1

      There were new critters the last time I played - gas spores that exploded when they were killed. Had to learn to keep a safe distance. Spells of stink bomb that killed critters in another room. At the deepest levels, there was green slime monsters that turned everything they bit into green slime.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    4. Re:Kind of sad, really by BadDreamer · · Score: 1

      The game was far from essentially finished. In fact, it never will be finished. User interfaces get better, exploits are discovered, and NetHack fixes and incorporates this to remain challenging and fresh. In fact, the update is quite timely as there are a lot of issues with NetHack 3.4.3 which now get addressed!

      This doesn't mean it gets the streamline treatment modern AAA titles get. In fact, rather the contrary. The new nasties are *really* nasty. NetHack now is a lot more unforgiving than NetHack 2.3 I began with back in the day. And NetHack 3.1.3 was eminently exploitable. That's now in the past, with polymorphing, store thefts and other things long since patched.

      "The Gremlin chuckles. You feel warm. You burn to a crisp."

    5. Re:Kind of sad, really by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      Who says the players change? I've had it installed on one device or another since I first found it (early 90s.....before that it was Rogue).

      You missed "Hack" between NetHack and Rogue. Hack was allright, NetHack was originally a reasonably close follow up but has diverged with all the extras. Some will like those, others will miss the simplicity of Hack.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    6. Re:Kind of sad, really by jonadab · · Score: 1

      As much as I like NetHack (and I really do), it honestly does have a number of widely-acknowledged and somewhat serious shortcomings. Among other things: the chance-to-hit formula is so broken that it causes entire _categories_ of features (such as shields and two-handed weapons) to go mostly unused; Elbereth was severely unbalanced in 3.4.3 (the new version takes several measures to try to fix this -- it remains to be seen if they will be enough, I suspect not); spellcasting roles generally have to spend the first third of the game playing as handicapped melee combat enthusiasts, which is not as intended; the status area of the UI needs some serious improvements -- not least, it should be easier to notice when your hitpoints are getting low; if the Unicode support is good, that'll be news to me (I haven't had time to really look at the new version yet since the release -- the leaked version a year or so ago had preliminary Unicode support that needed help); the score formula is so broken that experienced players almost universally ignore score completely (both major tournaments focus on other things), and getting a _low_ score is substantially more challenging than getting a high one -- which would be one thing if the score system were designed that way, like golf, but it isn't; the last 50% or so of the game in terms of how long it takes you to complete it has the last 2% or so of the plot and interest and anything that matters, leading to situations where players get bogged down and don't play for weeks at a time because they have completed the interesting parts (up through the Castle) but aren't yet close to winning in terms of time investment -- this happens to a _lot_ of players, perhaps the majority of players who are sufficiently experienced to win the game repeatedly. Also, 3.4.3 had a number of rather serious bugs, including a number of crash bugs. Most of those are fixed in the new version. That's a good thing.

      There's a reason the variant community is so active, with new variants popping up every few months. People keep seeing things that need to be _fixed_.

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  11. World of Nethack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The game is now massively multiplayer. With all the new armor and weapon choices your character can now look like @ or @ and even @ !

    1. Re:World of Nethack by refactoringdr · · Score: 1

      Yes, but if you want an @ it's an IAP.

  12. Sourceforge.net ? by Hougaard · · Score: 1

    Looks like they decided 12 years ago where to host their binaries :)

    1. Re:Sourceforge.net ? by jonadab · · Score: 1

      Maybe longer ago than that, yes. And yes, the dev team is aware of the recent issues with sourceforge and intends to move away from it, but they didn't want to delay the release until they do that, because 12 years is long enough, or somesuch.

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  13. Re:Death by mikael · · Score: 1

    Yes, yellow fungus give you hallucinations, along with certain potions. Everything object around you then looks like valuable artifacts, while monsters become totally mixed up. A black dragon appears to be as harmless as a slime mold, while a grid bug looks like a rock giant.

    --
    Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
  14. Re:How to install on Ubuntu? by i.r.id10t · · Score: 1

    Of course there is a root user. Just use sudo -i to become root, then run the installer/make install/whatever

    Or, as I have stated enough times to get banned from the ubuntu forums, just run sudo passwd and set a password for the root user - then anything expecting to be able to su -c or whatever will work too.

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
  15. Re:Death by KGIII · · Score: 1

    Ya know... The damned thing works natively in Linux and probably someone's already ported it to run on your toaster, remote control, car dashboard, and even installed a server on an IoT light bulb. Using WINE isn't *really* mandatory but, I suppose, someone had to.

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."