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

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."

Comments

Just in time...

[i.r.id10t]

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

Celebrate!!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

has the lawyer knocking yet?

[Lead Butthead]

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

Has the estate lawyer come knocking yet?

Re:has the lawyer knocking yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:has the lawyer knocking yet?

[silentcoder]

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

Re:has the lawyer knocking yet?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Open source game. Who do they sue?

Re:has the lawyer knocking yet?

[ackthpt]

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

I smell a wumpus

[OzPeter]

Good thing I have my quiver of crooked arrows.

Re:bugzilla is an ok choice

[Anonymous Coward]

NOTABUG, WONTFIX, PEBCAK.

VR Support

[ArsonSmith]

Will they be adding VR support soon?

Re:VR Support

[chispito]

Will they be adding VR support soon?

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

Kind of sad, really

[DNS-and-BIND]

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.