10th Year of the International Nethack Tournament 170
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."
Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Good luck to both of you still playing nethack!
For those too young... (Score:5, Funny)
Get offa my lawn!
I've said this before but... (Score:5, Funny)
I ascended with a wishless tourist once, and I consider that more of an accomplishment than my bachelor's degree.
Re:Obama's aunt an illegal, living on taxpayers $$ (Score:0, Funny)
Thanks, McCainbot! Lucky you warned us before we accidentally elected a black man!
Food (Score:1, Funny)
"You have finished eating your kitten."
I don't think I'd win. :-(
Re:Interaction (Score:3, Funny)
ah yes, i was wondering what "gaining" a level would actually mean.
thing is this tho, are not the levels counted in increasing numbers while going down?
as such would one not be "loosing" a dungeon level by going up?
or is this on par with:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html [giantitp.com]
Re:Obama's aunt an illegal, living on taxpayers $$ (Score:1, Funny)
Calling Barack Obama black is like calling John Edwards a mill worker.
Re:three four three (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.
Re:Obama's aunt an illegal, living on taxpayers $$ (Score:3, Funny)
Having a deadbeat relative precludes you from being President?
Heck, (once) being a deadbeat doesn't preclude you from being President.
Re:Spoiler Warning? (Score:3, Funny)
1 in 10,000???!??!?? You must play in Wizard mode. :D (That's either a smiley or YASD by newt.)
Layne
Best nethack moment ever (Score:5, 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."
Re:three four three (Score:5, Funny)
What, Times New Roman?
Re:Interaction (Score:4, Funny)
One of the things I love about nethack is that items (and monsters, and dungeon features...) interact with each other in so many ways. Wielding a cockatrice corpse as a weapon will make short work of many monsters -- as long as you're wearing gloves. Just be careful not to fall down the stairs because you're carrying too much load...
This is what kept me playing Nethack for many years - to see if some obscure piece of logic had been accommodated. It usually was.
I once "died" in Nethack of a "thermonuclear explosion", largely due to a series of unfortunate events (coulda been a Darwin contender :P):-
I had a room full of demons to deal with, and adopted my usually successful room clearing move which goes like this: having acquired teleportation and a ring of teleport control, I teleport into the room; then using my magic whistle, I summoned my 3 tame dragons (Huey, Dewey and Louie - when you absolutely have to kill off every last m**** f**** in the goddam dungeon...). This where it all went wrong though as on the next turn, the dragons breathed fire at the demons, I got caught in the cross fire, which wasn't a problem as I had many many HP by then and was fireproof (you need to be to descend to the "hell" levels), but I was also carrying so many spellbooks, wands, potions, scrolls etc which all went up causing a critical mass of magic...
I also remember a friend of mine who thought he'd be clever and hack his save file in an early Nethack and give himself max HP. He was very pleased with himself until he went up a level, gained 8hp, and the signed integer rolled over...
Re:I've said this before but... (Score:5, 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. ;-)
Re:Interaction (Score:3, Funny)
Every few years I pick up Nethack again and give it a whirl, and it always goes the same way. I'll lose a few characters in the early levels where you have almost no tricks up your sleeve and the monsters are still strong. Then I'll get a character past the hump and really start to make progress, only to be killed by some complete bullcrap like opening a door and discovering a monster room, so you close and try to pin (or wizard lock) the door when a dragon walks up behind you and one of the monsters on the other side of the door destroys it and pins you between them. So you pull out the emergency scroll of teleport and it teleports you right into the middle of the monster room, onto a sleep gas trap. That's when I stop playing the game for a couple more years.
Re:Spoiler Warning? (Score:3, Funny)
Finally, a thread where my sig makes sense...
It is "lol: You see no door there." for posterity.
Re:Great! (Score:3, Funny)
"While the graphics may seem primitive by today's standards, today's gameplay seems primitive by NetHack standards."
(Found that quote here [battlereports.com].)