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Games Entertainment

Nethack 3.4.0 274

Posted by michael from the yummy-mango dept.
Dark_Nova writes "Nethack 3.4.0 - the latest version of the greatest game ever created - has just been released. See the release notes for details about what's new, or go here to download it."
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Nethack 3.4.0 More

Nethack 3.4.0

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  • Wow, I remember way back when (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cade144 ( 553696 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @07:46AM (#3206578) Homepage
    Wow, I remember way back to my youth, I'd loose all sorts of productive time in college.

    Now I get to loose productive time as an adult. At least I'll get paid this time.

    • In 1985 (while 'studying' physics) I spent a whole university year playing nethack in the computer rooms. I should hate this game, but I cannot help to still occasionally play a game and love it.

      Even though after all that time I have not once played the game until completion :(

  • Hurray! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by martinmcc ( 214402 )
    I have just finished playing nethack and started browsing the web to find something interesting. Looks like I will be going back to playing nethack again!

    I've been playing nethack for many years now, and is the ONLY game I keep coming back to. For those that enjoy it, I would recommend slashem - a game based on the nethack code with add'on - though I am sure that there are many purists who will flame that!

    I'll just wave godbye to my weekend now!

    • Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NoBeardPete ( 459617 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @08:58AM (#3206779)

      The deal with NetHack is that is has been in development for ~15 years, and almost all of that work has gone into the gameplay. The interface hasn't changed at all in forever, there aren't really any graphics, so all of the work that is put into the game goes into how it plays, not how it looks.

      Once I get really into a game, the graphics don't much matter (excepting maybe a few select games, such as Myst). Once I've been playing for very long, I stop really seeing the details of the graphics, and see more of the abstract concepts involved. If new graphical effects are slowly leaked out over time, I may continue to pay them some attention (in Black and White, for example, I continued to pay some attention to how my creature was growing, getting fatter or thinner, and looking nicer or meaner), but it's mostly at the level of mild amusement. As long as I'm just going to see the abstracted version of what's really going on, why waste a lot of time on the interface? Put the time into game play, because that's what I really care about.

      The problem, though, is that people are initially attracted to a game by the graphics, even if the graphics don't ultimately have a big impact on how much they enjoy it. I've been playing NetHack since, uhhh, shit, I dunno when. Given modern standards for graphics, most people look at it and snort in derision. I know this happens all the time when I'm playing and someone wanders by and asks what I'm up to. I can try to explain that the gameplay is _way_ more important than the graphics, but it's hard to get people to sit down and put in the effort to learn it.

      I'm still happy playing, but this makes me a little nervous. How many new people are finding NetHack these days? I'm guessing it's not many. If NetHack can't keep attracting new blood, it'll eventuall stagnate and die. _Man_, that would suck.

      • Re:Hurray! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by scrytch ( 9198 )
        The interface hasn't changed at all in forever, there aren't really any graphics

        Au contraire. http://www.hut.fi/~jtpelto2/nhfeatures.html#SCREEN SHOTS

        Yes that is nethack. You can spew all you want about "gameplay is king", but I'm guessing even you don't play chess with scraps of cardboard with letters on them for your pieces. When I go to the symphony, I like to dress nice and see my date dressed nice, even though we're just listening. If you really wanted to cut out all the "irrelevant crap" in life, you'd just get a feeding tube and have your muscles electrically stimulated (something I fear I'll need after playing nethack, yes. I might pick up falcon's eye just for kicks though)

  • Yay, new way to waste time at work (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dragon218 ( 139996 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @07:49AM (#3206586) Homepage
    Hopefully, this edition will have the Amulet of Yendor in it.
    • Hopefully, this edition will have the Amulet of Yendor in it.

      Ah yes, how many years did I play it before actually finding the amulet for the first time.. :)

      There used to be some really great threads on what to add to the game on rec.games.hack [google.com] It seems as much as players hacked to win the game, authors hacked to put more into the game to figure out.

      Mostly I played it on the Amiga, a few versions put out by the Software Distillery, who were kind enough to created little 8x8 pixel drawings of things.

      Then there was that Amiga version of Moria with Large Lavender Leprechauns, brrr..

      @-/&=
      d[=!
      *!^.

      Marvin picks up a glowing potion-more-
      You fall through a pit trap-more-
      You leave the store without paying Manlobbi-more-
      An alarm sounds throughout the dungeon-more

      (as for errors, yeah, I haven't played in a while, but that will no change :)

      • >Ah yes, how many years did I play it before
        >actually finding the amulet for the first time.. :)


        It only took me a couple of months. I had it. In my hand. The dragon was hurting me, badly--but I had a wishing ring. No problem--wish for the Scroll of Recall (?) to go back to the first level.


        And, (*^(*(*&, my finger slipped and hit the wrong key (what, me sweating?) when I told it which item to use, delaying me one round, cuasing my death rather than escape.


        and I never got that far again.


        This would have been 1988, so was that version 2?


        hawk

    • The best thing is you can tell your boss your're doing a defrag.

      "The bugs on the floor speed up"

      "See, it's working!"

  • The nerd litmus test. (Score:5, Funny)

    by fluxrad ( 125130 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @07:49AM (#3206588)
    Just divide the number of people who download the latest version of this game by the number of valid IP's on the internet and you can figure out exactly what percentage of people on the planet earth won't be contributing to the world's "population" problem ;-)

  • Nethack vs Diablo (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PenguinLord ( 555013 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @07:50AM (#3206592)
    When i first played Diablo all i could think was, "Hey this is just hack with a nice interface". All the same elements are there except that nethack has a depth and subtle complexity that Diablo lacks.

    • Re:Nethack vs Diablo (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dimer0 ( 461593 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @08:01AM (#3206619)
      Yup. And there's something to say for using your imagination... OH CRAP! The green "@" and the red "'" are trying to eat me!! Ohhh noo!

      Do we need graphics fed down our throat for everything? Anyone remember playing AD&D? Or even D&D? I never walked out of a game saying "Hey, DM, your graphics suck!".

      I tell ya what tho - I've spent about 20 hours playing Balder's Gate II, which is fun - but since I've started playing BG2, I've put in about 40 hours of Nethack. I have to keep playing - all for the high score list when I die.
      • OK, how do I get the color turned back on? I know I had it ages ago, but I just can't find the options under FreeBSD to do this.


        I recall that I used to play on consoles rather than in an xterm under debian . . .


        hawk


        p.s. The foreground color should be set to green, and bg to black--this shows that you have the status to get a green-screen vt100 . . .


        :)

        • Under linux:

          /home/dasunt/.nethackrc includes the following lines:

          OPTIONS=DECgraphics,color

          Then I always do an 'export TERM=xterm-color' (even on the command prompt), and then run nethack. That way, I get colors and the pretty walls (like in the windows version by default).

  • oh shit (Score:4, Funny)

    by isli ( 543429 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @07:50AM (#3206593)
    i'm being chased by the @ and the %. Well, at least its not the / and the .

  • Greatest ? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by C0vardeAn0nim0 ( 232451 )
    nethack is a nice game, but it still falls short when compared to Elite
    • Yess.... I can remember countless nights I spent in the computer lab in my high-school, with my trusty old BBC and hijacking Apple II green monitors.
      My favorites:
      Elite
      Repton 2
      Labyrinth
      Civilization I
      Civilization III (sid meyers)
      Everything else is just... ok I guess...
    • Elite's not networked... but this [operagost.com] is.

      It's graphics vs. gameplay.


  • 1st Official Slashdot to English Translator-matic
    • "There's a sourceforge project creating just what you're looking for..."
      "Me and a bunch of people got drunk, thought we could code, submitted the idea and produced a fancy web page. It's now two years later and the project has no files to download and is STILL on Stage 1, Planning."

    • "That's the beauty of UNIX - Lots of little tools which can be used together. Far more flexible!"
      "I've been reading UNIX in a Nutshell for SVR4 and fuck knows what any of this flags stuff is about"

    • "Linux is far more secure than Windows. My box has never been hacked."
      "I can install Red Hat from a bootable CD. The machine is not connected to a network and all I do all day is type ps, pwd and ls. I'm so l33t."

    • "You might want to try going to college and learning about this stuff!"
      "My folks are rich enough to send me off for further education. I am now in an uber-elite crowd of know-it-alls and I am here to belittle you. Fear me."

    • "Microsoft products are soooo insecure!"
      "I've spent the last two years being subjected to biased slashdot propaganda. I couldn't hack into a properly configured windows system if my life depended on it."

    • "We should file an antitrust lawsuit against Sony"
      "I've spent far too much time absorbing bullshit ideals from anarchists. The truth of the matter is, I just don't want to pay for anything whatsoever. Britney CDs should be free because I think that somehow the constitution protects my illegal copying and distribution under some freedom of speech law or fair use act. Even though I don't have to go out and buy luxury items, I'm gonna whinge and bitch anyway"

    • "Have you considered using Linux?"
      "I've only been using it for a week, and now my hardcore wannabe techno friends think I'm a guru. I now recommend it to everybody based upon what I've read at slashdot."

    • "Don't you find that parsing this bitset through the compliation alogirithm that is piped out through GCC on a command line echo really works well for logarithmically sound sine wave matcher?"
      "Somebody please shoot me several times in the head. I am fucking clueless."

    • "If they join all the state drivers licence databases together, they'll be able to track me! How do I change my identity?"
      "I'm too fucking dense to realise that this has been going on for over 15 years already, and I've just finished reading 1984. Go figure."
    Don't forget to mod me down!
    • Not the funniest thing I've read, but funny enough for 9am. :)

      This whole (-1, Offtopic) thing is a bunch of bullshit. Yes, it may be offtopic, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't be able to see it! A lot of times, the offtopic stuff is better than the topic at hand. But not this time... we're talking about nethack!

  • Please please please (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Friday March 22, 2002 @07:59AM (#3206616) Homepage Journal
    Tell me they've got rid of the horrible "configure the thing by editting config.h" and replaced it with autoconf or somesuch. I don't mind picking out the game options by hand, but making sure it uses the right term\(cap|lin\)/ncurses library is a pain in the ass.

    (Anyway, I'm a slashem addict myself)
  • BBS games that are still available on Telnet BBSs nowadays, Arrowbridge immediatly comes to mind, not to mention DoorMud...
  • Looks like my AP calculus grade will be driven even further into the ground next grading period than it was this time. Thank god there is no Palm port yet, id *never* get any work done. Thanks Nethack

  • What is NetHack? (Score:5, Informative)

    by rtos ( 179649 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @08:12AM (#3206642) Homepage
    What do you mean you've never heard of Nethack?!

    I'm surprised to read quite a few posts from people saying "What's Nethack?" ... well, here's some information to get you started on an answer:

    Unsung Heros: NetHack [gamespot.com] : "NetHack is a spectacular dungeon crawl that has been in development for more than 15 years. It's the only game in this feature that we can refer to in the present tense, because it is the only game still being actively worked on. It features random dungeons, enough monsters to fill an AD&D menagerie, and enough commands to create a programming language."

    The Gamespy Hall of Fame [gamespy.com] : "Here's a game that's been under continuous development for over 15 years. It has no graphics, unless you count the primitive patterns made of ascii characters. And yet is has a huge following -- a very active newsgroup, fans all over the globe, and many instances of major media coverage. There's some kind of magic in NetHack, a world so huge and complex that every game is completely different, where each new item can twist the gameplay in new directions. Mostly we love it for the surprises -- the number of times you try some amazingly obscure action and find out that it works, leaving slump back in your chair and exclaim, 'They thought of everything!'"

    Salon: The Best Game Ever [salon.com] : "But as any hacker worth the title will tell you, Nethack is still one of the best games ever made. What's more, it's one of the best open-source games ever made -- meaning anyone who cares can grab ahold of the game's source code and make changes and improvements. The player's guide is even authored by none other than open-source ontologist Eric S. Raymond..."

    The Nethack Homepage [wtower.com] : "Nethack is a single player, ASCII graphics-based adventure game, similar to the lines of Dungeons & Dragons and similar fantasy games. It is commonly classified in the larger group of Rogue-like Games, which generally are all text-based, solo adventures. Within the game, your character is after the infamous Wizard of Yendor, who has stolen the Amulet of Yendor and plans to use it for his evil purposes. You, a young member of your chosen class, have been blessed by your people and your god to retrieve the Amulet, and to save the world from the Wizard's evil plans."

    Variants and Utilities [wtower.com] : "One of the most impressive features of Nethack is the amount of 3rd party developed material that either is a varient of the Nethack game, or can be used to enhance your Nethack gaming experience. You'll find both variants and utilites for Nethack listed on this page."

    But this one may be (in my biased opinion) the coolest project of all...

    Nethack-Palm Porting Project [sourceforge.net] : "The Nethack-Palm porting project is a loosely-knit group of Nethack and Palm enthusiasts who are working to port the classic game Nethack to the Palm platform. The project is well underway, but still far from complete so we welcome any new contributors." (See also Roguelikes for PalmOS [sourceforge.net])

    So there you go. NetHack. What is it? The longest running, most amazing, coolest, open source game in the history of computers.... or something. :) But seriously, if you've never played NetHack, give it a try. It's worth it, if nothing else, just to say you did.
    • That tells a lot about the game but I still can't find *any* screenshots for it.

      • Re:What is NetHack? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Kanon ( 152815 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @09:49AM (#3206984)
        Here's a picture of the main character

        @

        And his dog looks like this

        d

        The orcs are quite good

        o

        Does that help?
        • Actually, if you use Mac OS X, you can set font smoothing in Terminal so you get all the anti-aliasing you need. :)

        • Re:What is NetHack? (Score:4, Funny)

          by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @12:23PM (#3208008)


          > Here's a picture of the main character @ And his dog looks like this d The orcs are quite good o

          I've only ever seen the beginner's version, where the dungeon is a single 3x3 level and the only two characters are X and O.

      • You want Nethack with a GUI? Here you go. :)

        http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/falcon se ye.html
        http://falconseye.sourceforge.net/

    • the coolest project of all... Nethack-Palm Porting Project

      And for those like me who have Psion handhelds, the coolest of all would be NetHack for Psion [rmplc.co.uk]. :) Runs great on my Revo, and is a nice way to kill time like during math classes.

    • This is psychologically interesting. Nethack is a stupid little game. I mean really. Certainly Chess or Go are infinately more qualified to be called "The greatest game ever". Anyone that is new to net hack immediately sees that it is nothing. The only people that say it's "The greatest game ever" are people that have played it a long time and are extremely nostalgic about it, or have heard it's "The greatest game ever" and want to be cool so they play it and call it "The greatest game ever". The Salon article is the best. The authour agrees that it is "The best game ever" (as he calls it) merely on the say so of others... It's a cult and only cult members or cult member wannabes see any greatness in it at all. Non members see nothing. It's a zen test.

  • Playability (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TimeTrav ( 460837 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @08:13AM (#3206643)
    Heres a game that has real playability. You could play nethack for 100 hours+ and still not "master" it. I consider this to be more entertaining than playing some shoot-em-up that can be solved in 10 hours or less. Other games may be pretty, but this game has SOUL.

    The infocom games were similar ... many hours of playability. If new game authors would make games with the same appeal and infinite replayability as nethack, I might *never* go outside again! :D
    • You could play nethack for 100 hours+ and still not "master" it.

      Indeed. In fact, I first played it when it was still just called "hack". Don't know what it is about it, though, but something just failed to grab my interest. I like virtually every other roguelike game on the planet, but hack/nethack never did it for me. Angband (and before it, Moria), on the other hand, I'd probably rank as the greatest game ever written. 100+ hours, though? I've been playing it for 13 years now and it's still as playable as it ever was. And no, I haven't yet completed it. To me, that's the mark of a good game. Most modern games are dumbed down to the point where they're just way too easy to complete. Even Larn (probably the easiest of the roguelike games) still took a fair while to complete.

    • Re:Playability (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Peaker ( 72084 )
      Lets see you master Starcraft in 100 hours of gaming :)

      And by mastering, I don't mean finishing the single-player game, but being a master of multiplayer matches..

      In fact, most games aren't really "mastered" in 100 hours.. finishing the single-player game isn't mastering, and most modern games are geared towards the multiplayer version (Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, Starcraft, ...)

      • Re:Playability (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Quill_28 ( 553921 )
        Comparing apples and oranges. You can "master" starcraft in 20 hours of gaming. You would know all the units, moving them, everything about the game, etc. What you wouldn't have "mastered" is playing against other people.

        NetHack on the other litereally takes 100's of hours to master the game.

    • Re:Playability (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 22, 2002 @09:14AM (#3206821)
      Unfortunately (fortunately?) for me, I succumbed to searching for cheats on the web after dying the 6th time. Nethack is wonderfully rich, but in it's richness it's also one of the most unforgiving games you can play. There are hundreds and hundreds of things to do...but by the same turn there are just as many ways to die.

      For those of you who are not familiar with Nethack, once you're dead...you're dead. This can get especially frustrating if you've invested a lot of time in the character. So after having died so many times within the first hour of gameplay...almost regardless of what I did.(it's very easy to run out of food, die of desease, etc) I decided to check the web:

      No sooner than 15 minutes later, I had discovered a 'cheat' for saving character files. This effectively meant that I would never die...provided I kept backup copies of my character which wasn't a problem.

      So with this method I happily hummed along, and my wizard gained all kinds of levels and items...and the Nethack world WAS incredibly rich and diverse. But...for whatever reason...I payed another visit to the cheats section on the web. After about 15 minutes of looking I discovered 'Poly-piling'. It involves zapping a 'pile' of your gear with the 'Wand of Polymorphing' transforming it into other random items of the same type. This, coupled with the ability to reload my previous saved games(thanks to my backup copies) effectively gave me the ability to stock my wizard with any item I wanted =(. . I'd just zap and reload until the process prduced the item(s) I was looking for.

      So, to make a long story shorter, by the end of about 1 week's time, my wizard had mega gear, and mega levels...but I had lost something...my Nethack innocence if you will..and there was no getting it back.

      For the brief time that I played nethack, it was all there was in life. The underlying texture of Nethack was the most wonderful and diverse computer based roleplaying experience I have every had. But, those times are forever passed for me. Sometimes in those fond memories...I try to return to the game, to revel again in that fountain of wonder...but every time I try, the urge to invoke those nasty save/polypiling cheats overpowers me! Alas I cannot...and I end up quiting the game out of shame...rather than doing so.

      The Moral of the story...is that the posters here who play for years very likely do not employ these 'cheats'. I chose the dark path...and it forever tainted my Nethack experience...yes, power was quicker, easier to obtain! But ultimately it spoiled me! and I cannot enjoy Nethack for what it was meant to be...trecherous, unrelenting, and vastly rewarding game play!
      • If you had looked at the help, you would have realized that pressing 'X' would have done you more service than any savescumming cheats. And it's legit, as well.

  • Regcodes? (Score:3, Funny)

    by F.O.Dobbs ( 17317 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @08:18AM (#3206652) Homepage
    Where can I get a reg code for this? Anybody got a good warez site for this one?

    Oh wait, wrong game.

  • God (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wind_Walker ( 83965 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @08:25AM (#3206668) Homepage Journal
    When are the people over at Nethack going to realize that this feature bloat is completely destroying the product? Have you looked at the latest release.txt file? A new Win32 GUI, control-P for a full screen message...

    And at a size of 1.1 MB?!?!?! How am I supposed to download that on my dialup connection?

  • Release notes (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 22, 2002 @08:25AM (#3206669)
    Posted anonymously, because I'm not karma whoring.

    The NetHack DevTeam is pleased to announce the release of NetHack 3.4.0.

    NetHack 3.4 is an enhancement to the dungeon exploration game NetHack. It is a distant descendent of Rogue and Hack, and a direct descendent of NetHack 3.3.

    There are a great number of bug fixes in this release, as well as many changes and surprises beyond what you see listed below. Here is a brief overview of some new additions and changes in the game.

    • Many, many bug fixes and tweaks to the core code and to several ports
    • Enhanced config file processing and player selection prompts for some ports
    • Stamina affects ability to throw heavy things
    • Objects merge in containers
    • Wish for "nothing", and genocide "none" to preserve your conduct
    • Several small refinements to race/role separation
    • Config file BOULDER option to specify the symbol for displaying boulders
    • Riding has been improved
    • New travel command which is particularly helpful for mouse navigation on handheld computers
    • more feedback about skill advancement from #enhance command
    • End-of-game disclose options can be individually tuned to your liking
    • Mac: command-key shortcuts in the player selection dialog
    • Amiga: screenmode requester
    • Win32: new graphical interface contributed by Alex Kompel

    We've also included variations of enhancements contributed by members of the NetHack community at large. Among them:

    • Scott Bigham's new T-shirt messages and his option to turn off resistance display effects
    • Malcolm Ryan's option for "autodig"
    • Jay Tilton's full-screen message window display via control-P
    • Dylan O'Donnell's patch for optionally starting with no pet
    • Tom Friedetzky's blessed/uncursed/cursed selection patch for menustyle:full
    • Jason Short's additional lens uses
    • Kelly Bailey's Gnomish Mines changes
    • Ken Arnold's patch to display prices in your inventory

    A fuller list of changes for this release can be found in the file doc/fixes34.0 in the source distribution. The text in there was written for the development team's own use and is provided "as is", so please do not ask us to further explain the entries in this file.

    The NetHack 3.4.0 source code supports many different platforms including most Unix versions, Windows, DOS, Linux, Apple Macintosh(tm), Apple Macintosh OS X(tm), OS/2(tm), Atari(tm), and Amiga(tm).

    Also, note that the Gnome toolkit interface is still considered an experimental option. We have not enhanced the port ourselves, and so far we have not received any contributions doing so from the NetHack community.

    -- Happy NetHacking! --

  • Download Links (karma whore...?) (Score:4, Informative)

    by davidesh ( 316537 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @08:28AM (#3206685)

    Win32

    nh340win.zip (by HTTP) [aol.com](about 1M)

    nh340win.zip (by FTP) [aol.com](about 1M)

    Linux

    nh340lin.tgz (by HTTP) [aol.com](about 1.1M)

    nh340lin.tgz (by FTP) [aol.com](about 1.1M)

    NetHack 3.4.0 Linux Elf with TTY and Athena-widget-based (traditional X11) graphics interfaces (including tiles). This version requires X11 libraries, which are installed on almost all Linux systems.


    This binary has support for tty and X11 windowing systems, but not Qt. This means you will need to have X11 libraries installed on your system to run this binary, even in its tty flavor.

    nh340linQt.tgz (by HTTP) [aol.com](about 1.2M)

    nh340linQt.tgz (by FTP) [aol.com](about 1.2M)

    NetHack 3.4.0 Linux Elf with TTY and Qt-based graphics interfaces (including tiles). This version requires the Qt libraries (version 2.2 or 2.3) which may or may not be installed on any particlar Linux system.

    Note: Most Redhat installations do not include Qt by default; it must be specifically selected.

    Note: If you have KDE 2 installed, you have Qt nstalled.
    README.linux [nethack.org] Additional details about the Linux binary. If you are not running Redhat, check the System information in this file to see if you need to build from source [slashdot.org], instead of using these binaries.

  • Falcon's Eye (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BigJimSlade ( 139096 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @09:04AM (#3206792) Homepage
    Has anyone checked out Falcon's Eye? [www.hut.fi] It's a frontend for NetHack that has 3D isometric graphics and background music, and it's available for Linux, DOS and Windows. It looks fabulous, and I think it's a great way to get new people interested in the game.

    • Re:Falcon's Eye (Score:2, Interesting)

      by teamhasnoi ( 554944 )
      I haven't been able to get it to work on Winblows XP or 98 (under Virtual PC) but I have been able to get it to work on 95 under Virtual PC on OS X. Geez.
      • Falcon's Eye works great on my Windows 98 SE box. There are a few other graphical front-ends for Nethack. It would be interesting to see a front-end for the front-ends. So that I could select which interface I wanted on the fly. For some maps, the traditional ASCII interface, for others the Qt interface, and maybe if I am feeling in the need of even more eye-candy than the Qt interface, I can select the Flacon's Eye interface.

    • Re:Falcon's Eye (Score:3, Funny)

      by Junta ( 36770 )
      What, graphics with netHack? Blashpemer! We get our ASCII and we like it that way. May an @ devour you for even suggesting anything but ASCII :)
    • Having the game core separate from the display layer KICKS ASS. (More accurately, smacking a display engine on top of the thing)

      Anyone up for "skinning" NetHack?

    • Falcon's eye has some problems... there are some concepts that work fine with keyboard/ascii that just dont translate to a mouse driven game. For example; casting spells takes a directional parameter; instread of just clicking in the general direction you want to shoot, you have to click the arrow for that direction that pops up in a dialog box.

      Worse, the keyboard doesnt behave like ASCII or tile nethack, which is offencive to habitual players.
  • I have a real disability when it comes to Nethack: I *hate* resuming a saved game. If I can't play it in one sitting, I lose interest. Since hack changed to nethack, this has been a problem for me. Hell, I only ascended *once* on the last release.

    Oh well, building a good character is the most fun part of the game for me, anyway. I guess I'll let the new release suck up the precious fragments of my spare time, once again....
    • you have to be careful about your day job.


      be a student or a professor. That way, you start right after class on tuesday, and you have until thursday morning if you arranged your schedule properly!


      :)


      hawk, who has never stayed up past 11p.m. with a game. OK, would you believe not past midnight? 2am? . . .

  • Yes, I use Windows. I have to because of work.

    What I really, REALLY like in this release of the windows port is the following.

    1. It no longer takes 100% of my cpu!!!! I can play longer on my laptop now!!! YIPPIE!!!!

    2. It finally has some half-decent graphics, (for nethack) and I can easily switch between text-graphics and the new graphics.

    3. It still has the great playability of Nethack!!! I love it!!

    A lot of you were asking why Nethack is so playable and enjoyable. Here's my theory for anybody who wants to read it.

    Nethack and all of the other text-based games (Infocom, ZZT, etc...) force the user to READ. By reading what's going on, it allows the brain to use it's imagination. Your imagination (well, mine at least) is far more interesting than anything Blizzard or Hollywood could come up with. The images in my head really out-beat anything else.

    That's why Nethack (and other similar games) have so many return players.

    The second reason, is that Nethack doesn't have a single goal. If you want to get the amulet of Yendor, go ahead! If you just want to see how far your character develops, you can do that too! It's a really flexible game.

    Just my 2c worth.

    Gerald.
    • It is not designed such that the player is ensured to eventually win. Almost every commercial game uses the same psychological feedback formula of "optimal" reward that essentially makes every game blend into each other.

      Although Diablo/Diablo2 might perfect that formula such that playing all the way through is very engaging, the replayability is low due to the fact that you know the game is designed for you to win.

      Nethack is a universe that is vast enough that winning is exceptionally difficult, even if you read all the spoilers. Yet you still have the impression that it is easy throughout.

      Maybe though if there is one hint to take to heart it is to learn how to use and make holy water.

  • Bones (Score:2)

    by cswiii ( 11061 )
    From the site:
    (If you have old record and logfile entries from a previous NetHack version, you might want to save copies before they get overwritten by the new empty files; old saved games and bones files won't work with 3.4.0.)

    Alas! Without my bones files, how will I ever remember to avoid taking on a floating eye in melee? Or grabbing that cockatrice corpse? Or stuffing myself silly with spinach?

    • Re:Bones (Score:2, Informative)

      by gowen ( 141411 )
      Without my bones files, how will I ever remember to avoid taking on a floating eye in melee? Or grabbing that cockatrice corpse?
      Thats not what bones files are for. Thats record files. Bones files are saved levels on which you can find the corpses of previous characters, kill their ghost and loot them of their (now cursed) booty.
      • Yes. Corpses of previous characters.... corpses, because I presumably ran in a floating eye. Or stumbled blindly into a cockatrice corpse. Or tried to suck down a can of spinach into my already satiated body.

  • Don't forget... (Score:4, Informative)

    by pongo000 ( 97357 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @09:38AM (#3206924)
    ...about the Nethack tournament here [devnull.net], starts on Halloween. I've never played the tournament, but all this hype here will probably get me started!

  • One of the greatest games (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Blue23 ( 197186 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @09:38AM (#3206925) Homepage
    A few months back I listed by top three games of all time in regards to how much time I spent on them. (No indication if they were the "best" games I played, just the ones with the most hours logged.

    #3 was the Diablo series and expansion.

    #2 was the Civ series. Each one grabs me and doesn't let go. I've played for 24 hour blocks of time.

    #1 was Nethack. It's so incredible, so in depth. And so easy to die and have to start again.

    If you haven't tried this yet, and you have enough imagination not to need fancy graphics, give this a try. Then go read some strategies on the web, get completely overwhelmed by possibilities, and try again. 8) "Hmm, if I engrave Elbereth on the floor with this unidentified wand, what will that do..."

    =Blue(23) a/k/a iamBLUEhearmeroar
  • I still just don't get the appeal of this game. I think I must suck at it.

    They say the game has replayability. But every game I've played is the same -- my dog dies around level 3, and I die around level 6, usually to a gnome in the caverns with the 'natural' design. By that time I've found one or two magic items which I usually cannot use.

    They say you can do lots of things in this game; use cockatrices as weapons to stone monsters, etc. But every weird trick I've tried hasn't worked. I've never even seen a cockatrice (It would probably kill me quickly, anyway.) As far as I can tell, there's nothing to do in this game except bash monsters, collect treasure, and get killed. I can't even figure out how to cast spells.

    I'm sure it's an okay game once you figure out the obtuse interface. But I just don't understand why people keep claiming it has such appeal.
    • But you just haven't given it sufficient chance. It only seems clunky at first because people are not used to the game's key ideas:

      A. You don't need flashy graphics
      B. You only have one life

      Perhaps you are frustrated by other things as well, but these two things seem to turn off the most people, as far as I can see. People who get hung up on the game's difficulty and/or interface often fail to notice the hundreds of things that can actually happen in the game that make you stop and say "I can't believe they thought of that!" My wife was playing one time; she read a scroll of Punishment and was outfitted with a ball and chain. Later, she fell in a pit trap, and while attempting to climb out, the ball rolled in and hit her character in the head, ending the game. I find that completely funny and cool. Or the fact that you can get rings from kitchen sinks. Makes sense, right? Discovery is everything in Nethack...
    • You're not required to like the game. Some people who are actually good at it do. Some people like me who still suck at it like it. Move on, it does take all kinds.

      You do have to try all kinds of different things. If you keep playing the game the exact same way, you will always die the exact same way.

      I don't think anyone finishes the game with the pet they started with. Let it go, move on, feel sad for a moment, then wish for a blessed figurine of an archon, or polymorph your pet with the first polymorph wand you find.

      "Mister Asindihopo? Say hi to muffin"
      "RAARRRR!!!" *MUNCH*
      "BAD MUFFIN! Oh well, free loot."

      I do find myself wanting to hack on the game, but find there's way too much that's hardwired. Want to add extra states besides confused and hallucinating for messages to change, but found that those flags are basically hardwired, the message structures aren't really extensible. Stuff like that. Maybe someone could port nethack to the zangband engine, which is supposedly scriptable in python.
  • There goes another few thousand hours of my life!

    ttyl,
    Farrell
  • What, no sed version available???

  • My favorite .sig of all time (Score:3, Funny)

    by eaolson ( 153849 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @01:25PM (#3208463)
    Used by Dave Meringer, then of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory:
    Now I am become NetHack, the destroyer of graduate students.

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