NetHack 5.0 Released (nethack.org) 13
"So yesterday the Devteam (it is always the Devteam) released version 5.0 of legendary and venerable rogueike compuer game NetHack," writes the Rogue-like games column @Play. "It is 39 years old..."
MilenCent (Slashdot reader #219,397) writes: In addition to play changes it's left for players to discover, this version updates the code to compile with C99, makes it much easier to cross compile the code for other systems than the one running, and now uses Lua for its dungeon generation. Happy hacking!
For new players, "Nethack 5.0 now has an optional tutorial in the early phases of the game that might help you," notes the Rogue-like games column @Play: Three systems binaries are provided: Windows, MS-DOS and Amiga. Yes, Nethack still supports MS-DOS, and yes, it still supports classic Amiga: it explicitly supports AmigaDOS 3.0, meaning it can still run on 68000 machines... That these are the only systems they provide binaries for shouldn't be seen as an indication that these are the "most important" platforms for Nethack, it's more that, since it's entirely open source, building it yourself is entirely possible, and more expected than with most software. Nethack can be built for Linux, Windows 8-11, AmigaDOS, MacOS (I'm not sure if this includes classic Mac too but it might), Windows CE (wow), OS/2 (additional wow), BeOS, VMS and multiple Unixes... Another option is to play through public Nethack servers. The most popular of these are probably alt.org and Hardfought.
MilenCent (Slashdot reader #219,397) writes: In addition to play changes it's left for players to discover, this version updates the code to compile with C99, makes it much easier to cross compile the code for other systems than the one running, and now uses Lua for its dungeon generation. Happy hacking!
For new players, "Nethack 5.0 now has an optional tutorial in the early phases of the game that might help you," notes the Rogue-like games column @Play: Three systems binaries are provided: Windows, MS-DOS and Amiga. Yes, Nethack still supports MS-DOS, and yes, it still supports classic Amiga: it explicitly supports AmigaDOS 3.0, meaning it can still run on 68000 machines... That these are the only systems they provide binaries for shouldn't be seen as an indication that these are the "most important" platforms for Nethack, it's more that, since it's entirely open source, building it yourself is entirely possible, and more expected than with most software. Nethack can be built for Linux, Windows 8-11, AmigaDOS, MacOS (I'm not sure if this includes classic Mac too but it might), Windows CE (wow), OS/2 (additional wow), BeOS, VMS and multiple Unixes... Another option is to play through public Nethack servers. The most popular of these are probably alt.org and Hardfought.
I only just updated to 3.7.0-132 a while back (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Some of those things that I've found:
* A tutorial is offered on starting a game
* There can be themed rooms now, including (seen with my own eyes) non-rectangular ones, icy rooms, nested rooms and statue gardens (where the statues can actually be monsters).
* Iron bars can now be normal dungeon dressing. Before, they had only been seen in very few instances in Quest levels.
* Monkeys in minetown can now try to steal items from you (those may have been in a previous version)
* player monster corpses can generate
Re: (Score:2)
Nethack now supports cross compilation, so it might be possible to build for BeOS from a different kind of machine. Or maybe they use Haiku?
Version (Score:3)
I know version numbers are often arbitrary, but why did it jump from 3.6.7 to 5.0? Do they not like the number 4?
Re:Version (Score:5, Informative)
NetHack has many variants and forks, and one of them was named NetHack 4 [nethackwiki.com] (and was based on version 3.4.3) - naming this release 4.0.0 would've been rather confusing.
On top of that, there had been numerous development builds named "3.7.0", so releasing the final version with that same number would've also been confusing, so they went with 5.0.0 instead.
Re: (Score:3)
Thanks! That was very informative (and not something I could easily find).
I remember playing Rogue way back in the 80's on ASCII terminals :) Many hours. I think I moved on from that fad before NetHack appeared. It is cool that there is an X11 version for Athena and QT, too.
Now I am getting nostalgic.... I remember when we were on X Terminals, Xblast TNT came out. Great times blasting other players on the network. Wow- it is still in the Mint repos, and as a native package! https://community.linuxm [linuxmint.com]
Binaries provided for DOS, Windows, and Amiga (Score:2)
... other, more obscure platforms are also supported, but if you want to run NetHack on them, you'll have to compile it yourself from source. Kind of a baller move if you ask me :)
in before... (Score:2)
In before someone goes into a rant about how nethack isn't a roguelike, but a roguelite, because it doesn't meet some batshit insane standard that rogue doesn't even meet.
Re: (Score:1)
I once referred to FTL a roguelike. The horror which followed has left scars I will forever carry.
modernized to C99, then unmodernized to using LUA (Score:3)
> this version updates the code to compile with C99, makes it much easier to cross compile the code for other systems than the one running, and now uses Lua for its dungeon generation.
It never ceases to amaze me that developer spend the time to upgrade ancient code to the latest C version, yet add dependencies on sure to be broken add-ons like ancient niche scripting languages.
Is the question "How much of this was vibe-coded?"
Re: (Score:2)
(Disclaimer: submitter of the post, and also the person who's blog was linked to it, although that was added by the editor and not me.)
I would take the bet that *zero percent* of Nethack is vibe coded. The Devteam are not the kinds of people, I believe, to be easily swayed by (spits) _passing fancies_ like Claude. Lua (I've been told) can be compiled as straight C, so it doesn't introduce further dependencies. The previous special level building system of Nethack used yacc and lex, and was rather complex. I
good lord (Score:2)
I'm still playing Hack 1.0.3. (On WSL.) Maybe it's finally time to try Nethack.