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The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1
- Alex3917 8y agoApparently the patch for the bug I reported in 2004 (C343-20) didn't make it into this version, despite being fixed four years ago. The glacial timescales are kind of endearing at this point.
- hapnin 8y agoThey just moved to github so maybe time will be measured in months instead of decades.
- earenndil 8y agoThey didn't move to github, they just maintain a mirror on github.
- ggm 8y agoYour pull request crumbles into dust...
- Alex3917 8y agoNot my PR! The issue is that if you die by having a cursed ball and chain fall onto your head while descending a staircase, the screen doesn't transition to the lower level so it's not clear on which level the bones file would be generated. (Per emails from the dev team, it does get correctly generated on the lower level.) Apparently fixing this issue somehow required rewriting huge portions of the graphics engine, which probably explains the snarky comment next to the bug in the issue tracker. :-)
- simcop2387 8y agoThat's one hell of a bug to find. That's kind of hilarious. That does suck about how difficult to fix though.
- danShumway 8y ago:) To be fair, if I was writing any program and someone came to me with a bug like that, my first thought would be "#!@? I don't want to deal with this."
- ckemere 8y agoConfused - the change log includes "don't show the old level when you die going down the stairs because of an iron ball"
- larkeith 8y agoIs this available on any websites that don't require Javascript to view? (Seriously folks, there's no reason a static site like this should need JS enabled to read, except for tracking purposes.)
- tty7 8y agoSign up to mailing list ?
- jkaplowitz 8y agoIn keeping with history of the "Net" prefix of NetHack, this was posted to Usenet in the rec.games.roguelikes.nethack newsgroup, not a mailing list. Usenet isn't totally dead, it just seems that way from the trendier parts of the Internet. :) That newsgroup is still primary for NetHack. But sure, there are still more traditional ways to read newsgroups than the Google Groups interface.
- cokernel 8y agohttps://nethack.org/v361/release.html https://nethack.org/v361/release.html
- mherdeg 8y agoYou shouldn't even need a web browser to view this announcement -- it was posted on 27 April 2018 to rec.games.roguelike.nethack. Assuming you already have a newsreader set up, you can just go ahead and read that message.
- VectorLock 8y agoNethack.. Newsreaders.. Really taking me back to the halcyon days here.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cosarara 8y ago
- xor1 8y agoI'd like to plug DCSS here: https://crawl.develz.org/ https://crawl.develz.org/ I could never get into any other roguelikes, but I LOVE Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. I easily have over 100 hours in it, and just recently finished an actual game for the first time (15 runes, Gargoyle Hunter).
- Cursuviam 8y agoI find DCSS's development goals very interesting in contrast to Nethack. While Nethack is widely famed for "the dev's think of everything", DCSS has been on a streak of streamlining mechanics, such as the latest release collapsing all food items to rations instead of the pizza, royal jelly, and others. Though rip wand of healing.
- digi_owl 8y agoUgh, that kind of development approach gets my skin crawling for some reason.
- fiddlerwoaroof 8y agoYeah, I find that a lot of the changes made for the sake of “streamlining” just made the game more boring.
- duncan_bayne 8y agoUpvoted. In my opinion, this is what broke AD&D 3rd edition relative to 2nd Ed.
- digi_owl 8y agoAnd then 4th went and slimlined things even further. And what a success that was...
- duncan_bayne 8y agoI missed that entirely. 3rd Ed destroyed my interest in upgrading; I'd been playing since 1st Edition, too.
- darkkindness 8y agoThe most game-changing additions, IMO: > "Elbereth" now erodes based on attacks by the player, not monsters scared > Allow taming monkeys and apes with bananas > Peacefuls may react when you attack other peacefuls Also, I'm happy about these QoL changes: > New status line conditions Stone Strngl Deaf Lev Fly Ride > Give feedback just before timed levitation runs out
- roghummal 8y ago>"Elbereth" must now be the only engraved text on a square to function So... "elberethelberethelberethelbereth" won't work anymore, either.
- Spoom 8y agoThat is a potentially big change if you like to use Elbereth to protect your stack. Now you basically have to burn it.
- djur 8y agoAs of Nethack 3.6.0 Elbereth no longer works on a square that you're not standing on, so it can't be used to guard a stash. Now you need to use a scroll of scare monster for that purpose.
- wwweston 8y ago> "Elbereth" now erodes based on attacks by the player, not monsters scared That puts Elbereth back into useful territory. The way it was nerfed in 3.6 made it borderline useless when encountering a single foe that outmatched you, and entirely useless encountering a group. This is possibly bad news for people who thought that maybe The Problem With Nethack™ was that it was too easy to get out of the early game, but probably good news for everyone else.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- endemic 8y agoAnyone have recommended resources for learning how to play?
- kibwen 8y agoI'm a Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup player, which is a cousin to Nethack, but I imagine the process is the same: get an IRC client, connect to Freenode, join #nethack, ask questions, and learn to use the utterly invaluable resources provided by the in-channel bots (e.g. the learndb).
- djur 8y agoNetHack's learndb (Rodney) isn't quite as vital as Crawl's, mostly because NetHack is more spoiler-reliant and (as a result) has a much more detailed and accurate wiki, as well as other sources of spoilers.
- gsruff 8y agoThis playlist with a new player being led by an experienced player was very helpful for me when I was learning to play. Still haven't ascended, but what an addictive game. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHzN3MktVPzVdFNz7WYwGUePONsztAT55 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHzN3MktVPzVdFNz7WYwG...
- r3n 8y agoOfficial guidebook for basic knowledge http://www.nethack.org/v361/Guidebook.html http://www.nethack.org/v361/Guidebook.html For more advanced mechanics & spoiler http://www.steelypips.org/nethack/ http://www.steelypips.org/nethack/ There is also a NetHack wiki https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page
- r3n 8y agoPublic servers like NAO is also a good place to learn NetHack. https://www.alt.org/nethack/ https://www.alt.org/nethack/ You can download session files from players and play it on your machine, their configs are also available on the website.
- PaulHoule 8y agoHas anyone won this game honestly? I've patched the C code and only got so far. I tried savefile hacking and that didn't get me to the end. I was only able to win by compiling a version with debug symbols and playing inside the debugger. (eg. find the flag for the Wizard of Yendor's invisibility status and clear it.)
- schoen 8y agoThere's only one person known to have won without spoilers (that is, without reading the source code or information derived from the source code). However, you can see lots of experts playing live on nethack.alt.org and they regularly win. I've personally won four times (with Valkyries and Barbarians, two of the easiest classes) and once got a Priest to the Astral Plane and died there. :-( Recently I've switched to Crawl, also a great Roguelike with a very different philosophy. Watching other people play on NAO and/or asking people for help or advice should really improve your NetHack skills!
- codingdave 8y ago> There's only one person known to have won That is quite a modern concept. Back in ye olden times, people just played local versions of games, and won, and didn't announce their achievements to the world. I am sure there is a plethora of people who won and just didn't brag about it.
- __s 8y agoYes, in fact NetHack is supposed to be a more forgiving roguelike. See http://nethack4.org/blog/strategy-headroom.html http://nethack4.org/blog/strategy-headroom.html
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoPerhaps for a very specific and arcane definition of "forgiving." (Or maybe you just mean "more forgiving than Rogue," which is not saying much.) NetHack is famously brutal, and the people who beat it tend to sink hundreds if not thousands of hours first.
- dogecoinbase 8y agoHaven't been able to ascend a tourist since the post 3.4 Elbereth nerfings... but doesn't mean it's not possible. I'll keep trying.
- asztal 8y agoAscended my first tourist yesterday! It's actually a great class to play after the quest. You just have to be very careful (and perhaps lucky) in the early game.
- nradov 8y agoHas anyone programmed an AI to win Nethack? It seems like an obvious thing to try.
- schoen 8y agoYes! https://github.com/krajj7/BotHack https://github.com/krajj7/BotHack https://www.reddit.com/r/nethack/comments/2tluxv/yaap_fullauto_bot_ascension_bothack/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nethack/comments/2tluxv/yaap_fullau... Edit: I remember looking at BotHack at the time and being surprised at how extensively and elaborately hard-coded the strategy and evaluations were. This is definitely not machine learning! Edit 2: HN discussion at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8990869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8990869
- Twirrim 8y agoI found the source code to be absolutely fascinating, beautifully written, easy to parse and understand why and how various actions will happen. Here's an example method: https://github.com/krajj7/BotHack/blob/master/src/bothack/behaviors.clj#L43 https://github.com/krajj7/BotHack/blob/master/src/bothack/be... (defn- read-book [game] {:pre [(have game book #{:noncursed})]} (if-not (invocation-complete? game) (if-let [[slot _] (have game "Book of the Dead")] (with-reason "reading the book" (->Read slot)))))
- PhantomGremlin 8y agoHas anyone programmed an AI to win Nethack? It seems like an obvious thing to try. There's a long history of using bots (they weren't really smart enough to be called AI, but they did "learn") to play games like this. Long before Nethack there was Rogue. And then, 37 years ago, there was Rog-O-Matic. As Wiki describes it: Rog-O-Matic is a bot developed in 1981 to play and win the computer game Rogue ... Described as a "belligerent expert system", Rog-O-Matic performs well when tested against expert Rogue players, even winning the game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rog-O-Matic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rog-O-Matic
- dpeck 8y agoThoughtful of them to time the release with a full moon.
- jammi 8y agoPersonally, since I'm less interested in MS-DOS modes and fixed-length 8bit charset modes, I switched to the redesigned NetHack 4, which works fine with modern UTF-8 terminals. NetHack 4 is geared towards progression of the game and staying up to date with the changing world rather than mothballing the old game. It's a separate project from NetHack 3.x, with different goals and development teams. http://nethack4.org http://nethack4.org
- chungy 8y agoThe continued existence of an MS-DOS port doesn't detract from versions for current operating systems in the slightest... Vim and Emacs even maintain current ports for MS-DOS and I doubt anyone is going to give them up just because a DOS port exists. NetHack 4 is a radical shift for the game, and many of its ideas were incorporated into NetHack 3.6 (the upstream project), I think even its developer was placed onto the devteam for upstream NetHack while maintaining the fork simultaneously. It's a cool project, but NetHack 3.x is the conservative one, both in gameplay and in maintaining ports to operating systems of yesteryear (they clearly aren't against removing them, but they support them when there is at least one person to maintain it).
- htfy96 8y ago+1 here. The most significant change of Nethack 4 is to separate game logic into a common library named libnethack[0], so you can write your own interfaces and communicate with server using JSON. [0]: https://github.com/tsadok/nethack4/tree/master/libnethack https://github.com/tsadok/nethack4/tree/master/libnethack
- kazinator 8y agoI remember compiling NetHack back in 1993 or so for x86. The binary was well over 900 kilobytes of machine code (according to the size utility). I was like, "Gack! That's sized like some bloated Unix kernel!".
- lottin 8y agoI am big fan of this game, but I wish it had a more appealing user interface - I mean appealing to the general public. Whenever I show nethack to a friend, they're put off by it, and it's a shame because nethack really is a great game and it should be better known outside geek circles.
- metafunctor 8y agoThe terse user interface invites imagination. Therefore, the experience is so much more intimate than what a more graphical version could ever be.
- akavel 8y agoHave you tried https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Vulture https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Vulture ?
- captn3m0 8y agoIs there a version of nethack that uses emojis yet?
- aw3c2 8y agoThat would put Windows users at an advantage ;) https://emojipedia.org/pistol/ https://emojipedia.org/pistol/
- pmoriarty 8y agoNethack is the game I've played more than any other.. having played it literally for decades and decades. Yet I switched to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup about 5 or 6 years ago, and really haven't gone back except to try Nethack again every now and then only to feel it too painful and slow to continue playing. I've been spoiled by Crawl's autoexplore, its richness of gods and god-granted powers, its colors (in text mode, not tiles), and many other new features and innovations. That said, Nethack is still the deeper game in so many ways. Crawl's "don't do it like Nethack" approach has prevented it from taking all sorts of great ideas from Nethack and making Crawl in to a richer game -- things like making more advanced use of pets (like training them to steal from shops), more things to do in shops, use of altars beyond merely converting to a god, use of potions beyond merely drinking them, more uses for item inscriptions, all the ways to combine items, the list goes on and on. All this makes Crawl seem like the shallower game, though it's still plenty of fun, and I still play it to the exclusion of most any other roguelike for now. There's a lot of room for improvement, though. I just wish they'd take more of the best parts of Nethack and make Crawl even more fun.
- floatboth 8y ago> more advanced use of pets (like training them to steal from shops), more things to do in shops, use of altars beyond merely converting to a god That stuff is mostly tedious and frustrating though. > use of potions beyond merely drinking them That one is fun, sure. But arguably a bit non-obvious.
- danShumway 8y ago> I just wish they'd take more of the best parts of Nethack and make Crawl even more fun. Not that it's your (or anyone's) responsibility to do this, but quick reminder that both Crawl and Nethack are completely Open Source. So if anyone ever wanted to do a downstream fork that was pure Crawl + a few Nethack features... they could. Just want to maybe stick the idea in someone's head.
- rrix2 8y agoHow do you submit patches for inclusion in nethack proper? Just spent five minutes wandering nethack.org, and am still fairly convinced that it's a "source dump"-style project, not something that you can just submit a patch on their reviewboard.
- morsch 8y agoFor a historic perspective, see the CRPG Addicts posts: - Hack (1984) http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2015/04/game-186-hack-1984.html http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2015/04/game-186-hack-1984.ht... - NetHack 2.3e (1987) http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2011/01/game-38-nethack-1987.html http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2011/01/game-38-nethack-1987.... - NetHack 3.0 (1989) http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2012/06/game-71-nethack-30.html http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2012/06/game-71-nethack-30.ht...
- tomcooks 8y agoBeen playing NH for a long time, glad that it's still being worked on, following the original philosophy. If you find NetHack a bit too intense for you, and are looking for a more casual approach, give Pixel Dungeon on Android a try. It's not only fun, but also free software.
- Nuzzerino 8y agoFun Fact: the original Deus Ex, which takes place in the 2050s, has an Easter Egg. If you hack into a certain computer in the game, there is an email with NetHack release notes (version in the double digits, it being the year 2050). Being 13 at the time, that was my first time hearing about NetHack, and I decided to try it eventually.
- muzani 8y agoDungeon Crawl Stone Soup is also a good alternative, something that doesn't need so much game mechanics knowledge and is more intuitive.
- ourmandave 8y agoIf you find NetHack a bit too intense... They should rename it Kobayashi Maru! I read endless spoilers and how-tos and couldn't even get close to the Quest without cheats.
- dcbadacd 8y agoIs there a multiplayer+easy mode of the game? I'd really like to play it like D&D, with a party.
- imglorp 8y agoNo. At first glance, it seems easy, just make other players appear like monsters and add a chat feature. But if you consider more details, you arrive at their FAQ answer: > We think you can't do that in a playable way without compromising the basic idea of being able to think as long as you want about what you're doing, but many people have made many different suggestions as to the one obvious way to handle things. If you still like the idea, you can try Crossfire, a multiplayer roguelike for UNIX/X11. Other games to check out are MAngband and Diablo See http://www.nethack.org/common/info.html http://www.nethack.org/common/info.html
- dcbadacd 8y agoI disagree with the reason for not implementing it, adopting something like "simultaneous turns" mode from Civilization series could provide that time to think for everyone. But I'll check out Crossfire.
- chongli 8y agoI don't think Civ's simultaneous turns would work for NetHack. In Civ, you make quite a few actions on a single turn (especially in the late game). In NetHack you are always taking a single action at a time, though with some actions taking no time at all (viewing your inventory, naming and calling objects, naming monsters, applying a stethoscope for the first time that turn, etc) and other actions taking multiple turns (running, travel command, moving while slow). Essentially, NetHack has a different concept of turns than Civ. NetHack uses turns as a discrete time resource whereas Civ uses the more conventional boardgame style rotation. You could try to convert NetHack into the Civ model by giving the player a number of action points based on their speed but this would allow fast players to move around a corner, take an action, and retreat without the enemy getting a chance to notice them. This would fundamentally alter the balance of the game.
- JKCalhoun 8y agoI read the headline with excitement and thought, "Oh, God, is it the late 80's again and all of this was a dream? Let me get on USENET and confirm...."
- earenndil 8y agoBut...this is a link to a usenet post.
- Scuds 8y agolooking at some of the the bugs that have been worked on over the past: https://www.nethack.org/v330/spoiler.html https://www.nethack.org/v330/spoiler.html I'm wondering if these types of categorical errors like 'BUGFIX: kicking cockatrice meat while barefoot now stones you' can be eliminated by writing in a language with a more advanced type system that'll check for these things at compile time instead of relying on years of hard labor and the stone knives and bearskins of C. I'm looking at the logic around eating and it's craaaaazy https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/blob/NetHack-3.6.0/src/eat.c https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/blob/NetHack-3.6.0/src/ea... Ultimately I'm asking if even though "The Dev Team Thinks of Everything" to not have to rely on that when designing a game.