
After a ten-year hiatus, NetHack 3.6 - Alex3917
http://www.nethack.org/v360/release.html
======
pmoriarty
Fans of nethack and other roguelikes should try Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
(DCSS).[1]

You can play or watch games in progress by:

    
    
      ssh joshua@crawl.akrasiac.org
    

Use the password "joshua".

It's also available as a standalone program you can run on your own machine.

DCSS has some made some great innovations, such as fantastic use of color and
auto-explore, tons of really unique gods and races, it's scriptable(!) in Lua,
the list goes on and on...

[1] - [http://crawl.develz.org/](http://crawl.develz.org/)

~~~
0942v8653
Careful when SSHing into an untrusted host. They can find your public key(s)
that way and maybe identify who you are on GitHub.

~~~
pmoriarty
What are some good ways to protect against that?

My first thought is to create an entry in my ~/.ssh/config with an entry for
the untrusted host I'm going to ssh in to, using the "IdentityFile" keyword to
point to some bogus/misleading identity file. How does that sound?

~~~
voltagex_
I wonder if you can turn off automatic use of public keys for "*", and then
enable it in .ssh/config on an as-needed basis.

~~~
andreabedini
Totally possible, I do this. Also I have a different key per host (using %h in
IdentityFile)

~~~
vinceguidry
Do you use pass-phrases with your per-host keys? I wanted to do this, but was
unable to make it manageable. ssh-agent will only try so many keys before
moving on.

~~~
andreabedini
No, I don't use key pass-phrases.

------
sohkamyung
I like this change, adding Terry Pratchett quotes:

"At the time of his passing this year, the DevTeam decided that it would be a
fitting tribute to take a number of our favourite quotes from the various
Discworld novels and incorporate them into the game. Being the way we are, we
did a little more than that. There are now a huge number of quotes from many
of the Discworld novels in the tribute file, but this doesn't mean that we
wouldn't accept new submissions from other Pratchett fans."

~~~
roghummal
And for anyone unfamiliar with NetHack and its classes,

"As some may know, Terry Pratchett was a fan of NetHack, dating back to the
time that we introduced the Tourist class which was openly based on the
Discworld novels he penned."

------
itburnswheniit
Play once for fun, the next 1000+ times for revenge.

~~~
andrewstuart

        while True:
            Damn! Dead again.  
            OK well I'll stop now, get up, go do something else.  
            five minutes passes ..... 
            OK one more time

------
reidrac
I'm happy NH is still being developed with new releases, but for me... the
rogue-like event of 2015 is ADOM hitting steam:

[http://store.steampowered.com/app/333300/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/333300/)

I know this post is about NH, but some might find this interesting anyway.

~~~
mihaifm
Never tried ADOM. How does it compare to nethack?

~~~
reidrac
ADOM is one of the major 2nd gen rogue-likes (including NH and Angband in this
group), and they're similar.

I played ADOM first, so for me NH required re-training; so I may be biased.
ADOM offers a more complex world with different endings, compared with NH that
AFAIK focus on the Amulet of Yendor only (I might be wrong on this!).

~~~
Scarblac
Nethack has _lots_ of different unique endings, it's just that that one with
offering the Amulet to your God is the only one that counts as a win...

------
roghummal
You can play* or watch games in progress by:

$ ssh nethack@alt.org

It's also available as a standalone program you can run on your own
machine.[1]

You can follow milestones, defeats, and victories at #nethack@freenode. See
NAO[2] for more information!

* NAO currently runs NetHack 3.4.3.

[1] - [http://www.nethack.org](http://www.nethack.org)

[2] - [https://alt.org/nethack/](https://alt.org/nethack/)

~~~
bhaak
Also the server admin for NAO is Pasi Kallinen which got added to the DevTeam
earlier this year.

From what he told me, he worked hard this year to add lots of what is
considered "standard" among the modern NetHack forks. He didn't succeed
completely but it's an uphill battle if some of your code changes are code
reviewed with comments like "but this won't compile on a pre ANSI C compiler".

I hope he and the other new members will be able to jump start again the
development of NetHack.

------
andrewstuart
I nearly got fired cause I played so much nethack at work in the early 1990's.

~~~
eru
Did you ascend?

~~~
andrewstuart
No, but I did escape once with a fake amulet of yendor. I think that's when I
lost my spirit for returning.

One of my favorite things to do was enter a shop and then throw things out the
door of the shop so the shopkeepr didn't think I was stealing. Also, can't
remember how, but I used to be able to get my pet to steal things from the
shop.

Oh, and if you could pick up the corpse of a cockatrice then anything you
attacked and hit with it turned to stone. Nice. Maybe you needed to be wearing
gloves to do that. Can't remember it was a long time ago.

I did also get addicted to another text based game called "Empire" for a
while. I'm not sure if it still exists.

I think I played it on a Compaq 286.

Oh no... I can feel that long faded addiction tugging me back to the
console......I'd better call my sponsor.

~~~
DanBC
Just checking, is this the Empire game you mention?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Empire)

Or maybe this online mud?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_(online_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_\(online_game\))

There are a few in Wikipeda, so there are probably more as well.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_(disambiguation)#Video_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_\(disambiguation\)#Video_and_computer_games)

~~~
vinceguidry
My dad played a lot of Classic Empire back in the day. I gravitated more
towards a similar game that I _think_ was called Conquest, where the turns
auto-advanced (felt like an RTS) and infantry could cross bodies of water
themselves by turning into boats. Wish I could find that one again, I've never
found it on any of the 'old games' lists.

~~~
lakkal
There was a game called Conquest, which was a fantasy game similar to Empire.
I recall that you could play various races, Orcs being one of them, Wizards
another. It was very detailed, with each square of the map's terrain having
ratings for how useful it was. I remember that there was a note in the source
or license that the game was free but not allowed to be run on 'PCs'. (I
interpreted this to mean MSDOS machines, and was able to get it running under
Coherent). This would have been in the early 90s.

~~~
vinceguidry
The game I played was definitely not a fantasy game, it had modern-type units
like armor and airplanes. Neither was the Classic Empire game that my dad
played, with aircraft carriers and battleships and the like.

~~~
lakkal
Hmm, not sure what game you'd mean, then.

I was only able to find this man page for the game I was thinking of:

[http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/athena/contrib/games/man/man6/con...](http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/athena/contrib/games/man/man6/conquer.6)

------
copperx
Hi. I'd love to try NetHack but the game seems incredibly complex. Is this
true? does it have a huge learning curve?

~~~
seren
If you want to play without external help like a guide or a spoiler, it is
almost impossible to get anywhere because the game only gives you little hint
of what is happening at a given time.

Using "spoiler file" or wiki, will give you a rough overview of the creature's
strength and ability, weapon effectiveness, etc. This is helpful but is not
enough to win.

To win you must understand deeply (grok) all the different mechanisms of the
game (hunger, prayer, sacrifice, alchemy, intrisics, etc) and then have a
strategy.

This guide allowed me to ascend :
[https://alt.org/nethack/mirror/homepage.mac.com/mhjohnson/ma...](https://alt.org/nethack/mirror/homepage.mac.com/mhjohnson/mag-r342.html)

This is counter intuitive but the early game is much harder, once you have
found the right items, identified important scrolls and potions (about
finishing gnome mine & sokoban) the game becomes much easier. And if you are
well prepared everything beyond the Valley of Death is kinda boring and
"easy". For a first ascension, it is probably wiser to chose an easy class
(valkyrie, barbarian, knight, wizard).

Key strategy for the early game are : using your pet to identify cursed items,
to not level up too quickly because the generated monster will become too
tough, when in a desperate spot engraving "Elbereth" with your fingers might
save you a few times[0], praying at the right time, etc

A full game with a successful ascension is about 20-30 hours. However you
probably need 50-100 hours of failed attempt to learn the rope first. And it
can be frustrating at times because even if you know the game better, it will
take some times to make a breakthrough and survive the early levels.

Lastly if you really want to learn fast, play on a public server, and when you
are in a very tough spot, you can (at least you could) ask people on #Nethack
on Freenode for advice.

In the end, the game is very satisfying, because even if there is a big
element of luck, once you know the game well, this is your skill as a player
that will determine if you live or die, and this is really rewarding.

~~~
zipwitch
At high levels you're less likely to die in the simple course of wandering
around the dungeon, but there are a number of challenges only encountered at
high levels that have little margin for error, and can be swiftly deadly to
even a well-prepared character if the player doesn't know exactly how to
respond.

~~~
seren
I agree. I tend to genocide Lich and mind-flayers so there is nothing too bad
left if you have enough HP, AC and blessed potion of full healing. But the
riders can be scary if you don't know how to deal with them.

------
jl6
Is there a source of md5sums for the release tarballs that is independent of
Sourceforge?

------
losvedir
Are there any good versions of NetHack (or similar) for Android? I've never
played and it sounds like I'm missing out, but the only time I really feel
like I could put in some hours would be on the bus or train or something.

~~~
bencollier49
Have to say the Android versions all seem pretty unplayable.

Take a subnotebook on the train!

~~~
floatboth
Subnotebook? That word is almost as old as NetHack :-)

~~~
bencollier49
Subnotebooks are almost as cheap as Nethack. A no-brainer for sure!

------
balakk
My first ascension, 12 years ago.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/suraj$20nethack/rec...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/suraj$20nethack/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/WYgbd7FCR4o/4vW8jDHlCWYJ)

What a beautiful game.

------
hellbanner
Ah, Nethack.
[http://thegreatestgameyouwilleverplay.com](http://thegreatestgameyouwilleverplay.com)
!

------
FD3SA
Lineage the Bloodpledge, a hugely successful korean MMO was heavily based on
NetHack [1]. It is still one of the most widely played games in the world
(mainly in South Korea).

The article below does an excellent overview of its history and inspiration
from NetHack.

1\. [http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/07/the-game-archaeologist-
tr...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/07/the-game-archaeologist-traces-his-
lineage-the-highlights/)

------
paraiuspau
Oh man, i felt it in my water, i checked the site every day for 2 or more
weeks, didn't this morning, came on to hn, and lo-and-behold...

------
Turbo_hedgehog
Curious that they are still on sourceforge.

~~~
SwellJoe
Moving a large project, particularly one that uses lots of the SF.net
infrastructure, is non-trivial. Github only provides replacements for some of
that infrastructure. Even if you can trivially move all of your code into
github, and don't rely on mailing lists, ticket tracker, file downloads, etc.
you've still got to update documentation, download links across sites you may
not have control over, change code that relies on sf.net links (for automatic
updates, etc.).

For the project I work on, we moved code hosting to github years ago, but
still have our downloads hosted by SF.net, and haven't even thought of what to
do about mailing lists and tickets. We'll get around to moving it all,
eventually, but for small teams working on a project with so many users, so
many files, so many mailing lists, so many tickets, and just a lot of pieces
that make up the "project", it's a lot of work, and the gains may not be
immediately felt.

I don't know where the NetHack team is in their migration, but it is apparent
they're working on it. I'm not gonna criticize them for not having it done
already.

And, of course, there is no guarantee that github won't turn evil, someday,
too.

~~~
chei0aiV
github supports file downloads through the releases feature.

------
roghummal
menucolors! pickup thrown! sortloot! use_darkgray! And many more!

Merry Christmas everyone! Awesome :)

\--rog hum mal

------
SwellJoe
Well, I sure hope they didn't rush things. Great games take time.

------
kyberias
The git instructions [1] result in git asking for a password (on Windows).

[1]
[http://www.nethack.org/common/git.html](http://www.nethack.org/common/git.html)

~~~
bhaak
There's a big red "COMING SOON" at the top of the page.

That's probably why it doesn't work correctly at the moment.

------
Isamu
I think I last played this on my AT&T Unix PC 7300.

[http://unixpc.taronga.com/games/](http://unixpc.taronga.com/games/)

~~~
GurnB
This just reminded me that my first PC was an AT&T 6300. I hadn't thought
about that machine in years.

------
josephcooney
I got terrible wrist pain as a 10-year-old playing nethack on an Amstrad 1640
8086.

But totally worth it.

Ascii art never looked so 'cosmic'

------
Andaith
Anyone have any experience playing NetHack on a Nintendo DS? What's the
experience like?

------
jbellis
I haven't played in twenty years. Is Gehennom still ridiculously tedious?

~~~
Scarblac
Yes, but wasn't that change less than twenty years ago?

------
riffraff
this is great, but I wish there was a QT Tile version, as much as I know the
term version is The True UI, I still prefer graphics.

~~~
lightbulbjim
My favourite version is glHack:
[http://glhack.sourceforge.net](http://glhack.sourceforge.net)

It has nicer 2D tiles than the QT ones IMO and you can toggle between the
tiles and ASCII mode (with a few enhancements) by pressing tab.

Too bad it's so old. I wonder if there's any chance of it getting ported to
3.6.0.

------
poofyleek
Thought nethack went rogue but apparently not.

------
ilaksh
How to build on Ubuntu.. for God's sake, why isn't there a script or a
configure? I am trying to figure out the sys/Install instructions, getting
nowhere.

Why didn't they just make it public on github, and use their issue tracker?

EDIT: actually the sys/Install/NewInstall.unx instructions worked for me, at
least it is starting to make.

