
NetHack: The Greatest Game You Will Ever Play - ycmbntrthrwaway
http://thegreatestgameyouwilleverplay.com/
======
CJefferson
Nethack shows (to me) one of the greatest strengths, and weaknesses of open
source -- the tendancy to reach high-quality local minima.

With commercial products it is more common for products to die, not be
upgraded, or have significant major upgrades. With open source instead the
same products (nethack, vim, emacs and bash come to mind) can live in forever,
gaining small improvements over time.

On one hand, this is great! You have a long-lasting product you can learn and
use for years and years. On the other hand, I don't think nethack is the
perfect game, vim the perfect editor or bash the perfect shell, they are very
hard to displace.

~~~
ycmbntrthrwaway
Development of Nethack was somewhat closed until recently.

The public git repository was created this year I think and it is announced in
red on [http://www.nethack.org/](http://www.nethack.org/) with two links to
[http://www.nethack.org/common/git.html](http://www.nethack.org/common/git.html)

~~~
jcoffland
I think it's funny how kids these days think it's too hard to access the
source code of a project of it's not on GitHub. Self hosting used to be how it
was done. Open source software has been popular at least since the 80s. GitHub
is just a baby really.

~~~
rcxdude
that's not really got anything to do with how nethack development was
'closed'. Previously, while nethack releases were available under an open-
source license, there were only a small number of developers which did not
discuss nor release in-progress development publically.

~~~
pekk
Why are they obligated to? The software is still open source. Fork it if you
want to.

~~~
rcxdude
They're clearly not obligated to do anything. And there were many forks,
especially when the dev team went silent for about 12 years, and were
basically presumed dead by some.

------
thejoshwolfe
I love Nethack, but ultimately, I think it's a bad game. I decided to make my
own game inspired by Nethack that fixes Nethack's mistakes:
[http://wolfesoftware.com/legend-of-
swarkland/](http://wolfesoftware.com/legend-of-swarkland/)

I was greatly disappointed by Nethack's codebase, mostly by how inelegant and
special-casey it is. (For example, the fact that mind flayers turn to stone
when attacking a cockatrice is programmed in three separate places depending
on who's the mind flayer and who's the cockatrice: uhitm.c, mhitu.c, and
mhitm.c).

There are also fundamental flaws with the game's design, like as clever as it
is to implement Sokoban with boulders and pits, it doesn't belong in a dungeon
crawler, because random monster spawns can cheat you of a fair solution. The
mazes of Gehenom are too long and boring. The plane of water makes no sense.
The list goes on.

Another problem with nethack is how it punishes you for playing the game
without spoilers. If you don't read a wiki (or the source), you're going to
lose all your hours of progress to a bit of trivia you didn't know, like
Medusa instakills you unless you're wearing X, Y, or Z. Trial and error can be
good game design, but the retry period has to be short. In Nethack, it takes
hours to recover from a line of code you couldn't possibly predict. (Wouldn't
it be nice if fortune cookies or the Oracle were a reliable source of
information? Really, you need to just read the wiki.)

As great as nethack is for its complexity and immersion, there are too many
flaws for me to recommend it as a good game. That's why I'm trying to make my
own game that's as complex as nethack, but doesn't have all the flaws, large
and small.

~~~
chongli
I agree with most of what you wrote here but, to be fair, the Oracle is a
pretty reliable source of information. If you pay her a large amount of money
for a "major consultation" she will explain one of the main game mechanics in
detail. If you focus on gathering a lot of money by selling things to shops,
you can pay for multiple major consultations in a single game and create an
extensive set of notes to work from. Here's an example of one those major
consultations:

    
    
        Behold the cockatrice, whose diminutive stature belies its hidden might.  The
        cockatrice can petrify any ordinary being it contacts--save those wise
        adventurers who eat a dead lizard or blob of acid when they feel themselves
        slowly turning to stone.
    

There are stories of purported unspoiled ascensions[0]. Whether or not you
believe them is up to you. It all does seem plausible though.

[0]
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.games.roguelike....](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/wci4E96iKc4)

~~~
schoen
The Oracle does seem to have been devised to make unspoiled ascensions
possible, even describing the invocation ritual in detail. The Quest leader
also tells confused players what to do after retrieving the Amulet
(interestingly, with widely varying levels of specificity depending on the
player's role).

Still, I've never seen any specific unspoiled ascension stories apart from
Timothy Nodine's, so I wonder if that's the only one in history, or at least
if it's happened fewer than half a dozen times ever.

------
johnchristopher
I am in the non-vocal minority that doesn't like nethack. I love games but I
am in for the narration, the stories. I fondly remember the narratology vs.
ludology debate from 10 years back.

I prefer things like Knytt (from nifflas) for example (the story is rather
weak but the ambiance it gives out and the feelings I get from it entertains
me more).

edit: For instance I really dig adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/ and played
through it two times because of the mood, the theme and the slight hints of a
story behind it. I could never play nethack for more than 5 minutes. On a side
note, I used to play role-playing games and now all my friends are into
strategy board games with 72 pages or rules. It's okay, I just sit in the
couch reading the background of the world and its characters while they
compute ranges and the spawn ratio of monsters for the next round of the game.

~~~
sudeepj
In that case, may I suggest ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
[http://www.ancardia.com/](http://www.ancardia.com/)

It has a very absorbing storyline + high replay value.

~~~
johnchristopher
Thanks, I tried it yesterday for 10 minutes, without reading the manual and
didn't get very far. I couldn't enter towns and caverns and the bottom UI
right half was off screen so I couldn't exit the game (and the top right close
button of the window didn't work so I had to kill the process). I died in the
plains, killed by a barbarian. I might give it a shot later but I doubt I'll
play it for long. It's not the killing, it's the UI. The music is really nice
though.

~~~
guard-of-terra
ADOM has one of the nicest UIs between roguelikes, I guess you just got very
unlucky with your terminal.

There is SSH server with ADOM -
[http://ancardia.us.to/](http://ancardia.us.to/) might be more convenient.

Entering anything is '>'.

~~~
johnchristopher
Terminal ? I was playing under Windows (I followed the links and the latest
`free' version is 0.60
[http://www.adom.de/home/downloads.html](http://www.adom.de/home/downloads.html)
?).

Here's my main screen
[https://lut.im/lQnALEHivJ/FppL5O9xxlpZVf2z.png](https://lut.im/lQnALEHivJ/FppL5O9xxlpZVf2z.png)

And here's how it usually ends
[https://lut.im/vVKKqfc2ug/Bfk8uNV1tml17Zbe.png](https://lut.im/vVKKqfc2ug/Bfk8uNV1tml17Zbe.png)

It was a mix of mouse clicking and keyboard typing.

Edit: thanks. I tried the public server. I now know I definitely don't like
unix rogue-like game :].

------
girzel
The contrast between viewing that website (all fade-ins and exciting fonts)
and actually playing Nethack itself is... stark. But I enjoy assuming that the
irony is intentional!

Edit: Also, not to be that guy, but there are few boasts on that site that
don't apply twice as hard to Dwarf Fortress...

~~~
rbaud
No irony intended, I'm afraid! The goal of the site, which was a weekend
project back in 2010, was to make a compelling advertisement for Nethack
without relying on lots of illustrations.

------
rbaud
Hey, I made this! Love to see it pop up on HN every couple of years.

I hope it helps at least a few people discover the all-consuming joy of defeat
that Nethack has provided me over the years.

~~~
bovermyer
It's great design work, and you should be proud of it. However, the reasons
for why I play games are not well served by Nethack, I'm afraid, so the
advertisement doesn't work on me.

~~~
rbaud
Thanks, bovermyer!

------
pmarreck
I am a big fan of Angband in addition to NetHack. It's sort of like NetHack
(at least superficially) but more deterministic/less "have to learn random
shit to get past new obstacle", more of a straightforward action RPG I guess,
but also with interesting mechanics.

[http://rephial.org/](http://rephial.org/)

Not necessarily related- Has anyone attempted a game like this in a purely
functional style? It's a side project idea I've been putting off for a while.

~~~
dan-g
Steve Losh wrote a series of articles on writing a roguelike in Clojure:
[http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/07/caves-of-
clojure-01/](http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/07/caves-of-clojure-01/)

------
Yuioup
I... don't like NetHack. I've played it off and on for, I donnow, 20 years now
and I have yet to get beyond level 5 or something. I don't quite understand
how anybody is able to finish the game without reading spoilers and looking at
the source code. Can anybody who as ascended explain to me how you're supposed
to play this game?

~~~
schoen
I think almost everyone who has ascended has read at least some spoilers;
there seems to be only one (?) counterexample.

Other suggestions: Consult the Oracle (her advice is concrete and essential),
read the Guidebook
([http://www.nethack.org/v360/Guidebook.html;](http://www.nethack.org/v360/Guidebook.html;)
not generally considered spoilers), and watch other people play on a public
server (like nethack.alt.org).

The last one could be considered a spoiler because other players will rely on
and demonstrate knowledge that you didn't acquire from playing by yourself,
but it can be considered a much weaker or much different form of spoiler than
reading the detailed explanation documents. Your gameplay is likely to improve
a lot if you watch other expert players for a while, although bear in mind
that different players have different play styles and agendas and some may be
trying to do things that are unnecessarily boring, complex, or difficult.

------
fitzwatermellow
Rolling your own NetHack is also a fantastic way to get started in gamedev :)

Check out RogueBasin for (mind-bogglingly comprehensive) details:

[http://www.roguebasin.com](http://www.roguebasin.com)

------
tachion
Back in the day, I played a lot in Angband clone called TOME (Troubles of
Middle Earth) because I am a Tolkien lore fan and this flavor was amazing to
me. Unfortunately, TOME devs turned it into some-another-generic-fantasy-realm
that took away all the pleasure, and I havent been playing these games since.

~~~
mattchew
You might check out Sil, which is set in Middle Earth and is supposed to be
truer to the spirit of Tolkien. I've also heard it is good as a game. Haven't
played it myself.

~~~
tachion
Thanks for the tip, I've downloaded it and for sure will give it a try, but it
seems like the game is abandoned, which, again, is a shame, because I love
them Tolkien based roguelikes. Also, note, that TOME had quite different
gameplay, with quests, world underground and above and many, many more feats.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Sil is not abandoned AFAIK. The latest version is from just three months ago.
Did you find the right URL?
[http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/sil/](http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/sil/)

It is indeed one of the minimalistic roguelikes, like Brogue, rather than one
of the kitchen-sink roguelikes, like ADOM, Nethack or ToME. But do give it a
try, it's really a quality game! I have played several dozens of roguelikes
and it's in my top 3, right near ADOM and Brogue.

Some of its merits are intelligent enemies that are actually able to follow
group strategies rather than charging blindly, an original song system, really
great atmosphere and immersion (even better if you're a fan of Tolkien), and
probably the only roguelike I've seen with a crafting system that doesn't
suck.

~~~
tachion
Yep, that's the one. Already played a quick game, dead on arrival, as you can
imagine ;) Are you aware of any iOS/UNIX clones of it?

------
busterarm
I've played most roguelikes under the sun, but I'd have to say to this day my
two favorites are Ragnaraok/Valhalla and Brogue. They're the ones I'll still
dive in and get addicted to regularly.

Past that, the classics are right at the top: ADOM, Angband, Moria, DCSS,
NetHack.

If you want a laugh, try IVAN.

------
Bud
Really warms my heart to see this. I first played Nethack around 1989 or so,
on an ANSI terminal. (I remember thinking that the ANSI color was really
cool.) Haven't even thought of it in at least a decade and had no idea folks
were still working on it. Trying it again on the iPhone sounds like a riot.

I've never ascended, by the way.

------
znpy
Did anyone mention the emacs interface yet?

    
    
        http://www.nongnu.org/nethack-el/

~~~
girzel
Looks like development stopped in 2005, does it still work? Would be nice to
have on ELPA, if so...

------
ca98am79
I can remember the day in the 1980's when I was 10 or so and the 5¼-inch disk
came in the mail because my dad had mail ordered the game Hack for me because
he thought I might like it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_\(video_game\))

My friends came over and we printed the manual on our dot matrix printer - it
was like 60 pages and seemed to take an hour to print. We started reading it
before it finished, and it was incredibly exciting. Oh man, we loved that
game. I remember staying up all night playing it. I got my first hard drive
just so that I could install and play Nethack (you couldn't play it without a
hard drive).

------
brianstorms
Still prefer Avatar, Moria, Krozair, Oubliette, DND, and pedit5, all developed
years before Nethack. And all have graphics.

------
Al-Khwarizmi
I wish the FOSS community wouldn't give Nethack so much publicity.

Don't get me wrong, it's a really good game and I had really fun times with
it, but it shows its age and has been overcome in lots of ways. Current
players are more likely to find fun in ADOM, Brogue, DCSS, ToME, Sil, Powder,
Legerdemain, etc. than they are in Nethack. Modern roguelikes (or those that
are not that modern but have gone through recent extensive overhauls, like
ToME and ADOM) tend to be more balanced, and especially require fewer spoilers
to progress. And many of them (if not most) are FOSS too.

tl;dr: if you have never tried roguelikes, you probably shouldn't start with
Nethack. Nethack is a very good game but its design is dated, and its heavily
spoiler-based gameplay is not for everyone. There are more modern roguelikes
that are typically a better bet for new players.

~~~
capitalsigma
Which one do you recommend the most? I've played a little bit of Nethack and I
thought it was fun but not something I wanted to sink a huge amount of time
into.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Personally I recommend ADOM or Brogue, but any in the above list is great,
depending on personal taste.

------
xamuel
Continuing development is great in most ways, but it does have one drawback:
it prevents the existence of a stable canonical version. This becomes relevant
when you get into things like speedrunning, or just researching strategies in
general. There's no knowing whether the next update will change everything.

~~~
pmoriarty
Stability is more about the intentions and skills of the developers rather
than about their development methodology. Nothing about CI/CD forces devs to
break backwards compatibility, and nothing prevents them on focusing on
bugfixes and improving stability.

When big changes are necessary, developers can plan for them and let the users
know well in advance as to what to expect and when to expect it. This, again,
has nothing to do with development methodology, but is more about
communication and consideration for your users.

------
Alex3917
And if you download it, be fully prepared to shut down your startup and/or get
fired.

~~~
pmarreck
Depends on the personality of the person in question, and whether or not they
would have passed the Marshmallow Test

[http://healthland.time.com/2011/09/06/the-secrets-of-self-
co...](http://healthland.time.com/2011/09/06/the-secrets-of-self-control-the-
marshmallow-test-40-years-later/)

~~~
Alex3917
I dunno, I tend to think that deferring gratification and avoiding addictive
patterns of behavior are largely orthogonal. E.g. I'm pretty good at getting
work done and optimizing for NPV, but that doesn't mean I'm going to take up
smoking crack on the weekends.

------
mchahn
In the 70's a friend of a friend of mine developed Adventure which I'm sure
you all know as the original text adventure game. It was a giant step in
computer games. I worked at HP and someone ported it to the HP minicomputer.
It got so popular they had to run a script to block it during work hours.

My wife and I came in every night after dinner for weeks and played it. When
we weren't playing it we discussed ideas to get past the block. The word play
was awesome.

------
antonios
Roguelike geeks will also love Cogmind. Definitely the most polished and
interesting roguelike I've played in years.

------
cdubzzz
Check out [http://7drl.roguetemple.com/](http://7drl.roguetemple.com/) for
lots (and lots of lots) of other RL games of all types. There are some real
gems on there. Lots of very fun games.

------
fsiefken
I like another survival roguelike better, Cataclysm - uses SDL:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFRKNaKJCs8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFRKNaKJCs8)

------
jacobush
NetHack: The Greatest Game You Will Never Play

------
anta40
I tried NetHack several times. Still cannot like it.

Programming games like Robocode or Core War are way more interesting to me :D

------
znpy
I can confirm nethack is a very nice game.

------
steven2012
I've been playing hack/nethack regularly since 1985. It's truly the greatest
game ever. The best thing about it is how it has evolved over the years
tastefully, unlike every other game.

------
Khelavaster
ADOM is far better-executed ;). [see username]

------
inframare
Hands out the Yellow Mold

------
PaulHoule
Has anybody ever beat NetHack without patching the source code or running it
in the debugger?

~~~
SixSigma
It's so easy, even a computer can do it [1]

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/nethack/comments/2tluxv/yaap_fullau...](https://www.reddit.com/r/nethack/comments/2tluxv/yaap_fullauto_bot_ascension_bothack)

~~~
schoen
Since I'm not a Go player but am a NetHack player, I got more personal
appreciation out of BotHack's achievement from last year than from AlphaGo's
victory. That was also something that I hadn't expected to see for years to
come; you can see from the bot comparison page

[https://taeb.github.io/bots.html](https://taeb.github.io/bots.html)

that no other bot had really come anywhere close to ascending before BotHack
pulled it off.

It's interesting to see that the winning approach was GOFAI

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

\-- that is, the author taught the bot human-level rules and concepts based on
human knowledge about the game. It wasn't a deep learning or neural net
system; there is specific code about what altars do, how to fight mind
flayers, or whatever.

For instance, here's a hard-coded list of corpses to avoid eating.

[https://github.com/krajj7/BotHack/blob/master/src/bothack/pl...](https://github.com/krajj7/BotHack/blob/master/src/bothack/player.clj#L359)

------
Mithaldu
There is no "greatest game", the same way there is no greatest programming
language, operating system, movie, song, car, pizza, _etc._

If i didn't already feel Nethack was kind of weak compared to other rogue-
likes i've played, the hubris on display here would put me off against it.

~~~
hellbanner
Sure, but might as well reach for it. Especially in light of

* being playable entirely on a terminal * no "AAA" budget.. all text, all ASCII instead of fancy 3D graphics

It's a bit mocking of the AAA industry to call it "the greatest game".

Also, this site was not made by the devteam, but a fan. So the Hubris isn't
coming from the developers :)

~~~
cLeEOGPw
The things you listed is downsides, not something to be proud about. To play
on terminal you still need large screen, and colored, since NetHack utilizes
colors. This makes an obvious downside of not using any kind of images or
cursor. This makes the game unplayable for all people except few old
programmers and system admins used to do everything with commands.

In my eyes this game along with many other terminal games are "toys of old
unix admins". It's really mind-boggling how anyone can think that a game with
worst possible production quality can have a word as "greatest" associated
with it.

Just because you feel nostalgia, it doesn't make the game good.

