NetHack 3 By: Brian Schroeder



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tarix21.06.2018
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#50360


NetHack 3.4.3


NetHack

  • NetHack is a text-based graphical RPG.

  • Current version is 3.4.3

  • NetHack is Copyright 1985-2003 by Stichting Mathematisch Centrum and M. Stephenson.



NetHack is freely available ‘dungeon-crawling’ style RPG for a number of computing platforms.

  • NetHack is freely available ‘dungeon-crawling’ style RPG for a number of computing platforms.

  • It is available on the internet under the Nethack General Public License.

  • There are also a number of public NetHack servers that can be connected to with any terminal program.

  • One of the more popular ones, nethack.devnull.net runs an annual, month-long, NetHack tournament starting on Halloween at midnight where they track a number of statistics like most ascensions (games won), highest score in each role and most unique deaths. (These will be explained later)



Hardware Requirements (Estimated)

  • 386 or equivalent or higher

  • 5 MB hard disk space

  • 8 MB ram

  • Monitor capable of 24 lines x 80 columns of text display

  • *These requirements are estimated and based on the Microsoft Windows port of NetHack (which requires Windows 98 or higher to run w/o special patches.) A tile-based version is also available with probably only slightly higher requirements.



History

  • Based on the early game ‘Rogue’

  • Derived from ‘Hack’, written by Jay Fenalson with help from Kenny Woodland, Mike Thome and Jon Payne

  • Andries Brouwer took ‘Hack’ and modified it considerably.



History

  • Mike Stephenson began making his own changes to Brower’s ‘Hack’ and enlisted the help a group of people on USENET.

  • Eventually it acquired the name NetHack at the request of Brower who would like to keep the ‘Hack’ name open for his own possible releases.

  • Contrary to any impressions you might get from the name, ‘Net’Hack is a single-player game and will remain so.



Overview

  • You control your @ on a quest to descend into the Mazes of Menace, (Dungeons of Doom, whatever), retrieve the Amulet of Yendor for your deity, gain as much power and wealth as you can manage and return to the surface alive.

  • Begin on level 1 of the dungeon.

  • Amulet is below level 20.

  • The fake Amulet of Yendor is common, so take some identify scrolls.



Story

  • It is written in the Book of Kos:

  • After the Creation, the cruel god Moloch rebelled

  • against the authority of Marduk the Creator.

  • Moloch stole from Marduk the most powerful of all

  • the artifacts of the gods, the Amulet of Yendor,

  • and he hid it in the dark cavities of Gehennom, the

  • Under World, where he now lurks, and bides his time.

  • Your god Kos seeks to possess the Amulet, and with it

  • to gain deserved ascendance over the other gods.

  • You, a newly trained Footpad, have been heralded

  • from birth as the instrument of Kos. You are destined

  • to recover the Amulet for your deity, or die in the

  • attempt. Your hour of destiny has come. For the sake

  • of us all: Go bravely with Kos!



Story cont’d

  • That is the main story and the primary quest of the game. If you had chosen a different class (other than rogue) those words in red would be different to reflect your particular character.

  • There are a number of side-quests related to your class that you can uncover also…



Sub-Quest Example (for Samurai class)

  • I managed to get down to about level 9 when I received this message…

  • “You receive a faint telepathic message from Lord Sato: Your help is urgently needed at the Castle of the Taro Clan! Look for a …ic transporter.”

  • Once you enter the transporter, you get some extra information.

  • “Even before your senses adjust, you recognize the kami of the Castle of the Taro Clan. You see the standard of your teki, Ashikaga Takauji, flying above the town. How could such a thing have happened? Why are ninja wandering freely; where are the samurai of your daimyo, Lord Sato? You quickly say a prayer to Izanagi and Izanami and walk towards town.”

  • I am sure there was something after this, but I fell into a pit that used to be a river and killed by a pack of ninjas, wolves and an invisible stalker.



Player’s Roles

  • Archeologist

  • Barbarian

  • Caveman/Cavewoman

  • Healer

  • Knight

  • Monk

  • Priest/Priestess

  • Rogue

  • Ranger

  • Samurai

  • Tourist

  • Valkyrie

  • Wizard



Installation

  • Unzip and run.

  • -or-

  • Connect to a server and log in (assuming you have an account.)

  • Simple.



Text-Based Graphical?

  • As opposed to something like ‘Adventure’, yes.

  • Players see an overhead view of the current dungeon level, everything in the game is denoted by individual characters.



User Interface

  • Movement is capable using keyboard or mouse and keyboard.

  • Arrow keys or number pad control movement.

  • Most other keys have functions also and are case-sensitive.



The door opens. The killer bee stings!

  • The door opens. The killer bee stings!

  • ┌──── ┌──────┐

  • ··· ░░░░░░░░░░░░░·······│

  • ·a· ░ │······│

  • a ░░░░░░░░░░░░░■?·····│

  • a ░ │····%·│░░░░░░░░░░░░░░

  • @▒░░░░░░░░░░░░ │······■░░░░░░░ ┌───·────┐

  • └──────┘░ ░ │········│

  • ░░ │········│

  • ·········│

  • │·<··%···│

  • │···$····│

  • └────────┘

  • Jumo the Thaumaturge St:12 Dx:14 Co:16 In:14 Wi:10 Ch:10 Chaotic

  • Dlvl:5 $:251 HP:39(62) Pw:78(78) AC:9 Xp:7/763 T:3289 Stun Hallu Conf Hungry



Summary of key commands

  • ^D kick kick (a door, or something else)

  • ^T 'port teleport (if you can)

  • ^X show show your attributes

  • a apply apply or use a tool (pick-axe, key, camera, etc.)

  • A armor take off all armor

  • c close close a door

  • C call name an individual monster

  • d drop drop an object.

  • D Drop drop objects

  • e eat eat something

  • E engrave write message in floor

  • f fire fire ammunition from quiver

  • F fight followed by direction, fight a monster



Extended commands execute by typing # and the first few letters of the command

  • #adjust - adjust inventory letters.

  • #chat - talk to someone.

  • #conduct - list which challenges you have adhered to.

  • #dip - dip an object into something.

  • #enhance - advance or check weapons skills.

  • #force - force a lock.

  • #invoke - invoke an object's powers.

  • #jump - jump to a location.

  • #loot - loot a box on the floor.

  • #monster - use a monster's special ability.

  • #name - name an item or type of object.

  • #offer - offer a sacrifice to the gods.

  • #pray - pray to the gods for help.

  • #quit - exit without saving current game.

  • #ride - ride (or stop riding) a monster.

  • #rub - rub a lamp or a stone.

  • #sit - sit down.

  • #turn - turn undead.

  • #twoweapon - toggle two-weapon combat.

  • #untrap - untrap something.

  • #version - list compile time options for this version of NetHack.

  • #wipe - wipe off your face.

  • #? - get this list of extended commands.



Scoring

  • Score based primarily on experience, gold and things you’ve done, how deep you went in the dungeon, etc..

  • Experience-level style reward system – gain a level (by killing monsters, doing a quest, drinking a potion of gain level, eating a wraith corpse or praying), presumably become more powerful, capable of surviving deeper in dungeon.



Artwork

  • Clearly, the most realistic ever seen or that will be seen for some time.

  • All thing in game represented with individual characters, generally based on the type/first letter of the thing or something remotely similar looking (like ‘=‘ for a ring)

  • Different from the text-adventure game method of describing something.



NetHack

  • MONSTERS

  • a- ant or insect

  • b- blob

  • c- cockatrice

  • d- canine

  • e- floating eye/sphere

  • f- feline

  • g- gremlin

  • h- humanoid

  • i- imp/minor demon

  • j- jelly

  • k- kobold

  • l- leprechaun



NetHack

  • m- mimic

  • A- angelic being

  • B- bat/bird

  • C- centaur

  • D- dragon

  • E- elemental

  • F- mold/fungus

  • G- gnome

  • H- giant

  • I- something unseen

  • J- jabberwock

  • K- Keystone Kop

  • L- lich



NetHack

  • [- some armor

  • %- something edible

  • /- a wand

  • =- a ring

  • ?- a scroll

  • !- a potion

  • (- something USEable

  • $- gold

  • *- stone/gem

  • +- door or spellbook

  • ^- a trap

  • “- amulet or spiderwab

  • ‘- a boulder or statue



Sound and Music

  • Sound is an important part of the game as it can give you information about what is on a particular level.

  • There is no actual sound, per se, but the textual description of what your character can hear.

  • Some examples follow:



Sound and Music

  • You ring the bell.

  • This means you just rang a bell.



Sound and Music

  • You hear the chime of a cash register.

  • This means there is a vendor on the level.



Sound and Music

  • You hear the splashing of a naiad.

  • There is water somewhere on the level.



Sound and Music

  • You hear a door open.

  • This means that a monster capable of opening doors is nearby (most monsters cannot open doors.)



Sound and Music

  • You hear water falling on coins.

  • This means that a sink or fountain on the level might have treasure in it.



Influences

  • The game as a whole seems to be drawn from a number of sources, primarily Dungeons and Dragons, Lord of the Rings and mythology, also from other fantasy writing and some pop-culture references (eating spinach from a tin will get you a Popeye-esque message, eating a trident (spear) while polymorphed into a metallivore (metal-eater) will get you a message along the line of “pure chewing satisfaction” ala Trident gum.)



Special Features

  • The game keeps copies of your dead characters ‘bones’…you just might run into them at some point with a different character. (most of your stuff will probably be cursed though, and whatever killed you before will still probably be lurking around.

  • Whenever you start a new game, all the levels, potion/scroll/book/amulet/ring descriptions are randomized so you have to figure out everything over again. Kinda like Diablo, but more difficult.

  • Cursed, normal, blessed, enchanted, disenchanted and rustproof items.

  • Don’t kill your pet, use it to rob stores! Plus that would abuse your luck and make god mad at you!

  • Engraving (E- use fingers) the word ‘Elbereth’ in the floor will cause monsters to flee. (Very useful!)



Special Features

  • ‘Conduct’ challenges, restrictions on the actions a player can make. These are optional and include things like not eating (very difficult), not reading, not praying, not changing form, not wielding a weapon, not attacking anything (very difficult), not wishing or not committing genocide. Just in case you don’t think the game is hard enough and want more of a challenge.

  • Strange interactions. While everything may not have a use with everything, there are enough things that interact to keep you quite busy or perhaps in a constant state of peril. Things like hearing different sounds while hallucinating, or how scrolls can have completely different effects while you are confused.

  • Line-of-sight when entering lit rooms.

  • Special Sokoban levels!



Special Features

  • Windows version includes a version with image tiles instead of characters.

  • Most settings in the game are changeable/extendable.



Manual/Documentation

  • I suppose you could print it out if you wanted.

  • 54 page guidebook, a README file, in-game help.

  • In game character identification feature ‘/’ key. Identifies just exactly what a character on the screen is and, if applicable, offers some additional information. Additional information may just be a definition of what, say, a xan (no idea) is or it could be a quote or passage from literature noting the source of the feature. (More info on the Jabberwock monster, for example, gives a copy of Lewis Carroll's poem.)



You will be greeted with this:

  • You will be greeted with this:

  • NetHack, Copyright 1985-2003

  • By Stichting Mathematisch Centrum and M. Stephenson.

  • See license for details.

  • Who are you?



Bugs

  • You are not responsible for the actions of your pets in stores, they are free to take things out of the shop, eat them or anything else they might wish to do. In fact, sometimes pets will steal items from stores for you. In general, shopkeepers seem to only pay mind to players.

  • Regarding the ‘Conduct’ subquests mentioned earlier: One of the conduct quests is atheism, and is violated by praying, speaking with a priest of your god, etc. , however, you are still allowed to maintain this conduct as a Priest/Priestess (Priest of atheism?) and after having given the amulet to your deity.



Fun things

  • Finding a leprechaun hall when you have fireball/something explosive and reusable. From my experience, leprechaun halls have around 5k+ gold in them if you can manage to kill all the leprechauns before they start using their wands of dig (makes a hole to the next level down). If leprechauns hit you, they take about 75% of your gold.

  • Being polymorphed into a lycanthrope. You gain the ability to summon forth your kin but you generally can’t carry very much stuff…

  • Ascending…I’d assume. Aka. Winning the game (never done it)

  • Explore mode… Otherwise I’d have never been below level 13.

  • Eating corpses and getting intrinsics instead of dying. After you kill certain monsters with elemental attacks, you can eat their corpse to gain resistance to that elemental type or other effects like teleport control.



Not fun things

  • Being polymorphed against your will, especially if it’s into a werejackal. Werejackals are pitifully weak and sprigs of wolfsbane (the antidote) do not seem to be all that common.

  • Having all your stuff stolen by those bloody nymphs! Nymphs have absolutely no melee presence and therefore cannot actually harm you, but they do seem to have quite a penchant for taking your equipment right off of you!

  • Rust monsters, acid monsters, level drainers, HP drainers. It hurts to lose the stuff you worked hard to keep nice, especially when its stuff like…your body.

  • Death and it’s permanence (unless you backup your savegames in a separate directory.) A lot of games nowadays wouldn’t even think of having permanent death; NetHack is an exception.

  • 191 known ways to die. They range from things as mundane as ‘drowned in a pool’ and ‘killed by an undead monster’ to things like ‘killed by sipping boiling water’ and ‘killed by a carnivorous bag’.



Comparason

  • As a character-based RPG, it is very similar to other RPG’s in the ‘Roguelike’ genre.

  • As an adventure game, it shares many puzzle-like elements with text-based adventure games but with more of a free-form gameplay style on the order of Grand Theft Auto, something where the clandestine goal of the game can be to formulate your own goals. You can be perfectly content with having accomplished something that has nothing to do with winning the game.



Comparason

  • As a hack-and-slash style RPG, it shares many game elements with Diablo, randomly generated worlds, monsters and objects interspersed with predefined monsters, artifact objects and areas. Under most cases you can simply charge in and slaughter everything, but sometimes discretion is the better part of valor, especially if you’ve gone down a bit farther than your level might otherwise allow.



Why/What makes better/worse?

  • Compared to other Roguelike games, I think NetHack has a distinct advantage in being cooperatively developed by the people who play it. As people come up with new features and others adopt them, they can eventually find their way into an official release.

  • Compared to other RPG’s, its text-based nature allows for a much more complete set of reactions from the characters and world because its graphical complexity is so low, However, it is definitely not going to win any points in the art dept. and this will IMMEDIATELY turn off a huge number of people who have grown up with increasingly complex graphics or feel that they have outgrown the ‘text era’



Why/What makes better/worse?

  • Its better than other RPG’s because there are just so many different ways to do most of everything and so much nuance, you can get truly days worth of play time.

  • However, all of this nuance makes for an exceedingly difficult game that requires either tons and tons of memorization or for you to take notes on what you’ve seen happen in previous play.

  • It can be very unforgiving, the right combination of events (or bad luck) can completely destroy even the most well-planned character.

  • Also, there really Isn’t much player to NPC interaction from what I’ve seen, I think the unrealistic graphics create a sense of separation, you are just issuing commands to an at-sign that looks exactly like all the other at-signs that are trying to kill you…



Audience

  • Overall, there isn’t much to offend anyone, the occasional hell-hound or some such thing romping around in the pits of hell. every once in a while you will be seduced by some incubi or succubae, but you’d really have to know what was going on to realize it (sometimes they demand you pay them).

  • More than the content, the complexity of the game is probably at issue, as you progress further and further, there are more and more things you have to pay attention to and remember.

  • It is best for everyone to use their own discretion.



Design Mistakes

  • As mentioned earlier, Priests and priestesses are allowed to be atheistic. That’s more of a wording mistake, but it lends a little bit of inconsistency.

  • I am sure there are others or if you took a fine toothed comb to the thing you’d uncover some huge consistency nightmare just as a result of the way the program is structured and causes some things to react.



Summary



Strengths

  • Open-endedness

  • Open source

  • Explore mode

  • Complexity (interesting)



Weaknesses

  • Despite all the open-endedness, only one way to win (leave the dungeons with the real amulet)

  • Difficulty

  • Complexity (infuriation)



Worth purchasing downloading?

  • It’s free isn’t it?

  • Check nethack.sourceforge.net if you don’t like it, you can delete it.



Room for improvement?

  • As I mentioned in ‘weaknesses’, it wouldn’t hurt if there were more/varied endings that involved winning. Why can’t the character use the amulet to gain ascendance over the gods?

  • A training mode to let you know exactly what things like cameras and towels were for.



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