Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

groups.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 122 posts

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#111

Post by danShumway »

rrix2 wrote: post #106
danShumway wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How 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.

It absolutely is a source dump game, or at least it was the last time I checked (several years ago).

Nethack is often brought up as a jewel of Open Source games, but its development style closely followed closed source methodologies. By comparison, most closed source early access games today have more open and transparent dev cycles than Nethack ever did. That's a side topic, but Open Source game design is a really interesting topic all by itself that I wish more people would talk about.

In any case, source dump models are in a lot of ways even better for downstream forking, because you don't have to regularly integrate new patches in. Whenever a new version of Nethack comes out you'd have to merge in the changes from that version, and then reapply whatever patches you made.

The wonderful thing about Open Source is that your patches don't always need to be included proper. :)

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#112

Post by dds1 »

danharaj wrote: post #108
pmoriarty wrote: post #58

Nethack 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,…

Crawl consumed my spare time for some years, i even got good enough to streak 4 wins in a row. I disagree that it's a shallower game. Crawl is streamlined, yes, but the game mechanics are so finely tuned that at a tactical level its depth surpasses Nethack. That is, if you play an interesting combination and not MfBe or something :p The tactical complexity leads to strategic complexity at the margins when you're push…

I believe you mean MiBe. Also the game has had big changes depending how when you last played. All have resulted for overall improvement.

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#113

Post by dcbadacd »

dragonwriter wrote: post #107
dcbadacd wrote: post #77

Is there a multiplayer+easy mode of the game? I'd really like to play it like D&D, with a party.

There are a whole lot of multiplayer, D&D-like online games with NetHack and other roguelikes in their inspirational ancestry (some of which are actually branded as D&D games.)

Like?

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#114

Post by bmn__ »

rrix2 wrote: post #106
danShumway wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How 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.

> How do you submit patches for inclusion in nethack proper?

Don't bother. Just join the impatients:

http://nethack4.org/media/nethack4.git git@github.com:tsadok/nethack4.git

Some changes from NH4 trickle back into 3.6.

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#115

Post by bhickey »

xor1 wrote: post #110
bhickey wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I was a crawl dev from 2009 until whenever I pushed my last commit. Your reaction suggests that you're either unfamiliar with or misunderstand crawl's development philosophy. Crawl development strives to eliminate grinding and eliminate tedium. Players should never be rewarded for performing repetitive actions. Every choice should be meaningful. This has been the case since the game's revival in 2006 and goes ba…

Just wanna say thanks for your contributions. Are there any other similar games (proper roguelikes or not) you've found as enjoyable as DCSS?

My role was a minor one. The last thing I pushed was a Wang tile layout system that makes the Crypt more visually interesting.

> Are there any other similar games (proper roguelikes or not) you've found as enjoyable as DCSS?

Brogue is the finest Roguelike ever made. By happenstance, pender was my neighbor back when I lived in the valley.

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#116

Post by danharaj »

dds1 wrote: post #112
danharaj wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crawl consumed my spare time for some years, i even got good enough to streak 4 wins in a row. I disagree that it's a shallower game. Crawl is streamlined, yes, but the game mechanics are so finely tuned that at a tactical level its depth surpasses Nethack. That is, if you play an interesting combination and not MfBe or something :p The tactical complexity leads to strategic complexity at the margins when you're push…

I believe you mean MiBe. Also the game has had big changes depending how when you last played. All have resulted for overall improvement.

MfBe is lowkey easier than MiBe, at least when I was playing.

Looks like my last win was 5 years ago, wow!

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/players/danharaj.html

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#117

Post by dragonwriter »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #65
digi_owl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then 4th went and slimlined things even further. And what a success that was...

I missed that entirely. 3rd Ed destroyed my interest in upgrading; I'd been playing since 1st Edition, too.

If you get a chance, you might want to take a look at 5e; mechanically it's still streamlined, but lots of people who didn't like 3e/4e seem to like it.

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#118

Post by ckemere »

Alex3917 wrote: post #20
ggm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your pull request crumbles into dust...

Not 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, w…

Confused - the change log includes "don't show the old level when you die going down the stairs because of an iron ball"

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#119

Post by dragonwriter »

dcbadacd wrote: post #113
dragonwriter wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a whole lot of multiplayer, D&D-like online games with NetHack and other roguelikes in their inspirational ancestry (some of which are actually branded as D&D games.)

Like?

On further reflection, most of them are single player / multiple character, excluding ones that are very far from any roguelike influence. Actual multiplayer that still have much resemblance to roguelikes (especially the turn-based nature) are harder to find (IIRC, Neverwinter Nights might qualify, though largely through the influence of roguelikes back on D&D, since it was a fairly direct translation of then-current D&D.)

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#120

Post by mindways »

PaulHoule wrote: post #18

Has 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.)

Not remotely recently, but my friends and I played a lot of NetHack back in the 90s. I Ascended once or twice with no cheating (and with low-to-no use of Elbereth), and had a couple of good runs that could plausibly have worked out but didn't due to either bad fortune or (in one memorable case) very poor life choices involving a Ring of Conflict.

IIRC, we didn't even really read up on anything spoilery until we were getting down to the castle occasionally. Learning to survive the early-game was a journey both fun and frustrating.

Post reply on HN