21–30 of 92 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/1-turn_ascension Check out the information at the very end of this page.
> paste it into NetHack's terminal, and wait approximately 19 days. Thanks for the laugh
Another laugh.
When I saw the previous submission of this as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18853508 (which describes it as a "tool-assisted speedrun" of NetHack on the online server nethack.alt.org), I thought "wait, you can't have a tool-assisted speedrun of a nondeterministic game with hidden information...!" (particularly on an online server where you can't roll back history). Then I read the article and saw that this pro…
They had to do quite a lot of source diving to achieve this. The bumping into a wall to advance the RNG state without changing the game time is a really neat trick that I would otherwise have been completely unaware of, and I have played Nethack for many years and done some source diving myself. Truly a great feat of engineering here.
Initially thought just to probably be some numerical instability when the next actions are all equally likely (I.e. there’s nothing for it to do) but what was actually happening is the pseudo RNG was partially fed by controller input, and certain patterns of controller input would make random rewards more likely to spawn.
I always thought it was cool how these exploits get discovered by the deep nets
I’ve been trying to reach the amulet for 30 years.
NetHack can be very fun, if you invest some time. I recommend to start with a GUI version.
Aye, good times...
RNG manipulations are among some of my favorite speedruns just because of the absurd lengths players will go to align absolutely everything perfectly. For example, Dragon Warrior at AGDQ last year was an absolute treat to watch [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgh30BiWG58
When I saw the previous submission of this as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18853508 (which describes it as a "tool-assisted speedrun" of NetHack on the online server nethack.alt.org), I thought "wait, you can't have a tool-assisted speedrun of a nondeterministic game with hidden information...!" (particularly on an online server where you can't roll back history). Then I read the article and saw that this pro…
They seem straightforward to implement even for nethack.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They had to do quite a lot of source diving to achieve this. The bumping into a wall to advance the RNG state without changing the game time is a really neat trick that I would otherwise have been completely unaware of, and I have played Nethack for many years and done some source diving myself. Truly a great feat of engineering here.
This reminds me of something I read on reinforcement learning playing Atari / video games ... often you see the Deep net (I think the game in question was a tank game) just spazzing out on the controller when there’s no enemy, the tank was spinning on the spot while waiting for a door to open for example. Initially thought just to probably be some numerical instability when the next actions are all equally likely (I.…
I was under the impression that machine learning is only good at learning things that can be approximated by continuous functions.
A RNG is almost the complete opposite of that. It's everywhere discontinuous!
NetHack can be very fun, if you invest some time. I recommend to start with a GUI version.
I played my first NetHack games about 20 years ago and started with the GUI versions, but the game really hooked me when I tried it with the ASCII graphics. They are quite good and if you put a bit of time to it, you should be able to ascend in a couple of months. Aye, good times...
I think it took me a couple years to ascend without cheating, I don't know whether to cry or laugh at my former self :)
Btw, I think modern nethack playing is quite different from the old times, because of the amount of easy to find information (i.e. wiki,guides etc).
Playing without spoilers is more interesting but can become frustrating much faster.