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

First NetHack bot ascension

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–89 of 89 posts

Re: First NetHack bot ascension

#81

Post by WildUtah »

darkmighty wrote: post #69
riffraff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sigil-based graphics are part of what make the complexity possible I don't think that is relevant, I have played the GUI version for many years, and it's perfectly usable.

This is the reason those games can be so complex. Want to make a character fly 10m? Just move his character ('@') 10 grid steps. Want to make a camera? A char 'c' will do it. It's awesome that this allows you to easily program whatever you wish but you still get a visual representation of what's happening.

An Expansive Camera in Nethack is the character '(', not a letter 'c'.

A letter 'c' is a cockatrice or a pyrolisk; those are both quite dangerous so I suggest you learn to recognize them for your own good.

Re: First NetHack bot ascension

#82

Post by WildUtah »

Natsu wrote: post #73
saulrh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two major things that can make AI difficult: having too many options to choose from, and having difficulty figuring out which options are better. NetHack is nasty in both of these dimensions. • Many options are available: - Many different actions available at any given time (move, attack with a weapon, Zap using a wand, Quaff a potion, Wear a different piece of armor or equipment, Wield a different weapon,…

To be fair, there's not (that) much worry over which armor to use, it's more a matter of knowing what is and isn't enchanted and to what degree. There's a pretty much set kit for each class that you want to work towards. My neutral human wizards always have either Frostbane or Grayswandir (Magicbane as backup/for MR), robes, silver dragon scale mail, boots of speed, enchanted T-shirt, gloves of dex, etc.

Frosty and Swandy are a waste for a wizard, especially because you have to #offer mountains of sacrifices to get the skills unlocked. Mbane enchanted is enough of a weapon on its own along with attack spells. And you can get dagger skill up to expert easily.

Those swords barely do any more damage than Mbane even in the hands of combat classes.

Re: First NetHack bot ascension

#83

Post by steveklabnik »

digi_owl wrote: post #53
schoen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably D&D with a human dungeon master would allow more possible actions, in the sense that NetHack only allows (a)pply, (C)all, (d)rop, (e)at, (E)ngrave, (f)ire, (P)ut on, (q)uaff, (Q)uiver, (r)ead, (t)hrow, (w)ield, (W)ear, (z)ap, #dip, #invoke, #name, #offer, and #rub actions with specific items in your main inventory (and most of those actions won't be applicable to most items most of the time). A human DM migh…

Then again, human DMs can also be outwitted by careful specification of actions. Like how someone managed to win the original Tomb of Horrors.

Do you have a link with some backstory on this? I'd be interested.

Re: First NetHack bot ascension

#84

Post by pdpi »

kbenson wrote: post #4
pdpi wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it surprising? (And I do not at all mean that in a snarky tone. I've been lurking in the nethack community for so long that it seems perfectly natural to me)

Probably because to the the person familiar enough with NetHack to have played it but never immersed themselves in the community, ascension seems hard . A speedrun is one thing, doing it on a game many can't even win is another thing entirely.

Ascension _is_ hard. Or at least it still seems to me, seeing as I've personally never ascended :).

Re: First NetHack bot ascension

#85

Post by Natsu »

WildUtah wrote: post #82
Natsu wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, there's not (that) much worry over which armor to use, it's more a matter of knowing what is and isn't enchanted and to what degree. There's a pretty much set kit for each class that you want to work towards. My neutral human wizards always have either Frostbane or Grayswandir (Magicbane as backup/for MR), robes, silver dragon scale mail, boots of speed, enchanted T-shirt, gloves of dex, etc.

Frosty and Swandy are a waste for a wizard, especially because you have to #offer mountains of sacrifices to get the skills unlocked. Mbane enchanted is enough of a weapon on its own along with attack spells. And you can get dagger skill up to expert easily. Those swords barely do any more damage than Mbane even in the hands of combat classes.

I never seem to have that much trouble unlocking them if I've gotten that far.

Re: First NetHack bot ascension

#86

Post by schoen »

aidenn0 wrote: post #8
jedberg wrote: post #7

At the risk of losing my nerd card, I've never played Nethack. I read the reddit thread, and while it was in English, it made not a lick of sense to me. Now I know how non-engineers feel sometimes. :) BTW, can someone tell me why this is such an amazing accomplishment? I know Nethack is very old, so is this a case of a complex problem space or just no one has tried before?

There are a couple of things. First of all, just synchronizing the I/O is hard (there are good comments in the reddit thread there). Combat in non-enclosed spaces is hard do to ranged attacks line-of-sight, etc. I'm slightly surprised it has taken this long to do with pudding-farming, as that lets you get plenty of really powerful items (as well as other benefits from sacrificing the corpses)[1]. There are a few part…

After watching the ttyrec of the bot ascension, I was surprised to see that the bot farmed on a sink, not an altar, and hence used the puddings only for item drops and not for sacrifices.

That makes me a lot more optimistic that the bot is close to being able to ascend without farming, especially since I believe its character already had multiple amulets of life saving and a bag of holding even before starting to farm.

Re: First NetHack bot ascension

#87

Post by digi_owl »

steveklabnik wrote: post #83
digi_owl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again, human DMs can also be outwitted by careful specification of actions. Like how someone managed to win the original Tomb of Horrors.

Do you have a link with some backstory on this? I'd be interested.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/TombOfHor...

Crowning moment of awesome entry.

Re: First NetHack bot ascension

#88

Post by digi_owl »

alasdair_ wrote: post #79
digi_owl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again, human DMs can also be outwitted by careful specification of actions. Like how someone managed to win the original Tomb of Horrors.

Was that module ever won by the first groups to encounter it?

I have no idea.

Re: First NetHack bot ascension

#89

Post by steveklabnik »

digi_owl wrote: post #87
steveklabnik wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link with some backstory on this? I'd be interested.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/TombOfHor... Crowning moment of awesome entry.

Thanks for the follow-up.
Post reply on HN