NetHack 5.0.0

#1

Post by rsaarelm » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#2

Post by saulpw » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

> The build-time "yacc and lex"-based level compiler, the "yacc and lex"-based dungeon compiler, and the quest text file processing previously done by NetHack's "makedefs" utility, have been replaced with Lua text alternatives that are loaded and processed by the game during play.

This is very likely a good choice for multiple reasons, but it's truly the end of an era. (NetHack predates Lua, which has been around since 1993.) Lex and yacc are dead, long live lex and yacc!

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#3

Post by stickfigure » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:11 PM UTC

I must... resist...

(I probably play to finish ever 5 years or so)

It occurs to me that procedurally generated dungeons would be amazing with LLMs. Imagine every level with the sophistication of nethack's "special" levels. I hope someone out there is working on it!

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#4

Post by haunter » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:12 PM UTC

I can highly recommend the 3D client especially because it works almost everywhere, hope it will be updated for 5.0.0 soon

https://github.com/JamesIV4/nethack-3d

Web https://jamesiv4.github.io/nethack-3d/

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#5

Post by m000 » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

Wow! The inclusion of Lua bindings seems like a major step forward. This should make modding much more accessible.

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#6

Post by Zitrax » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:20 PM UTC

What happened to version 4? Looks like last release was 3.6.7.

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#7

Post by britta » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:22 PM UTC

Aw yeah! I’d love to see somebody from the DevTeam talk about this, or literally anything else they might want to talk about, at the Roguelike Celebration in October (https://www.roguelike.club/), if anyone has a connection and could encourage them to consider it. It’s a super lovely community-run online event, and everyone would be thrilled. (I was a volunteer for the first few annual events, as a person who played about a zillion games of Nethack as a kid.)

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#8

Post by stryan » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:26 PM UTC

Zitrax wrote: post #6

What happened to version 4? Looks like last release was 3.6.7.

Possibly to avoid conflicts with Nethack4[0], which was a fork of the Nethack 3.x series back when development was stalled. I think the guy behind it later joined the main Nethack dev team.

[0] http://nethack4.org/

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#9

Post by monarchwadia » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:27 PM UTC

m000 wrote: post #5

Wow! The inclusion of Lua bindings seems like a major step forward. This should make modding much more accessible.

Oh I missed that I the announcement. Nice!!!

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#10

Post by rsaarelm » Sat, May 02, 2026, 6:27 PM UTC

Zitrax wrote: post #6

What happened to version 4? Looks like last release was 3.6.7.

There is a variant named NetHack 4, they might want to avoid confusion with it.