NetHack

NetHack is a roguelike computer game originally released in 1987. It is an evolution of an earlier game called Hack (1985) which was itself an evolution of Rogue (1980). The name NetHack references the fact that its development has been coordinated through the Internet, though it is not a multiplayer game, nor is it in any way connected with computer-security related usages of the word hacking. The "hack" element refers to a genre of role-playing games known as hack and slash for their focus on action.

NetHack is one of the oldest computer games still being actively developed, with new features and bug fixes regularly being added by a loose group of volunteer developers, commonly called the DevTeam.

The player takes the part of a dungeon-delving hero in search of the Amulet of Yendor. The quest spans more than 50 levels, most of which are randomly created. Each level contains monsters, weaponry, magical items, hidden doors and much more.

NetHack is traditionally played using text mode graphics where the dungeon's features, its inhabitants as well as items are represented by single characters. There are also several graphical user interfaces available for the game.

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Game

Before playing the game, you are invited to select a race, class, gender, and alignment for your character, or allow the game to create a random character for you. There are traditional character roles such as knight, wizard, and rogue, but there are also unusual ones, including archeologist, tourist, caveman, valkyrie and samurai. Your character's class and alignment dictate what god you serve in the game; by pleasing your god, you may receive aid and gifts.

After constructing your character, your task is introduced:

"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."

To win the game, a player must find and sacrifice the Amulet of Yendor to their deity. The Amulet is found among the deepest and hardest levels of the game. Successful completion of this main task rewards the player with the gift of immortality (the player is said to ascend), and the player attains the status of demigod or a demigoddess. In addition to the main quest to find and sacrifice the Amulet, a number of sub-quests (one of which is class-specific) must be completed along the way.

Your character is initially accompanied by a pet animal, typically a kitten or little dog, although Knights begin with a pony. You can name your pet, and you can tame more pets along the way - domestic animals can be tamed by feeding them, and other monsters can sometimes be tamed by magic. Pets are very useful, not only for assisting you in combat, but also for detecting cursed items and stealing from shops.

The game is wide in scope: hundreds of unique items, situations, monsters, and personages provide opportunities for interaction with the gameworld. Some interactions are rare and occasionally amusing. For example:

"You fall into a pit! You land on a set of sharp iron spikes!--more--
The spikes were poisoned! The poison was deadly...--more--

Do you want your possessions identified?"

(This is referred to as YAAD or YASD, meaning Yet Another Annoying Death or Yet Another Stupid Death.)

The prompt "Do you want your possessions identified?", abbreviated as DYWYPI, is given by default at the end of any game, allowing you to learn any unknown properties of the items you had found.

A certain percentage of the time, the game saves the level on which a character has died, and then integrates that level into a later dungeon, complete with the ex-player's possessions, ghost and killer(s). This is done via 'bones files', which are saved on the computer hosting the game. A player using a publically-hosted copy of the game can thus encounter the remains of many other players. Players can also swap bones files via programs like Hearse.

It is often said that "the DevTeam thinks of everything" (acronym TDTTOE)- whatever you can think of for your character to do, they will probably have thought of a plausible response.

For example, attempting to dip a potion into itself would produce:

That is a potion bottle, not a Klein bottle!

Or, being burdened while going down the stairs would produce:

You fall down the stairs.

Bugs, funny messages, stories, experiences, and ideas for the next version are discussed on the Usenet newsgroup, rec.games.roguelike.nethack, commonly known as "RGRN".

Items and tools

NetHack features a variety of items: armour to protect you; scrolls and spellbooks to cast; potions to quaff; and an assortment of tools such as keys and lamps.

Although the majority of items are beneficial to the player, their use is unknown until the player finds out about them. For example: an amulet may be an amulet of life saving, but it may be shown by the game as just "an octagonal amulet" if the player does not know what it is. After it is identified, all octagonal amulets will be shown as "amulets of life saving". The descriptions for every item are randomised each game, the octagonal amulet may be life saving in one game and an amulet of strangulation in the next.

It is risky to try on random items, drink random potions, etc., and many players prefer to wait to identify any items by using a scroll of identify, or at least check for curses by placing items on an altar, before trying them.

Blessings and curses

Like many other roguelike games, most items in NetHack can be "blessed", "cursed" or "uncursed". The majority of items are found uncursed, but not all of them, and the status of an item is unknown at first (unless you are a priest or priestess, who can sense these things).

The status of an item can be revealed in a few ways. There is always a risk in using items when you are not sure of their cursed status.

A blessing makes the item more powerful. A blessed potion of healing would heal the player more than an ordinary uncursed potion would. Blessed weapons deal extra damage to undead creatures and demons.

Cursed items, on the other hand, cause ill or unintended effects. A cursed piece of armour may make the player more vulnerable to attacks, and can not be removed. A cursed scroll may just not work as well as expected, such as a cursed scroll of magic mapping that only maps a random selection of locations on a level, or do the opposite effect entirely - a cursed scroll of genocide creates the monsters that the player wished to kill. A potion of Gain Level (that would normally increase the experience level of the character by one), when cursed, will instead cause the character to gain a dungeon level - by rising up through the ceiling.

Some cursed items may have side-effects that may be beneficial to the player. Even using a cursed scroll of genocide can be beneficial if the player is aware the scroll is cursed.

Voluntary conducts

While NetHack is very difficult, veteran players often attempt "conducts", or voluntary restrictions on their behavior tracked by the game. Examples include:

• Not wishing for objects
• Holding to a vegan or vegetarian diet
• Going without food entirely
• Being an atheist means not praying, sacrificing corpses, or talking to a priest. The exception to this is sacrificing The Amulet of Yendor, which is required to win the game.
• Being illiterate means not reading or writing anything during the game. The exception to this is that you can still write a single 'x'.
• Pacifism, in which the player cannot directly kill any creature - such players often use a strong pet to fight on their behalf.

Some conducts are not tracked by the game, but remain popular, such as speedrunning - making it through the dungeon within a set number of turns - and chastity - not using incubi or succubi to gain experience. Other challenges include not using items, such as wearing no armour.

Spoiler files

Players over the years have compiled extensive documentation for every aspect of the game, from instructions on exactly how to navigate certain obstacles, to detailed formulae explaining the probability of in-game events. Gleaning spoiler information from the source code is known as source-diving. The documents are collectively known as spoilers.

Opinions vary on the use of spoilers. NetHack is widely considered one of the hardest games of all time, due to its intentional lack of a facility to reload a saved game after making a mistake. Even with complete access to all spoilers, the game still poses a considerable challenge. Many people have played for many years without ascending. Some consult spoilers extensively during the game, others only consult common information, and others choose not to read spoilers and will learn as they play.

Graphics

Though one was added later, NetHack was created originally without a graphical user interface, and any objects were displayed as letters on the screen:

Key:

• @ - The player character
• d - A dog (in this case, it is the player character's pet)
• ` - boulder or statue
• < and > - up and down staircases
• % - anything edible; corpses or rations
• ? - scroll
• + - closed door
• ( - tool (lamp, pick-axe, bag, etc.)
• F and : - enemies; a fungus (here, a lichen) and a lizard (newt)
• ^ a trap (in this case, it is a trap door)
• { a fountain

Below the map is the status line. First there is the hero's name and professional ranking, the latter based on the hero's experience. St stands for strength, Dx for dexterity, Co for constitution, In for intelligence, Wi for wisdom, Ch for charisma and Neutral is your alignment.

The next line shows the dungeon level the hero is currently on (increasing when you go deeper), money, hit points, magical power, armor class and experience level. The hero's hunger status, ranging from Satiated down to Fainting, would be shown next but it's currently normal and thus is not displayed.

Tiles mode

Apart from the original text mode, there are interfaces that replace text mode screen representations with images, or tiles, to represent the objects in the game - this is known as "tiles mode". Graphic interfaces include those using X11 tiled and the similar Windows graphical interface, the Qt toolkit, and the GNOME libraries. There are also enhanced graphical interfaces such as the isometric SDL based Falcon's Eye/Vulture's Eye and also the OpenGL based noegnud.

Notable (non-player) characters

• The Wizard of Yendor, also known as Rodney (which is "Yendor" spelled backwards).
• King Croesus, lord of Fort Ludios.
• The Oracle of Delphi (with references to the Internet Oracle and Oracle machines).
• Vlad the Impaler, a figure based on Vlad III Dracula and the Dracula story.
• The Gorgon Medusa, also from Greek mythology.
• Various demons, like Asmodeus, Demogorgon, Baalzebub, Dispater, Juiblex, and Orcus. The demons that appear in NetHack originate from the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons, though some of their names come from classical mythology.
• The Jabberwock from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky appears as a monster, along with the Vorpal Blade of the poem's protagonist.
• Izchak Miller, one of the founding members of the DevTeam, who died on April 1, 1994 from complications due to cancer. As he was responsible for, among other things, much of the shopkeeper logic, the owner of the lighting shop was named for him as a tribute. The DevTeam also dedicated version 3.2 of NetHack to his memory. It is generally considered to be very bad form to kill Izchak, even when playing as an extinctionist (a conduct where the player kills enough of every monster for no more to be born) . Many players who will happily slay everything else that moves will spare Izchak's life as a sign of respect.
• The Wumpus - as part of the Ranger class-specific quest, characters are required to 'hunt the Wumpus'. This is a reference to one of the earliest pre-RPG computer games Hunt the Wumpus.

Notable creatures

• The cockatrice: a typical example of a complex NetHack monster. Its touch can turn you to stone, so attacking it with your bare hands is not recommended. If you kill one and it leaves a corpse, you could wield it as a weapon, and turn other monsters to stone—but you'd better be wearing gloves. Furthermore, if your character is female, and you are polymorphed into a cockatrice, you can lay cockatrice eggs—which have several interesting applications. Again, "the DevTeam thinks of everything." One of the most commonly cited (and most amusing) stupid ways to die is to wield a cockatrice corpse while burdened, then fall down a staircase and land on one's own cockatrice corpse. In a compiled list of every possible way of getting killed by a cockatrice, the most unlikely is to, when immune to petrification, repeatedly toss a cockatrice corpse into the air and have it land on your head until you die.
• The floating eye: a monster without any active form of attack, this is one of the most dangerous creatures to the inexperienced or incautious NetHacker. If you attack (run into) a floating eye when not blind and not capable of reflecting its gaze, there is a very high chance of it immobilizing you for many turns, leaving you open to attacks from other creatures that roam the Dungeons of Doom. The most embarrassing player deaths (such as being killed by a newt or grid bug) are often the result of an unlucky encounter with a floating eye. Eating a floating eye's corpse, however, will grant telepathy, allowing a blinded player-character to see all creatures with minds that are on the same level.
• The soldier ant: even though this creature has no unusual abilities, it often comes as a surprise for the unprepared hacker. These critters move in swarms, are very fast, hard to hit and hit hard themselves. On the alt.org public NetHack server, they are the most common cause of death for players. It is something of a tradition in the #nethack IRC channel on the Freenode server to say, "Go Team Ant!" when the Rodney-bot announces that an alt.org player's character has been killed by an ant.
• The nymph: taking its origin in Greek mythology, these creatures are females of astounding charm. They manage to entice men and women alike into entranced helplessness, stealing the belongings of an adventurer who has fallen into their hands and teleporting away, leaving him bait for the more deadly creatures of the Dungeons. Or, in the worst case, to be destroyed by their own equipment, now wielded by the nymph.
• The mind flayer: this creature (and its more powerful relative, the master mind flayer) is very dangerous in close combat, as it can extract and eat parts of its opponent's brain. Not only does this cause an eventually-fatal loss of intelligence, but it can also cause its victim to forget information such as the layout of previously explored areas or the nature of any items being carried. As another example of "the DevTeam thinks of everything," a mind flayer is at a significant disadvantage when fighting creatures without a head.

Development

NetHack, as stated above, is developed by the DevTeam. They don't publicly discuss versions in progress, and they release new versions without any notice. However, a listing of fixed bugs (though not patches for those bugs) is available on their webpage. Often, unofficial patches will be released by others between versions.

Other versions & interfaces

• There was a commercial, first person-view game with some similarities to NetHack called Dungeon Hack. It was produced by Interplay and published by SSI under the Dungeons and Dragons license.
• One variant, Falcon's Eye, offers a graphical isometric view of the dungeon map. However, Falcon's Eye is now an abandoned project and has been essentially replaced by the Vulture's Eye project.
• Another graphical interface, noegnud, allows text views, isometric views like Falcon's Eye as well as more advanced 3D interfaces.
• Many experienced NetHack players prefer the original text mode interface, as they feel the graphical alternatives deter attention from playability and the use of one's imagination.
• Slash'EM (Super Lots of Added Stuff Hack - Extended Magic) is the only variant of NetHack still under development as of 2006- NetHack is an open source game (although the source code is only released along with new versions), so anyone can edit the source code and thus create new variants.
• nethack-el[1] [2] is an Emacs major mode for playing NetHack written by Ryan Yeske [3] and Shawn Betts .
• Ports also exist for the Nintendo DS [4], PlayStation Portable and GP2X.

Cultural references

NetHack's long life has led to a wide acceptance into computer culture, with constant references being made to it in the social circles, on the internet, in other games, and online comics, such as User Friendly.

When hallucinating, monsters will appear to be creatures drawn from other mythos, fictional universes or pop culture: this leads to humorous discoveries of references to such disparate sources as The Lord of the Rings, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Star Trek, Star Wars, BattleTech, Discworld, Zork, and even Pokémon.

External links

• NetHack Official Site
• The NetHack Index (large index of NetHack websites)
• Yet Another NetHack Site (with up to date spoilers)
• NetHack 3.4 spoilers
• A Bibliography of NetHack's Database
• The Annotated NetHack File
• StrategyWiki:NetHack
• Wikihack - The NetHack Wiki
• NetHack.de Sascha's and Raph's NetHack Site
• Annual NetHack Tournament, held in November
• Another Nethack tournament, held in the summer
• Hearse, a utility to share bones files
• List of NetHack spoilers
• NetHack Bingesoft and assorted patches
• Dudley's Dungeon - a NetHack comic strip, running since 2004
• NetHack tribute song by Rob Balder

Public servers

Several public servers have been set up to allow people to telnet to a host and begin playing NetHack:

• alt.org public NetHack Server, home of the 2 billion point ascension; character deaths, ascensions, etc. are broadcast on the #nethack channel on Freenode by an IRC bot named Rodney.
• Slackwell.com public NetHack Server, maintains detailed stats, and the ability to watch other players games in real-time.
• Nostalgia Public NetHack Server, keeps ttyrec (text dump) recordings of every game, lets you watch other in realtime, play through telnet or a web interface.
• Imelaps Public NetHack Server, for those in Europe, who find network connection to alt.org server too laggy.