News about Nethack

Last December 8 marked the tenth anniversary of the current release of “vanilla” Nethack. There has been no definite statement from the dev team that there will be no future releases, but it doesn’t seem very likely. As I’ve said before, this extended period of dormancy has spurred the creation of new versions of Nethack in an effort to fix the bugs that remain and introduce gameplay and interface options meant to make it a more enjoyable experience.

As of now, 18 January 2014, there are 3 or 4 actively maintained variants of Nethack that can be played offline (i.e. without connecting to a Nethack server). They are:

Nethack4 – this version differs the least from vanilla Nethack 3.4.3, unfortunately at the moment it’s not really possible to play on Windows except on a server. It runs great on Linux, though, and compiling it is simple once you have all the needed dependencies. This variant is updated fairly often. Created and maintained by Alex Smith

Dynahack – this version has a binary for Windows, which seems fine. It can be compiled for Linux but I’m having a minor difficulty doing that at the moment. The Windows version works great, aside from the fact that the terminal won’t let you really increase font size that much and won’t open full-screen. [Luckily, the final 2 options in Dynahack’s option menu allow you to set window height and width!]. Dynahack has a lot more changes in it than Nethack4 does. Like UnNetHack, you can play a vampire, and there is a new role of convict. DynaHack doesn’t make it easy to choose “conducts” as a challenge, which is something UnNetHack lets you do. Much like Nethack4 and Nitrohack, you can easily create and load several characters, and play on a server from the main menu screen. Created and maintained by Tung Nguyen.

picking a role in Dynahack

UnNetHack – This variant has binaries for both Windows and Linux so it’s one of the quickest to get started with no matter which system you use. Current version is 5.1, released in December of 2013. There are quite a lot of changes in this from vanilla, including 3 new classes, a new race, and a tutorial mode. There are dungeon changes including a shorter Sokoban that has more variety in its puzzles, and the Town and Dragon Caves special areas. Some of the regular areas have been altered so as to increase variety between games. Veterans who ascend fairly regularly can also select “conducts” – voluntary challenges such as not praying, not eating meat (for non-monks), not reading anything ingame, etc – that make it more difficult to win. The Windows edition of UnNetHack includes both ASCII and a tiled version, and the tiles are quite nicely done. Created by Patrick Mueller

UnNetHackPlus – A fork of UnNetHack, approved of by Patrick. It seems to be mainly an increase in variety and challenges from UnNetHack.

Also available (but dormant) are GruntHack,  SporkHack and SLASH’EM.

Nitrohack is no more

About a week ago, I noticed that nitrohack.org had gone offline.  Apparently, that fork is no longer being maintained, but instead the effort is now being put into Nethack4, a combination of Acehack and Nitrohack. I have heard that Nitrohack had a bug that corrupted save files, which I can’t dispute even though I never had a problem in over 40 games. I speculate that my inability to survive beyond the Sokoban levels may be related to my non-corrupted saves, but there’s no way to be sure.

Nethack4 seems to be the current “unofficial sequel” to Nethack. Unfortunately there’s no binary at the moment, and compiling on Windows is not yet possible. My efforts to compile it on Linux haven’t succeeded yet, so the easiest way to play it is online (by ssh or telnet to nethack@nethack4.org).

One useful change in Nethack4 is that you receive a warning when you are about to eat tainted food. I appreciate things like that…it doesn’t make the game easier but just avoids some of the more annoying problems in the original game.

This Valkyrie didn’t last too long, but I am out of practice. With some more playtime, I should manage to reach Minetown pretty consistently, and after that work on the Sokoban levels.

Nethack commands you should be using

In this post I’m going to go over some of the standard commands that some people may not know of (especially if you haven’t read the Guidebook in a really long time). I don’t mean that nobody uses them, just that they are not as obvious as the main ones. Most work the same in the variants, but I’m not sure that all of them do – I confirmed that “X” doesn’t work in Nitrohack.

Also, see the excellent command cheat sheet (PDF) at the Nethack wiki.

: and ;  – identify. : is used to see what’s directly under your character. ; will let you move the cursor to an item or monster nearby, and pressing ; again will identify it

^ – identify trap

/ – tells what another symbol represents

& – will tell you what some other command means (if you know the letter but forgot what it will do)

g(direction) – will move in that direction until something interesting is found

Q – get a throwing item ready in your quiver

x (lowercase) – this will exchange your current weapon with the alternate one (such as a bow)

f – fire your readied throwing weapon (arrows, dagger, etc)

I – instead of the entire list of your inventory, this will bring up the categories. Allows you to choose just one type of item to list

D – lets you choose what to drop from a list of all item categories

* – lists all equipped weapons, armor, rings, amulets (but not other items)

+ – lists all spells you know

alt-e (enhance) – view and raise your skills. New players may not realize it, but skills with weapons don’t automatically go up. You get 29 enhancements, one per level, which can be spread among your weapons and spell groups

V – display history of your progress in the game

Ctrl-X – player info (gives name, starting and current race, role, gender and alignment, and also lists the 3 gods for your role alongside their respective alignments)

X –  change to “nonscoring explore mode”. Just what it says: it won’t keep your score that game, but in return, you will be asked to confirm, whenever something might cause your character’s death. (The game asks for confirmation)

Nethack and Angband

I chose to focus primarily on 2 games and their variants: Nethack and Angband. Each one has a very distinct playing style.

Nethack

In Nethack you choose your character’s race, gender, and class (called “role” in Nethack). The standard game offers 13 roles to choose from, and 5 races. While one role is restricted to females, the others can be played with male or female characters. The role you choose affects which races you can become. You’ll start off equipped with some useful items, a weapon, and armor. As your character gains levels, they get abilities (some right away) that are unique to each role. Learning how to use those abilities will improve your chances of survival.

The roles are: archeologist, barbarian, caveman, healer, knight, monk, priest, rogue, ranger, samurai, tourist, valkyrie, and wizard. The races are the usual fantasy ones:  human, elf, gnome, dwarf, and orc.

The way to win Nethack is to journey through a dungeon of 50 levels, find the Amulet of Yendor, bring it with you back to the surface, ascend a few more levels, and offer it on an altar to your god. This, of course, is far from simple. Becoming better at Nethack involves learning the uses of anything you are carrying (including some far from obvious uses), interacting with the features and inhabitants of the dungeon, and trying not to make mistakes. Because it is turn-based, you should think about your options carefully – that vicious monster won’t move while you check your inventory.

Nethack includes a “Guidebook” of 62 pages, and an in-game help system. The Guidebook has a lot of useful information and hints to help you play the game, and reading it before you begin play is definitely recommended. The game is very hard even without making use of other sources of information about the game  (termed “spoilers”).

Nethack can be played using ASCII characters

Priest – Nethack with ASCII

or with tiles enabled:

Priest – Nethack tiles version

If you play on a Debian-based Linux system, the “Documentation” section of the repositories will have a spoiler file.

Nethack is considered to have 3 stages of game progress – early, middle, and late – determined roughly by what area you have reached in the game. Your short-range goals will change from stage to stage. It seems to be the consensus among the better players that the roles also fall into 3 groups: strong in the early game, weak in the early game but becoming excellent in the late game, and weak throughout the game (yet still able to win).

It is a single player game, but most variants (and the vanilla version) let you play online using a telnet client to sign in and play. You can watch other people play, see high scores, and others will see your progress. The only thing you can’t do online is use a “tiles” version of the game.

Nethack doesn’t have a town level, and each dungeon level is preserved while playing the same game. Unless you look up spoilers, you’ll be taking a lot of notes about monsters and their weaknesses, special levels of the dungeon and how to reach them, and what items are the best ones to keep with you for use later on.

There are less than 10 Nethack variants, some of which are no longer active. The Nethack wiki has a list of all of them.

Angband

In Angband you also choose your character’s race, gender, and class. The standard game offers 11 races but only 6 classes. The classes are Warrior, Rogue, Mage, Priest, Ranger, and Paladin – much more “standard fantasy” types than Nethack lets you play.  When you choose your race and class, the game shows you how your attributes are affected, and any advantages or disadvantages you have.

Your choice of race has no effect on which class you are allowed to choose.

Angband doesn’t have a Guidebook, but an FAQ mentions the 2 primary websites for it: rephial.org and angband.oook.cz. The forums, and a list of variants are at the second link, while rephial features a link to spoilers and an outdated but still useful Players Guide.

Two of the big differences between Angband and Nethack are the town level at the top, and the fact that when you leave any particular level, it is lost. Returning generates a new level, new artifacts, and monsters. You are expected to return to the town every so often in order to buy scrolls, better weapons, etc (town portal scrolls in Diablo are definitely borrowed from Angband). Angband is generally considered to take longer to play through than Nethack. It is more of a combat-oriented game, with very few puzzles. Because of the way shops work, stealing from them is impossible; in contrast, good Nethack players have learned the benefits of stealing from shops they find (one of the benefits of keeping your pet around!)

The levels in Angband are also much larger than those in Nethack. Nethack levels always fit on one screen when using the ASCII graphics, while Angband’s sprawl all over. There’s a command to see the entire map at once, which will also show you any stairs found. Hunger in Angband is much less a focus than it is in Nethack – monsters won’t leave corpses, and you must buy your food.

The number of Angband variants is much larger than those for Nethack – many are no longer being maintained, although they are still playable. The Angband forums has a Variants subforum that seems to consider less than 10 variants still current.

Playing online is pretty well supported in all versions of Nethack, while I don’t really see it as an option for Angband. I’m planning a post specifically about online play, where I will go into more detail.