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NetHack

A grateful djinni has granted the player a wish.
Developer(s)	The NetHack DevTeam
Stable release	3.4.3 / December 8, 2003
Repository	github.com/NetHack/NetHack
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Roguelike game
License	NetHack General Public License
Website	www.nethack.org

NetHack is a single-player 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 "net" element references that its development has been coordinated through the Internet, which was notable at the time. The "hack" element refers to a genre of role-playing games known as hack and slash for their focus on combat.

The player takes the part of a dungeon-diving hero in search of the Amulet of Yendor. The dungeon spans over 50 levels, most of which are randomly generated. The dungeon contains monsters, weaponry, magical items, hidden doors and much more or as some say: 'Features everything including the kitchen sink.'

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

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

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Game

Before playing the game, the player is asked to name their character and then select a race, class, gender, and alignment for his or her character, or allow the game to create a random character. There are traditional character roles such as knight, wizard, and rogue, but there are also unusual ones, including archeologist, tourist, caveman, valkyrie and samurai. The player's character's class and alignment dictate which god the player serves in the game; by pleasing his or her god, the player may receive aid and gifts.

After the player's character is created, the task is then 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, the player must find the Amulet of Yendor and sacrifice it to their deity. The Amulet is found at the lowest level of the dungeon. 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(-dess). In addition to the main quest to find and sacrifice the Amulet, a number of sub-quests must be completed along the way, including one class-specific quest.

The player's character is initially accompanied by a pet animal, typically a kitten or little dog, although Knights begin with a pony. The player can name his or her pet, and 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 the player in combat, but also for detecting cursed items and stealing from shops.

The game is wide in scope, with hundreds of unique items, situations, monsters, and personages providing opportunities for interaction within the gameworld. Some interactions are rare and occasionally amusing, while others can prove quite painful or even deadly.

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?"

Players sometimes use the acronyms YAAD and YASD when discussing their characters' deaths, meaning Yet Another Annoying Death or Yet Another Stupid Death. An "annoying" death is typically one that was the fault of misfortune more than the player (such as falling into a spiked, poisoned pit trap early in the game); a "stupid" death is when player's actions were directly responsible for their own death. Like roguelikes in general, Nethack features permadeath: expired characters can't be revived by anything short of editing the actual save files (savescumming).

Sporadically, 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 publicly-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" (abbreviated as TDTTOE). Anything the player can think of for their character to do, the DevTeam 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!

A similar message is given when one attempts to put a bag inside itself:

That would be an interesting topological exercise.

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

You fall down the stairs.

And the previous example of death if the character is polymorphed into a pit fiend, has lost poison resistance, and is wearing an amulet of unchanging:

You fall into a pit! How pitiful.  Isn't that the pits? 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?"

Bugs, funny messages, stories, experiences, and ideas for the next version are discussed on the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.roguelike.nethack (abbreviated RGRN).

Items and tools

NetHack features a variety of items: armour to protect the player; 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 character 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; e.g. the octagonal amulet may be an amulet of life saving in one game and an amulet of strangulation in the next.

Blessings and curses

As in many other roguelike games, all items in NetHack are either "blessed", "uncursed", or "cursed". The majority of items are found uncursed, but the "b/u/c" (blessed/uncursed/cursed) status of an item is unknown until it is identified or detected through other means.

The status of an item can be revealed in a few ways. One method is to use the item, but this can be risky. Instead, 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.

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 armor may make the player more vulnerable to attacks, and cannot be removed. A cursed scroll may just not work as well as expected (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 would normally increase the experience level of the character by one, but when cursed will 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", which are voluntary restrictions on their behavior tracked by the game, to increase the difficulty further. Examples include:

• Not wishing for artifacts
• Not wishing for objects at all
• Adhering to a vegan or vegetarian diet
• Going without food entirely
• Not polymorphing into some other kind of creature
• Being an atheist: 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)
• Illiteracy, not reading or writing anything during the game. The exception to this is that the player can still read the Book of the Dead (also required to win the game), and can write a single 'x'. Seeing random inscriptions on the floor, generated throughout the dungeon, also does not break this conduct.
• 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, or not using incubi or succubi to gain experience. Other challenges include not using items, such as wearing no armor.

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 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

NetHack was originally created without a graphical user interface, although the option to play using one was added later in its development. The game's interface, environment, entities and objects, are all created or represented by arrangements of ASCII or ANSI characters:

Key:

• @ - the player character
• d - a dog (in this case, 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 : - monsters; a fungus (here, a lichen) and a lizard (newt)
• ^ a trap (in this case, a trap door)
• { a fountain

Below the map is the status line. First there is the hero's name and professional ranking, the latter being 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 the player's alignment is Neutral.

The next line shows the dungeon level the hero is currently on (increasing when the player goes deeper), money, hit points, magical power, armor class, and experience level. The hero's hunger status, ranging from Satiated down to Fainting is shown on the far right, if it is anything other than normal.

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 or Vulture's Eye and also the OpenGL based noegnud.

Notable (non-player) characters

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• 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 the player to stone, so attacking it using the player's bare hands is not recommended. If the player kills one and it leaves a corpse, he or she could wield it as a weapon, and turn other monsters to stone—but would be better off wearing gloves first. Furthermore, if the player's character is female, and is polymorphed into a cockatrice, the player 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; for example if you are not wearing gloves and if the subject has the autopick up option on, they would die when they touched the body and the most unlikely is to die, when immune to petrification, repeatedly toss a cockatrice corpse into the air and have it land on the player's head until he or she dies. However, if one were to unfortunately run into a cockatrice, you could survive by quaffing a potion of acid or eating a lizard corpse.
• 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 the player attacks (runs into) a floating eye when not blind and not capable of reflecting its gaze, there is a very high chance of it immobilizing the player for many turns, leaving him or her 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 Rodney (a 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.
• Gremlins: the Devs even added those pesky critters that multiply when they have contact with water.
• Quantum Mechanics: these guys are another humorous addition by the Devs. While not being dangerous on their own; when a quantum mechanic attacks a player they are teleported randomly within the same floor unless the player has the ability to control teleportations. They occasionally carry a box carrying Schrödinger's cat.

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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

(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.)

• 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. In 2006, BioWare released Infinite Dungeons, a NetHack-like premium module for Neverwinter Nights, though the Neverwinter Nights version does not have permadeath, like Nethack.
• 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.
• glHack is a port of NetHack which uses OpenGL to render graphic tiles. glHack supports standard 2D tiles and traditional text mode, and introduces 3D dimetric tiles.
• Another graphical interface, noegnud, allows text views, isometric views like Falcon's Eye as well as more advanced 3D interfaces.
• Slash'EM (Super Lots of Added Stuff Hack - Extended Magic) is a more often updated variant of NetHack (which is only released every few years or so). 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 is an Emacs major mode for playing NetHack written by Ryan Yeske and Shawn Betts.
• Ports also exist for the Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, Tapwave Zodiac Palm OS 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 . To a hallucinating player, 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. Nethack references extend even to software: GNU Screen features a nethack option which changes the error and information messages to humorous Nethack-style messages

Numerous references to NetHack can be found in the online satirical RPG Kingdom of Loathing.

A reference to NetHack can be found in an E-mail accessible on an employee’s personal computer in the headquarters of the fictional company VersaLife in the video game Deus Ex.

References

1. http://hearse.krollmark.com/
2. news:rec.games.roguelike.nethack
3. http://glhack.sourceforge.net/
4. http://www.nethack.org/
5. http://www.nongnu.org/nethack-el/
6. http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/NethackMode
7. http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/RyanYeske
8. http://stuartp.commixus.com/nhds/
9. http://www.retrobits.net/palmos/nethack.shtml
10. http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010501
11. For example, exiting copy and paste mode will give the message "You have escaped the dungeon."
12. http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/The_Dungeons_of_Doom#References

External links

Official

• NetHack Official Site
  • A Guide to the Mazes of Menace (Guidebook for NetHack) by Eric S. Raymond

Reviews

• NetHack at MobyGames
• NetHack at Salon.com

Wikis

• StrategyWiki:NetHack
• Wikihack

Fansites

• The NetHack Index (large index of NetHack websites)
• Yet Another NetHack Site
• NetHack Usenet group on Google Groups
• NetHack tribute song by Rob Balder
• Dudley's Dungeon (NetHack fan comic)

• Computer and video role-playing games
• Fantasy computer and video games
• Free, open source roguelikes
• Linux games
• Mac OS games
• Mac OS X games
• Windows games