6 ms·

NetHack 3.6.6

183 points by paraiuspau 7y ago

kalium_xyz 7y ago
https://www.nethack.org/security/CVE-2020-5254.html https://www.nethack.org/security/CVE-2020-5254.html Never considered nethack as part of my security model
- naniwaduni 7y ago
  Everything with a setuid/setgid should be viewed with suspicion.
- stevekemp 7y ago
  Years ago I reported a security bug (CVE-2004-0103) in the nethack-like game "crawl". In that case it involved copying the contents of an environmental variable into a fixed size buffer. I've just checked my bug report, where I wrote: Demonstrating this bug is quite challenging as it involves: * Finding pizza. * Eating the pizza and having a two in three chance of your message (getenv( "CRAWL_PIZZA")) being used. Fun memories; I should audit some more code soon.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  There were (and probably still are) some shared *nix systems that allowed you to connect and play/spectate Nethack games.
  - htfy96 7y ago
    I often play with ssh nethack@hardfought.org . Multiple variants available.
bhaak 7y ago
Most of those security bugs have been found by using http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/ http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/ for fuzzing the config parser of NetHack. Also read the hilarious account how neglecting the integer range of parsing a number lead to a config that gives you an almost invincible character from the start: https://dpmendenhall.blogspot.com/2020/03/nethack-366-or-how-to-glitch-nethack.html https://dpmendenhall.blogspot.com/2020/03/nethack-366-or-how...
- devit 7y ago
  The C programming language strikes again.
- alxlaz 7y ago
  One of the things I love about nethack is that these things effectively amount to magic. Arcane knowledge of how the (virtual) works underneath beneath that which is (virtually) physical allows you to manipulate the world in strange ways that seem logically impossible. Nethack developers are among the few who can claim that a bug is a feature and be half-serious about it :-).
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > First, I made the PIC global offset table (GOT) writable by disabling PIE on the link line (-no-pie). Wait, what?
- jl6 7y ago
  The great thing about NetHack is that even a +127 cloak of magic resistance still won’t protect you from cockatrice stoning, disease from major demons, choking on food, drowning, nymphs stealing the cloak, poisoning, starvation, drawbridges, disintegration, brainlessness due to mind flayers, angry gods, or level drain. In short, there’s plenty of ways to die in NetHack!
  - htfy96 7y ago
    Also, be aware that today happens to be Friday the 13th, which will make your luck decrease by 1 and increases the difficulty a little bit ;p
blasdel 7y ago
https://www.nethack.org/v366/release.html https://www.nethack.org/v366/release.html
Tepix 7y ago
Nethack is great, is there a server where people can watch someone play the game and have a (audio) chat while watching? There's so much stuff to learn, I'd love to chat with an experienced players while they are venturing deeper into the dungeons.
- OskarS 7y ago
  Check it out: ssh nethack@alt.org EDIT: no audio, obviously, but you can send mail to players you're spectating
  - csours 7y ago
    OT: Why can't I put ssh://nethack@alt.org in my browser? Why isn't the browser a ssh client? I'm sure there's an extension or some such, and I know there are a lot of admin portals that have ssh accessible from the browser. edit: for instance here's is one such extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell-app/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell-app/p...
    - Cyberdog 7y ago
      The browser is already a browser, mail client, download manager, office suite, multimedia player, game console, chat client, videoconferencing system… I'm okay with the browser being allowed to not do things sometimes, even if that thing is basically encrypted Telnet.
    - somacert 7y ago
      Personally I would like to see shttp:// http:// (http over ssh) as a valid protocol. Realistically, I know this would end up being just as bad and broken as every other web tech. However due to the superb openssh implementation I tend to view ssh as the superior transport technology vs tls
      - tialaramex 7y ago
        Different audiences mean very different constraints, policy and technology for success between TLS and SSH. Most obviously for trust. TOFU is simple and while not fool-proof it's at least easy to think about the consequences. Using SSH with certificates (which somebody is bound to mention) is an afterthought and it shows. There's also a very different default thinking about who is authenticating to who and why. In TLS the server must authenticate and clients largely do not. In SSH the server's "authentication" is often limited to just proving possession of some private key corresponding to a public key, but the client must provide a username and state up front how they're planning to authenticate before proceeding. This is why that FIDO OpenSSH integration results in a file on your laptop (or whatever client) with local information whereas WebAuthn (FIDO integration for HTTPS) doesn't do anything like that. As you'd expect although the underlying primitives aren't dissimilar (Diffie-Hellman style key agreement, AES encrypt everything, bind identity to encrypted session using public key signatures) the details are tailored to their application. TLS isn't a better SSH and SSH isn't a better TLS.
mseidl 7y ago
This game taxes my graphics card like a mofo
- salawat 7y ago
  Stop trying to train a Neural Net to ascend for you. The gods don't take it kindly, Plus, the Amulet of Yendor runs a cryptocurrency miner when picked up by AI's. /s
classified 7y ago
I am still a hardcore fan of Angband: https://rephial.org/ https://rephial.org/ Different types of information (inventory, map, monster info, etc) can all be put in separate windows, so my screen is plastered with Angband windows when I play. Makes for great immersion, and the windows all retain their position and size between program starts. It may even be older than Nethack.
- sethish 7y ago
  Angband is 1990, Nethack is 1987
  - grandchild 7y ago
    If you dig into the version history of Angband[0] you will find that it was derived from the Moria[1] code, which was released in 1983. So depending on what your concept of "origin" is it might or might not be older. [0] http://www.thangorodrim.net/history/version.txt http://www.thangorodrim.net/history/version.txt [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moria_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moria_(video_game)
    - naniwaduni 7y ago
      Nethack, in turn, descends from Hack, released in 1982, but first published to Usenet in 1984. Hack and Moria are likely simultaneous.
      - OskarS 7y ago
        I mean, if we're going to play this game, they're all roguelikes and thus they're all descended from Rogue. Which, in turn, descends from Colossal Cave Adventure and Dungeons & Dragons, which is descended from traditional war-gaming, and if we continue down far enough we're back at the Royal Game of Ur.
        bhaak 7y ago
        It's more than that. Both Angband and NetHack are forks of their ancestors. There is an unbroken line of continous development of the same code base coming from the 80s. Hack and Moria OTOH were clones of Rogue and didn't share any source code with it. There is still non trivial code from 1984 in NetHack: https://i.imgur.com/H4HpjYf.png https://i.imgur.com/H4HpjYf.png With Angband, the case is a bit more complicated as the original Moria was written in Pascal but it was already converted to C in 1987 and Angband decends from that code.
rs23296008n1 7y ago
I had completely forgotten about this old chestnut. Have they made a multiplayer version yet?
- floren 7y ago
  I think multiplayer would completely wreck the strategic / thoughtful gameplay of NetHack. When I'm playing, if I get into a sticky situation I'll frequently make perhaps one move per minute, because until I act the monsters can't act either, so I have lots of time to look through my potions and spells and decide on a plan. How does this translate in multiplayer?
  - pfarrell 7y ago
    The nethack faq [0] agrees with you, with the exact reasoning you describe. 0: https://www.nethack.org/common/info.html#not https://www.nethack.org/common/info.html#not
- ratacat 7y ago
  It's not nethack, but I've made a multiplayer roguelike, that's actually launching its beta test today if you want to come play, best thing is to join the discord. https://discord.gg/rMBq7T https://discord.gg/rMBq7T
  - aww_dang 7y ago
    Here's my version of a multiplayer rougelikelike in the browser. Also has an optional crypto integration. https://playerkillers.exchange https://playerkillers.exchange
- jamesgeck0 7y ago
  For multiplayer, you're better served turning to the "rogue-lite" genre of games. Spelunky in particular is great. Crypt of the Necrodancer, Dungeon of the Endless, and Enter the Gungeon are also very good.
mysterydip 7y ago
My first experience with NetHack was in college, when my roommate convinced me to give it a try. I took about 10 steps in and saw "a rock falls on your head. you die." After several more failures (who knew eating kobolds was bad for you?), starvation, and death, I found the most fun in gaming the character creation system until I got a ring of teleport, going to the nearest shop, taking everything I could, and escaping without paying :D
picozeta 7y ago
It's famous in the roguelike world but I dislike that it is practically pretty much impossible to win without spoilers [0] (which means you have to read about it in wikis and co. to find a strategy that works). [0 I know there are some people who managed to ascend (win) without reading up, but they are probably in the < 0.01% so it's definitely not the norm.
- Yuioup 7y ago
  Thank you! I've been giving up on Nethack for over 20 years because I can't figure out how to play this stupid game. After all this time it wasn't me.
  - MaupitiBlue 7y ago
    33 years of frustration here.
- eropple 7y ago
  I kinda like that about Nethack and always have, to be honest. I like that even when I know exactly how it works I have to execute effectively. Having all the rules right there for thinking through from one turn to the next was really compelling to me. (I've ascended almost every role now, but that started only like four years ago!)
- 76543210 7y ago
  You can win? I assumed it never ends.
  - tripa 7y ago
    People win it every day. And publicly too: https://alt.org/nethack/top-3.6.php https://alt.org/nethack/top-3.6.php
- brmgb 7y ago
  Nethacks like most traditional roguelike is amongst these games I like to call checklist tickers, which is to say with a moderate amount of luck, if you plod through the required amount of trivia and perfectly follow the winning moves checklist you should succeed. It kind of ruins the fun for me - playing feels more like a chore than an actual game - but it seems really enjoyable to some.
haolez 7y ago
I love NetHack. My only gripe with it is that the AI is dumb most of the times and the context of some levels is simply bizarre. The Castle, for example, is just a huge pile of different monsters all trying to kill you just because :)
- ourmandave 7y ago
  Random shark in moat: "Okay, what's my motivation for this scene?"
  - haolez 7y ago
    If you haven't played through The Castle yet, you don't know what I mean! It's like a crowed music concert, but with gnomes and orcs piled up with dragons.
glouwbug 7y ago
The nethack codebase is so old school. Functions are KNR syntax
hypertexthero 7y ago
See also: Brogue — https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/ https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/ — colorful, user-friendly rogue-like available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Streets of Rogue — https://streetsofrogue.com/ https://streetsofrogue.com/ — with online cooperative play also available for Mac, Windows and Nintendo Switch.
- crawdingle 7y ago
  Love Streets of Rogue, https://crawl.develz.org/ https://crawl.develz.org/ -- is my personal favorite. Good combination of punishing but easier to pick up.
  - gbmor 7y ago
    DCSS is also my favorite. More polished than others in the early game, but still absolutely brutal.
- sandoze 7y ago
  Brogue is also available on iPad https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brogue/id613921309 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brogue/id613921309
crawdingle 7y ago
How is Nethack like the Grand Prix? Anyone who says they won without a spoiler is a liar.
atemerev 7y ago
So, if you were wondering what to do the next, say, fourteen days...
tmountain 7y ago
I've been playing--and sucking at--roguelikes for years, and I wanted to chime in to suggest "Caves of Qud" for anyone that likes this genre. It's a modern roguelike that's still in active development with a really imaginative universe: "The game features a mix between a post-apocalyptic and a fantasy setting, and is heavily inspired by the pen-and-paper role-playing game Gamma World and Dungeons & Dragons."
- kup0 7y ago
  Agree! Caves of Qud is quite fun. It can be difficult, so I often turn off permadeath just so I can wander around and enjoy the crazy worlds it has to offer on each run Very neat what it has done with ASCII-style interface too
  - d4mi3n 7y ago
    I'd also recommend Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead for a good post-apocalyptic/zombie themed rougelike. https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/ https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/
pmoriarty 7y ago
I love Nethack, and have returned to it time and time again since the 80's. However, much as I love it, for about 6 years now I've been drawn away to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup[1], which has in some ways evolved past Nethack. One of the main draws to DCSS for me has been its autoexplore feature, which makes exploring the dungeon much less of a chore than it was in Nethack. It also has much better use of color in text mode (the only mode I play both games in). Then it has an enormous variety of gods, powers, races, classes, and spells. Unfortunately, it does have some downsides compared to Nethack. The interactions with gods, shops, and pets tends to be richer and more complex in Nethack. The things you can do to and with items is as well. The trend in DCSS has been to kind of dumb it down over the years, taking away friction points that made it more complex and thus (arguably) less fun for a certain kind of player. My own taste is for more complexity and more options, so I'm not a huge fan of going in that direction, but I still stick with DCSS because it's great despite that. You can play and watch other people play the game by ssh'ing in to crawl.akrasiac.org, with a username and password of "joshua" (a reference to the classic 80's hacking movie Wargames). Another game, in some ways very different but in other ways very much in the spirit of both of these games that I've really enjoyed has been Path of Exile.[2] It's not minimalist like Nethack or DCSS, but it definitely has a lot of roguelike elements and is pretty complicated for a mainstream, modern game of this sort, and is a worthy successor of both of these games, in my eyes. It's free to play too, so if you have the slightest interest, give it a go. [1] - https://crawl.develz.org/ https://crawl.develz.org/ [2] - https://www.pathofexile.com/ https://www.pathofexile.com/
- schoen 7y ago
  > The interactions with gods, shops, and pets tends to be richer and more complex in Nethack. The things you can do to and with items is as well. Agreed about all of these except for gods. In NetHack you can't easily choose your god during the game (though you can sometimes not-easily choose your god during the game) and the difference in behavior from one god to the next is minimal. In Crawl, you can usually choose your god and thereby get different abilities, status effects, and effectively mini-conduct challenges based on what each god disapproves of. I think that's more interesting than the NetHack religion stuff, although it's true that NetHack has a slightly more complex model of gods' feelings toward you. I've been gradually writing up a document about differences between Crawl and NetHack and I think the items behavior you mention is a huge one. NetHack has a substantial minigame about item identification, plus various ways that items can be damaged, destroyed, or modified (beyond magical enchantment), plus ways that they can be combined with one another (including an entire "alchemy" system of mixing potions to get other potions), plus ways that one item can be turned into another item. Also, some items give status effects when carried, while others must be equipped, or applied or invoked. Also, some items have a nonintuitive or humorous use -- one of many examples is that some harmful potions can be used offensively by throwing them at monsters or by hitting the monsters with them. Monsters can also often make intelligent use of items against you. In Crawl, every item has essentially one and only one appropriate use, and every item is immediately fully identified when used or equipped. (Item identification is still not completely trivial because some items are harmful to use, or are consumed by use, so you might not want to use everything you find.) Items can never be permanently changed¹ except by enchantment or curses, and items can't be damaged, nor can they be destroyed except by using them up or dropping them into deep water or lava. Also, monsters make comparatively minimal use of items and don't pick them up. You can see where various people might prefer one style or the other! ¹ The one counterexample I can think of is the dragon-slaying lance that becomes more powerful every time it kills a dragon.
grawprog 7y ago
Just wanted to say, the nethack and unnethack android ports have probably the best controls and interface you could have for a roguelike as complex as them. They're smooth and easy to play, well as far as nethack goes and honestly probably my preferred way to play them these days. And as far as mobile games go, can't think of any others that offer so much depth, gameplay and replayability without iap's and bullshit for free. Sorry if this sounds like an ad, but I love nethack and getting to carry it around in my pocket and have it play well is just fucking awesome.
partomniscient 7y ago
I'm just impressed they managed to go from 3.6.5 to 3.6.6 during a leap year, in fact not too far off from Feb 29.
tuerai 7y ago
Anyone here ever play IVAN? (Iter Vehemens Ad Necem) It's a pretty fun roguelike with a unique fluid system.

183 points by paraiuspau 7y ago

https://www.nethack.org/security/CVE-2020-5254.html https://www.nethack.org/security/CVE-2020-5254.html Never considered nethack as part of my security model

naniwaduni 7y ago
Everything with a setuid/setgid should be viewed with suspicion.
stevekemp 7y ago
Years ago I reported a security bug (CVE-2004-0103) in the nethack-like game "crawl". In that case it involved copying the contents of an environmental variable into a fixed size buffer. I've just checked my bug report, where I wrote: Demonstrating this bug is quite challenging as it involves: * Finding pizza. * Eating the pizza and having a two in three chance of your message (getenv( "CRAWL_PIZZA")) being used. Fun memories; I should audit some more code soon.
vorpalhex 7y ago
There were (and probably still are) some shared *nix systems that allowed you to connect and play/spectate Nethack games.
- htfy96 7y ago
  I often play with ssh nethack@hardfought.org . Multiple variants available.

bhaak 7y ago

Most of those security bugs have been found by using http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/ http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/ for fuzzing the config parser of NetHack. Also read the hilarious account how neglecting the integer range of parsing a number lead to a config that gives you an almost invincible character from the start: https://dpmendenhall.blogspot.com/2020/03/nethack-366-or-how-to-glitch-nethack.html https://dpmendenhall.blogspot.com/2020/03/nethack-366-or-how...

devit 7y ago
The C programming language strikes again.
alxlaz 7y ago
One of the things I love about nethack is that these things effectively amount to magic. Arcane knowledge of how the (virtual) works underneath beneath that which is (virtually) physical allows you to manipulate the world in strange ways that seem logically impossible. Nethack developers are among the few who can claim that a bug is a feature and be half-serious about it :-).
saagarjha 7y ago
> First, I made the PIC global offset table (GOT) writable by disabling PIE on the link line (-no-pie). Wait, what?
jl6 7y ago
The great thing about NetHack is that even a +127 cloak of magic resistance still won’t protect you from cockatrice stoning, disease from major demons, choking on food, drowning, nymphs stealing the cloak, poisoning, starvation, drawbridges, disintegration, brainlessness due to mind flayers, angry gods, or level drain. In short, there’s plenty of ways to die in NetHack!
- htfy96 7y ago
  Also, be aware that today happens to be Friday the 13th, which will make your luck decrease by 1 and increases the difficulty a little bit ;p

blasdel 7y ago

https://www.nethack.org/v366/release.html https://www.nethack.org/v366/release.html

Tepix 7y ago

Nethack is great, is there a server where people can watch someone play the game and have a (audio) chat while watching? There's so much stuff to learn, I'd love to chat with an experienced players while they are venturing deeper into the dungeons.

OskarS 7y ago
Check it out: ssh nethack@alt.org EDIT: no audio, obviously, but you can send mail to players you're spectating
- csours 7y ago
  OT: Why can't I put ssh://nethack@alt.org in my browser? Why isn't the browser a ssh client? I'm sure there's an extension or some such, and I know there are a lot of admin portals that have ssh accessible from the browser. edit: for instance here's is one such extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell-app/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell-app/p...
  - Cyberdog 7y ago
    The browser is already a browser, mail client, download manager, office suite, multimedia player, game console, chat client, videoconferencing system… I'm okay with the browser being allowed to not do things sometimes, even if that thing is basically encrypted Telnet.
  - somacert 7y ago
    Personally I would like to see shttp:// http:// (http over ssh) as a valid protocol. Realistically, I know this would end up being just as bad and broken as every other web tech. However due to the superb openssh implementation I tend to view ssh as the superior transport technology vs tls
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      Different audiences mean very different constraints, policy and technology for success between TLS and SSH. Most obviously for trust. TOFU is simple and while not fool-proof it's at least easy to think about the consequences. Using SSH with certificates (which somebody is bound to mention) is an afterthought and it shows. There's also a very different default thinking about who is authenticating to who and why. In TLS the server must authenticate and clients largely do not. In SSH the server's "authentication" is often limited to just proving possession of some private key corresponding to a public key, but the client must provide a username and state up front how they're planning to authenticate before proceeding. This is why that FIDO OpenSSH integration results in a file on your laptop (or whatever client) with local information whereas WebAuthn (FIDO integration for HTTPS) doesn't do anything like that. As you'd expect although the underlying primitives aren't dissimilar (Diffie-Hellman style key agreement, AES encrypt everything, bind identity to encrypted session using public key signatures) the details are tailored to their application. TLS isn't a better SSH and SSH isn't a better TLS.

mseidl 7y ago

This game taxes my graphics card like a mofo

salawat 7y ago
Stop trying to train a Neural Net to ascend for you. The gods don't take it kindly, Plus, the Amulet of Yendor runs a cryptocurrency miner when picked up by AI's. /s

classified 7y ago

I am still a hardcore fan of Angband: https://rephial.org/ https://rephial.org/ Different types of information (inventory, map, monster info, etc) can all be put in separate windows, so my screen is plastered with Angband windows when I play. Makes for great immersion, and the windows all retain their position and size between program starts. It may even be older than Nethack.

sethish 7y ago
Angband is 1990, Nethack is 1987
- grandchild 7y ago
  If you dig into the version history of Angband[0] you will find that it was derived from the Moria[1] code, which was released in 1983. So depending on what your concept of "origin" is it might or might not be older. [0] http://www.thangorodrim.net/history/version.txt http://www.thangorodrim.net/history/version.txt [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moria_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moria_(video_game)
  - naniwaduni 7y ago
    Nethack, in turn, descends from Hack, released in 1982, but first published to Usenet in 1984. Hack and Moria are likely simultaneous.
    - OskarS 7y ago
      I mean, if we're going to play this game, they're all roguelikes and thus they're all descended from Rogue. Which, in turn, descends from Colossal Cave Adventure and Dungeons & Dragons, which is descended from traditional war-gaming, and if we continue down far enough we're back at the Royal Game of Ur.
      - bhaak 7y ago
        It's more than that. Both Angband and NetHack are forks of their ancestors. There is an unbroken line of continous development of the same code base coming from the 80s. Hack and Moria OTOH were clones of Rogue and didn't share any source code with it. There is still non trivial code from 1984 in NetHack: https://i.imgur.com/H4HpjYf.png https://i.imgur.com/H4HpjYf.png With Angband, the case is a bit more complicated as the original Moria was written in Pascal but it was already converted to C in 1987 and Angband decends from that code.

rs23296008n1 7y ago

I had completely forgotten about this old chestnut. Have they made a multiplayer version yet?

floren 7y ago
I think multiplayer would completely wreck the strategic / thoughtful gameplay of NetHack. When I'm playing, if I get into a sticky situation I'll frequently make perhaps one move per minute, because until I act the monsters can't act either, so I have lots of time to look through my potions and spells and decide on a plan. How does this translate in multiplayer?
- pfarrell 7y ago
  The nethack faq [0] agrees with you, with the exact reasoning you describe. 0: https://www.nethack.org/common/info.html#not https://www.nethack.org/common/info.html#not
ratacat 7y ago
It's not nethack, but I've made a multiplayer roguelike, that's actually launching its beta test today if you want to come play, best thing is to join the discord. https://discord.gg/rMBq7T https://discord.gg/rMBq7T
- aww_dang 7y ago
  Here's my version of a multiplayer rougelikelike in the browser. Also has an optional crypto integration. https://playerkillers.exchange https://playerkillers.exchange
jamesgeck0 7y ago
For multiplayer, you're better served turning to the "rogue-lite" genre of games. Spelunky in particular is great. Crypt of the Necrodancer, Dungeon of the Endless, and Enter the Gungeon are also very good.

mysterydip 7y ago

My first experience with NetHack was in college, when my roommate convinced me to give it a try. I took about 10 steps in and saw "a rock falls on your head. you die." After several more failures (who knew eating kobolds was bad for you?), starvation, and death, I found the most fun in gaming the character creation system until I got a ring of teleport, going to the nearest shop, taking everything I could, and escaping without paying :D

picozeta 7y ago

It's famous in the roguelike world but I dislike that it is practically pretty much impossible to win without spoilers [0] (which means you have to read about it in wikis and co. to find a strategy that works). [0 I know there are some people who managed to ascend (win) without reading up, but they are probably in the < 0.01% so it's definitely not the norm.

Yuioup 7y ago
Thank you! I've been giving up on Nethack for over 20 years because I can't figure out how to play this stupid game. After all this time it wasn't me.
- MaupitiBlue 7y ago
  33 years of frustration here.
eropple 7y ago
I kinda like that about Nethack and always have, to be honest. I like that even when I know exactly how it works I have to execute effectively. Having all the rules right there for thinking through from one turn to the next was really compelling to me. (I've ascended almost every role now, but that started only like four years ago!)
76543210 7y ago
You can win? I assumed it never ends.
- tripa 7y ago
  People win it every day. And publicly too: https://alt.org/nethack/top-3.6.php https://alt.org/nethack/top-3.6.php
brmgb 7y ago
Nethacks like most traditional roguelike is amongst these games I like to call checklist tickers, which is to say with a moderate amount of luck, if you plod through the required amount of trivia and perfectly follow the winning moves checklist you should succeed. It kind of ruins the fun for me - playing feels more like a chore than an actual game - but it seems really enjoyable to some.

haolez 7y ago

I love NetHack. My only gripe with it is that the AI is dumb most of the times and the context of some levels is simply bizarre. The Castle, for example, is just a huge pile of different monsters all trying to kill you just because :)

ourmandave 7y ago
Random shark in moat: "Okay, what's my motivation for this scene?"
- haolez 7y ago
  If you haven't played through The Castle yet, you don't know what I mean! It's like a crowed music concert, but with gnomes and orcs piled up with dragons.

glouwbug 7y ago

The nethack codebase is so old school. Functions are KNR syntax

hypertexthero 7y ago

See also: Brogue — https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/ https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/ — colorful, user-friendly rogue-like available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Streets of Rogue — https://streetsofrogue.com/ https://streetsofrogue.com/ — with online cooperative play also available for Mac, Windows and Nintendo Switch.

crawdingle 7y ago
Love Streets of Rogue, https://crawl.develz.org/ https://crawl.develz.org/ -- is my personal favorite. Good combination of punishing but easier to pick up.
- gbmor 7y ago
  DCSS is also my favorite. More polished than others in the early game, but still absolutely brutal.
sandoze 7y ago
Brogue is also available on iPad https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brogue/id613921309 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brogue/id613921309

crawdingle 7y ago

How is Nethack like the Grand Prix? Anyone who says they won without a spoiler is a liar.

atemerev 7y ago

So, if you were wondering what to do the next, say, fourteen days...

tmountain 7y ago

I've been playing--and sucking at--roguelikes for years, and I wanted to chime in to suggest "Caves of Qud" for anyone that likes this genre. It's a modern roguelike that's still in active development with a really imaginative universe: "The game features a mix between a post-apocalyptic and a fantasy setting, and is heavily inspired by the pen-and-paper role-playing game Gamma World and Dungeons & Dragons."

kup0 7y ago
Agree! Caves of Qud is quite fun. It can be difficult, so I often turn off permadeath just so I can wander around and enjoy the crazy worlds it has to offer on each run Very neat what it has done with ASCII-style interface too
- d4mi3n 7y ago
  I'd also recommend Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead for a good post-apocalyptic/zombie themed rougelike. https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/ https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/

pmoriarty 7y ago

I love Nethack, and have returned to it time and time again since the 80's. However, much as I love it, for about 6 years now I've been drawn away to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup[1], which has in some ways evolved past Nethack. One of the main draws to DCSS for me has been its autoexplore feature, which makes exploring the dungeon much less of a chore than it was in Nethack. It also has much better use of color in text mode (the only mode I play both games in). Then it has an enormous variety of gods, powers, races, classes, and spells. Unfortunately, it does have some downsides compared to Nethack. The interactions with gods, shops, and pets tends to be richer and more complex in Nethack. The things you can do to and with items is as well. The trend in DCSS has been to kind of dumb it down over the years, taking away friction points that made it more complex and thus (arguably) less fun for a certain kind of player. My own taste is for more complexity and more options, so I'm not a huge fan of going in that direction, but I still stick with DCSS because it's great despite that. You can play and watch other people play the game by ssh'ing in to crawl.akrasiac.org, with a username and password of "joshua" (a reference to the classic 80's hacking movie Wargames). Another game, in some ways very different but in other ways very much in the spirit of both of these games that I've really enjoyed has been Path of Exile.[2] It's not minimalist like Nethack or DCSS, but it definitely has a lot of roguelike elements and is pretty complicated for a mainstream, modern game of this sort, and is a worthy successor of both of these games, in my eyes. It's free to play too, so if you have the slightest interest, give it a go. [1] - https://crawl.develz.org/ https://crawl.develz.org/ [2] - https://www.pathofexile.com/ https://www.pathofexile.com/

schoen 7y ago
> The interactions with gods, shops, and pets tends to be richer and more complex in Nethack. The things you can do to and with items is as well. Agreed about all of these except for gods. In NetHack you can't easily choose your god during the game (though you can sometimes not-easily choose your god during the game) and the difference in behavior from one god to the next is minimal. In Crawl, you can usually choose your god and thereby get different abilities, status effects, and effectively mini-conduct challenges based on what each god disapproves of. I think that's more interesting than the NetHack religion stuff, although it's true that NetHack has a slightly more complex model of gods' feelings toward you. I've been gradually writing up a document about differences between Crawl and NetHack and I think the items behavior you mention is a huge one. NetHack has a substantial minigame about item identification, plus various ways that items can be damaged, destroyed, or modified (beyond magical enchantment), plus ways that they can be combined with one another (including an entire "alchemy" system of mixing potions to get other potions), plus ways that one item can be turned into another item. Also, some items give status effects when carried, while others must be equipped, or applied or invoked. Also, some items have a nonintuitive or humorous use -- one of many examples is that some harmful potions can be used offensively by throwing them at monsters or by hitting the monsters with them. Monsters can also often make intelligent use of items against you. In Crawl, every item has essentially one and only one appropriate use, and every item is immediately fully identified when used or equipped. (Item identification is still not completely trivial because some items are harmful to use, or are consumed by use, so you might not want to use everything you find.) Items can never be permanently changed¹ except by enchantment or curses, and items can't be damaged, nor can they be destroyed except by using them up or dropping them into deep water or lava. Also, monsters make comparatively minimal use of items and don't pick them up. You can see where various people might prefer one style or the other! ¹ The one counterexample I can think of is the dragon-slaying lance that becomes more powerful every time it kills a dragon.

grawprog 7y ago

Just wanted to say, the nethack and unnethack android ports have probably the best controls and interface you could have for a roguelike as complex as them. They're smooth and easy to play, well as far as nethack goes and honestly probably my preferred way to play them these days. And as far as mobile games go, can't think of any others that offer so much depth, gameplay and replayability without iap's and bullshit for free. Sorry if this sounds like an ad, but I love nethack and getting to carry it around in my pocket and have it play well is just fucking awesome.

partomniscient 7y ago

I'm just impressed they managed to go from 3.6.5 to 3.6.6 during a leap year, in fact not too far off from Feb 29.

tuerai 7y ago

Anyone here ever play IVAN? (Iter Vehemens Ad Necem) It's a pretty fun roguelike with a unique fluid system.