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foresto
chongli
Drat.
NetHack 5.0 changes thousands and upon thousands of things from the previous release, 3.6.7, which was 3 years ago. 17 years ago is an eternity in this game’s history. The versions may not have gone up hardly at all in that time, but the fix logs are enormous.
Adding up the line counts of the fix logs for the 3.6.X releases with 5.0, I get a total of 6814 lines. That’s bug fixes only. There’s a similarly large number of gameplay changes!
All that is to say, migrating your old save file through all of those changes would’ve been a ton of extra work to support. I know Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup can migrate old save files but they have a very carefully designed system for sunsetting removed features in a way that old save files can still use them.
abustamam
Wait, what happened to v4??
cturner
This is a rough history from an outsider: the original developers (“DevTeam”) went quiet, and would not take in new talent. There was some new talent in the community, and momentum for code tidy up and new features. One group forked and called theirs nethack 4. There were other forks with a similar spirit, such as unnethack. Eventually, DevTeam decided to reach an accommodation with talent in the fork groups. Release 5 is a DevTeam release with input from what was new blood fifteen years ago.
tetha
I also have a Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup with my first 3 runes around somewhere.
I'm aware I will probably lose it, but I'm also anxious to touch it. Maybe I should just get myself some good coffee tomorrow and get over with it. Biggest learning of that save is also how careful and defensive you have to play if you want to consistently get further.
vintermann
DCSS has also changed so much, it's hardly the same game anymore. It's maybe a better game in many ways, but it's not the game I spent time getting to know and getting good at.
Maybe an early example of "forever games" like Minecraft which just keep getting expanded forever and move ever further from the game you knew.
why_at
One of the oldest photos on my phone is the screenshot from the one and only time I beat Nethack. (As a tourist BTW)
oneshtein
Relax. It's the fake amulet. I found it twice.
technothrasher
As I recall from my game of many, many years ago, I got the amulet to the surface and was greeted with, “Oops, that’s the fake amulet. Go back down.” I’m pretty sure that’s the last time I played it.
foresto
** SPOILER ABOVE **
Would you please edit your comment, and preface it with a spoiler warning?
caymanjim
There's only one documented instance of someone winning without spoilers. It's a 40-year-old game.
BigTTYGothGF
Nethack has been around since 1987, it's a little late for spoilers.
wetpaws
No
saulpw
> 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!
anthk
Lua is not on base on most distros, that's sad. Also it stops being as portable.
By Amiga 68k platforms then. And maybe DOS.
Also, there no official Nethack i686 builds.
If I were them I'd try some micro-language from https://t3x.org as a pre-processor and bundle it. The T3X0 language itself can do wonders and even be ported to DOS with ease.
EDIT: ok, Lua can be portable and even they got DOS ports, this is great.
trynumber9
Nethack embeds Lua 5.4.8, so you don't need it installed from a distribution's package manager. As long as your system can build C99* it can build Lua. And given that Nethack 5.0.0 is C99, this dependency is not reducing portability any further.
* Lua has a LUA_USE_C89 flag so it may be more portable than Nethack 5.0.0 at this point.
troad
> LUA_USE_C89
How much functionality/performance does one lose with this flag? Genuine question, I don't know.
If C89 and C99 were equally performant/functional, it would seem logical to just target C89 (since any C99 compiler should be able to compile C89 too). There must be some reason it's a flag.
bhaak
There are also official Amiga binaries. :)
The Amiga port was resurrected just a few weeks ago.
https://mastodon.social/@ipaschke@cyberplace.social/11625728...
anthk
Great; hope they can made further ports to m68k Macs and Ataris.
6581
themafia
The lua 5.4 sources are less than 1 megabyte in size and are MIT licensed. You can link against it but it's just as easy to directly compile it into your application directly.
anthk
Good, kinda like JimTCL-small then :)
B1FF_PSUVM
> Lua is not on base on most distros, that's sad. Also it stops being as portable.
Huh? Usually programs just embed a Lua interpreter, I think. Famously light.
haunter
I can highly recommend the 3D client especially because it works almost everywhere, hope it will be updated for 5.0.0 soon
pimeys
I don't know... I played Nethack 30 years ago a lot and always felt all the graphical updates were not worth it. There's something when you can easily see the whole map in one screen. And that scary pink h appears suddenly...
Edit: but to be fair, I will try this 3d version.
jcul
"pink" h? There's a way to enable colours?
chongli
Yes, you can turn it on by setting the color option in your nethackrc file with the line:
OPTIONS=color
throw0101c
> https://github.com/JamesIV4/nethack-3d
Giving me Ultima VII / VIII vibes.
f3408fh
As someone whose first introduction to dungeon crawler was Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (with tiles), thank you! I just tried the 3D version and it runs very well.
SubiculumCode
By 3D I had supposed you meant 1st person. This seems as good as the other 2D graphics mods, fine if it's your thing. I've always preferred the chars.
engeljohnb
Thanks for sharing this. I think this might be what gets me to finally give Nethack a fair shake.
Der_Einzige
Is it possible to access wizard mode on the web version? I suppose I could just clone it and run locally and implement it if not, but would be nice if it's already there to know how to trigger it.
aeorgnoieang
Yes, it's supported. It's one of the "initialization" options when you start a new game.
anthk
Anywhwere, with NodeJS? If I wanted a GUI, I'll use Vulture's Eye and that's it.
foresto
[dead]
britta
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.)
ttctciyf
I'll definitely be keeping an eye on Roguelike Radio[0], still putting out episodes - 3 already this year! - to see if any coverage emerges.
klik99
I love Roguelike Celebration! Thanks for volunteering at it, and for boosting it here!
dansalvato
Wow, what a delightful surprise! I'm a huge NetHack fan and have been waiting a long time for the official 3.7 release before switching over to it. I've been a 3.6 holdout, haha.
AFAIK, the backend has moved a lot of map generation logic (and exposure of other data) to a Lua API, which is quite exciting as something for people to play with in tooling, forks, mods, etc.
Minor spoilers below:
I heard about some great balance adjustments that help to mitigate over-reliance on a single kit, such as making certain extrinsic resistances (e.g. wearing rings) stronger than their intrinsic counterparts, which adds to the decision-making in choosing what to equip. Another change I'm really excited for is the unicorn horn no longer being usable for "restore ability", so ability-draining effects (of which there are many) are a more significant threat (they were effectively zero threat until now).
Also very cool to hear the quest is now possible to do early (despite being a Bad Idea) as that has great implications for speedrunning or "fewest turns" runs.
Can't wait to dive in!
mtlmtlmtlmtl
As an avid Spelunky player(still trying to complete the Cosmic Ocean...), I recently decided to explore some of Spelunky's roots, and set out to learn Nethack, and fell in love with the game. After a few weeks of dying repeatedly, perusing the wiki, and watching the Ascending in Nethack Overexplained series on youtube(highly recommended), I managed to ascend a valkyrie. Planning on trying a harder role soon. It's amazing how tense it can be despite the turn based nature of the game.
I do like the nerfs in this release. Making excalibur harder to get for Valkyries is a good one, as well as nerfing the unicorn horn. The run where I ascended felt a bit too easy at times. But of course valkyrie will still be by far the easiest role, I think. I bet I'll be stuck for quite a while trying to ascend anything else.
vintermann
Spelunky seems in particular inspired by the slashem mod of Nethack, since there's a black market and shopkeepers with shotguns.
SubiculumCode
I've played so much Moria/Angband/Angband variants, it's funny that I never tried Nethack.
zorked
First impression: it has a tutorial, which should actually help increase the player base quite a bit.
It comes with some movement quality of life (e.g. moving into a door opens it, moving into an obviously dangerous thing requires confirmation).
If you enable the option, there's color coding of health (green -> full), burden level, and states like poisoning, which I think is new too.
You can filter out messages like "you have displaced your pet".
jballanc
IIRC, there was always a way to filter out certain messages (or that may be an alt.org customization, but it's been a part of my config file for a while now).
big85
Some notable changes in 5.0.0 (spoilers abound):
If a bag of holding explodes (e.g. due to putting a wand of cancellation in it), most of its items are scattered rather than lost
Amnesia no longer causes you to forget maps
Unicorn horns no longer restore lost attributes
Valkyrie ascensions (considered the easiest) are harder: chance to receive Excalibur when dipping a longsword in a fountain is decreased if not a knight, valkyries no longer start with a longsword, valkyrie doesn't gain Stealth until level 3
You can't displace pets into polymorph traps easily to get a super pet
You can apply $ to flip a coin
rirze
Damn they really nerfed valkyrie. I loved that class.
jballanc
For real! Valkyrie is the perfect "just bash things while only half paying attention" class. Great for when I'm playing to unwind (as opposed to playing as a challenge to myself).
At least there's still Samurai.
chorizo
That was my favorite class. Still remember the game where I mostly (t) threw my wakizashi (b) at enemies.
Hackbraten
I've been playing on and off for 15 years, sometimes daily for months on end. The deepest I managed to go is level 11, and as soon as I enter the Big Room, I die. In fact, I went past level 8 for the first time this year. I've read all of the NetHack wiki back and forth. I don't have the slightest idea what I'm doing wrong or how to improve.
I'm 46 now, and if I continue that pace, I'll be dead before I even reach the bottom, let alone ascend.
vintermann
One thing which I don't know if you've noticed (and I don't consider this a spoiler) but Nethack has level scaling. If you get levels too fast, faster than you get better gear, enemies outscale you. In my (admittedly very dated) experience a lot of the difficulty was striking that balance between exploring too quickly and lingering too long.
Hackbraten
Thanks. Are you referring to the dungeon level (depth) or the experience level?
bhaak
Dungeon level depth, mostly.
This being NetHack, an answer is often not as straight forward as it could be. Most of the time the level difficulty is proportional to how deep you are into the dungeon but there are levels where your experience level factors in as well.
andwaal
Been pkaying on and off since I was 12, 38 today.. Good times. Quick tip is to play valkyrie, dip sword for excalibur, rub any lamps and wish for sdsm, and you should be good.
Also check out DCSS, amazing game, been playing for soon 40 years.
Hackbraten
I've had them all. I’ve had wands of wishing, I die. I’ve worn blessed greased amazing technicolor Valenciaga +9001 silver patent leather dragon 2x HiDPIscale mail, I die. I step in a fucking trap, I get surrounded by a dozen killer bees, I die. Soldier ant, I die.
chongli
Good players can kill soldier ants with almost nothing, just some rocks or darts or daggers. There’s a bit of tactics to learn but the essential step is to stop bumping into enemies and learn to fight at range, use Elbereth to keep them at a distance, use doors and corridors to limit their angles of approach.
Once you learn how to kill a fast enemy (like a soldier ant) without letting it fight you in melee, you become unstoppable for the first 1/3rd of the game or so. You discover that you don’t need the best armour in the game right away, you don’t even need more than a half-decent weapon, you just need to maintain your supplies of ranged weapons (and wands).
Stepping in traps can also be avoided with the knowledge that (with 2 special exceptions) traps only generate in rooms, not corridors. Traps can be safely searched for from adjacent spaces and once discovered remain visible permanently.
I should also point out that the two enemies you mentioned that killed you have one thing in common: poisonous sting attacks. Poison has been nerfed in the latest version (5.0) and poison resistance can be acquired in game. Furthermore, some characters actually start the game with poison resistance for free!
andwaal
Haha amazing times, just have to go at it again, and again and again.
alex_young
I think I got my hands on Hack when I was 8, so I've been doing the same for, uh, 39 years. Damn. At least I was learning VI keys unintentionally, so it was somewhat educational. :)
jeffcoat
We can only guess about what's going wrong for you specifically . But I like guessing:
(extremely mild spoilers:)
- A core skill for Nethack is understanding how much danger you're in at any particular moment. Your comment about soldier ants below tells me you've made good progress here. But you need to recognize when you're in danger and how long you have to deal with that problem before you'll react appropriately.
- Nethack's dungeon isn't linear, it branches. (Think of the gnomish mines here, but there are other examples deeper.) When you're getting in over your head in one branch, go back up the stairs and switch to another one.
- When you're in immediate danger, Stop. Look through your inventory, consider your options. Think especially about wands, think about ways to write Elbereth, think about scrolls. Think about ways to use diagonal movement to your advantage to get to an escape, or a more defensible position. You have all the time in the world to think. There may not be a solution, but I've died more than a few times with more than one thing in my inventory that could have saved me.
- You need to be able to identify some things without waiting for a scroll of identify to fall into your lap. Price is the easiest way to identify the scroll of identify itself. It's also straightforward to learn to identify most useful wands: with spoilers or by experimenting. Engraving with the wand will often give you more information than zapping it. A lot of your early I'm In Danger toolkit will come from wands you've identified this way.
Good luck, have fun.
(Intermediate player, a few dozen ascensions 20 years ago.)
bonzini
Elbereth always seemed like a cheat... Never understood the point of it. I got to the quest without it, but not deeper.
chongli
It's not a cheat. It's explained in the game's manual (the Official Guidebook [1], just search for Engrave).
It's been nerfed since 3.6.X as well. Now it can no longer be used for fighting, only escape, and attempting to fight while standing on it will make you "feel like a hypocrite" and deduct 5 from your alignment score.
Hackbraten
Thank you for the tips, much appreciated!
anthk
13 in Slashem with the Doppleganger monk. HInt: there's the #technique feature, just type down
#tech
CobrastanJorji
Amazing.
I was never any good at Nethack. I think I just get impatient. I could regularly get a bit past Medusa but anything past that definitely involved save scumming. I was always a little jealous of the folks who could ascend regularly. But not jealous enough to, like, do anything about it.
Nethack's always been amazing for the feeling of "the devs thought of everything." I wonder how well that feeling holds up today.
MarsIronPI
Same. Partly it's that I always feel like I don't understand what's going on, mechanically speaking, as opposed to simpler roguelikes like Shattered Pixel Dungeon or Sil.
pimeys
Or do what I did when I played this as a child: read the spoilers. Then start with Valkyrie, get the Mjollnir, wand of wishing, and a dragon scale mail as fast as possible. And a bag of holding and you get pretty far.
It's a fantastic game if you have a bit of imagination. The possibilities are endless and it's so rewarding to ascend finally.
MarsIronPI
I've always heard that one of the enjoyable experiences of Nethack was figuring things out for yourself, so I've never read spoilers. I'd like to know what others think.
Der_Einzige
Much as chess frustrated the great game masters like bobby fischer for being too easily "gamable" with opening books, I find that the mods for games like nethack, i.e. SLASHEM et al, make it where even if you try to spoil it, the massive amount of new content combined with the relative lack of documentation force you to git gud.
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robbiewxyz
I played Nethack quite a bit as a teen but was never patient enough to ascend. Always YASD.
I revisited the game a few years ago & was happy to realize I had, in the meantime, grown the necessary patience. Ascending felt great.
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Last time I played, after many close calls, I finally got my hands on the amulet. Knowing that the journey back to daylight was likely to be at least as dangerous as the way I had come, I took a breath, saved, and set the game aside.
That was about seventeen years ago. I still have the save file. Today's announcement got me excited about the prospect of finally finishing my game, until I saw this:
> Existing saved games and bones files will not work with NetHack 5.0.0.
Drat.
Thankfully, NetHack is not one of those modern, commercial, online-only games that make it difficult to run old versions.
** SPOILER BELOW ** (in someone's reply to me)