NetHack: The Greatest Game You Will Ever Play
thegreatestgameyouwilleverplay.com
thegreatestgameyouwilleverplay.com
With commercial products it is more common for products to die, not be upgraded, or have significant major upgrades. With open source instead the same products (nethack, vim, emacs and bash come to mind) can live in forever, gaining small improvements over time.
On one hand, this is great! You have a long-lasting product you can learn and use for years and years. On the other hand, I don't think nethack is the perfect game, vim the perfect editor or bash the perfect shell, they are very hard to displace.
DCSS does suffer from the optimum local minima thing as well, though. There are a lot of big design choices that stick around because they've always been there, rather than being good choices. For instance: the difficulty curve, melee being superior to spell casting, big random damage spikes, length of the game (too long), tediousness of summons / spell casting, kiting as the optimal strategy 99% of the time, and the other things that make dcss what it is.
I'll say this: I've played both NetHack and Crawl (and many other roguelikes) and the main difference between the two of them, for me, is that I have fun playing Crawl and I have never enjoyed myself playing NetHack.
Having played a lot of both NetHack and Crawl, I think it's pretty bold to claim either game as the "best game ever". Both suffer from the same problem: past a certain point, your character has too many options for every situation and choices become boring and trite.
Crawl tries to "fix" the problem by making a lot of your powerful options unreliable. I believe this is the wrong way to do it. It messes with the player's natural feedback loops by inviting them past a point of no return demarcated by a hidden variable (the random seed governing the unreliable option).
Both games also suffer for the fact that they misuse a food clock. A food clock is a crude mechanism to stop the player from abusing regeneration of health and respawning of monsters. The problem with it is that it's a linear mechanism which simply does not function properly with a nonlinear game. Again, it invites players past a point of no return in cases such as foodless dungeon branches. Crawl tries to "fix" this by giving the player way too much food, but that just lengthens the feedback loop without actually solving the problem. The original Rogue (and its spiritual successor, Brogue) has a working food clock because it's a strictly linear game with a finite amount of food balanced against a finite number of areas to explore.
Both Crawl and NetHack also suffer heavily from the problem of "windshield monsters". Like so many bugs splatting on the windshield, the games lull you into a sense of complacency until inevitably you walk around a corner and something really nasty notices you and you die. Yet another case of a long feedback loop that messes with the player's expectations. This is the game play analogue of jumpscares from the horror genre; a cheap trick that ends up pissing off the player most times.
That just means you have to be careful so that can never happen. For some that makes the game boring, for others it's part of the fun. I like being prepared, so it's fun for me.
The boring part of the game is not the nasty thing that killed you, it's the thousand useless orcs you had to kill before it happened.
The public git repository was created this year I think and it is announced in red on http://www.nethack.org/ with two links to http://www.nethack.org/common/git.html
I suspect Nethack transitionied to git a year ago (from svn or possibly directly from CSV).
"The license was written in 1989 by Mike Stephenson, who patterned it after the GNU bison license."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetHack#NetHack_General_Public...
Another project with similar policy is OMNeT++ [0]. Simulation models are developed openly in the public [1], but the development of the kernel is done by closed group. Well, they also have restrictive license, forbidding commercial use, but what I am talking about is development model.
If you look at UnNetHack repository [2], it is forked from unofficial "Vanilla NetHack" repository [3] that contains only 53 commits, one for each released tarball. Now, with access to official git repository, it will be possible to track the changes between releases.
[1] https://inet.omnetpp.org/Repository.html
For example, I like the fact that almost every editor on my mac obeys the standard shortcut keys (at the minimum, apple+x,c,v for cut/copy/paste, apple+z undo, apple+s save, apple+q quit, apple+f find, apple+g find next, apple+a select all).
If you started vim or emacs today, would you choose on a mac to not follow the standard interface rules, when the editor was first started? I would (personally) hope not.
* Well, not all of them, save doesn't really make sense for a terminal, and 'cut' can't really be implemented for a general terminal app. but copy/paste/find/find next/close window/select all and others are all fine).
I was greatly disappointed by Nethack's codebase, mostly by how inelegant and special-casey it is. (For example, the fact that mind flayers turn to stone when attacking a cockatrice is programmed in three separate places depending on who's the mind flayer and who's the cockatrice: uhitm.c, mhitu.c, and mhitm.c).
There are also fundamental flaws with the game's design, like as clever as it is to implement Sokoban with boulders and pits, it doesn't belong in a dungeon crawler, because random monster spawns can cheat you of a fair solution. The mazes of Gehenom are too long and boring. The plane of water makes no sense. The list goes on.
Another problem with nethack is how it punishes you for playing the game without spoilers. If you don't read a wiki (or the source), you're going to lose all your hours of progress to a bit of trivia you didn't know, like Medusa instakills you unless you're wearing X, Y, or Z. Trial and error can be good game design, but the retry period has to be short. In Nethack, it takes hours to recover from a line of code you couldn't possibly predict. (Wouldn't it be nice if fortune cookies or the Oracle were a reliable source of information? Really, you need to just read the wiki.)
As great as nethack is for its complexity and immersion, there are too many flaws for me to recommend it as a good game. That's why I'm trying to make my own game that's as complex as nethack, but doesn't have all the flaws, large and small.
And as to the points about Medusa above... well. Of all the things that might kill you in one turn, that one will only get you if you're just plain not paying attention (to be fair, this is a very common cause of death).
I mean, you walk past a statue of Perseus (among many others)... which happens to hold one of several items that would save you, leading to the question of how he got petrified to begin with, but still.
Hmm, interesting... there's a massive number of statues, a palace layout that suggest some kind of boss, and, oh, Perseus with a silver shield and a blindfold. There might just be a hint or two in all that... :)
If there's anything that I feel is a real spoiler-only bit, it's the necessity of magic cancellation and which things give it. This is not well-described in game, at least in the versions I've played. (I think they did an update a while ago and I haven't really played it lately.)
Or you dropped in from above...
Behold the cockatrice, whose diminutive stature belies its hidden might. The
cockatrice can petrify any ordinary being it contacts--save those wise
adventurers who eat a dead lizard or blob of acid when they feel themselves
slowly turning to stone.
[0] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.games.roguelike....
Still, I've never seen any specific unspoiled ascension stories apart from Timothy Nodine's, so I wonder if that's the only one in history, or at least if it's happened fewer than half a dozen times ever.
There were other rogue-like games that were just as much fun, super-rogue comes to mind...
I prefer things like Knytt (from nifflas) for example (the story is rather weak but the ambiance it gives out and the feelings I get from it entertains me more).
edit: For instance I really dig adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/ and played through it two times because of the mood, the theme and the slight hints of a story behind it. I could never play nethack for more than 5 minutes. On a side note, I used to play role-playing games and now all my friends are into strategy board games with 72 pages or rules. It's okay, I just sit in the couch reading the background of the world and its characters while they compute ranges and the spawn ratio of monsters for the next round of the game.
It has a very absorbing storyline + high replay value.
There is SSH server with ADOM - http://ancardia.us.to/ might be more convenient.
Entering anything is '>'.
Here's my main screen https://lut.im/lQnALEHivJ/FppL5O9xxlpZVf2z.png
And here's how it usually ends https://lut.im/vVKKqfc2ug/Bfk8uNV1tml17Zbe.png
It was a mix of mouse clicking and keyboard typing.
Edit: thanks. I tried the public server. I now know I definitely don't like unix rogue-like game :].
I know there is a new commercial Knytt game, but I fear the pixelated simplicity of the earlier games would be lost. Have you played it?
(I probably should buy it anyway, if anything to reward the author for his excellent previous games).
I played the demo and I didn't enjoyed it. The ambiance is kinda still there but... not enough. Unfortunately he incorporated some game-play mechanics from the game with the ball (the name escapes me at the moment) and that is a deal breaker for me (although I did finish that game :) because it sucks me out of the mood back to tricky jumps.
Anyway, there's a demo with some playable chapters on his website.
Edit: Also, not to be that guy, but there are few boasts on that site that don't apply twice as hard to Dwarf Fortress...
I hope it helps at least a few people discover the all-consuming joy of defeat that Nethack has provided me over the years.
Not necessarily related- Has anyone attempted a game like this in a purely functional style? It's a side project idea I've been putting off for a while.
Other suggestions: Consult the Oracle (her advice is concrete and essential), read the Guidebook (http://www.nethack.org/v360/Guidebook.html; not generally considered spoilers), and watch other people play on a public server (like nethack.alt.org).
The last one could be considered a spoiler because other players will rely on and demonstrate knowledge that you didn't acquire from playing by yourself, but it can be considered a much weaker or much different form of spoiler than reading the detailed explanation documents. Your gameplay is likely to improve a lot if you watch other expert players for a while, although bear in mind that different players have different play styles and agendas and some may be trying to do things that are unnecessarily boring, complex, or difficult.
Check out RogueBasin for (mind-bogglingly comprehensive) details:
It is indeed one of the minimalistic roguelikes, like Brogue, rather than one of the kitchen-sink roguelikes, like ADOM, Nethack or ToME. But do give it a try, it's really a quality game! I have played several dozens of roguelikes and it's in my top 3, right near ADOM and Brogue.
Some of its merits are intelligent enemies that are actually able to follow group strategies rather than charging blindly, an original song system, really great atmosphere and immersion (even better if you're a fan of Tolkien), and probably the only roguelike I've seen with a crafting system that doesn't suck.
Past that, the classics are right at the top: ADOM, Angband, Moria, DCSS, NetHack.
If you want a laugh, try IVAN.
I've never ascended, by the way.
http://www.nongnu.org/nethack-el/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_(video_game)
My friends came over and we printed the manual on our dot matrix printer - it was like 60 pages and seemed to take an hour to print. We started reading it before it finished, and it was incredibly exciting. Oh man, we loved that game. I remember staying up all night playing it. I got my first hard drive just so that I could install and play Nethack (you couldn't play it without a hard drive).
Don't get me wrong, it's a really good game and I had really fun times with it, but it shows its age and has been overcome in lots of ways. Current players are more likely to find fun in ADOM, Brogue, DCSS, ToME, Sil, Powder, Legerdemain, etc. than they are in Nethack. Modern roguelikes (or those that are not that modern but have gone through recent extensive overhauls, like ToME and ADOM) tend to be more balanced, and especially require fewer spoilers to progress. And many of them (if not most) are FOSS too.
tl;dr: if you have never tried roguelikes, you probably shouldn't start with Nethack. Nethack is a very good game but its design is dated, and its heavily spoiler-based gameplay is not for everyone. There are more modern roguelikes that are typically a better bet for new players.
When big changes are necessary, developers can plan for them and let the users know well in advance as to what to expect and when to expect it. This, again, has nothing to do with development methodology, but is more about communication and consideration for your users.
http://healthland.time.com/2011/09/06/the-secrets-of-self-co...
My wife and I came in every night after dinner for weeks and played it. When we weren't playing it we discussed ideas to get past the block. The word play was awesome.
Programming games like Robocode or Core War are way more interesting to me :D
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.games.roguelike....
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/nethack/comments/2tluxv/yaap_fullau...
https://taeb.github.io/bots.html
that no other bot had really come anywhere close to ascending before BotHack pulled it off.
It's interesting to see that the winning approach was GOFAI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_artificial_intelligen...
-- that is, the author taught the bot human-level rules and concepts based on human knowledge about the game. It wasn't a deep learning or neural net system; there is specific code about what altars do, how to fight mind flayers, or whatever.
For instance, here's a hard-coded list of corpses to avoid eating.
https://github.com/krajj7/BotHack/blob/master/src/bothack/pl...
I remember the original Rog-O-Matic rogue playing bot which goes back to 1981. It was really fun to watch it play. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rog-O-Matic
Of course I've read lots of ascension stories and some spoilers about the game to succeed. It's a fun challenge and very rewarding, when you finally ascend.
The whole blog is very entertaining, and the Nethack articles in particular ( 13 if I'm not mistaken).
Not once on 3.6. It's way harder.
If i didn't already feel Nethack was kind of weak compared to other rogue-likes i've played, the hubris on display here would put me off against it.
* being playable entirely on a terminal * no "AAA" budget.. all text, all ASCII instead of fancy 3D graphics
It's a bit mocking of the AAA industry to call it "the greatest game".
Also, this site was not made by the devteam, but a fan. So the Hubris isn't coming from the developers :)
In my eyes this game along with many other terminal games are "toys of old unix admins". It's really mind-boggling how anyone can think that a game with worst possible production quality can have a word as "greatest" associated with it.
Just because you feel nostalgia, it doesn't make the game good.