Fans of nethack and other roguelikes should try Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (DCSS).[1]
You can play or watch games in progress by:
ssh joshua@crawl.akrasiac.org
Use the password "joshua".
It's also available as a standalone program you can run on your own machine.
DCSS has some made some great innovations, such as fantastic use of color and auto-explore, tons of really unique gods and races, it's scriptable(!) in Lua, the list goes on and on...
Something I really enjoy about DCSS is the community aspect that goes on in ##crawl on freenode. First, lots of help from smart players. Second, the bots announce milestones like unique mob deaths, entering branches, wins, deaths, etc. You can query the bots for help, too, useful for things like querying a monster's stats, and a million other things.
They have a tournament a few times a year, with every release. You build teams (or play on a team by yourself) and accumulate points a variety of ways. Banners are earned, and it is all logged.
I'm part of a small sub-community of players, and we use it to filter the announcements so we only see the players we care about, run queries on the Crawl bots without disrupting ##crawl, etc.
(edit: oh hi grimgrin, didn't notice it was you :)
Brogue is shorter and tighter than DCSS. If I had my way, we'd cut down crawl to 27 levels. In Brogue the maps are smaller, the food clock is more punishing, enemies tend to be more distinct from one another. I've joked that every time we need new content for crawl, we just steal it from Brogue.
Brogue runs in terminal / curses with `brogue --term`. It's not _as_ pretty (or garishly colorful), but it runs fine.
> the number of races/background/god combination in DCSS is simply incredible
Brogue reifies the concepts of "class", "god", "race" etc etc into the object system. Every character starts out exactly the same, and you choose your 'build' based somewhat off what you find in the dungeon. You don't learn spells, you pick up staves/wands/charms.
Additionally, it tries very, very hard to never let you grind your character. (As bhickey mentioned, ) the food clock is punishing, and the dungeon is less same-y. Yes, DCSS has branches that differentiate parts of the dungeon pretty successfully, but within a single branch (except for the set levels at the end), they're on the boring side.
When I first started playing DCSS, most of my roguelike experience was with Nethack, so I thought the interface was amazing (stashes! auto-explore! waypoints!), but now I kind of think they're crutches.
In fairness, I think the DCSS developers agree with you. Branches are for the most part getting shorter (extended excepted). Lair is still pretty long, but I'd rather it was made more varied than just shorter. Hall of Blades is now in Elf, and Elf is only 3 deep. Crypt's only three deep. Depths is actually pretty varied anyway. The main rune branches are all four deep.
I mean, Octopod Transmuter is not... easy... but all the long major roguelikes (ADOM, Nethack, DCSS, ToME) are basically games of patience. They're repeatably doable if you learn all the rules and are careful. Speedruns are harder, of course.
Whereas even if you're completely spoiled and have achieved a perfect score in the past, Brogue is still difficult because every decision matters and you can't take your time. If you don't plan the most efficient way to explore each level then you starve, and if you miss or waste a key resource then you die because you aren't powerful enough. I still love Crawl but I strongly second the recommendation to give Brogue a whirl.
If you ever want to increase the difficulty of a roguelike, you could always adopt a conduct[1], like "foodless", "atheist", "pacifist", "illiterate", etc.
I've done SpEn (3), MiFi (3 & 15), DDEE (3), but I still find the game incredibly hard. I've been playing MfIE and getting wiped out repeatedly before even collecting a rune. And that's _still_ an easy combination.
Brogue does sound interesting though. But perhaps beyond my skill level.
My first thought is to create an entry in my ~/.ssh/config with an entry for the untrusted host I'm going to ssh in to, using the "IdentityFile" keyword to point to some bogus/misleading identity file. How does that sound?
Do you use pass-phrases with your per-host keys? I wanted to do this, but was unable to make it manageable. ssh-agent will only try so many keys before moving on.
I don't understand, why is that a bad thing? Maybe it might be an issue if you're trying to do something anonymously (but at that point, you shouldn't be using your regular machine anyway).
It's rather unexpected. Browsers carry so much baggage that you need a private mode, I wouldn't have expected something like ssh to have this sort of problem before I read about how it exposes your keys.
If your identity is that sensitive keep a standard public key that is used by default, but for services where you might want your identity to not be linked to other accounts/places/activities have a separate key for each and specified where to use it in you SSH config (or by naming with the -i parameter on each ssh call).
To extend on that, from what I have heard, fans of DCSS should check out Desktop Dungeons (I liked the original, which is free, but the new version is also worth checking out).
Desktop Dungeons is pretty great, and a lot of people refer to it as a roguelike, but it's just not a roguelike. It's a puzzle/resource-management game. >:/
"resource-management game" aka Roguelikes. Heh. It does more strongly resemble puzzles though. For anyone that hasn't played, the gameplay resembles a single level of a roguelike with stationary enemies. The difficulty is in progressing through enemies to gain XP as efficiently as possible so you can take on the level boss. Everything is a resource. Even fog of war, once you discover a tile it restores health and mana.
I like this change, adding Terry Pratchett quotes:
"At the time of his passing this year, the DevTeam decided that it would be a fitting tribute to take a number of our favourite quotes from the various Discworld novels and incorporate them into the game. Being the way we are, we did a little more than that. There are now a huge number of quotes from many of the Discworld novels in the tribute file, but this doesn't mean that we wouldn't accept new submissions from other Pratchett fans."
And for anyone unfamiliar with NetHack and its classes,
"As some may know, Terry Pratchett was a fan of NetHack, dating back to the time that we introduced the Tourist class which was openly based on the Discworld novels he penned."
the Luggage has been one of the things visible when allucinating for many years, and it was one of the things that made me realize how many nerd references are embedded in nethack, which is still one of the reason it's so enjoyable.
That's great news on the front of "classic" rogue-likes. On the flipside, I'm really enjoying how Cogmind is evolving the interface and pushing ASCII graphics:
Instead of happening entirely inside dungeons, ADOM has an overworld, featuring cities, wilderness encounters, and of course many dungeons. It also has more of an overarching story than Nethack (lots of NPC's, quests, moral choices, etc.) and an interesting corruption mechanic, with ChAoS slowly taking over the world and corrupting your character with mutations.
I personally prefer it to Nethack as it's more varied, the ASCII UI is better (it also has tiles but I'm and oldschool player and use ASCII), the story is richer (and allowing for lots of roleplay, feeling more like an RPG), and it relies less on spoilers. Although to each their own, of course.
For me ADOM is the best maximalistic roguelike, Brogue is the best minimalistic roguelike.
By the way, just in case you don't know, you can try it for free. The paid Steam version mainly adds configurability of things like disabling permadeath, disabling hunger and stuff like that, and it is also updated more frequently; but the free version has the full world and the core roguelike experience. There are also servers where you can play the free version in ASCII mode online through ssh and spectate games, check http://ancardia.uk.to/ (UK) and http://ancardia.us.to (USA).
ADOM is one of the major 2nd gen rogue-likes (including NH and Angband in this group), and they're similar.
I played ADOM first, so for me NH required re-training; so I may be biased. ADOM offers a more complex world with different endings, compared with NH that AFAIK focus on the Amulet of Yendor only (I might be wrong on this!).
Never played it but from what I read, there is a more open world with different region and dungeon. Apparently there are also different endgame. I have the feeling it feels more like a traditional rpg than a dungeon exploration.
Also the server admin for NAO is Pasi Kallinen which got added to the DevTeam earlier this year.
From what he told me, he worked hard this year to add lots of what is considered "standard" among the modern NetHack forks. He didn't succeed completely but it's an uphill battle if some of your code changes are code reviewed with comments like "but this won't compile on a pre ANSI C compiler".
I hope he and the other new members will be able to jump start again the development of NetHack.
Should say that NAO currently runs a heavily patched version of 3.4.3. Specifically, the menucolors and pickup_thrown patches that are mentioned as being part of 3.6 are already in 3.4.3_NAO.
No, but I did escape once with a fake amulet of yendor. I think that's when I lost my spirit for returning.
One of my favorite things to do was enter a shop and then throw things out the door of the shop so the shopkeepr didn't think I was stealing. Also, can't remember how, but I used to be able to get my pet to steal things from the shop.
Oh, and if you could pick up the corpse of a cockatrice then anything you attacked and hit with it turned to stone. Nice. Maybe you needed to be wearing gloves to do that. Can't remember it was a long time ago.
I did also get addicted to another text based game called "Empire" for a while. I'm not sure if it still exists.
I think I played it on a Compaq 286.
Oh no... I can feel that long faded addiction tugging me back to the console......I'd better call my sponsor.
One time I was wielding the cockatrice corpse with gloves on, and I was doing pretty well until I found a succubus, who seduced me into taking off all my clothes...including my gloves...
I ascended for the first time during my first internship. (Didn't miss much, was with SAP.)
P.S. I never played a version of nethack that let you throw stuff out of the shop with the shopkeeper still alive. But I've been playing for less than ten years.
My dad played a lot of Classic Empire back in the day. I gravitated more towards a similar game that I think was called Conquest, where the turns auto-advanced (felt like an RTS) and infantry could cross bodies of water themselves by turning into boats. Wish I could find that one again, I've never found it on any of the 'old games' lists.
There was a game called Conquest, which was a fantasy game similar to Empire. I recall that you could play various races, Orcs being one of them, Wizards another. It was very detailed, with each square of the map's terrain having ratings for how useful it was. I remember that there was a note in the source or license that the game was free but not allowed to be run on 'PCs'. (I interpreted this to mean MSDOS machines, and was able to get it running under Coherent). This would have been in the early 90s.
The game I played was definitely not a fantasy game, it had modern-type units like armor and airplanes. Neither was the Classic Empire game that my dad played, with aircraft carriers and battleships and the like.
I should point out that the rascal responsible for that cause of bleary eyes in many a grad student is among us and even gloating about it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10686686
If you want to play without external help like a guide or a spoiler, it is almost impossible to get anywhere because the game only gives you little hint of what is happening at a given time.
Using "spoiler file" or wiki, will give you a rough overview of the creature's strength and ability, weapon effectiveness, etc. This is helpful but is not enough to win.
To win you must understand deeply (grok) all the different mechanisms of the game (hunger, prayer, sacrifice, alchemy, intrisics, etc) and then have a strategy.
This is counter intuitive but the early game is much harder, once you have found the right items, identified important scrolls and potions (about finishing gnome mine & sokoban) the game becomes much easier. And if you are well prepared everything beyond the Valley of Death is kinda boring and "easy". For a first ascension, it is probably wiser to chose an easy class (valkyrie, barbarian, knight, wizard).
Key strategy for the early game are : using your pet to identify cursed items, to not level up too quickly because the generated monster will become too tough, when in a desperate spot engraving "Elbereth" with your fingers might save you a few times[0], praying at the right time, etc
A full game with a successful ascension is about 20-30 hours. However you probably need 50-100 hours of failed attempt to learn the rope first. And it can be frustrating at times because even if you know the game better, it will take some times to make a breakthrough and survive the early levels.
Lastly if you really want to learn fast, play on a public server, and when you are in a very tough spot, you can (at least you could) ask people on #Nethack on Freenode for advice.
In the end, the game is very satisfying, because even if there is a big element of luck, once you know the game well, this is your skill as a player that will determine if you live or die, and this is really rewarding.
Aha! I was wondering about your "20-30" hours number, then I found this[1]: "Know firstly that Moria is a much longer game than NetHack. This is a consequence of the vastness of Moria's dungeon. It may take weeks and months to play an Moria character from the beginning to the triumph over the Balrog (or to a late but permanent death)."
I played quite a few hours of Moria (never killing the Balrog, but I never really was that motivated to "win" - I generally enjoyed finding new items, and discovering/learning "all" the spells. This in the older versions that included fun things like "Genocide"). I've also played a bit of the various Angbands, but I keep feeling that the stuff they add/change tend to make for an inferior game.
I really thought NH and Moria were more similar -- I think now that my initial dislike for NH was based on this misconception (NH is indeed a poor Moria, but it might be a great game if not viewed as a "version" of Moria).
At high levels you're less likely to die in the simple course of wandering around the dungeon, but there are a number of challenges only encountered at high levels that have little margin for error, and can be swiftly deadly to even a well-prepared character if the player doesn't know exactly how to respond.
I agree. I tend to genocide Lich and mind-flayers so there is nothing too bad left if you have enough HP, AC and blessed potion of full healing. But the riders can be scary if you don't know how to deal with them.
I played it extensively like a decade ago. Never ascended though, it's just too difficult.
My experience after discovering the game was one of being overwhelmed. Every single keyboard button has multiple functions, there's so much stuff happening and you're just stumbling around in a world whose rules you don't understand. (Like real life.)
After some time, I've dived into the spoilers file and gave it an extensive read. I realized that it would have taken years of playing figuring all this game mechanics out. And that even when spoiled, the game remains a lot of fun. (Again, like real life.)
What remains are fond memories and the realization that I'll probably never finish it in my lifetime. And I'm ok with that.
So yes, it's complex and complicated, but rewarding.
NetHack is complicated, but not complex. It has a lot of individual moving parts, but they generally act as you expect them to once you get the overall notion of the game.
There are also spoilers all over the place on the internet, namely on the Nethack wiki, that'll answer any question (literally, any question) about the game that you have.
The idea of permadeath games such as Nethack is that you play a game and die, lose everything you had with you and start all over again from scratch, time and time again.
But every time you play and die, you'll learn something. The learning curve is the game.
But the game doesn't explain anything. It doesn't even tell what commands can be used. I played like 10 games until I found out you can actually put on items, and that was by accidentally stumping upon the command on the internet. It would be nice if they at least listed what commands can be used, otherwise it is a guessing game, especially since some commands are more than 1 symbol.
If you press the `?' key it brings up a menu of help options, including
Select one item:
a - Long description of the game and commands.
b - List of game commands.
c - Concise history of NetHack.
d - Info on a character in the game display.
e - Info on what a given key does.
f - List of game options.
g - Longer explanation of game options.
h - List of extended commands.
i - The NetHack license.
(end)
Obviously, then, you need to know to press `?'. People who are accustomed to using interactive software in the terminal can probably guess at that, but it's worth noting that the third line of the manpage reads
To get started you really only need to know two commands. The command ? will give you a list of the available commands (as well as other information) and the command / will identify the things you see on the screen.
For software that runs in the terminal on a unix system, putting such instructions in the manpage is the appropriate thing to do. I don't know how they do it on Windows, it's quite possible it's more obscure there, which would be a shame, because more people on Windows are uncomfortable with TUIs.
> I don't know how they do it on Windows, it's quite possible it's more obscure there, which would be a shame, because more people on Windows are uncomfortable with TUIs.
The GUI version has menus that feature the same content that you get with '?' in the terminal version. For the console verson on Windows, you'll have to read the manual.
When I started with NetHack in the 80s on the Amiga, I wouldn't have had any chance of playing it if the Amiga version didn't feature menus with all the available commands showing also the keys.
Personally I found it to become a lot more fun once I started using spoilers, as there were so many things I would never have found out. The only slight negative is that I have since become obsessive about trying to identify things by all available methods, that costs time and is a bit boring. But that's my own choice.
And I'm a completely hack and slash player -- I've ascended 15 Valkyries I think (and some Barbarians), but I'm utterly useless as a weaker class that needs to be played with caution. I did manage a few wizards that got lucky early on, they become all-powerful later.
Winning the game requires a combination of research, caution, and instinct built up over time, all of which serve to simply avoid death. It's not nearly as much a matter of getting up enough armor or dealing enough damage as it is a matter of learning and avoiding the many instadeaths in the game, and taking advantage of the small edges that can help you survive when you're in peril.
I knew a guy who quit drinking for a week so that he could ascend. So there's that, too: don't play drunk.
POWDER is very a accessible way into the genre if you want to learn some of the skills you need for NetHack, such as item identification. It gives you that same feeling that the author really has thought of how every verb in the game can be used with every item in combination with any part of the game.
I just jumped in. Learn basic commands. Use ? (the help command) a lot, and learn new concepts as you need them. You'll die a lot, but so long as you have fun, it's time will spent.
Are there any good versions of NetHack (or similar) for Android? I've never played and it sounds like I'm missing out, but the only time I really feel like I could put in some hours would be on the bus or train or something.
The old school roguelikes that were built when they could count on a keyboard all have heavy keyboard dependencies. Nethack and Angband both have command sets that extend beyond the case-sensitive letters. (Protip: When forgetting what letter a given command is, do not just start hitting keys looking for it!) Of course you tend to use a subset in play, but even that subset can be quite large.
If you want to play a roguelike on a portable, you'll need to play something built for portable. I have no specific recommendations... unfortunately, I can't help but compare things to Angband (my drug of choice) and everything ends up too simple by comparison. That's just my problem, though. Android certainly has a lot of roguelike things on it, the Web is full of reviews and recommendations: https://www.google.com/search?q=best+android+roguelike
Lineage the Bloodpledge, a hugely successful korean MMO was heavily based on NetHack [1]. It is still one of the most widely played games in the world (mainly in South Korea).
The article below does an excellent overview of its history and inspiration from NetHack.
Moving a large project, particularly one that uses lots of the SF.net infrastructure, is non-trivial. Github only provides replacements for some of that infrastructure. Even if you can trivially move all of your code into github, and don't rely on mailing lists, ticket tracker, file downloads, etc. you've still got to update documentation, download links across sites you may not have control over, change code that relies on sf.net links (for automatic updates, etc.).
For the project I work on, we moved code hosting to github years ago, but still have our downloads hosted by SF.net, and haven't even thought of what to do about mailing lists and tickets. We'll get around to moving it all, eventually, but for small teams working on a project with so many users, so many files, so many mailing lists, so many tickets, and just a lot of pieces that make up the "project", it's a lot of work, and the gains may not be immediately felt.
I don't know where the NetHack team is in their migration, but it is apparent they're working on it. I'm not gonna criticize them for not having it done already.
And, of course, there is no guarantee that github won't turn evil, someday, too.
How to build on Ubuntu.. for God's sake, why isn't there a script or a configure? I am trying to figure out the sys/Install instructions, getting nowhere.
Why didn't they just make it public on github, and use their issue tracker?
EDIT: actually the sys/Install/NewInstall.unx instructions worked for me, at least it is starting to make.
You can play or watch games in progress by:
Use the password "joshua".It's also available as a standalone program you can run on your own machine.
DCSS has some made some great innovations, such as fantastic use of color and auto-explore, tons of really unique gods and races, it's scriptable(!) in Lua, the list goes on and on...
[1] - http://crawl.develz.org/