Nethackers?

finferflu · 2008-03-24 18:27:28

Just wanted to know how many of you play and appreciate Nethack.
I have discovered this game about one year ago. After hearing so much about it and its greatness, I ended up installing it to see what it was about. Faced with a @ and a d, I tried to move with the arrow keys, producing strange menus. I got fed up and left it for some months. After a while I decided to give it another go, wanting to explore the world of ASCII gaming. This time I started reading the guide and learnt the basic controls. I started playing and I was hooked in no time. After a year I'm still hooked, and of course I never managed to get back from the Gnomish Mines, stubborn as I am to take that route

Today I scored my highest highscore, surely you can laugh at it

  1      15807  finferflu-Val-Hum-Fem-Neu died in The Gnomish Mines            
                on level 10.  Killed by a gelatinous cube.              -  [67]

It is one of the rare times I've used a Valkyrie. I usually stick with a Samurai or a Wizard.

Anyway, I wanna hear your views. In my opinion really Nethack is one of the best games I've ever played. The ASCII interface is one of the big boosts. Imagination is much better than visuals.

And to conclude, here is a cool article I have found, a bit old, but Nethack is not that recent either (even the latest version dates back to 2003): http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2 … index.html

lucke · 2008-03-24 18:59:18

I used to play MUDs and a bit of ADOM.

finferflu · 2008-03-24 19:21:22

I also played ADOM for a bit, but it's very annoying to restart all over every time. While the quests are fun to do, I hate repeating always the same actions, i.e. talking to the characters over and over again to get the quests.

dyscoria · 2008-03-24 19:28:11

I think you've just resparked my interest in trying out nethack. I read about zangbandtk (some derivative of zangband, a derivative of angband, which is probably some derivative of something else ) and decided to try it out. I was hooked for a while but got bored. Tried it again bout a year later (took quite some effort to download as it apparently is a deceased project. I could only download from some dodgy website for deceased games ) and was hooked for a bit longer.

Heard about nethack, never got round to trying it. Learning all the ins and outs of zangband was hard enough (even though i was still terrible at the game), so i'm hesitant to start on nethack. Must try it though, its too popular to miss out on.

finferflu · 2008-03-24 19:30:04

To start with read the review, it really conveys the feeling you get while playing Nethack

Mikko777 · 2008-03-24 19:48:48

i played alot of nethack too.

Altho i never liked the ASCII versions, gl hack is nicer imho.

and theres also vultures eye with isometric graphics.

Anyways i seem to recall that barbarian is by far the easiest to play, and i think my best was 12+ levels, atleast i did get into the watery places once

I think that nethack is impossible to beat, but atleast theres so much new stuff every game that its easy to restart when you die.

mrcold · 2008-03-24 20:09:16

i have been hooked on nethack for about 2 months now

fwojciec · 2008-03-24 20:23:37

I'm trying not to right now... Too much work
Last time I installed it I ended up playing for two days non-stop -- it's incredibly addictive. I suck at it, though, I never got past the gnome mines (yet). I think my favorite game was playing as a pacifist-wizard who would let the pet (a cat named Miautz) do all the fighting.

bender02 · 2008-03-24 21:12:11

nethack!

I've been playing it on and off since 1994. One of the best games I've ever played. It's so vast that there's always something new to discover.

I like the original ascii interface the best. I tried some graphical versions, but for me it's important to see the whole level at once, without any extraneous stuff (like graphics).

I must admit I've read some spoilers at some point... and I still have the impression that it's (almost) impossible to discover all the things by just playing it. I'd recommend exploring the dungeon in "explore mode" (which asks "Die? [y/n]" when you die , just to familiarize yourself with the possibilities. Even in explore mode and as valkyrie, it's quite hard to win.

When I install a new system, this is one of the first things I look for a package of

finferflu · 2008-03-24 21:18:56

I'll be sincere, I use http://nethack.wikia.net as a companion to my games. There is stuff I would never figure out. Of course I don't dig it too much, I like to find out stuff on my own. Certain kinds of weapons and monsters are just too exotic to me, though

venox · 2008-03-24 23:09:33

I started to play nethack recently. It's a nice game (I've been playing mostly nethack and wesnoth on my spare time).
Actually, I think it would be cool a MMORPG on the nethack style (okay, I know MMORPG ideas sound stupid these days). I was looking forward to mangband, looks like a really cool project.

finferflu · 2008-03-24 23:19:32

How about Crossfire?
I haven't played it extensively, in fact I didn't even finish the tutorial, but it doesn't look bad. As for now I'm completely addicted to ASCII RPG games. I think ASCII art is quite a feature, and graphical games have never been able to draw me so much into the scenario.

What I particularly like about Nethack is the need of common sense and general culture to go on in the game. You need to know the monsters and the function of the tools you find. Sometimes I'm at loss because I'm not a big reader of fantasy books, so I have to resort to Wikipedia. At times I just need spoilers. I would have never known about *ahem* Elb***th (censored, I don't wanna be a party pooper) without reading the appropriate material.

bender02 · 2008-03-24 23:34:58

I just love the humour that appears sometimes...
Like eating an apple produces a message "Core dumped."

BC · 2008-03-25 03:52:55

I started playing again after a few years just because of this thread. And I'm still horrible at it

finferflu · 2008-04-01 15:20:24

Crap! I had my first encounter with a cockatrice, and I have the terrible habit of tasting everything:

 No  Points     Name                                                   Hp [max]
  1      22531  finferflu-Val-Hum-Fem-Law turned to stone in The               
                Gnomish Mines on level 8 [max 9].  Petrified by                
                tasting cockatrice meat.                              101 [101]

The best thing is that I knew what a cockatrice does, but I got confused with the chickatrice, I said to myself: "Naa, it's too early to meet a THAT thing yet".
Well, that was a bloody good game, I was getting on very well. Killed by my own stupidity

Last edited by finferflu (2008-04-01 15:23:17)

danielsoft · 2008-04-01 16:10:00

I love nethack! I didn't get very far, though, because I am not careful enough, most of the time. There are very interesting moments in the game... I remember some of them:
- once I ate a fox an became wiser
- I sacrificed to my god in the temple dedicated to the opposite god, the priestess got angry and killed me
- I played as a healer and applied "stone to flesh" spell to a boulder: I got lot of meat

I use the original ASCII interface.

Tried some other CRPG games, Adom would be interesting but it seemed too hard for me -carrying food used up all my carying capacity for example

Last edited by danielsoft (2008-04-01 16:22:41)

finferflu · 2008-04-01 17:04:52

I use the ASCII interface too. I think that to use tiled version you either have to use sensational graphics, or nothing at all. Abstract representation just works better for this kind of games.

I have played ADOM for a bit, but I hated the fact that I had to restart the same story all over again once I died. I usually hate to follow plots in videogames. That's what keeps me away from CRPGs and draws me closer to rogue-like RPGs. I like playability more than captivating plots, because if I wanted to read a story, I could as well read a book... or play an interactive fiction game
In the end, playing nethack you can tell a story in the first person, you are the one who develops the plot, turn by turn.

Last edited by finferflu (2008-04-01 17:07:38)

finferflu · 2008-04-02 12:37:07

What the hell!!! I died by mistake, for a stupid mistype. I was fully satiated, and was tasting a mumak corpse. "You are having a hard time getting it all down, stop eating? (y/n)" n
"You choke on your food".

                       ----------
                      /          \
                     /    REST    \
                    /      IN      \
                   /     PEACE      \
                  /                  \
                  |    finferflu     |
                  |      110 Au      |
                  |   choked on a    |
                  |   mumak corpse   |
                  |                  |
                  |                  |
                  |       2008       |
                 *|     *  *  *      | *
        _________)/\\_//(\/(/\)/\//\/|_)_______


Farvel finferflu the Valkyrie...

You choked in The Gnomish Mines on dungeon level 7 with 13951 points,
and 110 pieces of gold, after 5743 moves.
You were level 9 with a maximum of 91 hit points when you choked.

I had lots of interesting stuff this time, what a shame

Last edited by finferflu (2008-04-02 12:37:47)

moljac024 · 2008-04-02 18:36:05

I remember that fedora or ubuntu had a tiled version of nethack for GNOME, it wasn't glhack.....how could I get that one ? Can't remember the name

finferflu · 2008-04-02 18:47:27

Perhaps it's nethack-x11, or nethack-gnome.
You can get the X11 version by editing the source files (more precisely the config.h file).

moljac024 · 2008-04-02 19:01:20

Thanks for the reply....if I remember correctly I didn't like the X11 version and thought that the the gnome one was better.....is that developed by the ppl at debian ?

Mikko777 · 2008-04-02 19:02:36

the basic nethack usually have tiles, you just need to enable them in config.

or use glhack or vultureseye (its pretty!)

finferflu · 2008-04-02 19:04:39

I actually don't know. I have tried nearly all the graphical interfaces, but I always went back to the plain ASCII, it's just more intuitive. What I hated about nethack-gnome was having all those popup windows floating around, as I like to play fullscreen.
This is all to say that I didn't dig much anything that has to do with graphics and tiles.

nj · 2008-04-02 22:42:12

Interhack is a nifty program that sits inbetween you and Nethack. It can do all sorts of tricks like auto price id'ing items and drawing maps of the area. One of the most useful features is being able to press ctrl-e to engrave Elbereth with your finger. Spamming ctrl-e will get you out of some bad situations in the early game. It's a bit of a cheat, but hey it's fun.

I tried to make a PKGBUILD for this program before, but the perl dependencies were too much for me. I ended up installing them via cpan.

finferflu · 2008-04-03 07:57:39

Yeah, I knew about it, but I'm anti-spoilage
I believe that finding out things on your own is part of the general fun that Nethack provides.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-03-24 18:27:28

Nethackers?

#2 2008-03-24 18:59:18

Re: Nethackers?

#3 2008-03-24 19:21:22

Re: Nethackers?

#4 2008-03-24 19:28:11

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#5 2008-03-24 19:30:04

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#6 2008-03-24 19:48:48

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#7 2008-03-24 20:09:16

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#8 2008-03-24 20:23:37

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