NetHack 3.6.7

183 points by TheLocehiliosan 2 years ago | 94 comments
  • gustavorg 2 years ago
    I must be some kind of medieval purist because today in the middle of 2023 I still play the original rogue, in its 3.6.3 and 5.4 versions, and I can barely tolerate some of the changes. That's what I don't like about Hack and its "new" incarnation, Nethack. Changes were introduced that change the original spirit. I also played Moria and Adom for years with mixed results. I was never able to play Nethack. I'm going to try, maybe this time I will succeed.
    • bhaak 2 years ago
      It's as if they are different games with different design philosphies. :-)
      • rtontic 2 years ago
        Yeah, as sibling said, they are quite different games actually. Rogue to me feels a lot more minimalist, while nethack is 'everything AND a kitchen sink!'.
        • minikomi 2 years ago
          How else would one identify rings without the sink, though?
          • antiframe 2 years ago
            I like to eat them (when polymorphed into a metalivore, of course).
          • fencepost 2 years ago
            Isn't it SLASH'EM that's "everything and the sink?"
            • philsnow 2 years ago
              IIRC, SLASH'EM is a descendant of SLASH, "Super Lots of Added Stuff Hack"
          • Arrath 2 years ago
            May I ask if you've tried other roguelikes over the years?

            Caves of Qud is, imo, a particularly exemplary entry into the genre. Its a different approach with a very unique setting and evocative way of story telling. Its just plain...weird.

            • Pet_Ant 2 years ago
              What changes are the ones that bother you? As someone whose played with neither (though I have played with NetHack's source code) I'm curious.
              • yyyk 2 years ago
                DCSS would more be in your alley, since the devs actively try to simplify mechanics (perhaps too much IMHO).
                • chantok 2 years ago
                  Just different games. I prefer Moria over Angband. Don’t like some of the changes.
                  • lordleft 2 years ago
                    NetHack feels less cohesive and kind of all over the place. Greatly prefer ADOM
                    • JohnFen 2 years ago
                      I think nethack is OK, but I'm with you about rogue being the best.
                      • InvOfSmallC 2 years ago
                        Did you try Brogue? I love it.
                        • aezart 2 years ago
                          My favorite thing about Brogue is that I don't have to build a character before starting. You just jump in and grow your character naturally through equipment choices.
                      • bitofhope 2 years ago
                        Just a security patch, but I like seeing NetHack featured.

                        Looking forward to 3.7 where they finally address a glaring omission where up until now deities have been weirdly indifferent about people vomiting on altars.

                        • Tepix 2 years ago
                          Where do people play nethack online these days?

                          There's a list of public servers in the wiki at https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Public_server but it's hard to tell at a glance which ones are most popular.

                          em.slashem.me has an SSL certificate which expired last April.

                        • ianlevesque 2 years ago
                          If Dwarf Fortress can get a fantastic GUI, does that mean we can get one for NetHack too? I can dream.
                          • Rietty 2 years ago
                            I would check out Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup if you like roguelikes. It is similar to Nethack and has both tiles and an ASCII version.
                            • riffraff 2 years ago
                              DCSS is great, the web UI works flawlessly.

                              https://underhound.eu:8080/#lobby

                              It has a very different philosophy from NetHack tho, in that you generally have clear trade-offs between your choices (e.g. there isn't a "best" armor or weapon, you have limited skill upgrades and need to choose how to spend them etc..), compared to the "keep buffing up until you're god" you get in NetHack.

                              Both are a lot of fun and frustration.

                              • seanhunter 2 years ago
                                I know this is somewhat sacrilegious to say but I think for all the reasons you say DCSS is a much better game than nethack. Some years ago I went through a phase of being quite into nethack and ascended a couple of times, but really lost interest because there are too many situations where there is only one correct way to play. There’s also just a lot of arbitrary nonsense that they expected you (not sure whether this has changed) to have read the source code to know with zero discoverability in the game.
                                • versteegen 2 years ago
                                  The web UI is excellent, but not flawless... for example, Ctrl-Q is the key to quit the game (so you can start over with a new character). But... that's already taken by the browser.
                                  • nonethewiser 2 years ago
                                    why does the url include the port? I haven't seen that before. What does it mean about how the site works?
                                  • aricz 2 years ago
                                    I'll add Angband to the list. A hack-and-slash roguelike. 1 town, 100 dungeon levels, kill Morgoth and win the game. Diablo 1 was heavily inspired by this game (and Moria).
                                    • thaumasiotes 2 years ago
                                      There are 256 dungeon levels. (Maybe including the town; I'm not sure.)

                                      Dungeon level 100 doesn't have stairs down, but you can get to level 101 by falling through a trap door on level 100.

                                      • flenserboy 2 years ago
                                        Angband is great, and was great to find after having played Moria on and off for a few years. The game that really caught me was one of its variants — Zangband. Not because of the Zelazny connections, but because of the sheer size of the gameworld and everything that could be found in it. It hasn't, however, apparently been updated since the mid-aughts.
                                      • nix23 2 years ago
                                        I add "Caves of Qud" and "Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead" to the list.
                                        • Arrath 2 years ago
                                          Both excellent games.
                                        • unflaggedbird 2 years ago
                                          Adding Brogue [1] to the list. Neat and very well balanced.

                                          [1] https://github.com/tmewett/BrogueCE

                                        • sohkamyung 2 years ago
                                          There are a number of GUI interfaces to NetHack on their wiki [1]

                                          [1] https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Graphical_user_interface

                                          • pabs3 2 years ago
                                            Unfortunately some of these aren't very good in some cases, for eg you can't click on the map in the X11 version under GNOME XWayland and the Qt interface just doesn't start on Debian.
                                            • justusw 2 years ago
                                              Unfortunately that means for me that we are still a few years away from the year of the Linux desktop. /s
                                              • znpy 2 years ago
                                                must be a problem with wayland, i remember playing a lot with the qt interface with no problem under xorg
                                              • stusmall 2 years ago
                                                I spent more time in college than I care to admit playing either Falcon's Eye or Vulture's Eye. Can't really remember which.
                                                • ianlevesque 2 years ago
                                                  Nice! Even a couple mobile versions.
                                                • boothby 2 years ago
                                                  I'm quite fond of Pixel Dungeon. It's quite simplistic compared to NetHack but it's good fun (if you like dying early and often) and looks nice. And, bonus, it's GPL3-licensed and hasn't seen an update since 2015, so not only are there a bunch of really creative forks out there, but they're also open source.
                                                  • chongli 2 years ago
                                                    Shattered Pixel Dungeon is my favourite fork. The game is actively developed and has done a ton of cool things to change up the formula. Really great game to play on a phone!
                                                  • Alex3917 2 years ago
                                                    The iOS app just got updated and I think it has new tiles. What we really need imho is a mobile interface like the one that Beamdog designed for the Switch version of Baldur's Gate. That way it could be played on systems like the Steamdeck.
                                                    • JohnFen 2 years ago
                                                      I had a great GUI for nethack at one time. I forget what is was called, though. There are a number of options, you should try them out.

                                                      Personally, the text interface remains my favorite. The world I build in my head is far richer than any GUI can do.

                                                      • Endy 2 years ago
                                                        Nethack already has a wonderful GUI. Characters are graphical (if it's on the screen, it's a graphic), and there's plenty of tiles you can use.
                                                        • cafeinux 2 years ago
                                                          By your logic, every CLI program is a GUI program. That may be technically not wrong, but it doesn't really mean it's true, according to what people usually mean when they talk about GUIs.
                                                        • koolala 2 years ago
                                                          See Pathos? It's streamlined but very inspired with great UI.
                                                        • SLHamlet 2 years ago
                                                          Oh wow, so happy it's still being updated. One of my first published stories was about the early dev team, but it was even ancient back then:

                                                          https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2015/12/nethack-roguelike-rpg-open...

                                                          Updated since 1987!

                                                          • qrush 2 years ago
                                                            Oh great, just the reminder I need to draw me back in and finally figure out how to ascend as a Caveman, Monk, Healer, or Priest. https://alt.org/nethack/player-stats.php?player=DoctorNick
                                                            • fnordpiglet 2 years ago
                                                              I’m just waiting for rust nethack.
                                                              • jleedev 2 years ago
                                                                Dipping for Excalibur is a great early way to get this.
                                                                • 2 years ago
                                                                • anthk 2 years ago
                                                                  Cool, but I still prefer a patched Slashem =).

                                                                  Altough the references to Terry Pratchett are a good reason to play vanilla Nethack.

                                                                  • lkbm 2 years ago
                                                                    I still haven't tried Slashem. I've been using unnethack for the past couple years. I'm not sure why I ended up trying it after years of vanilla.
                                                                    • bhaak 2 years ago
                                                                      Maybe because it’s better? (:
                                                                  • wellthisisgreat 2 years ago
                                                                    Is there an accessible nethack for iOS?
                                                                  • Lapsa 2 years ago
                                                                    nerf Polymorph
                                                                    • nindalf 2 years ago
                                                                      > NetHack is a single player dungeon exploration game that runs on a wide variety of computer systems, with a variety of graphical and text interfaces all using the same game engine. Unlike many other Dungeons & Dragons-inspired games, the emphasis in NetHack is on discovering the detail of the dungeon and not simply killing everything in sight - in fact, killing everything in sight is a good way to die quickly. Each game presents a different landscape - the random number generator provides an essentially unlimited number of variations of the dungeon and its denizens to be discovered by the player in one of a number of characters: you can pick your race, your role, and your gender.
                                                                      • Yuioup 2 years ago
                                                                        > not simply killing everything in sight - in fact, killing everything in sight is a good way to die quickly

                                                                        Can you expand on this? I've been losing for years. What else can you do besides killing things?

                                                                        • wwweston 2 years ago
                                                                          Pick up stuff and run away, not necessarily in that order.

                                                                          Go shopping. Or have your pet go "shopping" for you.

                                                                          Have your pet kill things. This removes threats and gets you loot and through maybe half a dozen levels, helping you gear up without leveling up (and yes, eventually you want to level up, but you want to do it very slowly if at all while gearing up, because the faster you level up, the more likely it is the game will generate tough monsters you're probably not ready for, like soldier ants or crowds of orcs with poison arrows).

                                                                          • rsaarelm 2 years ago
                                                                            Try to find your way downstairs while avoiding monsters too dangerous to fight and collect more powerful items. Standard NetHack strategy is that you should try to collect an "Ascension kit" of items and know when to use the tools in it.
                                                                            • kzrdude 2 years ago
                                                                              You can run away, and maybe use the E word
                                                                              • Yuioup 2 years ago
                                                                                Yeah Elbereth with a crayon.
                                                                            • 2 years ago
                                                                            • mherdeg 2 years ago
                                                                              Oh jeez, this fixes CVE-2023-24809 - i.e. nethack on shared systems may be risk due to buffer overflow in pre-3.6.7 versions.

                                                                              I was looking at the list of diffs with some confusion about why it's such a small point release ( https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/blob/NetHack-3.6/doc/fixe... ) before I re-read the release notes and saw the security issue.

                                                                              • ilyagr 2 years ago
                                                                                I wish it was "Becoming a demigod allows arbitrary code execution..."
                                                                                • 2 years ago
                                                                                  • planede 2 years ago
                                                                                    Seriously, if the security of nethack is critical to your security, then you probably do something very wrong. There is no reason to not sandbox the hell out of it.
                                                                                    • johnklos 2 years ago
                                                                                      Not all security works in your oversimplified Windows-centric ways.

                                                                                      Since we're not building a VM per user on multi-user systems, we do care about security of the programs we install.

                                                                                      • planede 2 years ago
                                                                                        You don't have to spin up a VM per user to sandbox on Linux. You could use firejail. But traditional UNIX user sandboxing could also go a long way.

                                                                                        I'm just saying that I would never trust nethack to not execute arbitrary code and I would have other security measures in place if my threat model required it. It's written in C. I don't expect most contributors to be security focuesed. The primary use is a user running it on their own machine, which is a completely different threat model.

                                                                                  • steponlego 2 years ago
                                                                                    [flagged]