back to article NetHack to drop support for floppy disks, Amiga, 16-bit DOS and OS/2

Roguelike ASCII adventure game NetHack has just received its second upgrade in 12 years. NetHack 3.6.1 follows 2015’s version 3.6, which was the game’s first update in a decade. The new update allows knives and stilettos to be used as can-openers, ends the pernicious practice of diagonal jumping through open doorways and …

  1. Shadow Systems

    Lamentable but understandable.

    Support for a device that's gone the way of the Dodo as far as 99% of the users out there are concerned isn't a high point on their list of things to keep alive. Only the smaller subset of users that care about the game itself (& ones like it) might care about a FD compatible code, but how many of those have a FD to use in the first place?

    *Shakes head sadly*

    It's like lamenting that we no longer use punch cards, MFM HDD's, or Beta video cassette tapes. Or horse buggies, or chipped stone axes, or... or... or Big Ben's roof as a spot from which to moon the French!

    *Cough*

    I'll get my coat, it's the one with my ASCII in the pocket...

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Lamentable but understandable.

      Agreed.

      Except for "the roof of Big Ben". Big Ben is the bell, not the tower. The bell is mounted in the Elizabeth tower.

      I suggest using the Post Office Tower for mooning purposes, as it is taller.

      https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/palace/architecture/palacestructure/towers-of-parliament/

      1. Shadow Systems

        Re: Lamentable but understandable.

        Woot! Thanks! I'll go climb it like King Kong & waggle my private parts at their aunties! =-)p

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: Lamentable but understandable.

          "Woot! Thanks! I'll go climb it like King Kong & waggle my private parts at their aunties! =-)p"

          Since it's the BT (nee Post Office) Tower we are taking about, then Shirley you mean "climb it like Kitten Kong"

        2. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: Lamentable but understandable.

          " I'll go climb it like King Kong"

          This being England, perhaps Kitten Kong is more appropriate, and you can get there on a bicycle built for three.

    2. Timmy B

      Re: Lamentable but understandable.

      "or chipped stone axes"

      Oi! I still make stone axes!

    3. jake Silver badge

      Re: Lamentable but understandable.

      Strangely enough, this weekend I used punch cards (testing my IBM 1401 restoration), replaced an MFM drive (on an old Coherent system that runs a greenhouse ... due to be modernized. Eventually.), fired up a Betamax (pulled a wedding video off a long-lost tape for a friend), and drove a buggy (buckboard, actually). A stone axe, though, there you've got me. As penance, I'll split some kindling with one when I fire up the bread oven on Tuesday.

    4. Rich 11

      Re: Lamentable but understandable.

      It's like lamenting that we no longer use punch cards

      I still have a stash of punch cards in the bottom drawer of my desk. Never know when you need roach...

    5. Omgwtfbbqtime

      "...or chipped stone axes"

      Speak for yourself!

    6. Timmy B

      Re: Lamentable but understandable.

      We do actually use chipped stone axes of a sort in advanced surgery such as eye surgery where obsidian blades beat anything made of metal.

      We also still build with knapped flint .

    7. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: Lamentable but understandable.

      We might not use tape much any more, but Linux will still be (ab)using tar for years to come.

    8. J. R. Hartley

      Re: Lamentable but understandable.

      The Amiga version won't die.

      1. phuzz Silver badge

        Re: Lamentable but understandable.

        The Amiga was too beautiful to live.

  2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    The likely loss of the platforms and code mentioned above may not perturb many: Rouguelike games are a very niche concern these days.

    Someone is not doing their duty of infecting the young ones.

    Once infected, they stay infected. Till life prints out a tombstone in ASCII.

    Jokes aside - as depth and breadth it remains The Game. One you can play for decades and still fail to win. My best achievement is getting up to the Astral plane and killing two of the 3 riders - the third one (Death) got me.

    1. Sandtitz Silver badge

      "My best achievement is getting up to the Astral plane and killing two of the 3 riders - the third one (Death) got me."

      I started with Nethack in late 80s and it took me about 15 years to ascend my first character. After that it became easier when I knew what to do in the endgame and learned to play it more safe. Perhaps if I'll ever get the Monk to ascend I'll quit. Or at least wait for a next major version with new challenges.

      BTW, you don't have to kill the riders to win the game, although you usually need to kill at least one.

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        I honestly thought winning was impossible

        I thought the only endgame was to die.

        Winning was to die well, while losing was to die from something daft and easily avoided.

        I guess I'm just really bad at this game!

        1. Shadow Systems

          Re: I honestly thought winning was impossible

          Don't feel bad, you're not alone in that. It took me reading all the various spoilers before I could "cheat" (follow in the footsteps of folks that had gone before) well enough to get far enough into the game not to die at every opportunity. I thought it was my lot in life to find *every* gruesome, hideous, & embarassing way to die in that damned game as was possible, if not having the game generate fresh & inventive new ways to kill me. I was about this || close to abandoning it as utterly unwinnable (at least by me) when I found my first spoiler forum on it. I spent the next hour reading, taking copious notes, & groaning at all the "What? But you're not supposed to be able to DO that!" moments before diving back into the game. After that it got much easier, but *only* because I was "cheating". If it weren't for the spoilers I'd still be dying just after it drew the first screen.

          "Hey look! That's just not right! The help file says that symbol means 'Food', not 'Dragon'! You piece of shit!"

          *Cough*

          Don't feel bad about never winning the game, you're not alone in that particular train of thought. =-J

      2. Terje
        Coat

        Playing aggressively early on, and knowing what to wish for makes it a whole lot easier.

        Mine's the erodeproof +3 gray dragon scale mail

    2. jake Silver badge

      Start the kids on Wumpus.

      Show 'em how to modify it to suit themselves. The more kids playing and trying to kill off each other, the better. Most find it to be great fun, once they learn the basic(s). The C version (part of the BSD games package) is a decent tool to get kids involved in more complex coding.

      After this indoctrination, they will probably discover NetHack all by themselves. My Daughter, and most of my nieces & nephews did.

      1. John Sager

        Re: Start the kids on Wumpus.

        Hey, that brings back memories! I wrote an implementation of Hunt the Wumpus in Coral 66 running on ICL 1900 series machines back in the late 70s. 300 baud dial-up with thermal paper terminals - that was real hacking!

        On the subject of Software Archaeology I'm currently trying to resurrect some instrumentation software from the early 90s - Visual Basic 3 on Windows 3.x. I salute the retro gamers who thought developing dosbox was a good idea. That runs Windows for Workgroups fine under Linux. With an old version VB3 decompiler, Visual C++ 1.52 on WinXP in a VM and IDA on Linux, I've sussed out how it all works. So now I've actually managed to build a 16-bit DLL that successfully emulates the driver for the long-dead ISA GPIB card that was originally used by the software. That's probably more ancient x86 hacking than I ever did at the time - talk about climbing up the learning curve again! Next step is to build some 'hardware' in dosbox to talk to my USB to GPIB adapter.

        1. Korev Silver badge
          Boffin

          Re: Start the kids on Wumpus.

          Out of interest, what is it that you’re trying to resurrect?

          1. Rich 11

            Re: Start the kids on Wumpus.

            A lich lord.

          2. John Sager

            Re: Start the kids on Wumpus.

            HP53305A s/w for driving a HP53310A modulation domain analyser. A rather Cinderella instrument but good for us as they are cheap now on eBay.

        2. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

          Re: Start the kids on Wumpus.

          I played Hunt the Wumpus on an HP41 Calculator back in 1979

    3. brotherelf
      Pirate

      The young ones may be sidetracked by Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, which has a crafting system that makes NetHack's alchemy look simple. And zombies.

    4. Bernard M. Orwell

      "Rouguelike games are a very niche concern these days"

      Nuh-Uh. Do a quick search on Steam for Roguelike and goggle at the myriad returns. Of course, us old school purists might gripe that many of them are not really Roguelike, but it remains they are still very present as a concept in gaming.

      Now, back to Dwarf Fortress with me.

      1. Orv Silver badge

        I love hearing about other people's Dwarf Fortress games, but after looking at the user interface I think I'd rather do something more simple and intuitive -- like program an implementation of Eliza in TECO.

        1. jake Silver badge

          TECO?

          That anything like EMACS Lisp?

  3. Christian Berger

    Hmm... that's an odd choice

    I mean many of us know many architectures which will likely die before 16-Bit DOS, AmigaOS or OS/2. After all Microsoft already dropped Windows support with it's newest 64-Bit operating systems, so Windows software won't work anymore unless it's using the new Win32 APIs.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Hmm... that's an odd choice

      Don't know why they're dropping Amiga, it's quite UNIX-like.

      E.g. Vim started on the Amiga then was ported to UNIX.

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: Hmm... that's an odd choice

        Vim was a clone of the vi clone stevie as ported to the Amiga.

        vi -> stevie -> Amiga stevie -> Vim

        1. Dan 55 Silver badge

          Re: Hmm... that's an odd choice

          Stevie was also ported back to UNIX but it withered away and died.

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: Hmm... that's an odd choice

            stevie's not dead, it's just resting. I still run across it occasionally in the wild.

            1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
              Thumb Up

              Re: Hmm... that's an odd choice

              stevie's not dead, it's just resting."

              Yeah, beautiful plumage too!

  4. AMBxx Silver badge
    Coat

    Bastards

    Downloaded for first time this morning. Now I'm hooked.

    So many commands though!

    1. AMBxx Silver badge

      Re: Bastards

      Not such a good start:

      ----------

      / \

      / REST \

      / IN \

      / PEACE \

      / \

      | XX|

      | 79 Au |

      | killed by a |

      | jackal |

      | |

      | |

      | 2018 |

      *| * * * | *

      _________)/\\_//(\/(/\)/\//\/|_)_______

      Goodbye XX the Ranger...

      You died in The Dungeons of Doom on dungeon level 2 with 162 points,

      and 79 pieces of gold, after 731 moves.

      You were level 1 with a maximum of 15 hit points when you died.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Bastards

        It's a rite of passage.

        It's your first, first-level death. Trust me, it won't be your last.

        I've been playing Nethack since version 3.0 (1989-1990?) and I _still_ haven't managed to ascend a character, and I've lost count of the number of times I've been done in by a grid bug or similar low-level critter.

        For added lulz, try one of the variants such as Slash'EM (Nethack on speed ... and insanely difficult at times)

        If you really want to do your head in, try the Adventure Mode in Dwarf Fortress.

        I accept absolutely no responsibility for lost productivity :-)

        1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

          Re: Bastards

          For added lulz, try one of the variants such as Slash'EM (Nethack on speed ... and insanely difficult at times)

          That's what my older one is playing. I find it too difficult and stay with good old Nethack as shipped on Debian.

      2. Joseph Haig

        Re: Bastards

        Watch out for those ants. They are nasty.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WTF

    "Players whose characters are blinded may welcome news that eating a nurse’s corpse will cure that affliction."

    Is this for real?!

    1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

      Re: WTF

      "Players whose characters are blinded may welcome news that eating a nurse’s corpse will cure that affliction."

      Is this for real?!

      Yes. It's Jeremy Hunt's latest plan to "improve" the NHS.

    2. handleoclast

      Re: WTF

      You probably still get penalized for cannibalism, though.

      Easier to carry a unicorn horn.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: WTF

      Yes.

      Yes it is.

      The Nethack dev team have a well deserved reputation for being ... creative.

      Nurses have (or at least had) other uses, too.

      Mind, I'd like to think that by the time you're encountering nurses you'd at least have acquired ESP in some form, rendering blindness a minor inconvenience at worst (and it comes in handy when you go up against Medusa). Easiest way to do this is by chowing down on a floating eye corpse. Bon appetit!

      Personally, I find hallucinating to be far more bothersome, especially on some of the more ... interesting levels.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Hattie Jacques and Barbara Windsor in "Carry On Again Nurse"

        "The Nethack dev team have a well deserved reputation for being ... creative."

        Creative as in "weird, creepy and possibly insane"? Yes, I can see that!

        "Nurses have (or at least had) other uses, too."

        "Other uses"?! I really don't want to know... :-O

        And here was me thinking that Nethack was just a geek-favoured 70s mainframe style hack and slash involving experience points and stereotype dwarves with oversized axes.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Hattie Jacques and Barbara Windsor in "Carry On Again Nurse"

          "Other uses"?! I really don't want to know... :-O

          "Nurse dancing" is the canonical one - see here (but you have to be naked to do it)

          As for being a '70s flavoured hack and slash', it has a lot more playability (and re-playability) than a lot of the shite that seems to get peddled these days. 'Course, to take full advantage of that glorious ASCII you really need something like this.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Hattie Jacques and Barbara Windsor in "Carry On Again Nurse"

            Hmm. That site also informs me that "a nurse is a hostile human monster. Nurses can attack you in melee, doing minor damage. [..] What is so special about the Nurse, however, is that if you are wearing no armor and wielding nothing (no weapon or other item, such as a magic lamp etc), the nurse will instead heal you."

            I've no idea whether this makes the original quote seem less weird in context, or whether I want to question the overall sanity of the designers further!

            ""Nurse dancing" is the canonical one - see here (but you have to be naked to do it)"

            *Of course* you do! (Runs away quickly)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No one will care

    Anyone running ancient platforms doesn't want to play the 2018 version of the game, but the version that was current back when that ancient platform was not ancient.

  7. ibmalone

    Every few years something happens to remind me that BeOS existed at one time. (Never actually touched it.)

    1. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

      The BeOS lovers will downvote me for this, but it really was A Bit Shit. Yes, it had some interesting sound capabilities and was multiprocessor capable out of the box, but beyond that?

      The networking code was awful (and they tried to invent their own API, that didn't work), printing was non existent, OpenGL was unaccelerated, the multimedia codecs were sub par, and the supported hardware and software list was small (and even more tiny on PPC).

      Giving it a go coming from OS/2 I was underwhelmed, when OS/2 could already do almost all of what it did, but better.. Instead, I moved to NT.

      I do have an R4.5 Pro disc, and have installed BeOS PPC on a Powermac 4400, but I'm not fussed about booting it up very often.

      1. Orv Silver badge

        I played with the PC version back in the day. It had some neat ideas, but was half-baked at best, and more mainstream OS's pretty quickly overtook it. I think it was the first time I encountered software audio mixing. (I highlighted a bunch of MP3s and clicked 'Play', expecting them to queue, but instead it played them all simultaneously. "Do the thing that's impressive instead of the thing a sane person would want" seemed to be a BeOS motto.)

  8. Antonius_Prime

    Has anyone told the BoFH's?

    I recall that Simon was running it on a PDP in one story. Wonder what our Kiwi Wonder will make of that?

  9. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

    I might be daft enough to maintain the OS/2 version

    Not bothered about the rest of them, though. Might spend ten minutes seeing if a new DOS version can be created by taking the win32 console code and running it through HXDOS that support a subset of win32 calls. Given DOS Nethack is already protected mode/extended memory based, keeping it alive seems utterly pointless.

    I have all the other PC based OS (including BeOS PPC..), but no, I think not.

    Roguelikes are alive and kicking, however. Dwarf Fortress is popular, and there's a large number of 'roguelike' action games out there. True, their interpretation is normally 'randomly generated world and permadeath with bones equipment drop', and it's realtime, but at least the legacy is being recognised.

    I have finished Nethack, but only by save scumming (yes, I know). When I do play it I'm usually not careful enough and end up dying in the mines, or just above the castle.

  10. Joel 1

    Best graphics of any game

    Far better graphics than any other game - interfaces directly to the imagination. The things I have seen...

    1. handleoclast

      Re: Best graphics of any game

      Did mushrooms enhance the graphics interface?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I just want to be worshipped as a god by another universe of conscious beings, 'k?

    Can we teach an AI to play a roguelike? Perhaps allow the structure and connectome of the neural net to be algorithmically defined and inherited, and set thousands of them exploring, living, fighting, dying, breeding and competing for resources in a massive dungeon? And maybe allow them to communicate, let them send messages that others within a certain radius can hear? And just set it going on a server somewhere and forget about it for a few years...

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: I just want to be worshipped as a god by another universe of conscious beings, 'k?

      When you return after several decades, there's just one tactic being used by everyone which basically consists of "attack everything, throw everything at everyone, steal every item, scoff all the food".

      AI really doesn't have a way to learn at all. It's just a "natural selection" of algorithm parameters, usually chosen pseudo-randomly.

      We can't even get Mario to complete any given Mario Bros level - look up Mario AI... it's fine if you train it forever on one simple level, but then it has to be completely retrained for any other. Or even if you slightly move one block.

      Don't believe the AI hype. It's brute-force and showmanship, that's all.

    2. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

      Re: I just want to be worshipped as a god by another universe of conscious beings, 'k?

      There's at least one program that plays Nethack, and plays it well - better than most players.

      Move slowly, enscribe Elbereth a lot, check each item before using it, etc.

      Personally I have a terrible habit of kicking sinks or quaffing from fountains, both of which can be beneficial, but are highly risky..

  12. MOH

    Rouguelike?

  13. ravenviz Silver badge
    Pirate

    Many a fond memory of playing Hack then Nethack at poly in the 80's, oft a lecture missed due to playing, and still playing at midnight, getting dinner from the vending machine. Worthy notes: cockatrices, David's Treasure Zoo, swarms of orcs and bees, Maud, FOOBIE BLETCH, 'Nothing happened', wearing a cursed ring of levitation, and a wand of death bouncing back to you!

    If you like the playability and want a modern take, try Wazhack.

    1. cs9

      Install Unity to play the browser version, which is free up to 300 feet, after that insert $10 to continue?

      Even EA is not that shameless.

      Do I have to pay for inventory slots too?

  14. GeoGreg

    NetHack taught me how to compile software

    Back in the Olden Tymes (about 1989), NetHack was one of the first programs I built from source (on a Sun running SunOS 4.1.3). I learned all sorts of things about Makefiles and such. And it's not cheating if you learn it from reading the source! (Even when I played it frequently, I still never ascended a character.)

    You are paralyzed. The grid bug bites! The grid bug bites! The grid bug bites! --More--

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: NetHack taught me how to compile software

      Me too ... remember the excitement of downloading patches (as a set of part files from from reg.games.roguelike.nethack) then seeing the magic of patch upgrade the source (well, almost maggic ... there were invariably a number of .rej files to consult to fix rejected patches) and then 'make nethack'.

      Haven't played it for years ... about time I tried again. I never managed to ascend a character ... think I once thought I was getting to the end only to find I had a "fake amulet of yendor"

      As for its humous messages ... I remember the double take the first time (durign a game that seemed to be going quite well) I found an apple, ate it and saw a "core dumped" message!

  15. Barleyman

    Ascension

    After years (and years) of playing on and off, I had an epiphany. Instead of usual amulet of reflection + gray dragon scale mail, I started using amulet of life saving, cloak of magic and silver dragon scale mail.

    That "extra life" just made all the difference. No more suddenly dying because you didn't realize there was a Mumak in that blob and just *how much* damage you were taking per turn.

    The second boost was statuscolors patch. It's surprisingly effective when HP changes color at specified thresholds. re: Mumak situation. It's now included in Nethack 3.6.x (as status hilites) so no need to get a patched binary.

  16. elenmirie

    Bot ascensions

    Actually, people have made bots that can ascend nethack... afaik they can only do dwarf valks though. They're kind of passe now... I guess until someone makes one that can ascend complex spellcaster rather than just a brute force valk.

    Anyone who wants to play on a public server can cruise over to https://www.hardfought.org/nethack/, where you will find the latest release and a load of variants!

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