Nethack For Gp32

[retrobits]

screenshots on the GP32:​

well, after ordering one of those last mysterious BLUs from craigx, I started playing around with the Mirko sdk and GeePee32 to pass the time until my unit arrived. After only a couple of days, NetHack limped its way to life. (I'm amazed at the quality of the tools provided by Spiv, Mirko, Firefly, Darkfader, and Wintermute... and many others. What took me months on Palm OS, I was able to accomplish in just a few days. Its really a tribute to the quality of the homebrew dev tools and libraries for GP32.)
[CUT]
Anyhow... here it is NetHack 3.4.3.1 for GP32. I managed to get it working on a smaller rez screen than the Zodiac, and it survived the translation very well. The GP32 actually runs a little quicker than the Zod version, and the controls are a little nicer too. The only thing that is a little slower is the I/O to the smc card. But its really not too bad. I am sure there are still lots of bugs. Let me know how you like it (or hate it?)...

some features:

• "whiz-bang" colorized, pure ASCII, tty interface
• Intelligent "screen-clipping" to fit within 320x240 pixels using a 6x8 font
• Extended & colorized status line, adapted to GP32 display
• Mini console for viewing recent "pager" messages and system events.
• Level checkpointing (insurance files for recovering from crashes)
• User definable macros, including editor
• On-screen keyboard
• High score list (Top Ten Scores!)

DOWNLOAD IT HERE

Here is the ReadMe File for GP32 (must read to learn controls).

If you don't have any idea what NetHack is... well, its time to get started. Here's the official Website, Man Page, the Guidebook, and the FAQ.

GP32 Lives!![/CUT]

 

[cozmic]

Oldschool fun!

A what speed does it run? 66mhz?

 

[retrobits]

A what speed does it run? 66mhz?

yep, runs at a blazing 66mhz... lots of battery life!

 

[vaustein]

Excellent!

Sorry to be a beggar, but will tile support be added soon,
For we Nethack fans w/out the patience to memorize the whizbangs?

 

[Alex.]

Thank you very much! It works very well on my Blu+. I wanted to play Nethack for a long time, and now's the perfect time!

- Alex

 

[JaqMs]

Sigh, there goes 20% of my interest in selling my GP32 and buying a GP2X

 

[starpause]

wow, i had NO idea how massive this game was ... 2meg!

too bad the help text and so on is wrapped funny. that sort of thing always distracts me. since it's a known issue, it might get fixed?

anyway, awesome to have this playable, big ups retrobits!!!

the gp32 really is an accomplished, seasoned system ...

 

[cozmic]

The Gp32 owns

 

[Alex.]

Truly the king of handhelds, no doubt!

- Alex

 

[retrobits]

Thanks for the comments people! So far no one's GP32 has crashed or anything? Things are going better than I expected. Has anyone tried to play on a FLU or NLU? Does the display look terrible on NLU? I'm wondering about an inverted color scheme (light background) for NLUs and bright sunlight with BLUs.

The text wrapping in the help system annoys me also. I should be able to fix that one up in .2.

Tiles? Well, in my opinion, the eye candy is lower on the priority list for me than improving gameplay and getting the the Ascii version to "thing of beauty". Tiles are cool for sure. A good set of tiles can make people new to NetHack give it a shot, but I find myself turning them off even when running on a large display. Thats just me. Of course I'm also one of those people who would buy a GP32 just to play NetHack. So you really can't count my opinion for much... other than the fact that I'm the one running the compiler!

Today I played the game for an hour or so and got a little frustrated trying to hit a diagonal to avoid a trap just inside of a door. I made a change so that when you hold down Left-Trigger, it locks the stick for diagonal movement only. Seems to work great so far. This will be in .2.

I'm toying with the idea of chatboard support, but think efforts to improve the on-screen keyboard would probably be higher priority. Chatboard is such a cool little thing, but in the end I find I don't take the time to pull it out (for other emus). When I do, I am really pleased with the results though.

:wub: gp32_console

 

[JaqMs]

When I restored a saved game, the macro interface got messed up (full of empty macros). You might want to investigate into that. But in my opinion, the macro system is a little hard to use due to the controls and because you have to navigate to find the command you need.

 

[BaDToaD]

Excellent.

Will fire this up as soon as possible.

Many Thanks.

 

[peetabix]

Will there be a Gp2x version?

 

[retrobits]

...the macro system is a little hard to use due to the controls and because you have to navigate to find the command you need.

what would be your ideal control system for nethack on a handheld device like GP32 with 8-way directional and 6 buttons?

 

[DavidBeoulve]

I'm going to duck and run for cover as soon as I finish saying this:

Any chance for a GP2X port?
(perhaps it's already in the works? perhaps I have asked something insanely stupid?)

 

[Dzz]

I'm going to duck and run for cover as soon as I finish saying this:

Any chance for a GP2X port?
(perhaps it's already in the works? perhaps I have asked something insanely stupid?)

There's a different gp2x version of Nethack that I'm slowly working on. Search for 'nethack' to find the thread. To this you might answer:

1) Yeah, but this one looks better so I'm hoping it will be ported
2) Yeah, but at the rate you're updating it you'll never finish the port
3) Ok, cool, I'll check it out

Any of those answers are acceptable

 

[retrobits]

since I don't have a GP2X, nor any plans to obtain one (at least in the near future), I will not be working to port this to GP2X. Dzz is working on a different version (and tiles!) that looks very promising. Hopefully both of these projects can benefit each other. I am especially interested in finding the optimal configuration & control scheme for playing rogue-like games on a handheld device. I'd really like to hear from anyone with any strong feelings on the topic.

Dzz: (just browsed the Nethack-GP2X thread) you probably already figured this out by now, but you need to run the dungeon and level compilers on the GP2X.

 

[Dzz]

Dzz: (just browsed the Nethack-GP2X thread) you probably already figured this out by now, but you need to run the dungeon and level compilers on the GP2X.

Thanks! I do know that this is one way to fix my problem but it will be fairly painful to do that just because of the way I went about doing my port. However, I have already probably spent more time trying to figure out a way around doing that than it would have taken to just do the right thing in the first place...

I wish I had a gp32 so I could have a look at what you've done... it looks like great work though!

 

[retrobits]

I wish I had a gp32 so I could have a look at what you've done... it looks like great work though!

Thanks!

This is really my second time around. I started with a Zodiac port last year in October 2005. I remember debugging down into the object loading routines and getting a headache. Nethack has some very twisted code, but very adaptable to many different configurations and displays once you learn whats going on. Angband code as a comparison is much easier to understand, but so much is hardcoded to 80 columns and assuming that you have a single page menu, that its very difficult to get it running on a small screen.

Actually, HERE is an old post of mine showing the level compiler running on the Zod with stderr and stdout piping into seperate emulated terminals. I did the same for GP32.

 

[JaqMs]

...the macro system is a little hard to use due to the controls and because you have to navigate to find the command you need.

what would be your ideal control system for nethack on a handheld device like GP32 with 8-way directional and 6 buttons?

Some kind of alphabetical menu? Like when you select a letter, a list of the commands starting with that letter appears (even commands that have a different letter keystroke from its description). That way, it will be easier to find commands since the first words of the descriptions are usually words like "Put", "Wield", etc. Another way could be to sort the commands by function, such as commands for inventory, actions, system commands, etc. Finally, you could just make a box list of all the commands such as in Rogue for GP32:

http://www.gp32x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,26,339

But of course, you may need to make several pages of them to fit all the Nethack commands. Hope that helps, though I'm not depending on you to add these.