Nethack

[Dzz]

Instead of actually building that functionality into the program itself, it might be easier to just make a script... I'm not sure what return values Nethack has, but say it returns with one value when the player dies, and a different value for if the player quits... then in the script, just have a loop that continuously runs the binary until it exits with a value that indicates that the user chose to quit.

It seems like this could work. I'm not very familiar with shellscripts but I'm sure a few minutes with Google will turn up the info I need. There will still be the extra time to load the game again but that's still better than navigating through the menu to find it again.

 

[Serith]

I've been having a lot of fun with nethack - I havn't discovered anything interesting yet, except that I should really stop eating jackal corpses, nearly every time I've died so far has been from food poisoning :lol:

Are shopkeeper buy/sell rates random? Because he bought a green gem from me for 7 gold pieces, and wanted thousands to buy it back :blink:

Should have killed him...

If you eat corpses immediately after their death, chances of food poisoning is pretty much none, but it only takes a couple turns for corpses to spoil.

When a shopkeeper buys something from you, if it's unidentified, you get paid as much as you would for the cheapest identified item that it could be. So, he paid you 7 gold for your gem, because gems could turn out to be pieces of glass, which are pretty much worthless. When he buys it, he finds out what it really is, and charges based on that.

 

[paulobecker]

Another question for the Nethack experts out there (sorry if it's going too much offtopic). How do I un-blind myself? Yesterday I read a book and it somehow made me blind, so I ended up losing a level 7 character (yeah not much, but it was the furthest I've managed to go so far) because a bunch of question marks kept biting me and I couldn't fight them back ¬¬'

 

[Ze_ro]

Another question for the Nethack experts out there (sorry if it's going too much offtopic). How do I un-blind myself? Yesterday I read a book and it somehow made me blind, so I ended up losing a level 7 character (yeah not much, but it was the furthest I've managed to go so far) because a bunch of question marks kept biting me and I couldn't fight them back ¬¬'

I'm pretty sure blindness from spellbooks is temporary... but it still seems to last an awful long time. Usually, I just tough it out until my vision comes back. One thing that can be helpful is to eat the corpse of a floating eye beforehand, which will give you telepathy. If you're blinded with telepathy, you'll be able to see all the monsters in the level, although you still won't be able to see the walls of the dungeon. Careful though, floating eyes have a nasty habit of paralysing you....

Remember that if you're REALLY screwed, you can always pray to your god. You have no control over what your god will do though, but as long as you don't annoy them (ie, pray too often, smash alters, etc), there's a good chance they'll help you. However, there have been many instances where I wanted them to cure my blindness or stop hallucinations, and all they did was heal me.... but at least it's a good last-ditch effort.

--Zero

 

[Vynx]

I've been having a lot of fun with nethack - I havn't discovered anything interesting yet, except that I should really stop eating jackal corpses, nearly every time I've died so far has been from food poisoning :lol:

Are shopkeeper buy/sell rates random? Because he bought a green gem from me for 7 gold pieces, and wanted thousands to buy it back :blink:

Should have killed him...

If you eat corpses immediately after their death, chances of food poisoning is pretty much none, but it only takes a couple turns for corpses to spoil.

When a shopkeeper buys something from you, if it's unidentified, you get paid as much as you would for the cheapest identified item that it could be. So, he paid you 7 gold for your gem, because gems could turn out to be pieces of glass, which are pretty much worthless. When he buys it, he finds out what it really is, and charges based on that.

Is there an easy way to get items identified? I'm sure I came across scrolls that do that, but perhaps an object? There was a magnifying glass on sale once, would that help?

 

[Astropath]

Blindness, almost always, is temporary - excep for when the creature eats or plucks out your eyes. Even then it's possible to grow new eyes (via various spheres, but I'd rather start anew).
But if you loose sight because of potion explosion, or trap, or spellbook, in most cases you'll be killed by your own pet because you will attack it accidentally while blind, and it would fight back. If you seem to be in a safe spot, do not move. Use "feel" command, and get into the corner so you don't hit your pet accidentally. Rest for 100-500 turns, and you should see again. It's a high chance your pet would fight off the attacks in the meanwhile. Pray, but only if your god is pleased with you.

As for getting items identified - no, there's only a way to tell whether they are cursed or not, and it's only 90% reliable (with pets). Magnifying glass - I don't remember it being a method. Maybe it was added later.

 

[Vynx]

Blindness, almost always, is temporary - excep for when the creature eats or plucks out your eyes. Even then it's possible to grow new eyes (via various spheres, but I'd rather start anew).
But if you loose sight because of potion explosion, or trap, or spellbook, in most cases you'll be killed by your own pet because you will attack it accidentally while blind, and it would fight back. If you seem to be in a safe spot, do not move. Use "feel" command, and get into the corner so you don't hit your pet accidentally. Rest for 100-500 turns, and you should see again. It's a high chance your pet would fight off the attacks in the meanwhile. Pray, but only if your god is pleased with you.

As for getting items identified - no, there's only a way to tell whether they are cursed or not, and it's only 90% reliable (with pets). Magnifying glass - I don't remember it being a method. Maybe it was added later.

I'll try getting a magnifying glass sometime to see what it does.

I've been trying to access www.gp2xgamer.com/nethack to get some more tilesets for this port of the game (the link was in the readme) but it doesn't seem to work. Is there a new or alt link, or anywhere else I can get tilesets for it?

 

[Dzz]

Blindness, almost always, is temporary - excep for when the creature eats or plucks out your eyes. Even then it's possible to grow new eyes (via various spheres, but I'd rather start anew).
But if you loose sight because of potion explosion, or trap, or spellbook, in most cases you'll be killed by your own pet because you will attack it accidentally while blind, and it would fight back. If you seem to be in a safe spot, do not move. Use "feel" command, and get into the corner so you don't hit your pet accidentally. Rest for 100-500 turns, and you should see again. It's a high chance your pet would fight off the attacks in the meanwhile. Pray, but only if your god is pleased with you.

As for getting items identified - no, there's only a way to tell whether they are cursed or not, and it's only 90% reliable (with pets). Magnifying glass - I don't remember it being a method. Maybe it was added later.

I'll try getting a magnifying glass sometime to see what it does.

I've been trying to access www.gp2xgamer.com/nethack to get some more tilesets for this port of the game (the link was in the readme) but it doesn't seem to work. Is there a new or alt link, or anywhere else I can get tilesets for it?

The webpage doesn't exist yet. There are only the three tile sets, I don't know of any others in the correct format. I have not yet decided whether to ship the tile sets with Nethack (to keep the download size smaller). If I don't then they will be available on that page.

But there aren't any more tile sets.

 

[Muncher666]

Blindness, almost always, is temporary - excep for when the creature eats or plucks out your eyes. Even then it's possible to grow new eyes (via various spheres, but I'd rather start anew).
But if you loose sight because of potion explosion, or trap, or spellbook, in most cases you'll be killed by your own pet because you will attack it accidentally while blind, and it would fight back. If you seem to be in a safe spot, do not move. Use "feel" command, and get into the corner so you don't hit your pet accidentally. Rest for 100-500 turns, and you should see again. It's a high chance your pet would fight off the attacks in the meanwhile. Pray, but only if your god is pleased with you.

As for getting items identified - no, there's only a way to tell whether they are cursed or not, and it's only 90% reliable (with pets). Magnifying glass - I don't remember it being a method. Maybe it was added later.

I'll try getting a magnifying glass sometime to see what it does.

I've been trying to access www.gp2xgamer.com/nethack to get some more tilesets for this port of the game (the link was in the readme) but it doesn't seem to work. Is there a new or alt link, or anywhere else I can get tilesets for it?

Magnifying glass sounds like one of them patch features that aren't in vanilla nethack. There are a few other things that are patches that sorta add, but take away from the game, things like empty potion bottles and chemistry sets for making potions, a Hacker class, that sort of thing.

You can identify cursed items by dropping them on altars. For identifying, you can always get a spellbook of identify. This might seem quite unlikely, but if you ever start a game off as a wizard with a magic marker, dip a fairly useless spellbook into a fountain and you will have a blank book. Attempt to write a spellbook of identify - there is something like a 40% chance that wizards will be able to do it.

Though all of that probably won't work till 0.4.

Allan.

 

[Astropath]

Identify gems by applying a touchstone to them. Identify rings by dropping them into sinks and observing the effect (you'll loose the ring, but next time you find such ring it will be already known for you). Weapon/armor becomes known to some extent after you use them for a while.

However, again, my advise to everyone interested in the game would be to download and read official Nethack spoilers - don't worry, it won't spoil your game - instead you will get the idea of its depth and scale, and since you can never find everything in the game, there will be no spoiling the fun.
Otherwise you may miss an awful lot of things.
Have tried quaffing from fountains? Tried kicking sinks? You wouldn't probably know to do it, ne?
And there are tons of other non-apparent things you can do, with strange and amazing effects... Almost everything in the game can be used in a non-standard ways, and almost everything is interactive and has hidden context to it. Take a door for instance. Simple as that, eh? - But I could write a 5-page essay about doors in Nethack, their uses and effects and applications for them.
So do read that Official Spoilers for Nethack, it's an interesting reading too.

 

[Kannibaal]

DZZ,

1) I\'m still playing as an Illiterate barbarian and found out that when you leave the gnomish mines downwards the program exits to the menu (this happened twice). Maybe this is related to the previous bug that when people _entered_ the gnomish mines they where dumped to the GP2x menu.

2) Is it possible to redirect the errors to a logfile via a script? Could be handy, no?

3) I see no difference in tiles between the standard locations and the gnomish mines locations. I think the tiles should reflect the mines as being rocklike.

4) When crashing out of the program, nethack should be able to recover your latest state but I think that the option is not selectable in the startmenu forcing you to start all over again. This frustated me twice when point (1) occured.

For the rest, Looking forward to any progress you make, the system is already really polished and professional looking!

Marco

 

[Dzz]

DZZ,

1) I\'m still playing as an Illiterate barbarian and found out that when you leave the gnomish mines downwards the program exits to the menu (this happened twice). Maybe this is related to the previous bug that when people _entered_ the gnomish mines they where dumped to the GP2x menu.

2) Is it possible to redirect the errors to a logfile via a script? Could be handy, no?

3) I see no difference in tiles between the standard locations and the gnomish mines locations. I think the tiles should reflect the mines as being rocklike.

4) When crashing out of the program, nethack should be able to recover your latest state but I think that the option is not selectable in the startmenu forcing you to start all over again. This frustated me twice when point (1) occured.

For the rest, Looking forward to any progress you make, the system is already really polished and professional looking!

Marco

Thanks, I'm trying to figure out the best way to deal with the crashes that a few people have reported. Thanks for your feedback. Getting these ironed out will be somewhat time-consuming and it's the major reason that this is not yet a public release. If the program crashes there is no helpful error that can be rediredcted anywhere.

The walls of the gnomish mines will look correct in version 0.4.

 

[Kannibaal]

[/quote]
Getting these ironed out will be somewhat time-consuming and it's the major reason that this is not yet a public release. If the program crashes there is no helpful error that can be rediredcted anywhere.
[/quote]

Thanks for the info, I think nethack has one of the most complex interfaces in game design due to its history and every option included. Making it as easy as it is now already shows that you put a lot of effort in thinking about the interface.

Here is another thing to think about (let me know when I start to get irritating)

I like the "press select twice" option while standing on a staircase to go down or up.
and the "press A twice" to shoot something from the quiver.

Maybe there could be a different assignment to "press b twice"? Dropping items is something I do not often, eat I do a lot.

And maybe select twice while not on a staircase could trigger a different often used option?

You where right in your assesment that it starts to get irritating when lots of items are stacked and you get the same message over and over again (there are multiple items here) . Your option to put it in the message window should be a good solution. Maybe a notifier window showing for 2 seconds could be an idea?

Thanks,

Marco

 

[Vynx]

Is the help section broken by the way? I can't seem to access it in this version - just handy for reference, saves me digging it up on my PC or out-of-game

 

[dsd28]

This game sounds really cool. I love long involved rpgs. Can't wait till I get my GP2X so I can try it out.

 

[paulobecker]

This game sounds really cool. I love long involved rpgs. Can't wait till I get my GP2X so I can try it out.

It sure is long, but I can't say much about involved. Even though I still haven't played it much, it seems to me like it barely has a storyline. As in, less than Diablo story-wise. But even so, one can get involved without a story if the gameplay is really interesting.

 

[DaveN]

This game sounds really cool. I love long involved rpgs. Can't wait till I get my GP2X so I can try it out.

www.nethack.org

Get the tiles version if you play it the first time.

Cheers, David

 

[dsd28]

This game sounds really cool. I love long involved rpgs. Can't wait till I get my GP2X so I can try it out.

www.nethack.org

Get the tiles version if you play it the first time.

Cheers, David

thanks!

 

[Astropath]

3) I see no difference in tiles between the standard locations and the gnomish mines locations. I think the tiles should reflect the mines as being rocklike.

4) When crashing out of the program, nethack should be able to recover your latest state but I think that the option is not selectable in the startmenu forcing you to start all over again.

Marco, I'm sorry. Cause you were asking Dzz, not me, but the thing is - Nethack has few unique features that seem to be its "Holy Writ".
First - the appearance of walls and stuff. It's still an ASCII game, heavely relying on the gameplayer's imagination, and training it. Replacing ASCII art with pixel art is fine, but introducing new type of wall is... oh, my, it's blasphemy, I'm afraid.

Second - I, off course, would definitely love not having my game lost because of batteries dying. But recovering last state, imho, is not going to work, because it would open the door for cheating:
"Oh, I run into a bunch of Sandworms while I'm paralyzed, so I think I'll turn the GP2X off in the midgame (let's pretend that the batteries run out) and then restart from the last recovered moment".
I'm sorry, but Nethack's phylosophy is: Dead is dead, and there's no turning back, no restoring the game.

However, I agree that loosing the game because of dead batteries is lame and miserable, so, maybe it's worthwhile to work on a better warning system - a system to actively warn a player that the battery is about to die. Maybe even forcing save&quit when the battery gets on "empty" level +10 minutes. Just an idea...

 

[DavidBeoulve]

*chuckles* I suppose that makes Marty a blasphemer. He plays Nethack on the PC and was the first guy to show it to me outside of me reading about it online, and he had this utility to "manage" his characters on the side.

Oh well. Little did I know at the time.

Given the format (GP2X) I'm not against sacrilegious compromises - delete the character file once death has occurred. Will folks cheat? Sure. But they can still backup their file before playing the game, right? It's all about usability and playability.

That does not come from a perspective of "I know Nethack," but rather, "I'm a handheld user." Feel free to tell me why I'm evil for such a suggestion