NetHack 3.0 -- General information
NetHack 3.0 is a new generation of the dungeon exploration game NetHack.
It is a distant descendent of Hack, and a direct descendent of NetHack 2.3.
It is the product of a year-long, very intensive, international team
effort. Many parts of 2.3 were rewritten for NetHack 3.0, and many new
features were added. Judged by size alone, with all options enabled,
NetHack 3.0 is twice as big as 2.3.
While aiming at retaining the general atmosphere of NetHack 2.3, we sought
to open up new directions of development for the game. Alignment, both for
player characters and for monsters, was introduced. Player character
attributes were added and integrated into the game. Special compiled
levels were added, and these open up endless future possibilities. An
endgame was written, for a climactic ending. The code for monsters and
objects was massively rewritten, and many new creatures and items were
added. The self-polymorph code was debugged and greatly enriched. Shops,
too, were enhanced. There are now doors in doorways and chests that may
contain valuables, both of which may be closed or locked. New commands to
open or kick doors and force locks on chests were added. You can also use
kicking as an attack mode, and you can kick objects around if it pleases
you. You will discover the rest for yourselves...
To compensate for the massive additions, we rewrote the code around some
new map fields for an increase in speed up to, if not beyond, that of 2.3.
The code is now organized, and nearly lint-free.
We dedicate the game to the many unknown hackers, both past and future, who
contribute so much to the game.
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Please read items (1), (2) and (3) BEFORE doing anything with your new code.
1. Unpack the code in a dedicated new directory. We will refer to that
directory as the 'Top' directory. It makes no difference what you
call it.
2. If there is no flaw in the packaging, SEVEN sub-directories will be
automatically created, and files will be deposited in them:
a. A 'src' directory, which will contain general *.c files.
b. An 'include' directory, which will contain general *.h files.
c. An 'auxil' directory, which will contain a variety of data files.
d. An 'amiga' directory, which will contain the Amiga-specific files.
e. An 'others' directory, which will contain MSDOS and TOS files.
f. A 'vms' directory, which will contain VMS files.
g. A 'mac' directory, which will contain Macintosh files.
The names of these directories should not be changed, unless you are
ready to go through the makefiles and the makedefs program and change
all the directory references in them.
3. Having unpacked, you should have a file called 'Files' in your Top
directory. This file contains the list of all the files you now SHOULD
have in each directory. Please check the files in each directory
against this list to make sure that you have a complete set.
4. Before you do anything else, please read carefully the file called
'license' in the auxil subdirectory. It is expected that you comply
with the terms of that license, and we are very serious about it. In
particular, you are prohibited by the terms of the license from using
NetHack 3.0 for gainful purposes.
5. If everything is in order, you can now turn to trying to get the program
to compile and run on your particular system. It is worth mentioning
that the default configuration is Ultrix (simply because the code was
housed on such a system). It is also worth mentioning here that NetHack
3.0 is a huge program by comparison with 2.3. If you intend to run it
on a small machine, you'll have to make hard choices among the options
available in config.h.
The files Install.* were written to guide you in configuring the program
for your operating system. Reading them, and the man page, should answer
most of your questions.
At the time of this release, NetHack 3.0 is known to run on:
DEC vaxen running Ultrix and BSD
Sun-3s running SunOS 4.0
Encore Multimax running UMAX 4.2
Bull XPS100 running System V R2.2 or R3.1
Bull DPX/2 200 running System V R3.1
AT&T 3B4000 running System V
AT&T 3B1 running System V (3.51)
AT&T 3B2/600 & 3B2/622 running System V R3.2.1
AT&T 3B2/1000 Model 80 running System V R3.2.2
286 box running Microport SysV/AT (not extensively tested)
IBM PC compatibles running MicroSoft C or Turbo C under MS-DOS
IBM PS/2 and AT compatibles running MicroSoft C under OS/2
Commodore Amiga running Lattice or Manx/Aztec C under
AmigaDOS 1.3 (WorkBench 1.3, KickStart 1.2 or 1.3)
Atari 1040ST under TOS
DEC vaxen running VMS
Data General AViiON systems under DG/UX
Valid Logic Systems SCALD-System
Macintosh (still requires testing)
Mips M2000 running RiscOS 4.1
Gould NP1 running UTX 3/2
Stride 460 running UniStride 2.1
Pyramid 9820x running OSx 4.4c
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If you have problems building the game, or you find bugs in it, the
development team may be reached as
nethack-bugs@linc.cis.upenn.edu.
Patches especially should be directed to this address. If you've changed
something to get NetHack to run on your system, it's likely that others have
done it by making slightly different modifications. By routing your patches
through the development team, we should be able to avoid making everyone else
choose among variant patches claiming to do the same thing, to keep most of
the copies of 3.0 synchronized by means of official patches, and to maintain
the painfully-created file organization. (Remember the mess when everybody
just posted their own patches to 2.3? There were no archived bug-fixes to
give people who got 2.3 after its initial release, so the same bugs kept being
discovered by new batches of people. Please cooperate to keep this from
happening to 3.0.)
It is inevitable that we will reject some proposed additions of new features
either because they do not fit our conception of the game, or because they
require more code than we consider they're worth. If we reject your feature,
you are free, of course, to post the patches to the net yourself and let the
marketplace decide its worth.
All of this amounts to the following: If you decide to apply a free-lanced
patch to your 3.0 code, you are on your own. In our own patches, including
those which will update to 3.1, we will assume that your code is synchronized
with ours.
-- Good luck, and happy Hacking --
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.