![]() Microsoft Windows (the standard NetHackW.exe available from, or available on the Windows Store).The best known are probably the officially supported ports for Windows, Mac and Linux: Using a graphical interface allows the game to be played with tiles instead of ASCII graphics. From this history arises a kind of authority.Īs well as the standard ASCII interface, many official and unofficial graphical user interfaces are available. It is one of the few computer games widely played by people who are younger than it. NetHack is history: Descending from Rogue, NetHack has 38 years of development behind it. You will probably learn some C, and possibly get into heated debates about the merits of pseudorandom number generators, expected returns, inconsistencies between competing mythologies, and the ethics of exploiting bugs. You may dive into the very source code, looking to explain that one-in-a-thousand shot you just pulled off. You will consult tables and guides in search of an edge because everyone knows the best way to have fun in a game is to take 20 until you beat an impossible DC, rather than try to actually succeed at something hard yet possible. You will stop worrying about your score, and start considering questions of optimality, efficiency, and elegance. You will learn, eventually, and move onto higher concerns. NetHack is deep: in your first game, you will die quickly, and come back worrying about how to survive. Put simply, NetHack is a harsh mistress, whose respect you must earn. NetHack is unforgiving: if you die, you stay dead. NetHack is hard: while other games can be completed in an afternoon, you may go years without finishing NetHack. Its culture is deeply intertwined with that of the Unix systems, and indeed is a staple fixture on any good Unix system - a known quantity, ageless, familiar, and soothing whatever hairy command-line tasks are required, nethack(6) is always there. The programmer is drawn to NetHack as an extension of the operating system. While other games are dated by their interfaces, NetHack is preserved in ascetic purity. Just as a mathematician seeks elegant expressions over fuzzy generalities, NetHack eschews graphics in favor of perfectly crafted, well-defined ASCII characters. On the surface, the game is a hack'n'slash Dungeons and Dragons clone, but its subtle sense of humor and intellectual rigor elevate it from the faintly nerdy to the sharply geeky. Mathematicians, programmers, physicists, engineers, linguists and writers all feel a strong pull, though anyone with an eye for detail, a sense of completeness, a respect for complexity, and a head for numbers will be at home. "I think this page should be a kind of FAQ, as it may be the first place strangers will visit upon seeing the Main Page." Your sacrifice is consumed in a flash of light!-More.
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