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Though it is not really mutiplayer, a community based around Nethack (1987?) still very much exists and the game is still updated. It is an ASCII RPG that you should likely check out at least for a bit if RPGs are your thing.
Paying for NetHack is like buying bottled water. Just.. WHY
Also, how does this not go against NetHack's license agreement, particularly this part?
>cause the whole of any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is a derivative of NetHack or any part thereof, to be licensed at no charge to all third parties on terms identical to those contained in this License Agreement (except that you may choose to grant more extensive warranty protection to some or all third parties, at your option)
Nethack has a copyleft license similar to the GPL. If a program or library links with it or is derived from it, must remain open-source, and it must retain the Nethack public license. Being a truly open-source license, the NH-GPL gives developers the right to sell derivative works, which is what the Vulture guys seem to be doing (A fair price for the convenience of having the game hosted on steam). However, if they ever close source the project, they will be violating nethack's copyright and can be sued by nethack's developers.
I read the licensing agreement just now and it looks like you copy and pasted, part of one sentence while removing the rest of the context...the rest of the context which talks about the terms of COMMERCIAL distribution.
Now I'm not a legal expert but before anyone grabs their torches and pitchforks just take a minute to read the WHOLE license agreement, not just a fraction of one sentence.
Also for anyone not aware there are also numerous versions of Nethack available for IOS and Android for sale.
If you read the whole license agreement which is only 4 paragraphs long, paragraph 2 and 3 both talk about the terms of commercial distribution.
>c) You may charge a distribution fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You may copy and distribute NetHack (or a portion or derivative of it, under Paragraph 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Paragraphs 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: a) accompany it with the complete machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Paragraphs 1 and 2 above; or, b) accompany it with full information as to how to obtain the complete machine-readable source code from an appropriate archive site. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution.)
If you like Vulture but don't want to pay for it, it can still be downloaded for free. If you don't like Vulture, there are numerous other frontends for playing Nethack and if you're a purist...there's always plain ole' Nethack of course.
Roguelikes! That's the sort of game you find in the FOSS world.
There's the grandaddy of 'em all: Angband.
But there its grandaddy: Nethack.
There's also its grandaddy, Rogue, but I can't find a properly good place to link to for an authoritative version of the game that started it all.
Since the developers of Dwarf Fortress spent a year implementing beekeeping, I can only imagine what the game would be like if it were FOSS. It'd have beekeeping, wasp-keeping, hornet-keeping, and naked-mole-rat-keeping.
Roguelikes originated back in the day before actual graphics on computers, when everything was text. I remember reading an argument on fidonet in which one grognard was complaining that introducing colour to the text-based graphics had completely spoiled the game.
They're typically complex and quite hard, too. If you want to try a roguelike in the traditional mode, can I suggest Nethack. Your character sprite will be an @ symbol, so if you like you can add the Falcon's Eye mod which introduces isometric sprite-based graphics (completely spoiling the game, obviously).
You are doing yourself a disservice, sir. Not quite as steep a learning curve, but if you cut off both my hands, I could still count how many people I know who've beaten it on my remaining fingers.
Some 8-bit music :):
echo "main(i){for(i=0;;i++)putchar(((i*(i>>8|i>>9)&46&i>>8))^(i&i>>13|i>>6));}" | gcc -x c - && ./a.out | aplay
Source: http://www.xkcdb.com/9067
In case that I win, you can keep the key; I don't use steam anyway. Nethack for the win^^
http://www.nethack.org/v330/info.html
The "net" refers to how the devs networked to work on the new version of Hack. I mean, the game was released in the 80's adding "net" certainly did not imply a multiplayer game back then.
The NetHack dev team is still alive and kicking. They posted an update on the official website about four months ago regarding a (new) leaked version of the game: http://www.nethack.org/
September 21, 2014 Announcement
>The NetHack Development Team feels it is necessary to publicly address an issue that has surfaced in the last week.
>Recently a NetHack source distribution has appeared, claiming to be NetHack 3.5 or 3.5.0 or 3.4.4.
>This claim is partially correct. This is our code. However it was not released by us or with our authorization. This code is not ready for release: it is unfinished, unpolished, and almost certainly very buggy. It has not been play-tested for balance or functionality. It is best considered a partial and unfinished rough draft. We will not be supporting this code, nor will we be releasing binaries or bugfixes for it. It will not be available through our website.
>Due to this incident and to prevent confusion, we will not now nor in the future release anything with a version number of 3.4.4, 3.5, or 3.5.0.
>We thank those of you who play and develop both NetHack and its many variants for your support and encouragement at this time and over the many years NetHack and its progeny have and continue to evolve.
Yes, they're technically breaching the public NetHack GPL since the linked Steam libraries remain closed.
However, note that the public NetHack GPL does not have to apply to them. It is in the power of the NetHack copyright holders to give the Vulture team NetHack under a different license.
Perhaps you should go play some of the original Roguelikes, such as Nethack, Angband, or perhaps even Rogue (though that is getting pretty old). They're all free, and many other free variants besides.
Once you have done that, you will not mistake the genre for a shoot-em-up any longer. (To put it lightly.)
First off, buy some torn jeans and add rivet spikes all down the legs. You'll need sunglasses, and a mac, any mac will do, the older the better though.
Then put on your outfit, sit down and grab the software from: http://www.nethack.org/v343/ports/download-mac.html
In no time you will be furiously typing codes into a cryptic ascii hacking window and looking stylish while doing so.
If you're really putting the "patient" into patient gaming, you might try Nethack. It's fast approaching its 30th Anniversary, and it's a turn-based, windowed, roguelike dungeon crawler. It's also free! It is, however, a very complex game, and a bit old-school.
If you want something a bit faster, Nuclear Throne is another roguelike, windowed by default and very system-light. It's a very fast-paced, shoot 'em up, bullet-hell game, but it does have a pause function. It is also extremely difficult, so you're never more than a couple seconds from dying, which is a convenient break to go back to OW. Probably my favourite on this list (I play it during OW queues myself).
There's also Hotline Miami, another super fast-paced shoot 'em up, but much less difficult than NT and not a roguelike. It's a bit more story-driven than the previous two, but on level replays in particular it's good for short, quick games.
According to the developer, Vulture no longer retains any code from the original FE fork.
Have you read the Nethack License agreement? It clearly allows for commercial distribution. There are only 4 paragraphs. Read paragraph 2 and 3. Pay particular attention to 3a. That is what this falls under. According to 3a. for commercial distribution (which is allowed) the developer must include complete machine source code with the distribution. Then read the sentence right after 3b. It defines complete source code as the orginal or updated source code for Nethack.
So under the terms of the license agreement the developer has to include the source code for Nethack 3.4.3 which incidentally is 3.4mb. He doesn't have to include the source code for Vulture or any third party libraries such as the Steamworks library. That said, Vulture is and will still continue to be open source anyway.
So...why would you pay for this? If you like this frontend, want to support the developer who has worked on this and other Roguelike projects for free up to this point and want the Steam features. (It can also be purchased on Desura)
If you don't want to pay for it...guess what? You don't have to! It's open source! And you can download the binaries for it supporting multiple platforms for free too.
A lot of people have been trying to turn this into a storm in a teacup and this isn't even the first commercial frontend for Nethack either!
So in summation, yes, the Nethack license agreement does allow for commercial distribution. If you don't want to pay a few bucks to support the developer, you can still get Vulture for free anyway.
I suggest Nethack. Truly a great game. I like playing with the GUI, and unless you're a very old school gamer, I would suggest the same. I should mention that Nethack isn't for everyone, it's hard, rather, it's a game most people NEVER beat. I played on and off for 3 years and I've yet to ascend(the term used when you beat the game). However, beating the game isn't what makes it fun(though im guessing it would make it a tad bit better) It's that every time you play the game, it's different, and you gotta figure out all the nuances and changes, and even then you'll likely die. And when you die, you must start over(saves are deleted when you die) hence why so few actually beat the game.
edit So I decided to check out Dungeons of Dredmor since a few others mentioned it in this thread. It's clear that whomever created the game was a big Nethack fan, and they wanted to pay homage to the old school Roguelikes. Yes it is fun, also lots of humor, yes it is annoyingly frustrating....I just killed myself trying to figure out what a "Narwhal Wand" would do. Then I killed myself again not more then 2 seconds into my second life by "Random teleport" into a group of mobs. "Because dying if fun"
Those credits appear to be taken from the 3.4.3 Guidebook.
The devteam have not been anonymous so much as keeping game discussions between themselves, lest they be inundated by every @ and his d.
I doubt we'll see another release. Last I heard, the devteam had noted that they'd rather see greater distinction between the roles, rather than new features. But it's been a long time.
The source code is available, of course, so Slash'Em and other variants could be seen as carrying the torch right now.
For replayability, but not really graphics/sound/ease of use, try Nethack. It's an incredible and deep game if you can get past the archaic interface.
Just so you know what you're getting into before you download, here's the pc version. The versions are identical.
Also, /r/nethack.
> How could I make something like this?
You need a simple TCP listener that pipes a file to the connecting party at a set speed. You then use VT100 escape codes to control the cursor.
> Or maybe a command line game over telnet?
There is Nethack as an example. You can try it at telnet nethack.alt.org
It all depends on if you want to go spoiler free or not.
There's the main guidebook
The Nethack Wiki is probably a good place to check out for spoilers
I've been playing so much nethack past couple of weeks since the new update (3.6.0) came out. It's my favorite game at the moment.
https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page
There is a rather steep learning curve but it's worth it.
You understand incorrectly a bit.
They could sell a warranty.
The nethack license is here: http://www.nethack.org/common/license.html
It explicitly (and repeatedly this has been the case, too) calls out only allowing payment for PHYSICAL distribution. This has been discussed over and over between 1989 when the license came into play and now. The dev team repeatedly has said that the license covers PHYSICAL distribution and not digital distribution. It doesn't matter if features were added on, or that Steam requires it this way to offer other features, or what not. The license is clear, the terms are clear, and it's almost 20 years old.
There's no excuse for this blatant violation of the terms of the Nethack license, and therefore, unless there is a warranty being sold, the vulture team technically loses the ENTIRE RIGHT to distribute nethack or derivatives.
(Though fortunately, buyers of their product do not.)
I don't mean to be a hardass about this, but the makers were clear. The dev team is clear. Many companies over the years approached the dev team and offered money to make this into a commercial product, and they clearly rebuked them.
We shouldn't ignore the wishes of the dev team AND the licenses of the product just because we want to.
Nethack was released with a viral and noncommercial license. Period. This isn't a secret.
Hmm, I wonder... do they include Nethack in the package they sell?
According to the Nethack license you're only allowed to charge a distribution fee for Nethack or any derivatives thereof. So as long as they provide the full source code for their modifications to Nethack and can justify the prize as the cost of distributing the game, I guess they're ok.
Edit: See /u/Tvei's post for the developers' explanation.
Roguelikes are not strategy RPGs. They're regular RPGs which are usually distinguished by having 1) randomly generated dungeons/worlds and 2) perma-death - you can only save the game to pause playing.
They're usually turn-based and pretty often only have character-based interface, though there's been modern games that use graphics and some have abandoned the turn-based aspect too. Diablo series basically evolved from roguelikes.
For old-school roguelikes I'd recommend NetHack and Linley's Dungeon Crawl.
Nethack, the classic dungeon crawl, has more depth (no pun intended) than most games.
Don't forget to eat the corpses of the creatures you vanquish to gain their intrinsic powers. Just make sure they're fresh, not poisonous, and wouldn't be put to better use as sacrificial offerings. Tin them if you want them to last. Train your pet to protect you and steal from shops, polymorph junk (or yourself, or your pet) to make it into something useful, and write on the floor with your wand to help identify it. Elbereth is there to help if you need it, and that's just scratching the surface.
Nethack is one of the hardest games I've ever played. Very high complexity, randomly generated dungeons, and permadeath make it extremely rewarding to beat and very replayable.
If you're ~~insane~~ really keen , try to beat it without spoilers from the wiki and other guides, using only the official player guide and knowledge gained in-game. AFAIK there's only been one successful ascension under those conditions. Even with guides you'll probably find it pretty tough to beat. There's also a subreddit: /r/nethack.
it's a game, and a pretty old one (it's generally played at the terminal, though graphical versions now exist). It's a tile-based RPG based off of the even older Rogue. You play as a character who has been sent to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor from the bottom of the dungeons of doom and offer it to your god in exchange for ascension to demi-godhood. It's punishingly hard, even if you read all the spoilers on how to play the game, and you frequently see the death screen which is parodied in the final panel of the comic.
In all honesty, I would LOVE to see a more detailed game guide for nethack. Like, 120-140 pages or so.
I have read the "A Guide to the Mazes of Menace" book but it leaves many details to be discovered the hard way.
Quite frankly, I would pay good money (20-30$) for an ebook I can print at home on my own and that covers the game in a sufficient detail.
Ideally, two 140-pages volumes (I don't really want to bring a brick with me).
I have no idea if this ever worked for public servers. But if you are willing to play locally, there is a ray of hope...
So a long time ago, I used to be like this. I eventually managed to get around the trouble of setting up an alt by setting the name option to 'player'. This lets a single user have access to multiple characters, by typing in the character's name.
I got out of the habit of playing multiple simultaneous characters for many years. Eventually I tried again on a new install ... it didn't work.
Setting the name to 'player' currently causes the game to crash. This is bug C360-8. It is "fixed"... in the next bug-fix release.
These days I do not care, since I play one character at a time. But this stuff might help you, if you are playing old versions of the game on local systems.
I prefer ascii; I feel it's more clear, but it can be hard to understand what represents what at first. I used a lot of farlook (the ; key) at the start. One nice thing about playing offline is you can use the windowed version, which has an almost ascii display, but the walls of rooms are much clearer.
The guidebook is the best resource for basic game mechanics. There aren't any spoilers.
Nethack 3.6 is the standard version now. (Although the devteam is working on a 3.61...) Most of the variants are based on Nethack 3.43, so you'd have to read up on the differences before playing some of them, and it could be confusing to learn two slightly different games at once. I'd suggest getting comfortable in 3.6 first. With that said, my personal favorites are Unnethack and dNethack. (As far as I can tell, dNethack is only available in the most recent version online, though).
SSH is nice if you plan on playing on multiple computers or bragging about your accomplishments. The only significant gameplay difference is in bones files; you can get bones from everybody online, but offline you only get your own. Online can be good, because people can die with really good stuff, but also frustrating, especially as an inexperienced player. I prefer playing offline, but I play at alt.org as well.
There's a bunch of classic computer games based on Rogue, that are called Roguelike games. Variants like Nethack have been in development for almost 30 years, and it has just had its first major release in 12 years. It's ridiculously complex. Winning? I'll just quote Wikipedia on this one:
"To win the game, the player must retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, found at the lowest level of the dungeon, and offer it to their deity. Successful completion of this task rewards the player with the gift of immortality, and the player is said to "ascend", attaining the status of demigod... Fans of NetHack consider an ascension without having read spoilers very prestigious; the achievement is so difficult that some question whether it has been or can be accomplished."
I play nethack, a rogue-like text-based game that started as a project in 1987. Their latest release was in 2003, until a few weeks ago that they released a new version after 12 years. http://www.nethack.org/
It's not exactly a game from 1995, but it depends on your definition. The 2003 release that I play is version 3.4.3, and the site says that 3.2.2 was released in 1996 and I doubt it was a entirely different or that the 1996 version has stopped working if you compile it.
> Come at me, vim users!
I know this pain! If you want to get good at HJKL movement, my best advice is to play nethack, a lot. Most people I know play with HJKL, elites play with numpad. It's one of those games that is deceptively deep.
http://www.nethack.org/ If you're just getting started, read the guidebook. http://www.nethack.org/v343/Guidebook.html
The open nature of Nethack would make this pretty risky. Even if the skins were very cheap, restricting access to any content for any reason (other than to let the player unlock it through playing the game) would be met with hostility, and the code written to gate that stuff might even violate Nethack's license.
However, the license does explicitly allow a distribution fee.
It's one of the most influential games of all time and considered to be among the most difficult games too, next only to variants that spawned after veterans decided it was too easy for them.
Intro: http://www.nethack.org/v343/Guidebook.html.
If you've ever heard of the term YASD (Yet Another Stupid Death), this is the Trope Namer as you can easily end your game by doing something like drinking from a fountain, tripping down the stairs and so on. Recommended for people who feel like they need some real challenges in playing, try and see how far you can get without spoilers.
Try Nethack. Don't read any spoilers. Just jump in.
It's just as annoying and time-consuming as Dark Souls without all the irritating full-screen graphics and real-time interaction.
Let /u/wil convince you:
>Nethack is one of my all-time favorite games, one I've been playing since 1200 baud was smokin' fast.
>-- Actor Wil Wheaton, http://www.wilwheaton.net
The closest thing I know of is [Wyvern](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyvern_(video_game\)). I don't know if it's still alive or not, though.
The NetHack people said it a long time ago that multiplayer and roguelikes don't mix.
>Has anyone ever thought that multiplayer NetHack would be a neat idea? > > (Sigh.) Yes, at least a couple hundred people. We think you can't do that in a playable way without compromising the basic idea of being able to think as long as you want about what you're doing, but many people have made many different suggestions as to the one obvious way to handle things. If you still like the idea, you can try Crossfire, a multiplayer roguelike for UNIX/X11. Other games to check out are MAngband and Diablo.
Which I guess also brings up MAngband.
It's most likely Nethack or some other roguelike. Nethack is still in active development and runs on modern operating systems and hardware. If you you enjoy roguelike games you may enjoy DesktopDungeons.
I've enjoyed many of those games; seems like a good list. I'd put the first two Diablo titles on there. During the ADnD/3.x era, the Collectors Editions came with supplemental crossover books to run Diablo in DnD.
And no list of D&D PC games can be complete without the best ADnD simulator there is: nethack, which happens to be free.
I dated a guy who would play NetHack for hours and hours on end. This was only a few years ago. He also had a unique ability to find odd/weird/funny obscure videos on YouTube.
I assume this is bug C343-370.
> Travel (_) command can get stuck trying to plot a path past an interesting dungeon feature, for example, a trap or fountain.
nethack. Whenever I notice it's full moon, I get pulled back. First release 1987; most recent release was in 2015. Actively developed/maintained.
Have you ever played Nethack? It's one of the truly classic roguelikes, being only one degree of separation away from Rogue itself. Bonus: it's free.
In its basic mode its graphics are amazingly primitive, as it was originally designed to run on a terminal. But don't let that fool you. It's an amazingly complex and fun game, and still under active development. The most recent version came out just last month.
(And if the non-graphics do bother you, there are graphical front-ends for it too.)
Never mind, all I had to do was read from http://www.nethack.org/common/info.html
Can I use my old save files and bones files with the new version? Almost always no, but see the release information for each version to be sure. These files contain information from the internal structures of the game, and these almost always change between versions.
You cannot use save or bones files from any previous version with 3.6.0.
Oh man, /u/Donateandfeelbetter, you are in for a treat! There are some fantastic games that work like this. A whole bunch of text adventure games, for instance, plus two of my favorite games: Nethack and Dwarf Fortress.
Implementing this sort of thing is totally possible. Most of the time, tutorials involve writing a stream of text to the console, with newlines and such being the only controls. It's totally possible to do more, though. Most OSes allow you to take control of the console and write any character to any position on the screen. Exactly how this is done varies by operating system, but there are a variety of libraries designed to hide the ugly details. Ncurses is a popular one for Linux.
While i see your points,and i love the TARDIS avatar, i must say that i'm not very sure this is out of the legal premises. Are you referring to this licence ? -> http://www.nethack.org/common/license.html
Yeah Nethack is still being maintained. There are rumors on the main page that the dev team is writing another version, http://www.nethack.org/.
There is also a whole bunch a variants such as Slash'EM.
Look at games like NetHack that keep good old fashioned graphics alive: it's pretty easy to see how they do it. Make a grid on the console, fill the plane with characters that end up making some sort of image.
You could do that without a great deal of 'real' programming experience.
Just extend the idea a bit further: rather than using the console, imagine we're using a pixel field. We can switch pixels through any colour to get our desired image.
Build abstraction layers on that: make it so I can get a virtual pixel field and define any arbitrary colour I want, and the abstraction layer will figure out what to make the actual pixels on the screen to work out to that colour in that space by combining the primitive colours pixels can actually be.
Abstract further: Let me just say 'put a circle here with this colour' and have the abstraction layer figure out what parts of the pixel plane to make what colours to give the appearance of a circle.
Abstract again to say 'an instance of a 'car' is an assembly of these shapes in this sizes in this configuration' and have it work through the abstractions previously established.
This is a really cool text (symbols) based game that you may want to look into NetHack you can download the source here I too am just beginning to learn code, hopefully basic so that I can play with my new Ti-84, so you'll need a more experience programmer to understand any of that.
Are you thinking something like Rogue, [Moria](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moria_(video_game\)), Nethack, or others?
Get nethack, and mirror the wiki (if you want spoilers). I have sunk tons of hours into this game, and absolutely love it because it's always different. You might also want to check out Battle for Wesnoth, a tbs with a massive amount of community content for it.
NetHack Available for virtually every device you can imagine, for free.
An ASCII based (with graphic tiles as a possibility) where you have to go down the Mazes of Menace to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor for your god.
It's the most representative game of the roguelike genre, featuring permadeath, 13 choosable roles, and infinite replayability. It takes a couple of days to know the basics, but a lifetime to master. It's not uncommon for people to take up to one year at least to be able to ascend (finish the game, it refers to the ascension you have to make to offer the amulet to your god) a single character, let alone the 13 roles. It's often recommended for most people to spoil themselves as much as possible to stand a chance inside.
Nethack is one of the oldest, most complete/elaborate, and best-known roguelikes. You're very much going to want to spend a bunch of time with the wiki. Other interesting ways to die include casting Genocide on yourself, falling down stairs while holding a cockatrice corpse or egg, or zapping a Wand of Death at a wall that reflects it back at you.
Ok. The first thing: Permadeth does not work if it's stuffed into a game which was not designed for it.
I used to play alot of Roguelikes. In most of these games, it doesn't take many hours of grinding to have a very high level character. The game plays fast, you can get lucky and find top level items early on, you can get wishes that let you wish for any item in the game, all sorts of things that would completely and utterly break something like Diablo 3.
But you die. You might just die when you fuck up, and there are lots of ways to fuck up. But that's okay, because the game's not about grind and even playing at level 3 is just as fun, maybe moreso, than the late game.
Try Nethack. Give it a chance. It's one of the most historic electronic games I can think of - it's entwined with the culture of the internet (and usenet before that), it's been played since 1987 (honestly, 1985, because Hack is the same goddamn thing) and it's fucking AMAZING.
I don't see how that's scumbag-ish.
That's like saying "Scumbag Person-with-job, buys top-line gaming computer.
Plays nothing but Nethack" (that's me by the way)
While I'm in no way pro-mac, I think we need to stop the mac-bashing. It's just getting ridiculous.
Gotta add NetHack to this list.
If you're interested in knowing why: Gamasutra's Game Design Essentials: 20 RPGs - 7. NetHack.
"rogue-like gameplay"
Roguelike is an RPG subgenre. A game which has roguelike gameplay plays like the the hit 1980's title [Rogue](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(computer_game\)). NetHack has roguelike gameplay. Brotherhood does not.
If you're not specific to precisely Rogue, this version of Nethack should apparently work:
http://www.nethack.org/v331/ports/download-msdos.html
That's 3.3.1. There are two binaries there, one for 386+ and one for 286-. It's probably not going to be lightning fast, but I think it would probably be playable.
Anyone else having issues with defaults.nh? I looked for info and couldn't find any (perhaps I'm not too good-looking) - not only does the 3.6.3 seem to ignore my backed up defaults file, it doesn't seem to generate a new one when I moved the original out of the folder.
EDIT: Turns out I wasn't that good looking. Seems like they moved the options file and renamed it for some reason:
It almost never gets brought up, but in addition to the wiki, NetHack actually has an official instruction manual. That's how I got my start way back before the wiki was really a thing and it's still a great spoiler-free jumping off point today.
EDIT: I just reread it, and it's not 100% spoiler free, in that it includes a few hints that could technically be considered spoilers. But some version of it has been included since the very beginning and I think it is probably considered the baseline for spoiler-free information. After rereading, it's an even better resource than I remembered and probably tells you everything you could eve need to know if you want to get into the game in a spoiler-free or spoiler-light manner.
You can learn everything about nethack from here: http://www.nethack.org/
Also, you'll need the Nethackwiki at hand, because every hacker wants to know why he died: https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page
There is an android port, you can download it from the store.
Also, you can play it in your browser on nethack.alt.org: https://alt.org/nethack/
Be prepared to face multiple YASDs (Yet Another Stupid Death)
All time favorite game is Nethack and/or Slash'Em. For those not in the know, it is a permadeath dungeon crawl. It is THE game that people refer to when saying 'a Roguelike game' because first there was Rogue and it was good, but it was missing a lot of good things. Then they gave it the good things and it became Nethack.
It is the deepest, most complex game ever, bar none. Its initial and still to date, most used interface is ASCII characters. Literally zero graphics and yet it is more complex than the most recent RPG.
Permadeath. When you save, you quit the game automatically. Incredibly difficult. I've been playing it on and off for over 25 years and have actually won the game less than 10 times.
Another reason I love it is because there is a graphical port of the game called Vulture that I created some of the images for.
Thanks for this giveaway! :D
To me, Brogue was fight when you have to, since you don't level and are on a strict hunger clock (I assume this is still the case). Although you could level up from fighting in the original Rogue, I felt like in later levels this produced diminishing returns as the monsters got so dangerous in terms of risk, I just wanted to get out, and I felt the same way in Brogue. I've won at Brogue...but not at Rogue...lol.
My point is, despite obvious differences, Brogue stays pretty true (to me) to the original Rogue in that many times it's better to just avoid a fight using your utility items and move on, so in long winded way, you might want to try some older titles that might stay close to that original fomula :
I found some Rogue variants (I haven't got a chance to try them though sorry) : https://sourceforge.net/projects/roguelike/files/
I think Hack/Moria and it's successors might be worth a shot, Nethack or Troubles of Middle Earth maybe? For ToME, I think v2.3.5 is good.
"NetHack is a single player dungeon exploration game that runs on a wide variety of computer systems, with a variety of graphical and text interfaces all using the same game engine. Unlike many other Dungeons & Dragons-inspired games, the emphasis in NetHack is on discovering the detail of the dungeon and not simply killing everything in sight - in fact, killing everything in sight is a good way to die quickly. Each game presents a different landscape - the random number generator provides an essentially unlimited number of variations of the dungeon and its denizens to be discovered by the player in one of a number of characters: you can pick your race, your role, and your gender."
Short: Eversion (don't be deceived by level 1/2: it's not something a small child should play).
Long: I'm not the first to say Nethack. Which I've only got about half way through, despite playing for years, and I sometimes hate. Here's the guidebook.
You can find the full changelog here: http://www.nethack.org/v360/release.html
The main changes are under the hood, like updating the engine to run better on modern OS as well as making it easier to update and add new content to the game later on.
They also updated the UI and took some gameplay and quality of life improvements from some of the popular NetHack variants (DynaHack, UnNetHack and NetHack 4) out there.
Quality of life improvements are things such as better loot sorting, pickup throw, menu colors, statue glyphs and dungeon overview for example.
Oh and they heavily nerfed Elbereth which caused a lot of drama.
You know? You might be very well onto something there. I just looked at what is, in my opinion, some of the best C code in the world, specifically the Nethack source, and noticed they seem to double wrap stuff as you suggested.
If it's in the Nethack source, it's best practices.
Yeah it's kinda difficult to learn at first. It just looks so cluttered and messy. If you really want to learn (which in my opinion is worth it) I'd suggest first getting familiar with roguelikes. Play a bit of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup https://crawl.develz.org/ Or maybe some nethack http://www.nethack.org/ This will get you familiar with the 2d turn based style and with the primitive graphics. Stone Soup has some great tiles as well as ascii, I usually play with tiles. With Dwarf Fortress I usually just play with ascii. I just did some research and I found what looks like a pretty good set of tutorials for getting started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEMrwzM02Y0&list=PLbS4aSdanAJ-FuHcWhD6uBixMEWIBjMH0 The worst thing about DF is the terrible controls. They are horribly confusing and seem randomly picked, but once you get used to them the game can be pretty fun. The controls aren't actually as bad as some people say they are. Almost every button you can press is actually labeled on screen saying what it will do, but you might have to spend some time scanning the screen to see what you want to do.
I hope my rambling wall of text helped, and who knows! Maybe you'll enjoy DF!
Nethack
I'm not so sure about hours real time in game, but I've been playing consistently (at least weekly, and for much of the time daily) for ~19 years. It's more of a religion than a game.
Also, after 12 years, the Dev Team finally released a new version!
You're right. I should have realised that. That explains why it doesn't work; and what I should do to fix it. Now I suppose the new questions are why did it work in the previous version; and why does the guidebook use similar faulty regex as examples. here
autopickup_exception=">* cursed*"
Anyway, I'm not in a position to test what you're suggesting in the game; but I'm pretty confident that what you've said is correct. Thanks for the help.
Here's the actual license. http://www.nethack.org/common/license.html
graspee is attempting to add his own interpretation of the license by reading into it what simply doesn't appear to be there. The Nethack devs don't appear to have said anything about it publicly. In fact, they crawled out of their dungeon last year to make a public statement about a leaked unofficial update to Nethack...but had nothing to say about Nethack being sold on Steam, which at the time was already on Greenlight, was considered pretty major roguelike news and according to many people something that the Nethack devs were completely aware of.
Now, graspee can argue his interpretation of the Nethack license until we all grow old and die and it doesn't matter anymore but unless the Nethack devs, the actual license holders of the original game come forth and say something then it's pretty pointless to argue.
Roguelikes come in many different shapes and sizes, and not all of them rely on having to optimise stats. Dungeons of Dredmor and Desktop Dungeons, however, definitely do.
Have you tried DoomRL, SotS: The Pit, or even Nethack? Those all have less prominent or simplified attribute systems, so resource management and tactical decision-making become more important.
If I'm not mistaken, the listing on steam is Vulture for Nethack. Vulture is the isometric display that gives Nethack some actual graphics. Nethack as it exists on nethack.org is not currently available on Steam.
> Tourists start out with lots of gold (suitable for shopping with), a credit card, lots of food, some maps, and an expensive camera. Most monsters don't like being photographed.
They're not a traditional tank / DPS / support class, but they can do some interesting things: for example, a camera flash can blind many monsters, and the credit card can be used to pick certain kinds of locks. And since food is a critical game mechanic in NetHack, having a lot of it helps you survive in the early game.
If you want to give some Rogue-likes a shot like lava1o and Rochwell suggested, I'd take a look at Nethack. It's another game where you play for a solid 6 months and still have fresh, entertaining run every time.
You forgot NetHack, an ancient game.
Created in 1984 it is a console based (not peasent console the real console) game and there is an official gui version of the game. It is still played and being worked on. Version 3.5 will soon be released as announced in September 2015. It is a complex rpg dungeon based game, inspiring a lot of other games which led to the games you see today. It is fun to play while being extremely hard. And I mean hard. Its one of the hardest games out there today and will probably stay that way, as it takes skill and strategy to beat it. Very few people have beat it.
While there are a lot of old games out there this should be at the top of your list. Have Fun!
It's a real game. Here's the web page where you can download the game from free http://www.nethack.org/
Here's the wikipedia page on it, which describes it fairly well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetHack
More information: http://www.desura.com/games/vulture-for-nethack
Sorry, it's only available on Desura, but you don't have to install the Desura manager it in order to play it, just click on the link @ the title.
You should put it back; the license doesn't say anything against it, and some people (like me) might be looking for it. Who posted that, so I can PM them and ask for the link? (or if that person sees this comment, that works too.)
the reason i mentioned those two is because rogue, the game that spawned the genre, was a turn-based rpg and all of the roguelikes i played back in the day were turn-based rpgs as well. the way i see it to be considered a roguelike you have to get the core gameplay of rogue down. this and -this are games i consider to be rogulikes.
i'd consider binding of isaac to be more of a bullet hell than a roguelike. never played rogue legacy but isn't more of a platformer like spelunky is?
Nethack is an amazing experience so long as you can look past its very poor graphics. But it's one of the games with the most depth in the history of gaming. The game can be found for free here: http://www.nethack.org/ If you need help there is a somewhat active community over at /r/nethack and a very extensive wiki (trust me you're going to need it) here: http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
As someone who has gone back to the game every few months for the last 5-6 years I can honestly say its a really amazing game once you put in the initial effort to figure out how it works.
edit: I should note that this game came out in 1987, not even a decade after rogue (1980), and was played using ASCII tiles on a mainframe, just like rogue was. Its basically a direct successor to rogue itself. I would recommend using a tileset, which gives very basic graphics. At least until you get a hang of the game.
Um, it's free. Always has been, always will be.
This is the main version with the most documentation and wiki support http://www.nethack.org/v343/ports/download-win.html
This is the most popular variant, which is likely to be considered the better version, but is harder to find information about because it is newer and less popular (Also, it'll take some work to get tiles working, which you probably want to have unless you're used to ascii graphics) http://sourceforge.net/projects/unnethack/
29
Super Metroid [1]
Massive tie [2]
[1] also check out the Redesign ROM hack
[2] Metroid Prime, Mega Man 3, Rogue Squadron II, Soul Calibur II, Ninja Gaiden 2 (NES), Faxanadu
So, like NetHack?
Greatest dungeon crawler ever. One life, death is permanent, dungeons are randomly generated each time you play. Also, it's free and has ports to literally everything (Linux, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, etc).
Here's a website to help you survive as long as possible:
http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page
Just remember: NetHack doesn't care if you live, or die.
With regards to the plagiarism; you should note that nethack has a very open copying policy.
The tileset that nethack uses was actually taken from the atari version of rogue. The company that owns the copyright to the tileset went bankrupt and the inventors of rogue apparently consider the set to be in the public domain.
Well, I've tried some of them newfangled games like Portal (when it was free), but it just wasn't for me.
I prefer to stick to the classics like nethack (which is much older than your computer).
[](/rarityjudge "I guess I'm a video game hipster. I haven't had time to play anything for a long time though.")
Preface
I am not a nethack god by any means, but i have been playing off and on for over a year. you see something new every time you die, for sure.
things to notice:
I am on the first dungeon level, yet have > 1300 turns. I spent so much time searching for doors I almost starved to death.
I drank from a fountain which produced a large rat which in turn killed my pet (which is bad news in this game as your pet saves your life)
I died because the lichen (green dude to my bottom left) was holding me. I was supposed to kill it first, and then I would have been fine. The lichen is the easiest thing to kill in the game. (I try not to use the nethack wiki midgame-- I feel I learn better killing off a few characters and then researching things I had questions on).
YASD -- yet another stupid death.
Sorry, first I read 'middle earth' :) Anyways Nethack or Adom on the game side, they will keep you busy sometime, well Nethack can take you couple of years :). Also if you want to read some good rpg-comic, Order of the Stick is pretty good :)
You can download and play Nethack, or play online via telnet at a server like NAO.
It's an incredibly, incredibly complex and interesting game. Here's how to cheat at it, but I will tell you that even if you go to that wiki for every little thing, you will still probably not beat the game for months, maybe years.
It's basically text-only, but I've never been more thrilled playing a game than with Nethack.
PS. Don't forget the IRC channel, #nethack on irc.freenode.net!
To quote the website:
>nethack-343-win.zip (about 2M) (MD5 sum: b91739c9f101a787220853eae904941d) Contains two executables - an Intel Win32 tty console executable and an Intel Win32 Graphical Interface executable. This may be used on Intel machines running Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.