NetHack...

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Just posted this in another thread, but in case you don't read that one, check this out:

Have you seen Falcon's Eye? Some programmer made a 3/4 Isometric, "Diablo" style graphics engine that runs off of Nethack source. It's free, too.

http://falconseye.sourceforge.net/index.html

Bad news is I haven't been able to get it to run on my Win2K machine here at work, even though it says it's supported.






Dan

[bigfree1]

I'm trying to get it to run on Win 98 SE, just get the following error:

NETHACK caused an invalid page fault in
module NETHACK.EXE at 018f:00545293.
Registers:
EAX=00000000 CS=018f EIP=00545293 EFLGS=00010246
EBX=00000008 SS=0197 ESP=026af3f0 EBP=026af538
ECX=026af4a4 DS=0197 ESI=005451b3 FS=5517
EDX=ffffffff ES=0197 EDI=026af4ef GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
0f b6 70 02 89 f2 c1 e2 08 0f b6 40 03 8d 34 10
Stack dump:
00000000 00000000 00581aac 026af4a4 00000000 00000000 00000000

Any ideas anyone?

[Ari Rahikkala]

Hmm... quite a long time since I have last played NetHack, I've been more into UrW, ADOM or more general hacking lately. Anyway...

Don't even try Falcon's Eye. It isn't worth it. You'll have a much better time just playing normal NetHack. I'd say, in fact, that NetHack looks better, even graphically. No, it might not look like that at first, but wait until you actually start moving...

Thrones do have a few bonuses. Make sure that there are no items in the square the throne is in, then sit on it. It seldom does anything good (often it confuses you or does something bad to your equipment), but you can get wishes from it.

Merging with a scaly armor: If you've got a dragon scale mail, you will always polymorph into the colour of dragon your scale mail is of. Being a black dragon, yes, it is cool .

About getting a bag of holding from Sokoban: I hope my memory isn't failing... The highest level of Sokoban is special, it has a zoo. In the back of the zoo are three doors, behind which are three chambers. IIRC there is always "Elbereth" written on the floor of one of the chambers, and also one bonus item in one of them. I can remember getting wands of lightning and bags of holding, at least.

Father Beast: Of course it depends on luck whether your pet survives the first few levels or not. Anyway, let it kill a few monsters (IIRC pets don't choose battles in which winning isn't expected... Something a player should do, too ) on its own and it won't take a long time for it to get levels. Using a wand of polymorph on a pet is sometimes very rewarding (i.e. if you get a balrog, the first thing you should do is to jump from joy through the roof). You can also use a stethoscope (recommended) or wand of probing (deprecated, as it has limited charges) to see exactly on what experience level your pet is.

[Urban Ranger]

What is UrW? What is ADOM?

Falcon's Eye looks nice per Dan's screenshot. What's wrong with it? Maybe you are just way too used to those character graphics.

[MattyBoy]

Tried ADOM, but got into ruts which were useful but dull and seemed to always die after a similar length of time. I also got impatient with having to behave myself all the time. That is why I play Neutral characters in Nethack, too.
ADOM does provide a new slant to the whole thing, though.

What's UrW?

Thanks for the other tips. I think you are right about Sokoban. I did end up with a bag of holding around about there last time I played and you described that level exactly as I saw it then.

I agree that the ascii graphics easily beats the icon-style graphics that came out a while ago, but I will try falcons eye for myself. I'm not interested unless I can play quickly via the keyboard, though.

I have switched to Wizard, but I am dying before I get far, mostly as I am playing as if I were a Valkyrie.

[Ari Rahikkala]

UR: Yes, maybe that, or maybe I just haven't played more Diablo than the demo of D1 and therefore haven't really got used to that POV and style... I don't know. However, I maintain that NetHack is a better game with ASCII graphics than with Falcon's Eye .

UrW, http://www.jmp.fi/~smaarane/urw.html ... Ah, I'll leave the advertising/review up to the Underdogs : http://www.theunderdogs.org/game.php...l+World%2C+The . Just don't be turned off by the absolutely horrific QBASIC-like intro screen (I think Sami put it in to make UrW a cult game that nobody else than the vets understand ) and create a character.

A Kaumolainen is good for beginners, or if you want to use ranged combat I'd recommend Owl-tribe. When creating the world, try again if you get a world filled with almost square-like lakes or a very swampy world (very big grey areas). 'The Village' or 'The Abandoned Camp' are pretty easy starts, and recommended. Choose either no game-course (number 0, IIRC) or roaming/survival.

In the game just read the keybindings (use the '?' button to find them), get to know the skill system of the game with 'F1', and go on playing. Die a few times stupidly, then make the choice whether you want to go on playing it or not.

[MattyBoy]

Nethack as a Wizard

As you can see, I have this game mastered

4 7239 Gary-Wiz-Hum-Mal-Neu died in The Gnomish Mines on
level 7. Killed by a dwarf, while helpless. - [56]
5 4603 Gary-Wiz-Hum-Mal-Neu died in The Dungeons of Doom on
level 8. Killed by a rothe. - [69]
6 3563 Gary-Wiz-Hum-Mal-Neu died in The Dungeons of Doom on
level 8. Killed by a fire vortex. - [43]
7 1002 Gary-Hea-Hum-Mal-Neu died in The Gnomish Mines on
level 6. Killed by a watch captain, while helpless. - [45]
8 728 Gary-Hea-Hum-Mal-Neu died in The Dungeons of Doom on
level 2. Killed by a giant bat. - [48]

I think I ascended as a wizard before, but it seems hard to imagine now.

[MattyBoy]

How about this for a good start?
My wizard has excellent scrolls, fortunate to begin with a wand of polymorph, so I turn my pet into:
1] jackal (useless)
2] xan (powerful for the early levels, but I can't feed it to keep it my friend)
3] Air Elemental
Last time I ascended I had an extremely fast 500+ HP, -33AC, level 30 Valkyrie (18/**, 22, 18, ...) and my HP never got below a few hundred until I got blinded amongst the Air Elementals on the Air level. After reading "you are showered with debris" many times, I noticed that my HP was at 40!!! and I had to tread very carefully to stay alive.

My Air Elemental ("Morris") is very fast and kills each monster that we find in a single turn. Fighting is now optional for me. On dungeon level 2 I find a good shop that Morris clears for me (nicely shaped for clearing and Morris' movement makes it easy). On dungeon level 3 we find a shop full of spellbooks! With Morris' help, I now know at least 10 spells. All of a sudden I have a serious character - he is only level 6 (AC 5, HP 33?), but he has not even searched all of 3 levels yet. Also he has about 1500 gp (until he meets a leprechaun) from selling spellbooks back to the librarian.

So on level 4 I meet that leprechaun again and I leave him to Morris (as I am feeling greedy for $$), but he zaps me with a wand of fire (1 of 2 spellbooks burns, ench wpn & identify scroll burns, cloak burns. Bounce. spellbook 2 burns, cloak burns more, scare monst scroll burns, err... 0 HP)

You die.
3097 Gary-Wiz-Hum-Mal-Neu died in The Dungeons of Doom on
level 4. Killed by a bolt of fire. - [39]