NetHack is one of the oldest games still developing (since 1987), with continuous improvements and bug fixes made by a group of volunteers, which are called the DevTeam.
This it's a game of adventures quite addictive Dungeons and Dragons style. The "net" element refers to its development being coordinated through the Internet, while the "hack" element refers to a genre of role-playing games known as hack and slash for their focus on combat.
The traditional way of playing NetHack is via ASCII graphics, that is, with images made up only of letters and characters from the computer (this is because NetHack takes advantage of the use of the Unix curses library, the same as other games of this style traditionally do).
About NetHack
The main objective of the game is to find the Amulet of Yendor, even though throughout the game can be found with other missions to fulfill, either as extras to the main mission of recovering the Amulet or as part of the central mission (many times without knowing that they are part of it).
Unlike many other games inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, the emphasis in NetHack is to discover the details of the dungeon and not simply kill everything in sight; in fact, killing everything in sight is a good way to die quickly.
Each level of the game is always unique and different between each game, as the levels are generated randomly (except for some special levels). As in many games, the objects always have a different random description from game to game and only until the player properly identifies the objects can he know what they are about.
Monsters are generally represented by uppercase and lowercase letters. Each letter refers to a species of monsters in general (canines, insects, cats, humans, etc.), and the colors (if present in the interface) or some commands in the game allow you to identify the particular monster.
NetHack is a complex and difficult game. Newbies can despair in the first instance or even end up quitting the game, which is why the game is truly a title for old gamers.
Features include:
- 45-50 levels, most of which are randomly generated.
- Variety of items: weapons, armor, scrolls, potions, rings, gems, and a variety of tools such as keys and lamps.
- Blessings and curses.
- Permadeath - Expired characters cannot be revived without backing up the actual save files.
What's new in NetHack 3.6.3?
Currently NetHack continues to receive updates and it is that recently the NetHack development team I release the new version of NetHack 3.6.3.
This version contains mainly bug fixes (more than 190), as well as more than 22 improvements to the game, including those proposed by the community.
In particular, compared to the previous version, the curses interface on all platforms has been significantly improved. It also improved the work in MS-DOS (especially in virtual machines).
The 3.6.3 release is final on the 3.6 branch and opens the beginning of branch development 3.7. The next major release is expected to be 3.7.0, in which it is planned to introduce new features as well as clean up the code base to support a number of outdated platforms.
How to install NetHack on Linux?
For those who are interested in installing this game on their system, they can do it in the following way.
First instance we can download the tgz package that they provide directly from their site official Web. This can be obtained by opening a terminal and typing:
wget https://nethack.org/download/3.6.4/nethack-364-src.tgz
Now we are going to unzip the package with:
gzip -dc nethack-364-src.tgz > nethack-364-src.tar tar xf nethack-364-src.tar
Done this we go to the subdirectory sys / unix and run setup.sh
cd nethack-364-src cd NetHack-NetHack-3.6.4_Released cd sys cd unix sudo setup.sh
We return to the src subdirectory and type
cd.. cd.. cd src make
The game will now compile for a long time. Later we have to execute
make install