NetHack 3.2 -- General information

The full NetHack 3.2 distribution ported for SCO OpenServer 5 is available as a gzip'd tar archive on this CD. To install, in a writeable directory issue the command :

gzcat [mount-point]/src/X11/nethack-3.2.tar.gz | tar xf -

then cd into the nethack-3.2 directory and, as root, type "make install". The [mount-point] above refers to the path on which the SCO Skunkware 96 CD is mounted.

NetHack 3.2 is a new enhancement to the dungeon exploration game NetHack. It is a distant descendent of Rogue and Hack, and a direct descendent of NetHack 3.1 and 3.0.

NetHack 3.2 is the product of two years of very intensive effort by the NetHack Development Team and its porting sub-teams. Many parts of 3.1 were re-written for NetHack 3.2, and many new features were added.

The new additions and changes in the game include:

Warwick Allison has introduced enhancements the game's display code to support a more graphical appearance with the X11, MS-DOS and Amiga display system. The display can now use a "tile" based system which is better at displaying uniquely identifiable information about the player's surroundings.

The spell casting system has been dramatically changed. The source of these changes was the code developed by Stephen White, who wrote the NH++ patch kit. These changes have been re-integrated into NetHack with appropriate modifications required to balance them for the 3.2 release.

We have also added a weapons proficiency system to allow for "learning" how to use weapons effectively and reflecting that proficiency in combat. Also based on code by Stephen White.

Many inventory and item choice interfaces are now menu oriented with an option to toggle back and forth to the original (3.1) interface.

These are some of the most prominent global changes, but there are many other changes in the game, and they are no less dramatic.

This version of the game is special in one way. During the development of 3.2 (at that point in time it might have actually become 3.1.4), one of the members of the Development Team, Izchak Miller, passed away. This version of the game is dedicated to the memory of Izchak Miller, and his invaluable contributions to the evolution of NetHack over the past 10 years.

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, many sub-directories will be automatically created, and files will be deposited in them: 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 'dat' 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 3.2 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 BSD/Sun/SunOS4.x (simply because the code was housed on such a system). It is also worth mentioning here that NetHack 3.2 is a huge program. 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 sys/*/Install.* were written to guide you in configuring the program for your operating system. The files win/*/Install.* are available, where necessary, to help you in configuring the program for particular windowing environments. Reading them, and the man pages, should answer most of your questions.

At the time of this release, NetHack 3.2 is known to run/compile on: 

        AT&T 3B1 running System V (3.51)
        Data General AViiON systems running DG/UX
        DEC vaxen running Ultrix
        Decstations running Ultrix 4.x
        HP 9000s700 running HP-UX 9.x and 10.x
        IBM PC/RT and RS/6000 running AIX 3.x
        NeXT running Mach (using BSD configuration)
        Sun-4s running SunOS 4.x
        Sun-4s running Solaris 2.x (aka SunOS 5.x)
        SGI Iris running IRIX
        386/486/Pentium boxes running Linux/BSDI

        Apple Macintosh running MacOS
        Atari ST/TT/Falcon running TOS (or MultiTOS) with GCC
        Commodore Amiga running AmigaDOS 1.3 or greater with SAS/C 6.55
                (but see Install.ami about DICE and Manx)
        DEC Alpha/VMS (aka OpenVMS AXP), running V1.x through V7.0
        DEC VAX/VMS, running V4.6 through V7.0
        IBM PC compatibles running MS-DOS with MicroSoft C, Borland C++ 3.1, or
                DJGPP.  It is recommended to have at least an 80386 processor.
        Intel (80386 or greater) and DEC Alpha desktop machines
                running Windows NT
        Intel (80386 or greater) running Windows 95
Previous versions of NetHack were tested on the following systems, and we expect that NetHack 3.2 will work on them as well: 
        AT&T 3B2/600 & 3B2/622 running System V R3.2.1
        AT&T 3B2/1000 Model 80 running System V R3.2.2
        AT&T 3B4000 running System V
        AT&T 6386 running System V R3.2
        DEC vaxen running BSD
        Decstations running Ultrix 3.1
        Encore Multimax running UMAX 4.2
        Gould NP1 running UTX 3/2
        HP 9000s300 running HP-UX
        Mips M2000 running RiscOS 4.1
        Pyramid 9820x running OSx 4.4c
        Stardent Vistra 800 running SysV R4.0
        Stride 460 running UniStride 2.1
        Sun-3s, -4s, and -386is running SunOS 3.x
        Sun-3s and -386is running SunOS 4.x
        Valid Logic Systems SCALD-System
        286 box running Microport SysV/AT (not extensively tested)
        386/486/Pentium boxes running 386BSD
There is support for NetHack 3.2 on IBM PS/2 and AT compatibles running OS/2 1.1 - 2.0 (and probably Warp) with Microsoft C 5.1 or 6.0, and OS/2 2.0 with GCC emx 0.8f or IBM C Set/2, but this port is currently untested

Unless otherwise mentioned, the compiler used was the OS-vendor's C compiler.

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

Please be sure to include your machine type, OS, and patchlevel.

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 3.2 synchronized by means of official patches, and to maintain the painfully-created file organization. (This process has been working since the time when everyone just posted their own patches to 2.3. At that time, there were no archived bug-fixes to give to people who got 2.3 after its initial release, so the same bugs kept being discovered by new batches of people.) We have been successful in preventing this from happening since the 3.0 release. Please cooperate to keep this from happening to 3.2.

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 their worth.

All of this amounts to the following: If you decide to apply a free-lanced patch to your 3.2 code, you are on your own. In our own patches, we will assume that your code is synchronized with ours.

-- Good luck, and happy Hacking --