1 2 Using and Installing Amiga NetHack 3.3 3 (or Everything You Never Wanted to Know Before NetHacking) 4 (or Not Everything That Happens Always Comes Knocking) 5 6 Last Revision: 28 March 2000 for NetHack 3.3.1 7 8 90. Pre-intro for NetHack 3.3.1: 10 Amiga-specific changes for 3.3.1: 11 Most (around 99%) known bugs fixed (volunteers welcome). 12 HackWB and HackCli are no longer supported. Use the main binary. 13 14 We would like to thank each and every one of the people who took 15 the time and effort to report bugs to us. THANK YOU! 16 17I. Introduction 18 19I.A. Overview 20 Welcome to Amiga NetHack! If this is your first visit to our fair 21 city, you are in for an amazing but dangerous journey; if you have 22 visited us before, beware! the city has changed in many strange and 23 subtle ways; it has also grown quite a bit. This missive brings to 24 light those mundane tasks which must be dealt with before beginning 25 your journey; for those of you who are faced with the task of 26 installing the pre-fabricated version of our town, section III 27 (Installing Amiga NetHack 3.3) will guide you through the task at 28 hand. If you are ready to visit, the local visitors guide is in 29 section II (Using Amiga NetHack 3.3); please also see the general 30 guide packaged separately (the file "GuideBook"). 31 32 To all our visitors, a hearty Welcome! - and please be careful. 33 34 [Those responsible for the previous paragraphs have been sacked. The 35 documentation has been completed at great expense in a more traditional 36 style. -- The Management] 37 38I.B. Getting Help 39 If you have questions about strategy, weapons, or monsters, the best 40 place to go for help is the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.roguelike.nethack. 41 42 If you have problems with installation or think you have found a bug 43 in the game, please report it by electronic mail to the development 44 team at nethack-bugs@nethack.org, where it will be routed to the 45 appropriate person. Include your configuration, the version of 46 NetHack you are playing (use the 'v' command), whether or not you are 47 using an official binary release (and if so which one) and as much 48 specific information as possible. As NetHack runs on many different 49 machines, be sure to mention that you are playing the Amiga version. 50 51I.C. Credits 52 Olaf Seibert first ported NetHack 2.3 and 3.0 to the Amiga. Richard 53 Addison, Andrew Church, Jochen Erwied, Mark Gooderum, Ken Lorber, 54 Greg Olson, Mike Passaretti, and Gregg Wonderly polished and extended 55 the 3.0 and 3.1 ports. Andrew Church, Ken Lorber, and Gregg Wonderly 56 are responsible for the 3.2 port. Janne Salmij�rvi resurrected the 57 amigaport for 3.3. 58 59II. Using Amiga NetHack 3.3 60 Run NetHack from the shell or from some tool that allows that, 61 ie. ToolManager. See the NetHack.txt file for command line options 62 and other usage. 63 64II.A. Sources of Information 65 Where to go depends on what you want to find out. If you want to find 66 out about distributing NetHack, read the license (in NetHack:license 67 or type ?i during the game). For an introduction to NetHack, read 68 the GuideBook file. To find out what options are compiled into your 69 copy of NetHack, type #v during the game. Finally, for information 70 during the game on all kinds of things, type ? and select from the 71 menu or by pressing Help key. 72 73II.B. The Amiga NetHack WorkBench Front End 74 3.3.1 no longer supports HackWB. 75 76II.C. The Amiga NetHack CLI Front End 77 3.3.1 no longer supports CLI Front End either. 78 79 Instead, use the main binary. See NetHack.txt file for the standard Unix 80 flags for NetHack. In addition to those flags, Amiga NetHack accepts 81 the flags -l to force non-interlaced mode and -L to force interlaced mode. 82 83II.D. Amiga-Specific Information for NetHack 84 85 There are several options that are unique to the Amiga version of 86 NetHack that may be specified in the NetHack.cnf file or on an 87 OPTIONS line: 88 89 altmeta allows the ALT keys to function as META keys. The default 90 is altmeta. 91 flush flush discards all characters in the queue except the first, 92 which limits typeahead accidents. The default is !flush. 93 silent turn off the audio output. The default is silent. 94 95 The current version of Amiga NetHack also supports menu accelerators. 96 See Guidebook.txt for a detailed description. Also supported is 97 selecting the number of stacked objects to drop, used with the (D)rop 98 command. Type the number and then select an item (or items with 99 accelerators). Items with a count associated with them are denoted 100 with # in place of -. I.e. 'd - 3 blessed daggers' becomes 101 'd # 3 blessed daggers'. You can clear the count by hitting esc 102 while counting or deselect and reselect the item. The default 103 is to drop all selected items (as before). 104 105 106III. Installing Amiga NetHack 3.3 107 108III.A. General Installation 109 Installation should be easy - basically it consists of putting files 110 where they belong and adding an assign to your startup. If you are 111 installing from the official binary distribution, simply unpacking 112 the archive in the appropriate directory will put the files in the 113 places they belong. 114 115 IF YOU ALREADY HAVE A PREVIOUS VERSION INSTALLED YOU MUST DELETE THE 116 OLD SAVE AND BONES FILES - THEY WILL NOT WORK! This includes save 117 and bones files from all previous versions of NetHack (yes, even 3.3.0). 118 If you have a game in progress and want to finish it, use your 119 current version and then update. 120 121Will NetHack fit on your machine? 122 NetHack 3.3 is large. NetHack 3.3 is very large. You will need: 123 > Any standard series Amiga: 500, 600, 1000, 1200, 2000, 2500, 3000, 4000. 124 > WorkBench 2.04 or later. 125 > At least 3 meg of RAM. NetHack will NOT run in 1 meg (probably even 2). 126 > Mass storage: A hard drive with over 3 meg of free space is highly 127 recommended. 128 129Hard Disk Installation: 130 Unpack the archive to your place of choice. Since you are reading this 131 you've probably done that already. Now just assign NetHack: to 132 NetHack directory containing the executable and datafiles and other needed 133 directories. 134 135 Use the table in the next section to see where things should end up. 136 Be sure that the file 8 ends up in NetHack:hack/8. 137 138Configuration 139 Using your favorite text editor, edit NetHack:NetHack.cnf to match 140 your system. 141 142 Create the save file directory (makedir NetHack:save) and the levels file 143 directory (makedir NetHack:levels), if they don't already exist. 144 145 Create the score file (echo to NetHack:record) and, if desired, the log 146 file (echo to NetHack:logfile), if they don't already exist. You may 147 leave out logfile, but record is needed. 148 149III.B. File Location Table 150NetHack: 151 amii.hlp Guidebook.txt hack.font 152 license NetHack NetHack.cnf 153 NetHack.txt nhdat nhsdat 154 record Recover Recover.txt 155 logfile (optional, but useful) 156NetHack:hack 157 8 158NetHack:tiles 159 monsters.iff objects.iff other.iff 160 161IV. BBS Interface 162 163 [Since HackCli and split binary is no longer supported the following 164 probably doesn't apply anymore. Due to lack of a suitable environment 165 it is also untested.] 166 167 The BBS mode is based on the standard NetHack tty port and is designed 168 for use in a BBS setting - it is specifically not recommended for use 169 on the console. The current TTY mode has changed significantly since 170 the preliminary version released with 3.1.2. In particular, BBS mode 171 now works with split binaries (only), and now supports multiple games 172 in progress at the same time for multi-line boards (note however that 173 any individual user should not be allowed to run two instances of 174 NetHack at the same time). 175 176 To set up NetHack for use with a BBS, set OPTIONS=windowtype:tty 177 and unset DUNGEONS, TRAPS, and EFFECTS in NetHack.cnf. Configure 178 the BBS to expect I/O through stdin and stdout, and have NetHack 179 invoked as: 180 HackCLI :uid -u uname options... 181 where uid is any string (without embedded spaces, colons, or slashes) 182 that is unique for each BBS user and uname is some corresponding human- 183 readable name for that user. Uid is used in constructing file names 184 to prevent collisions between simultaneous games and to prevent 185 people from using other people's save files. Uname is the name the 186 character will have in the game and the name that will appear in the 187 record file. 188 189 The terminal is assumed to be a 24x80 ANSI-compatible terminal. 190 The present version does not deal with situations such as low 191 memory gracefully - as NetHack uses a considerable amount of 192 memory this is particularly painful with multiple games in 193 progress. Sysops are reminded to be familiar with the recover 194 utility, which may be needed from time to time and which should 195 probably not be available directly to users. Bug reports and 196 suggestions for improvements are requested from the user community - 197 this is still considered alpha software. 198 199