1 NetHack 3.4.3 -- General information
2
3NetHack 3.4 is an enhancement to the dungeon exploration game NetHack.
4It is a distant descendent of Rogue and Hack, and a direct descendent of
5NetHack 3.3.
6
7NetHack 3.4.3 is a bugfix release for NetHack 3.4.2.
8 * Several dozen general bug fixes including at least one fatal bug
9 * Correct several inconsistencies
10 * Handle level completely filled with monsters better
11 * win32tty performance enhancements when playing on Windows 98 and Windows Me
12 * win32gui player selection fixes
13 * X11 player selection fixes, one of which could be fatal
14 * Eliminated a gold-in-shop-container cheat
15 * Include bones file version compatibility info in options file
16
17A fuller list of changes for this release can be found in the file
18doc/fixes34.3 in the source distribution. The text in there was written
19for the development team's own use and is provided "as is", so please do
20not ask us to further explain the entries in that file.
21
22The internal structure of bones and save files has not changed between
23NetHack 3.4.0, 3.4.1, 3.4.2 and now 3.4.3. That means that if you use the
24same compiler, the same compiler version and compiler switches, the same
25NetHack compile-time options, and you have not incorporated any additional
26source code patches that altered the save file format on your system, then
27bones and save files from 3.4.0 through 3.4.3 should be compatible.
28
29
30 - - - - - - - - - - -
31
32Please read items (1), (2) and (3) BEFORE doing anything with your new code.
33
341. Unpack the code in a dedicated new directory. We will refer to that
35 directory as the 'Top' directory. It makes no difference what you
36 call it.
37
382. If there is no flaw in the packaging, many sub-directories will be
39 automatically created, and files will be deposited in them:
40
41 a. A 'dat' directory, which contains a variety of data files.
42 b. A 'doc' directory, which contains various documentation.
43 c. An 'include' directory, which contains *.h files.
44 d. A 'src' directory, which contains game *.c files used by all versions.
45 e. A 'util' directory, which contains files for utility programs.
46 f. A 'sys' directory, which contains subdirectories for files that
47 are operating-system specific.
48 g. A 'sys/share' subdirectory, which contains files shared by some OSs.
49 h. A 'sys/share/sounds' subsubdirectory, which contains sound files
50 shared by some OSs.
51 i. A 'sys/amiga' subdirectory, which contains files specific to AmigaDOS.
52 j. A 'sys/amiga/ship' subsubdirectory
53 k. A 'sys/atari' subdirectory, which contains files specific to TOS.
54 l. A 'sys/be' subdirectory, which contains files specific to Be OS.
55 m. A 'sys/mac' subdirectory, which contains files specific to MacOS.
56 n. A 'sys/msdos' subdirectory, which contains files specific to MS-DOS.
57 o. A 'sys/os2' subdirectory, which contains files specific to OS/2.
58 p. A 'sys/unix' subdirectory, which contains files specific to UNIX.
59 q. A 'sys/vms' subdirectory, which contains files specific to VMS.
60 r. A 'sys/wince' subdirectory, which contains files specific to Windows CE.
61 s. A 'sys/winnt' subdirectory, which contains files specific to Windows NT.
62 t. A 'win' directory, which contains subdirectories for files that
63 are windowing-system specific (but not operating-system specific).
64 u. A 'win/share' subdirectory, which contains files shared by some
65 windowing systems.
66 v. A 'win/Qt' subdirectory, which contains files specific to Qt.
67 w. A 'win/X11' subdirectory, which contains files specific to X11.
68 x. A 'win/gem' subdirectory, which contains files specific to GEM.
69 y. A 'win/gnome' subdirectory, which contains files specific to GNOME.
70 z. A 'win/tty' subdirectory, which contains files specific to ttys.
71 A. A 'win/win32' subdirectory, which contains files specific to the
72 Windows Win32 API.
73
74 The names of these directories should not be changed unless you are
75 ready to go through the makefiles and the makedefs program and change
76 all the directory references in them.
77
783. Having unpacked, you should have a file called 'Files' in your Top
79 directory. This file contains the list of all the files you now SHOULD
80 have in each directory. Please check the files in each directory
81 against this list to make sure that you have a complete set.
82
834. Before you do anything else, please read carefully the file called
84 "license" in the 'dat' subdirectory. It is expected that you comply
85 with the terms of that license, and we are very serious about it.
86
875. If everything is in order, you can now turn to trying to get the program
88 to compile and run on your particular system. It is worth mentioning
89 that the default configuration is SysV/Sun/Solaris2.x (simply because
90 the code was housed on such a system). It is also worth mentioning
91 here that NetHack 3.4 is a huge program. If you intend to run it on a
92 small machine, you'll have to make hard choices among the options
93 available in config.h.
94
95 The files sys/*/Install.* were written to guide you in configuring the
96 program for your operating system. The files win/*/Install.* are
97 available, where necessary, to help you in configuring the program
98 for particular windowing environments. Reading them, and the man pages,
99 should answer most of your questions.
100
101 At the time of this release, NetHack 3.4 is known to run/compile on:
102
103 Apple Macintosh running MacOS 7.5 or higher, LinuxPPC, BeOS 4.0
104 Atari ST/TT/Falcon running TOS (or MultiTOS) with GCC
105 Commodore Amiga running AmigaDOS 3.0 or higher with SAS/C 6.x
106 (but see Makefile.ami about DICE and Manx)
107 DEC Alpha/VMS (aka OpenVMS AXP), running V1.x through V7.1
108 DEC VAX/VMS, running V4.6 through V7.1
109 HP 9000s700 running HP-UX 10.x, 11.x
110 IBM PS/2 and AT compatibles running OS/2 - 2.0 and up with GCC emx
111 Intel 80386 or greater (or clone) boxes running MS-DOS with DPMI.
112 Intel 80386 or greater (or clone) boxes running Linux, or BSDI.
113 Intel 80386 or greater (or clone) boxes running Windows 95/98/Me.
114 Intel 80386 or greater (or clone) boxes running Windows NT/2000/XP/2003.
115 Intel Pentium or better (or clone) running BeOS 4.5
116 Sun SPARC based machine running SunOS 4.x, Solaris 2.x, or Solaris 7
117
118 NetHack 3.4 will also run on the following, but a cross-compiler hosted
119 on another platform, such as win32, is required to build from source.
120
121 Pocket PC devices running Windows CE 3.0 and higher
122 H/PC Pro devices running Windows CE 2.11 and higher.
123 Palm Size PC 1.1 devices running Windows CE 2.11
124
125 Previous versions of NetHack were tested on the following systems,
126 and we expect that NetHack 3.4 will work on them as well:
127
128 AT&T 3B1 running System V (3.51)
129 AT&T 3B2/600 & 3B2/622 running System V R3.2.1
130 AT&T 3B2/1000 Model 80 running System V R3.2.2
131 AT&T 3B4000 running System V
132 AT&T 6386 running System V R3.2
133 Data General AViiON systems running DG/UX
134 DEC vaxen running BSD, Ultrix
135 Decstations running Ultrix 3.1, 4.x
136 Encore Multimax running UMAX 4.2
137 Gould NP1 running UTX 3/2
138 HP 9000s300 running HP-UX
139 HP 9000s700 running HP-UX 9.x
140 IBM PC/RT and RS/6000 running AIX 3.x
141 IBM PS/2 and AT compatibles running OS/2 1.1 - 2.0 (and probably
142 Warp) with Microsoft 6.0, and OS/2 2.0 and up with IBM CSet++ 2.0.
143 Intel 80386 or greater (or clone) running 386BSD
144 Mips M2000 running RiscOS 4.1
145 NeXT running Mach (using BSD configuration)
146 Pyramid 9820x running OSx 4.4c
147 SGI Iris running IRIX
148 Stardent Vistra 800 running SysV R4.0
149 Stride 460 running UniStride 2.1
150 Sun-3s, -4s, and -386is running SunOS 3.x
151 Sun-3s and -386is running SunOS 4.x
152 Valid Logic Systems SCALD-System
153
154 Unless otherwise mentioned, the compiler used was the OS-vendor's
155 C compiler.
156
157 With the demise of Windows NT on the DEC Alpha, no attempt has been
158 made to build NetHack 3.4.3 on that platform.
159
160 Windows 98/Me have been the most problematic Windows platforms for
161 running NetHack so far. Patches for 3.4.2 (courtesy Michael Lehotay)
162 have been incorporated into 3.4.3 to help make them work better. Your
163 results may vary.
164
165 A build for Intel 80286 machines and DOS "real mode" overlaid versions
166 has not been produced for 3.4.3. Nobody on the porting team has
167 the time or the software to attempt the necessary tuning that will allow
168 it to achieve the balance of having just the right amount of available
169 memory, and still have acceptable performance. The sources necessary
170 to do so are still included in the source distribution, so if someone
171 has access to a real-mode compiler and lots of spare time on their hands,
172 you may be able to get things working. Of course you do so at your own risk.
173
174 - - - - - - - - - - -
175
176If you have problems building the game, or you find bugs in it, we recommend
177filing a bug report from our "Contact Us" web page at:
178 http://www.nethack.org/
179
180When sending correspondence, please observe the following:
181o Please be sure to include your machine type, OS, and patchlevel.
182o Never send us binary files (e.g. save files or bones files). Whichever
183 platform you are using, only a small minority of the development team has
184 access to it, and you will rapidly annoy the others. If you have found
185 a bug and think that your save file would aid in solving the problem,
186 send us a description in words of the problem, your machine type, your
187 operating system, and the version of NetHack. Tell us that you have a
188 save file, but do not actually send it.
189 In the rare case that we think your save file would be helpful, you will
190 be contacted by a member of the development team with the address of a
191 specific person to send the save file to.
192o Though we make an effort to reply to each bug report, it may take some
193 time before you receive feedback. This is especially true during the
194 period immediately after a new release, when we get the most bug reports.
195o We don't give hints for playing the game.
196o Don't bother to ask when the next version will be out. You will not get
197 a reply.
198
199If you don't have access to the world wide web, or if you want to submit
200a patch for the NetHack source code via email directly, you can direct it
201to this address:
202 nethack-bugs (at) nethack.org
203
204If you've changed something to get NetHack to run on your system, it's likely
205that others have done it by making slightly different modifications. By routing
206your patches through the development team, we should be able to avoid making
207everyone else choose among variant patches claiming to do the same thing, to keep
208most of the copies of 3.4 synchronized by means of official patches, and to
209maintain the painfully-created file organization. (This process has been working
210since the time when everyone just posted their own patches to 2.3. At that time,
211there were no archived bug-fixes to give to people who got 2.3 after its initial
212release, so the same bugs kept being discovered by new batches of people.)
213We have been successful in preventing this from happening since the 3.0
214release. Please cooperate to keep this from happening to 3.4.
215
216It is inevitable that we will reject some proposed additions of new features
217either because they do not fit our conception of the game, or because they
218require more code than we consider they're worth. If we reject your feature,
219you are free, of course, to post the patches to the net yourself and let the
220marketplace decide their worth.
221
222All of this amounts to the following: If you decide to apply a free-lanced
223patch to your 3.4 code, you are on your own. In our own patches, we will
224assume that your code is synchronized with ours.
225
226 -- Good luck, and happy Hacking --
227