Nethack Fourk (now at v4.3.0.4)

[getter77]

https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/comments/7i5u2b/announcement_nethack_fourk_4304_released/?st=jawis6fe&sh=7ffdd3bb

Announcement:

Today, December 7th, 2017: a day that will live in infamy. The roguelike gaming community was suddenly and deliberately attacked by NetHack Fourk version 4.3.0.4, which has been unleashed upon the world to wreak whatever havoc it may.
Screenshots:

 http://mistersanity.blogspot.com/2017/12/screenshots-nethack-fourk-4304.html

Play Online (Recommended):

    US server (Vermont): ssh nethack@hardfought.org web https://www.hardfought.org/hterm
    EU server (Germany): ssh nethack@ascension.run web https://ascension.run/hterm/

Download:

    Precompiled binary for 64-bit MS Windows: https://github.com/tsadok/nhfourk/releases/download/v4.3.0.4/nhfourk-4.3.0.4.msi
    Source for version 4.3.0.4 (PKWare ZIP format): https://github.com/tsadok/nhfourk/archive/v4.3.0.4.zip
    Source for version 4.3.0.4 (tarball): https://github.com/tsadok/nhfourk/archive/v4.3.0.4.tar.gz
    Source repository: git clone https://github.com/tsadok/nhfourk.git

Build Instructions:

    For all Unix-type systems (Linux, BSD, Mac, etc.), see the regular README: https://github.com/tsadok/nhfourk/blob/4.3.0.4/README#L456
    For MS Windows, instead see: https://github.com/tsadok/nhfourk/blob/4.3.0.4/README-MSWindows.txt

Major Changes (since 4.3.0.3):
    New tilesets have been added (see full list below).

    More race/role options and differentiation. If you've always wanted to play as a Dwarf Priest, Giant Samurai, or Scurrier Ranger, now you can. (Scurriers are a race of bipedal humanoid rodents. They are fast and have innate digging ability.)

    Each type of armor now has minimum and maximum sizes for who it will fit, so if you are a small race (e.g., Gnome) or a very large race (e.g., Giant), you may not be able to wear everything. (However, Giants start with ten extra points of Defense, compared to other races; and Gnomes can see in the dark.)

    The speed system has been overhauled: various sources of speed (or temporary slowness) now stack with each other, so e.g., if you are wearing speed boots, drinking potions of speed will still provide a benefit: they speed you up even more.

    Many of the special levels now have new versions.

    The life cycle of dragons has been extended. Watch out for dragon halls, which may contain elder dragons or even ancient dragons.

    Potions of healing and of full healing no longer have an overheal effect; for that you specifically need potions of extra healing to give you "extra" healing above your maximum.

    There is now a scroll of consecration, which can be used to create an altar (or, if confused, a magic chest).

    There are now role-specific and in some cases also race-specific ways to improve your alignment record.

Other Changes:
    New monsters, including jitterbugs and gryphons. (The latter can be saddled and ridden, if you can tame one.)

    The following have been buffed: lances (including Dragonbane, which knights can get via crowning); cornuthaums; stealth; speed (intrinsic, extrinsic, and temporary speed now stack); giant spiders (web spinning attack); monster hitpoint regen; Trollsbane; quarterstaves (improve spell-casting success rate); Elbereth (works against most humans; but not against your quest nemesis, sorry); scrolls of scare monster; Mjollnir (it no longer hits and shocks the thrower 1% of the time); scroll of stinking cloud; crystal balls

    The Priest and Caveman quest artifacts have changed.

    Wielding Stormbringer now causes peaceful and tame monsters to attack you while you are wielding it. (It does NOT cause you to attack things you don't intend to attack.)

    End-of-game item identification, and the dumplog, places information the player character did not know in brackets.

    More conducts are tracked than before.

    Yellow lights emit light with a larger radius than before.

    Ghosts are invisible.

    Teleport control is disrupted by the mysterious force when you are carrying the Amulet of Yendor.

    Food no longer has a random 1/7 chance to be rotten when you eat it.

    Bribeable demons will no longer accept tiny amounts of money.

    Fire Brand and Frost Brand are now short swords; but they can be dual-wielded together. Also, Sting can be held second to Orcrist, for two-weapon combat.

    By default, bones will not load on special levels; this includes Minetown and Delphi. If you want bones to be loaded even on special levels, you have to go into the options and change the bones setting to fully enabled.

    The numbers of experience points needed to reach various levels has been reduced, significantly.

    There are several new types of shops. (They are, however, rare.)

    Looking things up with whatis (/) now gives useful information.

    For more details on what has changed, see the changelog: https://github.com/tsadok/nhfourk/blob/4.3.0.4/doc/changelog-fourk.txt

    Automatically-generated spoilers area also available. If you have a local copy of the game, you can generate your own using the #spoilers command in debug mode (they are created in the same directory as the xlogfile and livelog). You can also find the automatically generated spoilers, as well as Sokoban spoilers, online at http://jonadab.jumpingcrab.com/nethack-stuff/spoilers-fourk/

Tilesets:
Which tileset to show is selectable in the options. All tilesets are available in the SDL client (only text tilesets otherwise). The list of tilesets included with the game is now as follows: * text-unicode (NEW, differentiates all dragon ages) * text-legacy (for if your terminal doesn't know UTF-8) * text-ascii (for that fully retro look, no weird characters) * geoduck (graphical but with elements of the text symbols) * slashem-16 (basically the vanilla default GUI tileset) * slashem-32 (NEW, 32x32, 8-bit color) * dawnlike (16x16, 4-bit color, very distinctive art style) * fmob (NEW, 24x24, each tile has one foreground color, plus black) * rltiles (32x32, 32-bit color)

Feedback:
Feedback and bug reports can be submitted in the following ways:

    IRC is the fastest way to get an answer. You can leave feedback in the #nethack4 channel on Freenode, which is shared between NetHack4 and its major variants (Fourk and FIQHack). Mentioning the word Fourk in here guarantees that I will see your message when I am next online.

    Bugs can now be reported in the public bug tracker, http://roguelikes.live/nh4-bugzilla/ (Please bear with us if this is a bit slow. It's a new installation, and we still need to do some performance tweaking.)

    Correspondence about NetHack Fourk may also be sent to jonadab either on the Freenode IRC network or by email (at columbus.rr.com). If using email, please make sure that the word "Fourk" is included in the Subject: header of your message. (I get a lot of junk mail and rely absolutely on whitelist filters to bring actual relevant messages to my attention. If the Subject has Fourk in it, Arsinoe will see the message in my POP3 inbox and /msg me.)

    For other options, see http://jonadab.jumpingcrab.com/nethack-stuff/spoilers-fourk/contact-me.html

 

[Krice]

Why playing online is recommended? By the way, I guess when the source is now easier(?) to compile there is going to be more forks. It could be as bad as Angband with huge amount of forks but they all miss the point the main game had in the first place.

[Avagart]

huge amount of forks but they all miss the point the main game had in the first place

Why it's bad? I really like diversity of *bands. You can play FA Angband, NPP Angband, UnAngband, and experience different gameplay style every time, and I find it amazing. Although I don't think it's something that will happen to NetHack, its community seems much more, say, conservative.

Btw, using installer that won't let you specify, and even don't show *where* the game will be installed, is kinda red flag for me.

[Krice]

Btw, using installer that won't let you specify, and even don't show *where* the game will be installed, is kinda red flag for me.

Some programs (in Windows) throw data in Users which has several confusing folders for program data etc. I still have Jade's crap in Users - username - .jade. I recall that Jade could not remove itself properly so I left it there. Thanks again Biskup. But I wonder why Nethack (fork) even needs an installer. It's not like casuals are going to play it anyway.

Why it's bad? Because most forks are bad, they often just "add" stuff without considering gameplay balance etc. And that stuff is just more items, maybe some new level theme or something like that which doesn't really add anything interesting into the game.

[Avagart]

But I wonder why Nethack (fork) even needs an installer.

I asked that question via reddit. It seems that developers decided to use *default system recommended paths* - on Windows, game will be installed in Program Files, and moving game files to our directory-of-choice will break things (like save system). Why? Because "This is the way Microsoft recommends doing it." It doesn't make sense for me.

[getter77]

That became A Thing in the Win 7 era in terms of strongly encouraged practices and triply so with the advent of Win 10---it is weird and down to a sort of streamlining predictability in terms of admin permissions and such, but that's about how it goes if they want to minimize OS friction at a high level.

[Krice]

"This is the way Microsoft recommends doing it."

This sounds really weird. Imagine RL programmers asking Microsoft what they should do. You simply don't need to use an installer to create a perfectly working game which also cleans up better when you delete it.