[newbie] Help for configuring the game (console version)

Lord K.

unread,

Oct 24, 2012, 2:30:30 PM10/24/12

to

Hi, I discovered nethack today and I enjoy it. I will
probably come here and ask some questions in the days to come.

First of all, is there a way to replace the default pager (a "more"-like
ager) with something more efficient like "less"?

Second question, by enabling the "DECGraphics" option, I can have nice
walls, but how can I have the nice "path" like on this picture:
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/213/screenshot2009121510213.png

Third question, how can I disable the choice character selection at the
beginning and have the computer choose it for me (without having to tell
it at each time)?

Best regards, thank you by advance,

K.

bcode

unread,

Oct 24, 2012, 3:29:53 PM10/24/12

to

Lord K. <k...@kax.org> wrote:
> Hi, I discovered nethack today and I enjoy it. I will
> probably come here and ask some questions in the days to come.
>
> First of all, is there a way to replace the default pager (a "more"-like
> ager) with something more efficient like "less"?

See include/unixconf.h (search for DEF_PAGER) - this will require
recompiling the game.

> Second question, by enabling the "DECGraphics" option, I can have nice
> walls, but how can I have the nice "path" like on this picture:
> http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/213/screenshot2009121510213.png

That looks like IBMgraphics; enable these instead of DECgraphics.
Note that AFAICT this requires a cp437-compatible encoding, which
not every terminal [emulator] may support.

> Third question, how can I disable the choice character selection at the
> beginning and have the computer choose it for me (without having to tell
> it at each time)?

In your .nethackrc:
OPTIONS=role:random,race:random,gender:random,align:random

Doug Freyburger

unread,

Oct 24, 2012, 4:14:34 PM10/24/12

to

Lord K. wrote:
>
> First of all, is there a way to replace the default pager (a "more"-like
> ager) with something more efficient like "less"?

To my knowledge alternatives are only available when compiled for UNIX
like systems such as Linux.

> Third question, how can I disable the choice character selection at the
> beginning and have the computer choose it for me (without having to tell
> it at each time)?

Read the Guidebook file several more times. Now do it backwards a
paragraph at a time to have a different context. There are examples of
setting switches in the config file to do that. On Windows defaults.nh.
Lines in my current one look like -

OPTIONS=IBMGraphics

OPTIONS=noautopickup,perm_invent,showexp,silent,sortpack
OPTIONS=nosparkle,time,number_pad:0
OPTIONS=name:Doug,role:Knight,race:Human,gender:male,align:lawful
OPTIONS=dogname:Smokey,catname:Clint,fruit:Citron
OPTIONS=horsename:Silver
OPTIONS=notravel

OPTIONS=suppress_alert:3.3.1

OPTIONS=rest_on_space

I don't think any of my other settings have been changed from the
default. As you can see I happen to be playing human lawful knights at
the moment. A bit redundant in the case of knights.

Jonadab the Unsightly One

unread,

Oct 24, 2012, 8:40:45 PM10/24/12

to

On Oct 24, 2:30 pm, "Lord K." <k...@kax.org> wrote:

> First of all, is there a way to replace the default pager (a "more"-like
> ager) with something more efficient like "less"?

In addition to what others have said, the msghistory and
msg_window options might be considered relevant here.

> how can I have the nice "path" like on this picture:
> http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/213/screenshot2009121510213.png

I recognize the character being used for that path. It's part of
IBM Extended ASCII. Depending on your OS and its l10n
settings, it may or may not be available.

As the other poster said, it is possible that IBMGraphics
may do this for you automatically. If not, you can customize
the characters used for many things with the DUNGEON
option in your .nethackrc, but you'll have to choose from the
characters that are available on your system and specify
them by number, and furthermore I suspect you probably
can only use ones that can be represented in a single byte
on your system.

(Some newer variants, including NetHack4, use Unicode,
so you could use any character at all that your system can
display. But vanilla NetHack is much older than Unicode
and had not yet been updated to support it when 3.4.3 was
released about a decade ago.)

SM

unread,

Nov 2, 2012, 5:53:41 PM11/2/12

to

2012-10-24, Lord K. wrote:
> First of all, is there a way to replace the default pager (a "more"-like
> ager) with something more efficient like "less"?

Have you found out already that < scrolls back a page at many (but not
all, e.g. \) prompts? I had been playing for years and didn't know about
it.

--
:wq

SM

unread,

Nov 2, 2012, 5:56:53 PM11/2/12

to

2012-10-24, Doug Freyburger wrote:
> OPTIONS=rest_on_space

This can easily lead to YASD's if one is inclined to tap SPACE to get
out of prompts and similar situations.

--
:wq

bcode

unread,

Nov 2, 2012, 8:42:58 PM11/2/12

to

AFAICT that is not related to the pager; it's a menu, and as such
it cannot be replaced anyway (easily, that is).

Jorgen Grahn

unread,

Nov 2, 2012, 8:51:42 PM11/2/12

to

On Wed, 2012-10-24, bcode wrote:
> Lord K. <k...@kax.org> wrote:
>> Hi, I discovered nethack today and I enjoy it. I will
>> probably come here and ask some questions in the days to come.
>>
>> First of all, is there a way to replace the default pager (a "more"-like
>> ager) with something more efficient like "less"?
>
> See include/unixconf.h (search for DEF_PAGER) - this will require
> recompiling the game.

No. That's the last resort pager; the game will[1] first try
$HACKPAGER, then $PAGER, and finally that one. See
sys/unix/unixmain.c.

That's pretty normal behavior for a Unix application. See for example
the Linux environ(7) man page -- $PAGER is the standard enviroment
variable for such things.

/Jorgen

[1] That is I suppose it will. I use the X interface, so I never used
this feature.

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .

bcode

unread,

Nov 3, 2012, 8:57:47 AM11/3/12

to

Jorgen Grahn <grahn...@snipabacken.se> wrote:
> On Wed, 2012-10-24, bcode wrote:
>> Lord K. <k...@kax.org> wrote:
>>> Hi, I discovered nethack today and I enjoy it. I will
>>> probably come here and ask some questions in the days to come.
>>>
>>> First of all, is there a way to replace the default pager (a "more"-like
>>> ager) with something more efficient like "less"?
>>
>> See include/unixconf.h (search for DEF_PAGER) - this will require
>> recompiling the game.
>
> No. That's the last resort pager; the game will[1] first try
> $HACKPAGER, then $PAGER, and finally that one. See
> sys/unix/unixmain.c.

DEF_PAGER *has* to be defined for HACKPAGER or PAGER to change
anything at all. It says in unixconf.h that because of that,
not defining DEF_PAGER (which will make the game use its
default pager) might be better for security (especially on
servers, depending on the details of how it is set up).

Also, from sys/unix/unixmain.c:
#ifdef DEF_PAGER
if(!(catmore = nh_getenv("HACKPAGER")) && !(catmore = nh_getenv("PAGER")))
catmore = DEF_PAGER;
#endif