Hack 1.0.2 posted
Andries Brouwer
(10 parts, one 45K part each working day); the first part is
posted today.
Warning:
Contrary to Hack 1.0 which is a very stable program [only two
or three real bugs have been reported - I recall one about
restoring games containing engravings (with a one-line fix)
and one about being hit by 'R' while not wearing a helmet
(with a one-character fix)] this new release is virtually
untried, and may be full of bugs.
Being an optimist, I do not expect many bugs of the 'memory
fault - core dumped' type, but the new features are not yet
fine-tuned and you may find the game less balanced.
Probably you should not throw away the old sources and binaries
before the new version has been up and running satisfactorily
for some time. But:
Warning 2:
You cannot have two versions of hack with the same playground;
the older version will choke on the bones- and save-files of the
other.
Warning 3:
A lot has been changed. If you have made local mods, reconsider
carefully what you have done; except in very simple cases it is
quite likely that the same mod will no longer work as intended.
(Here is how you could try to preserve your mods: first make a
context diff between the original source and your modified source;
then try to apply these diffs (by hand, probably patch will fail)
to the new source.)
Note these changes in the command repertoire:
'I' list inventory [used to be 'i']
'i' (followed by a symbol) list all objects of specified kind
'.' wait & rest [used to be ' '; this can be reset using
the 'O' command, or the environment var HACKOPTIONS]
(there are more changes; see the help files).
Note these changes in the display:
The number of experience points is no longer shown. (If you feel
you cannot do without, there is an #ifdef in the source.)
Also the field Gold has disappeared from the bottomline. Using
the command '$' you can sit down and count your money and hope
that no Leprechaun comes along.
Sooner or later I want to remove the Hp (Hpmax) fields as well,
but I haven't found a good replacement yet. (I would need a lot
of adjectives describing strength and damage incurred; just like
I don't want to know that my stomach contains food for 813 more
moves and prefer a scheme with Choked-Satiated-(normal)-Hungry-
Weak-Fainting-Fainted-Starved, I don't want to know either that
I have 23 hit points out of a maximum of 91. Who supplies me with
descriptions?)