Official releases
Simon
I haven't been around on the group for a while, so wanted to check in and see what's happening. Has the dissolution of the devteam been officially announced yet? How are Spork, Un and Slash'EM playing these days? Have there been any really cool ascensions recently?
Anyways, it would be great to hear what's been going on.
Simon.
TJR
The wiki moved to nethackwiki.com, that's pretty much the biggest
change I'm aware of. Spork and Un are live and kicking; Slashem and
Vanilla seemingly aren't developed anymore. Nethack.alt.org is quitely
become even more awesome as time goes by.
Maud and Nht have pushed the record for speed ascensions to absurdly
low turn counts. Solidsnail is doing a complete set of zen ascensions
for each role. I personally am working on an all-conducts ascension
without bones stuffing, but the best I've achieved is a post-quest
game parked in the castle.
Janis Papanagnou
> On 13 Jan., 13:21, Simon <yaroguel...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Hi rgrn.
>>
>> I haven't been around on the group for a while, so wanted to check in and
>> see what's happening.
If it is more than seven years that you've been here, then something has
changed - in the main branch - otherwise not so much. ;-)
>> Has the dissolution of the devteam been officially announced yet?
They're still fixing bugs. The last memo that I've got from them was dated
2011-01-11: "This wasn't related to -306 and hadn't been fixed; now it has."
Wait! - that's just two days ago.
> Slashem and Vanilla seemingly aren't developed anymore.
With the minor exception of the mentioned bug-fixing.
> Nethack.alt.org is quitely become even more awesome as time goes by.
Seconded.
Frankly, I'd even favour if a new Vanilla release would be released just
for the purpose of an updated credits section in the Guidebook where Pasi
and Drew would be mentioned for inventing and supporting NAO, the greatest
site for making Nethack even more popular that it was. - Big Thanks to them!
> Maud and Nht have pushed the record for speed ascensions to absurdly low
> turn counts.
I don't think those should be mentioned; at least it should be pointed out
that those (some/most/all) games have been cheated, at least unreliable to
be counted as minimum-turns achievement. As I mentioned in the past, those
games devaluate the real low-turn efforts that have been made in the past.
Probably the recent turn counter overflow game should also be mentioned as
another current record, just a few days old (look for the respective posting
in RGRN; 2011-01-08 by Khaos).
Janis
TJR
wrote:
> On 13.01.2011 17:40, TJR wrote:
>
> > On 13 Jan., 13:21, Simon <yaroguel...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> >> Hi rgrn.
>
> >> I haven't been around on the group for a while, so wanted to check in and
> >> see what's happening.
>
> If it is more than seven years that you've been here, then something has
> changed - in the main branch - otherwise not so much. ;-)
>
> >> Has the dissolution of the devteam been officially announced yet?
> > Slashem and Vanilla seemingly aren't developed anymore.
>
> With the minor exception of the mentioned bug-fixing.
If nobody ever sees the fix, is the bug then fixed?
> > Maud and Nht have pushed the record for speed ascensions to absurdly low
> > turn counts.
>
> I don't think those should be mentioned; at least it should be pointed out
> that those (some/most/all) games have been cheated, at least unreliable to
> be counted as minimum-turns achievement. As I mentioned in the past, those
> games devaluate the real low-turn efforts that have been made in the past.
You can still post a YAAP for your no-bones record speed run; NAO even
added an option to disable bones files.
Cheating is a charged word that implies breaking agreed-upon rules.
Why not let Maud and Nht play NetHack the way the DevTeam wrote it,
and congratulate them to their impressive achievements?
> Probably the recent turn counter overflow game should also be mentioned as
> another current record, just a few days old (look for the respective posting
> in RGRN; 2011-01-08 by Khaos).
I believe a 1-turn ascension has been done before. At least the
article on the wiki is quite old.
Janis Papanagnou
> On 13 Jan., 18:16, Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanag...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>> On 13.01.2011 17:40, TJR wrote:
>>> On 13 Jan., 13:21, Simon <yaroguel...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> Has the dissolution of the devteam been officially announced yet?
> ...
>>> Slashem and Vanilla seemingly aren't developed anymore.
>>
>> With the minor exception of the mentioned bug-fixing.
>
> If nobody ever sees the fix, is the bug then fixed?
If the question is asked in the context of a "dissolved devteam", then yes.
But it has no practical relevance for us; therefore I wrote "minor".
(A rougher and stricter term would have been "insignificant exception".)
> [...]
>
> Cheating is a charged word that implies breaking agreed-upon rules.
> Why not let Maud and Nht play NetHack the way the DevTeam wrote it,
> and congratulate them to their impressive achievements?
I think this is a ridiculous debate. If someone looks into the end-log on
the server - something that is not as the DevTeam wrote it, BTW; that's a
NAO feature - then they rely on out-of-game information which is cheating;
there's no euphemism for that behaviour that could hide that fact. YMMV.
Cheating to get "impressive" turn numbers that could only developed by
that cheating is not impressive, as far as I am concerned. Other folks may
find that impressive, I don't care; but it should be mentioned how they
achieved it, so that it gets the right dimension, compared with those who
have achieved a bit larger turn count numbers but without cheating. Sadly
those guys have been completely displaced from the achievement list by the
few cheaters. Again, I don't care, how people have fun. But honour to whom
honour is due.
Janis
TJR
wrote:
> On 13.01.2011 19:10, TJR wrote:
> > Cheating is a charged word that implies breaking agreed-upon rules.
> > Why not let Maud and Nht play NetHack the way the DevTeam wrote it,
> > and congratulate them to their impressive achievements?
>
> I think this is a ridiculous debate. If someone looks into the end-log on
> the server - something that is not as the DevTeam wrote it, BTW; that's a
> NAO feature - then they rely on out-of-game information which is cheating;
> there's no euphemism for that behaviour that could hide that fact. YMMV.
> Cheating to get "impressive" turn numbers that could only developed by
> that cheating is not impressive, as far as I am concerned. Other folks may
> find that impressive, I don't care; but it should be mentioned how they
> achieved it, so that it gets the right dimension, compared with those who
> have achieved a bit larger turn count numbers but without cheating. Sadly
> those guys have been completely displaced from the achievement list by the
> few cheaters. Again, I don't care, how people have fun. But honour to whom
> honour is due.
Agreed: using dumplogs should be disclosed.
Acehack conductifies most things some people find objectionable, so
that people who play by the "rules" get due credit for their
ascension. I like that approach.
Simon
I used to mostly play locally, with hearse. Ascended everything up to and including knight in reverse order but then work, family, etc intervened. Also to be honest I lost interest because every game started to feel the same. I ascended a couple of characters on Un as well, which was great. Never got round to trying Spork. These days I have regular long train journeys so I'll try out NAO and see if the train wifi is reliable enough to cope.
Incidentally I just checked the bugs page of nethack.org and it looks like the last update was on 16 September 2010. So perhaps hope isn't completely gone. At the very least you'd think they'd do a bugfix release!
Simon.
David Damerell
>e. I ascended a couple of characters on Un as well, which was great. Never
>got round to trying Spork. These days I have regular long train journeys
>so I'll try out NAO and see if the train wifi is reliable enough to cope.
If you've got a shell account on a real computer, I suggest you run
"screen" there and connect to NAO from there.
I suspect you're using the "new" Google Groups interface. Please don't; it
posts articles without References: lines.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Clown shoes. I hope that doesn't bother you.
Today is Second Mania, January.
Tomorrow will be Second Aponoia, January.
Janis Papanagnou
>
> Acehack conductifies most things some people find objectionable, so
> that people who play by the "rules" get due credit for their
> ascension. I like that approach.
Sounds good.
Janis
Patric Mueller
> Sounds like the community is still going strong, and even with some of
> the same arguments -
Some things never change :)
> great to hear! I had been worried that as Vanilla
> withered the community would slowly die as well.
The public servers have done a lot to keep the interest high.
Of course a new release would have been much better.
The splintering of the development as there is no central bugfixing
authority for NetHack is also not ideal.
> Incidentally I just checked the bugs page of nethack.org and it looks
> like the last update was on 16 September 2010. So perhaps hope isn't
> completely gone. At the very least you'd think they'd do a bugfix
> release!
I wouldn't bet on it. :/
Bye
Patric
--
NetHack-De: NetHack auf Deutsch - http://nethack-de.sf.net/
NetHack for AROS: http://sf.net/projects/nethack-aros/
UnNetHack: http://apps.sf.net/trac/unnethack/
ais523
wrote:
> On 13.01.2011 17:40, TJR wrote:
> > Maud and Nht have pushed the record for speed ascensions to absurdly low
> > turn counts.
>
> I don't think those should be mentioned; at least it should be pointed out
> that those (some/most/all) games have been cheated, at least unreliable to
> be counted as minimum-turns achievement. As I mentioned in the past, those
> games devaluate the real low-turn efforts that have been made in the past.
Of course, it's entirely fair to consider runs that abuse bones
(either accidental pudding farmer deaths like nht's former world
record, or blatantly bones-stuffed ones like maud's current record)
separately from runs that don't use such techniques. However, the
players in question are entirely capable of beating the efforts in the
past anyway; it seems that one of Maud's runs was a bonesless 2816-
turn run (<http://alt.org/nethack/userdata/M/Maud/dumplog/
1262899446.nh343.txt>, although of course it's not obvious it was
bonesless from the dumplog), not quite the sub-2200 amazement we're
used to nowadays, but nonetheless well under what was achieved before
polyself-based strategies became common in speedrunning. To put it
another way, the runs are still interesting even if they're doing
various things in ways rgrn might not want them to do things. (As a
comparison, I'm trying a minimum-turncount run which is actually
cheating atm; no editing of game files allowed, everything
accomplished is stuff that could happen in theory in a legitimate
game, but doing things like savescumming and controlling the RNG; it
might be interesting to see what the theoretical minimum is. In 3.4.3,
without exploiting memory corruption bugs like C343-218, it seems to
be 2016 turns, although the amount of luck required to accomplish that
without cheating is obviously effectively impossible in practice. I
have legitimate ascensions that aren't cheating by any definitions I
know; but separately from that, I thought it would be interesting to
compare an actually cheated run to ones that are merely abusing bones.
There's quite a difference...)
In other news, it's also worth mentioning the other side of speed
ascensions; if you've been away for over a couple of years or so, you
may well have missed the 1:42 (in realtime) by Adeon in the 2009 /dev/
null tournament, which is just as impressive as the gametime
speedruns. Realtime speedrunning hasn't had revolutionary shifts in
strategy like gametime speedrunning has; rather, the players doing it
are just very good, with multiple people getting under 3 hours in many
tournaments nowadays. They resemble normal games a lot more than the
gametime runs do, with the major difference from a normal game being
the hugely reduced amount of backtracking in the runs (not quite
alpine conduct, but something approaching it).
--
ais523
Janis Papanagnou
>
> Of course, it's entirely fair to consider runs that abuse bones
> (either accidental pudding farmer deaths like nht's former world
> record, or blatantly bones-stuffed ones like maud's current record)
> separately from runs that don't use such techniques.
Technically you generally can't separate those two classes, I suppose.
Notwithstanding that particular question; IMO it would be good if NAO
would keep just one entry per player in the minimum turn-count list
(then, likewise, they could also reduce the list to 25 entries or so).
> However, the
> players in question are entirely capable of beating the efforts in the
> past anyway;
If you've noticed a couple cheats that they've done, the motivation to
search any non-cheat achievements (if any) is close to null.
> [...] To put it
> another way, the runs are still interesting even if they're doing
> various things in ways rgrn might not want them to do things.
Wait! What RGRN "wants" or not is not the question, and actually not
relevant for that; folks can play as they like. The point in question
is _the comparison_ with other, non-cheat fast ascenders, specifically
on a public server.
And I agree with you that it can be interesting to view their games;
I've done that. In the past I spoke about a "bad smell" in otherwise
proficiently played games.
> [...]
Janis
dtype
> You can still post a YAAP for your no-bones record speed run;NAOeven
> added an option to disable bones files.
Yep, I'd like to drag this line back out from the thread. We (well,
paxed) just added an option for no-bones play, so that cleaner games
can be played for comparison purposes, and certain accomplishments can
be broken out a bit more easily in stats pages. I imagine once we have
enough data, we'll have some kinds of no-bones top lists.
-drew
Rast
> On Jan 13, 10:10 am, TJR <tilmina...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > You can still post a YAAP for your no-bones record speed run;NAOeven
> > added an option to disable bones files.
>
> Yep, I'd like to drag this line back out from the thread. We (well,
> paxed) just added an option for no-bones play, so that cleaner games
> can be played for comparison purposes,
How about adding additional nerfs? Say,
- No randomly generated /oW before the Valley
- No more than one magic lamp generated above DL12.
- Once a shop has an item from the set {speed boots, power gloves, CoMR},
no further items from that set will be generated for that store.
- At most two "lucky" (throne, fountain, smoky potion) wishes before
XL14.
etc.
--
"It's only possible to betray where loyalty is due," said Sandy.
"Well, wasn't it due to Miss Brodie?"
"Only up to a point," said Sandy.
- Muriel Spark
Patric Mueller
> dtype wrote on Sun, 16 Jan 2011 17:26:19 -0800 (PST):
>> On Jan 13, 10:10�am, TJR <tilmina...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > You can still post a YAAP for your no-bones record speed run;NAOeven
>> > added an option to disable bones files.
>>
>> Yep, I'd like to drag this line back out from the thread. We (well,
>> paxed) just added an option for no-bones play, so that cleaner games
>> can be played for comparison purposes,
>
> How about adding additional nerfs? Say,
I disagree with calling an option that is set to false per default and
that a user may set by himself a "nerf".
This is just another conduct in NetHack. As we all know all a well
stuffed bones level can completely ruin the challenge of your own
ascension.
Of course it's a conduct that you can't adhere to when playing on a
server if the public server has no code for supporting it (besides
#quitting). Locally you can delete the bones level by hand or compile
a version that doesn't load bones level.
> - No randomly generated /oW before the Valley
Why not go all the way and don't generate random /oW? Like in
SporkHack where you only have the castle wand.
Although I don't see a large difference to the wishless conduct which
is already tracked by Vanilla with this one.
> - No more than one magic lamp generated above DL12.
> - Once a shop has an item from the set {speed boots, power gloves, CoMR},
I think this would reduce NetHack's randomness and would remove the
possibility of some memorable moments.
> no further items from that set will be generated for that store.
> - At most two "lucky" (throne, fountain, smoky potion) wishes before
> XL14.
Speaking from the programmer's point of view, because of the way
NetHack is coded such things are harder or even impossible to track
without breaking bones and save file compatibility. This has always to
be taken into account with NAO.
David Damerell
>Why not go all the way and don't generate random /oW? Like in
>SporkHack where you only have the castle wand.
Cor blimey. I suggested to Derek generating them 1:1 (and the Castle wand
1:3, with no wresting for WoW), but he's gone even further.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Oil is for sissies
Today is Brieday, January.
Tomorrow will be Gouday, January.
Rast
>
> Rast <ra...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> This is just another conduct in NetHack. As we all know all a well
> stuffed bones level can completely ruin the challenge of your own
> ascension.
> > - No randomly generated /oW before the Valley
>
> Why not go all the way and don't generate random /oW? Like in
> SporkHack where you only have the castle wand.
Sure, whatever. I don't think a post-castle WoW gives much of an
advantage wrt conducts or speed.
> Although I don't see a large difference to the wishless conduct which
> is already tracked by Vanilla with this one.
The point is that you can compete with other players without
automatically losing to a competent player who happened to find an early
WoW.
> > - No more than one magic lamp generated above DL12.
> > - Once a shop has an item from the set {speed boots, power gloves, CoMR},
>
> I think this would reduce NetHack's randomness and would remove the
> possibility of some memorable moments.
A well stuffed armor shop can remove a lot of challenge also.
> > no further items from that set will be generated for that store.
> > - At most two "lucky" (throne, fountain, smoky potion) wishes before
> > XL14.
>
> Speaking from the programmer's point of view, because of the way
> NetHack is coded such things are harder or even impossible to track
> without breaking bones and save file compatibility. This has always to
> be taken into account with NAO.
Good points. Save files already do track total wishes used, so this
version should be safe:
IF the player has used two or more wishes AND has NOT yet visited the
castle level, further attempts to get wishes will fail, as follows:
- smoky potions will never release djinn
- thrones will give +1 luck instead of a wish
- water demons will always be generated hostile
- magic lamps will always give "nothing happens" when rubbed (they won't
be wasted)
Janis Papanagnou
> Rast <ra...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> - No randomly generated /oW before the Valley
>
> Why not go all the way and don't generate random /oW? Like in
> SporkHack where you only have the castle wand.
I never understood that emphasis on those (rare!) WoWs, while one can
get tons of loot from farming, or, with sufficient (boring) patience,
also arbitrary amounts of loot even from from just camping & killing.
In those cases where you just don't find sources of MR, or sources of
reflection, or sources of whatever, you'd wait (or search) anyway to
get it. Late WoWs are, to me, a way to reduce time and boredom to wait
for the respective sources in a more, umm.., natural way. Early wishes
are rare and contribute to the diversity of games. (Unbalancing? Gee!)
The idea revisited in the thread, let me call it global balance factors,
isn't bad, certainly. Myself I often thought (and probably posted about
it in the past) about the luck factor; it shouldn't be controllable by
the player as easily as it is now. Rather a lucky dice should reduce an
internal threshold that increases again over time. Currently you might
have a dozen lucky events in a row while a single unlucky event (like
poison incidents) may at the same time instantly kill you.
Janis
David Damerell
>On 26.01.2011 07:38, Patric Mueller wrote:
>>Rast <ra...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> - No randomly generated /oW before the Valley
>>Why not go all the way and don't generate random /oW? Like in
>>SporkHack where you only have the castle wand.
>I never understood that emphasis on those (rare!) WoWs, while one can
>get tons of loot from farming, or, with sufficient (boring) patience,
>also arbitrary amounts of loot even from from just camping & killing.
Well, in these specific cases, that doesn't help. If we're trying to
compare un-cheated speedruns in vanilla, an early WoW is a big stroke of
luck, so big that essentially speedruns become a matter of starting games
until you get that stroke of luck, but patience-based approaches don't
help at all.
And in Sporkhack, the design intent is to make patience-based approaches
ineffective or dangerous.
Also, more generally, you've got to get to the point where you can farm,
camp, and kill - and at that point the game is yours to lose and you're
just wasting time. It's not an alternative to finding the early WoW - the
early WoW is what _gets_ you to that point without doing the work.
>In those cases where you just don't find sources of MR, or sources of
>reflection, or sources of whatever, you'd wait (or search) anyway to
>get it.
Well, the question of "what to do in a particularly unlucky game" isn't
relevant to speedrunning - quit and restart - and in Spork, definite
effort has gone into making lacking specific resistances less critical
than in vanilla.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Clown shoes. I hope that doesn't bother you.
Today is Gouday, January.
Tomorrow will be Chedday, January.
Ray Kulhanek
> Quoting Janis Papanagnou<janis_pa...@hotmail.com>:
>> On 26.01.2011 07:38, Patric Mueller wrote:
>>> Rast<ra...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> - No randomly generated /oW before the Valley
>>> Why not go all the way and don't generate random /oW? Like in
>>> SporkHack where you only have the castle wand.
>> I never understood that emphasis on those (rare!) WoWs, while one can
>> get tons of loot from farming, or, with sufficient (boring) patience,
>
> Well, in these specific cases, that doesn't help. If we're trying to
> compare un-cheated speedruns in vanilla, an early WoW is a big stroke of
> luck, so big that essentially speedruns become a matter of starting games
> until you get that stroke of luck, but patience-based approaches don't
> help at all.
>
If the issue is comparing speed runs, it might be best to write a
"Tournament Rules" patch that reduces variability in several ways: no
random /oW, no bones, and the other things mentioned in this thread.
But rather than making it a compile-time option, let it be an option
that's selected at the same time as the race and role. Then if you
select that option, you get a conduct for it. Then you would have a
single conduct to filter on when you want to compare games under vaguely
similar circumstances, and because it's not a compile-time choice, it'd
still be possible to use it on public servers without reducing
variability in normal games. It'd still be a fairly involved patch to
write, of course, and luck would still be a major factor no matter what
you do, but it might help somewhat.
AlexO
> The splintering of the development as there is no central bugfixing
> authority for NetHack is also not ideal.
I seem to recall being shouted down for making a similar
observation...
David Damerell
Patric didn't start by calling the Dev Team dicks.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Clown shoes. I hope that doesn't bother you.
Today is Chedday, January.
Tomorrow will be Stilday, January - a weekend.
Patric Mueller
I don't remember that you got shouted down and I hope that you didn't
get the impression from any of my postings that I were shouting you
down.
I didn't mean to say that having different variants and different
development teams is bad as such.
Different people have different ideas on how to change the code. There
are several things that are now in UnNetHack that I wouldn't have
included because I thought it wouldn't be necessary. But they got
included as I saw them working in other variants or roguelikes that
convinced me otherwise.
I didn't talk about the problem that we don't have the development
version of NetHack. But I've been always critical about the fact that
the DevTeam puts up a buglist that is of limited use and that they got
most of the bug reports without anybody else seeing them.
Janis Papanagnou
>
> And in Sporkhack, the design intent is to make patience-based approaches
> ineffective or dangerous.
In what way dangerous? Mind to give some examples for that part of Spork's
design?
Janis, curious
SoothSayer
It seems he is saying that all the others _are_ "patience based", and
that Spork "isn't".
That was the impression I got.
I see what you mean though. "ineffective"?. I am always patient.
What a wild thing to say.
Jonathan Ellis
"David Damerell" <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
news:Bli*tg...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...
> Quoting AlexO <alex...@gmail.com>:
>>On Jan 14, 9:24=A0am, Patric Mueller <bh...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>>>The splintering of the development as there is no central bugfixing
>>>authority for NetHack is also not ideal.
>>I seem to recall being shouted down for making a similar
>>observation...
>
> Patric didn't start by calling the Dev Team dicks.
On the evidence of the last several years, there is *no* Dev Team any more,
therefore they cannot be dicks...
Martin Read
> It seems he is saying that all the others _are_ "patience based", and
>that Spork "isn't".
>
> That was the impression I got.
>
> I see what you mean though. "ineffective"?. I am always patient.
Different kinds of patience.
There's the kind of patience required to use your brain when your
character is in a hazardous situation, instead of panicking and pushing
buttons.
Then there's the kind of patience required to pudding farm.
The former will stand you in good stead in Sporkhack; the latter, not so
much.
--
\_\/_/ turbulence is certainty turbulence is friction between you and me
\ / every time we try to impose order we create chaos
\/ -- Killing Joke, "Mathematics of Chaos"
David Damerell
I'm not sure one can specifically; so much of it is aimed at making the
player never be completely safe (and if you can't be completely safe,
farming looks a lot less attractive).
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Clown shoes. I hope that doesn't bother you.
Today is Teleute, February.
Tomorrow will be Oneiros, February.
Janis Papanagnou
> Quoting Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com>:
>> On 27.01.2011 20:07, David Damerell wrote:
>>> And in Sporkhack, the design intent is to make patience-based approaches
>>> ineffective or dangerous.
>> In what way dangerous? Mind to give some examples for that part of Spork's
>> design?
>
> I'm not sure one can specifically; so much of it is aimed at making the
> player never be completely safe (and if you can't be completely safe,
> farming looks a lot less attractive).
This is something that I'd also attribute to Nethack; maybe to a lesser
degree, because you explicitly gave this as a Spork property, dunno.
Items are not save from theft, gold is not safe, the dungeon walls are
not safe, objects on the floor are not safe, Elbereth spots are not safe,
memory (disclosed information) is not safe, pets are not "safe", locked
doors are not safe, wielded weapons are not safe, worn armour isn't, and
I'm sure I forgot a lot to mention. I suppose making the rest even less
reliable has to be countered by not making it an instant death (in Spork)?
Janis
David Damerell
>On 01.02.2011 17:16, David Damerell wrote:
>>I'm not sure one can specifically; so much of it is aimed at making the
>>player never be completely safe (and if you can't be completely safe,
>>farming looks a lot less attractive).
>This is something that I'd also attribute to Nethack;
I wouldn't, because it's perfectly clear that farmers and extinctionists
can do their thing without too much difficulty. If an extinctionist can
wipe out that many monsters, it seems clear to me that they must have
achieved pretty complete impunity while doing so. The first extinctionist
genoless report I can dig up killed 35,000 monsters, which I suppose must
be typical. The chance that any given monster kills them must be
microscopic (frex, 0.5^(1/35000) ~= 0.99998).
>Items are not save from theft, gold is not safe, the dungeon walls are
>not safe, objects on the floor are not safe, Elbereth spots are not safe,
>memory (disclosed information) is not safe, pets are not "safe", locked
>doors are not safe, wielded weapons are not safe, worn armour isn't, and
>I'm sure I forgot a lot to mention.
Much of this seems pretty irrelevant. Patience-based approaches don't work
if there is a serious risk of death or permanent setbacks. Who cares if
some of your pile of gold too heavy to carry gets stolen?
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
And now, a seemingly inexplicable shot of a passing train.
Today is Mania, February.
Tomorrow will be Aponoia, February.
Janis Papanagnou
>> not safe, objects on the floor are not safe, Elbereth spots are not safe,
>> memory (disclosed information) is not safe, pets are not "safe", locked
>> doors are not safe, wielded weapons are not safe, worn armour isn't, and
>> I'm sure I forgot a lot to mention.
>
> Much of this seems pretty irrelevant. Patience-based approaches don't work
> if there is a serious risk of death or permanent setbacks. Who cares if
> some of your pile of gold too heavy to carry gets stolen?
It's of gradual importance; lost gold in the beginning can be crucial if you
cannot buy some helpful items from shops (or donate to priests for AC), a
dugged wall or smashed locked door that you thought would protect you while
you're healing from a battle can be crucial later, same with Elbereth when
a horde of elf lords or a single minotaur appears, etc.
Janis
David Damerell
>On 03.02.2011 16:08, David Damerell wrote:
>>Quoting Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com>:
>>>Items are not save from theft, gold is not safe, the dungeon walls are
>>>not safe, objects on the floor are not safe, Elbereth spots are not safe,
>>>memory (disclosed information) is not safe, pets are not "safe", locked
>>>doors are not safe, wielded weapons are not safe, worn armour isn't, and
>>>I'm sure I forgot a lot to mention.
>>Much of this seems pretty irrelevant. Patience-based approaches don't work
>>if there is a serious risk of death or permanent setbacks. Who cares if
>>some of your pile of gold too heavy to carry gets stolen?
>It's of gradual importance; lost gold in the beginning
... has absolutely nothing to do with late-game patience approaches.
>dugged wall or smashed locked door that you thought would protect you while
>you're healing from a battle can be crucial later
Which again is not pertinent to a late-game patience-based approach.
>same with Elbereth when a horde of elf lords or a single minotaur
>appears, etc.
Same again. Once I have 200 HP and more armour than the USS New Jersey,
who cares about a single minotaur?
Janis Papanagnou
> Quoting Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com>:
>> On 03.02.2011 16:08, David Damerell wrote:
>>> Quoting Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com>:
>>>> Items are not save from theft, gold is not safe, the dungeon walls are
>>>> not safe, objects on the floor are not safe, Elbereth spots are not safe,
>>>> memory (disclosed information) is not safe, pets are not "safe", locked
>>>> doors are not safe, wielded weapons are not safe, worn armour isn't, and
>>>> I'm sure I forgot a lot to mention.
>>> Much of this seems pretty irrelevant. Patience-based approaches don't work
>>> if there is a serious risk of death or permanent setbacks. Who cares if
>>> some of your pile of gold too heavy to carry gets stolen?
>> It's of gradual importance; lost gold in the beginning
>
> ... has absolutely nothing to do with late-game patience approaches.
>
>> dugged wall or smashed locked door that you thought would protect you while
>> you're healing from a battle can be crucial later
>
> Which again is not pertinent to a late-game patience-based approach.
>
>> same with Elbereth when a horde of elf lords or a single minotaur
>> appears, etc.
>
> Same again. Once I have 200 HP and more armour than the USS New Jersey,
> who cares about a single minotaur?
I wasn't restricting that to late game; rather to a property that Nethack
generally has, and one that I haven't seen to that degree as a basic game
concept before.
If all you wanted to say is that after some point of character development
(and survival) you won't be vulnerable any more to most things, I certainly
won't disagree.
The point where I got curious upthread was how specifically the late game
patience issues have been addressed in Spork, and I thought if it's only
those specific late game issues it might be possible for you to mention a
few. Anyway.
The basic principle that you can't rely on anything in the earlier stages
are already nicely implemented in Nethack in many ways. I say that, well
knowing that there's always something to improve; and I could name some as
well. But that doesn't invalidates the concept, even if there are variants
that, based on the NH core and on core principles, enhanced the game further.
After decades I am still astonished about the Nethack mechanics, how well it
is balanced in many respects; just because some exploits have been detected
(and are applied), and have been fixed in variants, doesn't invalidates the
huge sophisticated basis that we are meanwhile used to take as granted, as
it seems.
</rant> :-)
Janis
David Damerell
>On 03.02.2011 20:28, David Damerell wrote:
>>Same again. Once I have 200 HP and more armour than the USS New Jersey,
>>who cares about a single minotaur?
>I wasn't restricting that to late game;
But it is in the late and middle game that patience-based approaches come
into play.
>The basic principle that you can't rely on anything in the earlier stages
>are already nicely implemented in Nethack in many ways.
I'm not sure this is particular to NetHack or particularly remarkable. In
every first-person shooter, say, in the earlier stages if enough monsters
attack you, you will die, and if you fire off too much ammo, you won't
have enough anymore, and these are typically both easy traps to fall into.
What is unusual about NetHack is... well, the equivalent situation in an
FPS would be that in the middle game you could endure five minutes' steady
fire without being in trouble (and regenerate it all back) and simply tape
the fire button down to avoid the hassle of pressing and releasing it.
>After decades I am still astonished about the Nethack mechanics, how well it
>is balanced in many respects;
Although you always seem very coy on what those respects are.
It's not, for example, that games (taking it as read that the classes
are intended to vary in difficulty) are of consistent challenge early on.
Sometimes I find a WoW; sometimes I get a bones file and a master lich
tears my head off and gobs down my neck. More generally, I may meet tough
or weak monsters, get good or bad equipment - the variance is very high.
It's not that the challenge is maintained later on. There's a chunk of the
game where every monster is a speedbump or Demogorgon.
It's not the case that anything that brings large benefits also carries
large hazards. Alchemy, for example, requires nothing more than a bit of
loot discipline.
So what is it?
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Aponoia, February.
Tomorrow will be Epithumia, February - a weekend.
Doug Freyburger
>
>>>Same again. Once I have 200 HP and more armour than the USS New Jersey,
>>>who cares about a single minotaur?
>
>>I wasn't restricting that to late game;
>
> But it is in the late and middle game that patience-based approaches come
> into play.
Folks discuss when to move down to the next level in the early game.
Should a character tarry on a level? Not if there is any risk of
starvation. But if the rate of random monster generation is high enough
to supply plenty of food and enough kills to keep advancing the early XP
levels there is far more disagreement.
I suggest that disagreement reflects attitudes towards patience-based
approaches. I want to be XP=2 when I go to level 2 for a complete
exploration. I want to be XP=3 when I go to level 3 for a complete
exploration. If I also want to be XP=4 when I go to level 4 for a
complete exploration that gets into an early game version of a
patience-based approach. I'm often XP=8 or more by the time I have
completed Sokoban and mines end and proceed into the mid-game. I try on
tones of armor in mine town before leaving the mines and Sokoban for the
mid-game. That's a patience-based approach in the early game. The
preparation helps me survive in the mid-game and on. It's also a
reflection of my lower skill at the game.
Janis Papanagnou
> Quoting Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com>:
>> On 03.02.2011 20:28, David Damerell wrote:
>
>> The basic principle that you can't rely on anything in the earlier stages
>> are already nicely implemented in Nethack in many ways.
>
> I'm not sure this is particular to NetHack or particularly remarkable. In
> every first-person shooter, say, in the earlier stages if enough monsters
> attack you, you will die, and if you fire off too much ammo, you won't
> have enough anymore, and these are typically both easy traps to fall into.
This seems to characterize a "flat" type of game; two parameters that vary,
and are depending on each other. I suppose you agree that in Nethack you have
many many more game parameters; and the more parameters you have the more
difficult it is to balance them to each other - the combinatorial complexity
is more between (I think) something like N^2 and 2^N than linear N. That's
where Nethack Devteam has done an excellent job given the complexity, and
that's what I call balance. (There are other definitions of balance, too,
for example the upthread mentioned drawbacks and unreliabilities, or the
early/late game differences in difficulty, or the balance you mention below.)
>> After decades I am still astonished about the Nethack mechanics, how well it
>> is balanced in many respects;
>
> Although you always seem very coy on what those respects are.
> It's not, for example, that games (taking it as read that the classes
> are intended to vary in difficulty) are of consistent challenge early on.
AFAIUYC; balance of classes is another issue. But I wouldn't demand that all
classes are of equal or comparable difficulty. I like that there's a weaker
Tourist class, and many people certainly like the existence of Valkyries.
And you have differences in how to play them most effectively; I think this
is difficult to design sufficiently balanced, but Nethack has achieved that,
IMO. I say that while honestly admitting that the late game makes classes
differentiate much less than in the beginning; but there's still sufficient
variance, if you don't force any existing character to be a melee fighter
(which you are anyway free to do with most classes).
> Sometimes I find a WoW; sometimes I get a bones file and a master lich
> tears my head off and gobs down my neck. More generally, I may meet tough
> or weak monsters, get good or bad equipment - the variance is very high.
Hmm.. - I'd say that the variance may be very high, another data point of
uncertainty that I like; it were the most interesting situations to solve,
and some of those have also been deadly - wouldn't have been challenging
otherwise.
I recently mentioned what I think about early WoW's and their "nerfing"; I
think it's overemphasized. And Master Lich's? - Well, there are a couple
situations when you can face them out-of-depth; as a form of shape changer,
just wait until they change shape again; as result from a polytrap, look
for an escape route, change your strategy, and tactically leave the level
for a later visit. All that adds to diversity and challenge of NH games.
Bones? Well, depending on where you play you can never say what you will
meet there; powerful monsters - apply escape tactics; tons of loot - too
bad, your game is spoiled, you'd better quit! :-) but good bones are not
granted, and if it's an advanced bones heap you have to be equipped well
enough already (curses!) to make use of that loot. On NAO I haven't often
found bones, but then I also had a game where I found, wait, was it 5 or 6
bones heaps in a single game? - But so what? - I then had, say 4 amulet of
reflection, or 3 bags of holding, or a larger set of stethoscopes than ever
necessary. In other words; a single good bones heap may support your game
or not, as it is often the case, a couple bones not necessarily better.
Bones may be challenging, or, in other games you even don't notice them.
The curses are a balancing factor, as are the former monsters and pets.
>
> It's not that the challenge is maintained later on. There's a chunk of the
> game where every monster is a speedbump or Demogorgon.
I'm sure you're right; if you decide to thoroughly prepare your character
(once you survived the more challenging stages of the game) you may have
your own carelessness as the major enemy. ;-)
>
> It's not the case that anything that brings large benefits also carries
> large hazards.
Yes, that's certainly correct.
> Alchemy, for example, requires nothing more than a bit of
> loot discipline.
Well, especially in alchemy I think there's more to consider to value it
appropriately. You need intact potions, and (without bones, or sometimes
a rare large enough potion shop with sufficient amounts of appropriate
ingredients) you will get them from monsters; so you must apply tactics
to get the potions before the monsters quaff them, but this again, depends
on the class you play, the loot you found or received, for example. Again,
diversity made alchemy effectively impossible in one game, and very easy
in another game, and everything in between. And sometimes even the "loot
discipline" doesn't help; if you're playing a weak character that has to
rely on drinking potions to survive the early or mid game.
>
> So what is it?
All mentioned plus much more :-) I hope it got clear, now, but I try an
informal definition what (to me) constitutes a prominent balance aspect.
To me it is, in Nethack, primarily that you have the many interdepending
factors and game options of combinatorial complexity integrated in a way
that you are confronted with diversity and variance, while still having
the choice to vary strategy (according to class/race, environment, and
situations), i.e. sufficiently many degrees of freedom for the player,
without extreme discrepancies in the presented game evolution, while also
playable by various player skill levels. Nethack.
Janis
David Damerell
>David Damerell wrote:
>>But it is in the late and middle game that patience-based approaches come
>>into play.
>Folks discuss when to move down to the next level in the early game.
>Should a character tarry on a level?
No, not unless there is an altar and a sacrifest offers net benefits.
That's not quite an absolute rule, but it'll do for 95% of cases.
I'm talking about patience-based approaches that work - not necessarily to
win the game, but to achieve their intended goal. Obviously if you're
counting bad strategies then patience-based approaches can be used any
time.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Oil is for sissies
Today is First Thursday, February.
Tomorrow will be First Friday, February.
David Damerell
As far as I can make out, you think NetHack is balanced because it is
unbalanced, as the term is normally used. Game difficulty varies wildly,
both during a game and between different games; risk and reward are not
closely correlated.
Janis Papanagnou
>
> As far as I can make out, you think NetHack is balanced because it is
> unbalanced, as the term is normally used.
No, that's certainly not what I think.
Janis