NetHack 4.0.0 Release Announcement from the DevTeam

[Patric Mueller]

The NetHack DevTeam is pleased to announce the release of
NetHack 4.0.0. [1]

NetHack 4.0 is an enhancement to the dungeon exploration game NetHack.

It is a distant descendent of Rogue and Hack, and a direct descendent
of NetHack 3.4. [2]

You can download the usual packages from here: [3]
https://sourceforge.net/projects/unnethack/files/nethack/4.0.0/

There are a great number of bug fixes in this release, as well as many
changes and surprises beyond what you see listed below. Here is a
brief overview of some new additions and changes in the game.

* Core game engine code has completely rewritten [4]
* Autoexplore (from AceHack) [5]
* Death talks in CAPITAL LETTERS (from UnNetHack) [6]
* Uncursed and blessed scrolls of magic mapping reveal secret doors
* Blessed scrolls of magic mapping reveal objects
* Dump log: show same information on final dump as wizard mode
* Minotaurs respect Elbereth
* Bones level tracking
* Conduct: Racial armor tracking
* extra AC point per worn piece of racial armor
* Reduce occurrences of hint daemon to once per game
* Automatically identify rings dropped into a sink when message is shown
* Allow stethoscopes to identify egg types (unless hallucinating) (from SporkHack)
* Reduce AC of dragon scales to 1 and dragon scale mails to 5
* Killing your Quest leader opens up the stairs to the lower quest levels (from SporkHack)

* new dungeon features:
- muddy swamp (from NetHack Brass)

* added items:
- chromatic dragon scales and scale mail [7]

* new monsters:
- chromatic dragons
- wax golems (providing candles as death drop) (from Slash'Em) [8]

* new branch:
- the Dragon Caves (from NetHack Brass R/S) [9]

* new levels:
- Sokoban levels (from GruntHack)

* bug fixes:
- Draw health bar in inverse when color is disabled (reported by
Bernard Helyer)
- Warn atheist player when trying to offering the Amulet of Yendor
- Workaround for preventing the stairs to Vlad's tower appearing
in the wizard's tower

* build fixes:
- Compilation failed on openSUSE when trying to link with curses but
tparm being present in ncurses (reported by Roger Koot)


Happy NetHacking!

For the DevTeam...
Patric Mueller

[1] Obviously, I'm not Mike Stephenson. The DevTeam finally realized
that they need some fresh blood and quickly assimilated me after
the assimilation of Derek Ray miserably failed.
[2] Actually, there has been a lot of code being taken from other
variants, but we traditionally used that sentence and you know how
we resent change.
[3] I'll update nethack.org as soon as my public key has been
authenticated. I don't know how my public key could have been lost
in the mail.
[4] Unfortunately, the rewrite turned out to have an eerie resemblance
to vanilla's code all over again.
[5] Autoexplore is completely useless of course, as has been said a
thousand times already, but our newest DevTeam member insisted on
it.
[6] Without any doubt, the only real good change there is in
UnNetHack.
[7] Chromatic dragon armor provide fire, cold, sleep, disintegration,
shock, poison, acid, stone resistance and reflection. They are
dropped by the new chromatic dragons and Tiamat (formerly known as
Chromatic Dragon).
[8] Without any doubt, the single not de-balancing change in Slash'Em.
[9] The Dragon Caves are four mines-like levels which have at the end
3 chromatic dragons that might drop chromatic dragon scales.

[Janis Papanagnou]

On 01.04.2012 20:19, Patric Mueller wrote:
>
> The NetHack DevTeam is pleased to announce the release of
> NetHack 4.0.0. [1]

My first thought was; it's "April 1st".

Janis

[Doug Freyburger]

Janis Papanagnou wrote:
>Patric Mueller wrote:
>>
>> The NetHack DevTeam is pleased to announce the release of
>> NetHack 4.0.0. [1]
>
> My first thought was; it's "April 1st".

Yep. My second thought was wishing it were real.

[Janis Papanagnou]

On 01.04.2012 22:06, Jukka Lahtinen wrote:

> Took me several seconds to realize that after starting to read :-)

An implicit version hint like Nethack-4.1.12 might have helped. %-)

Janis

[Jonadab the Unsightly One]

On Apr 1, 7:38 pm, Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanag...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

> An implicit version hint like Nethack-4.1.12 might have helped. %-)

Personally I've just come to expect the whole internet to be useless
(for anything but a couple of laughs) for about thirty hours every
year around this time.

Granted, there's occasionally a major legitimate announcement on AFD,
just to buck the trend. Glulx, for example, was originally announced
on April first. That was more than ten years ago, though.

[Capt. Cave Man]

And I still use it every day. ;-)