version

[Julian]

How new is #overview? The information is invaluable.

[Janis Papanagnou]

On 07.10.2023 19:23, Julian wrote:
> How new is #overview? The information is invaluable.

The idea is old; I think it was around the mid of the 1990's when I
first suggested some in-game automatism for notes. Later folks used
the 'name' and 'call' features to store some information in a game.
We did not have that #overview and #annotate commands in NH-343, so
I suppose it came with 3.6.x - but I cannot say whether it had been
(maybe) borrowed from a variant that could have appeared earlier.
Nethack 3.6.0 came out in 2015; the Nethack Wiki says about it:
"The #terrain, #annotate and #overview commands were introduced."

Janis

[Pat Rankin]

On Saturday, October 7, 2023 at 10:23:41 AM UTC-7, Julian wrote:
> How new is #overview? The information is invaluable.

It was around as a source code patch during the 3.4.3 days.
Someone---presumably the original author--contributed it to
devteam and it was added to what eventually became 3.6.0,
sometime in the dozen years between 3.4.3 and 3.6.0.

Some levels receive an automatically generated annotation,
separate from interesting features you've encountered such
as altars and fountains. You can add a manually composed
annotation to the current level with the #annotate command.
That will replace any previous manual annotation but if there
is an automated one then #overview will show both. Like
re-naming monsters and objects, assigning a new annotation
of a single space will remove the old one.

During play, #overview only shows levels that it considers
to be "interesting", comprising any level with any annotation
or with discovered features or the furthest level reached in
each part of the dungeon or a level with extra stairs leading
to another part of the dungeon (if they've been discovered;
I don't recall if they have to have been traversed). During
end-of-game disclosure, all levels that were visited get shown
regardless of whether they were interesting.

In to-be-3.7, plain #overview still shows only interesting levels
but if you precede the command with the 'm' prefix, all the
levels you've visited will be presented in a menu and you can
pick one to assign an annotation to even though it isn't the
current level.

[Patric Mueller]

Janis Papanagnou <janis_pap...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I suppose it came with 3.6.x - but I cannot say whether it had been
> (maybe) borrowed from a variant that could have appeared earlier.
> Nethack 3.6.0 came out in 2015; the Nethack Wiki says about it:
> "The #terrain, #annotate and #overview commands were introduced."

The original patch was posted and discussed in here in 2006:
https://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/browse_frm/thread/8e2751a7fc85fd6b

The patch was added to the development NetHack version almost
immediately but IIRC no DevTeam member took part in the discussion in
RGRN.
https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/commit/660d3589c

I found the patch in 2009 (I didn't remember back then seeing it
earlier) and added it to UnNetHack.
https://github.com/UnNetHack/UnNetHack/commit/bfa79e341c

From UnNetHack, it got ported into all of the active variants at the
time.

So the version of the dungeon overview in NetHack in 2015 (or in the
leak from 2014) is not directly based on the versions that were public
before 3.6.

Convoluted history. :)

Bye
Patric

--
NetHack-De: NetHack auf Deutsch - https://nethack-de.sf.net/

UnNetHack: https://unnethack.wordpress.com/

[Patric Mueller]

Janis Papanagnou <janis_pap...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I suppose it came with 3.6.x - but I cannot say whether it had been
> (maybe) borrowed from a variant that could have appeared earlier.
> Nethack 3.6.0 came out in 2015; the Nethack Wiki says about it:
> "The #terrain, #annotate and #overview commands were introduced."