Nethack on OS2008
 

The developer of this package seems to have gone inactive. Is there anyone out there with the skills and the time to make it compatible with OS2008? (And perhaps add hardware keyboard support)

http://n770galaxy.blogspot.com/

It'd be a shame if such a good project died

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

I hoping Santa will bring me an n810 for xmas, and if she does I'll definitely want Nethack on it.

The bad news is I know nothing about maemo development.

The good news is that I know the nethack sources backwards (I did the Psion 5 port of nethack), and it only took a few changes to the existing maemo port to get it to compile in scratchbox.

So if Josep Torra really isn't going to continue maintaining the maemo nethack I expect I'll want to pick it up.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

Well, here's to hoping that your wife will love come Christmas morning then, Duncan. :)

I would personally love you myself, but I don't know how attractive you are. ;)

By the way, would you be putting some of your own touches to the port if you did end up taking that on as a project?

Just asking.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

<Coquettisch voice> ~Hiiii there Duncan!~ :)

Done any work with SDL?

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

I'd obviously do a build without changes first: it seems mostly to work, I've spotted a few issues but I don't know if they are specific to my build or not (e.g. when asked if you want to see your inventory etc. after you die you have yes/no/cancel options and I'd expect cancel to stop asking the questions but it doesn't).

Then, yes, I have a few things I'd like to see: I think the screen real-estate could be better used so I'd like to play around a bit with the general layout. Also the menus could probably be tidied up.

I'm not one for using pretty graphic tiles: the ascii tileset is IMHO much clearer, but on the Psion I ended up with a character set that had tile-like representations for a few dungeon features (like boulders that were big and round) so I want to see if I can find a similar compromise tileset and include it.

The other big thing would to incorporate hearse support somewhere. Possibly automated whenever you start/end or save your game. (Configurable of course in case there are people who prefer not to use hearse).

ArnimS, do you mean as in pygame? No, I can't say I have.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

That was exactly what I was hoping to hear!

My power of suggestion worked! :D

But yeah, the screen layout was a real downer, especially the main display screen. I was pretty disenfranchised on how everything seemed to have some sort of scrolling feature that was being implemented. I'd much prefer the screen and windows to be much more static then how it was presented. I think that the twitchy movement of your character and other graphics was because of both the scroll bars on the sides of the display. Nothing felt like it was being held smoothly together with all of the scrolling in the game.

Also, without a standard, traditional keyboard interface to use, made many commands counterintuitive. Just trying to pick up several items off the ground or changing several in-game options limited you to only one choice at a time.

Well, just don't go disappearing on us, you sound like a person with many talents.

Besides, ArnimS could use a little competition. I think he's about all we have left here in the scene.


Edit:
Just saw some screenshots of your port, Duncan. Now that's what I'm talking about! :)

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

I just realised my thread had really good replies. I was sure I'd subscribed. This is excellent news. :)

It'll be so nice to be able to play Nethack on the train again. Getting the current version we have running again would be ace but if you decide to pick up the project and make it your own that would be so much better. I'd love to see what a fresh pair of experienced Nethack porting hands can do with it.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

Just to have something, I took the code from Josep Torra's web site and built it against the chinook SDK. No change in the code except for a rename of a single include.
The updated deb is available here.

It works much better than the OS2007 version -- as it actually starts up... Your mileage may vary, of course. Just something to hold us up until a blessed version is actually released...

Robert B.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

That's excellent! Thank you :) It installed and ran fine. I shall have a game on the train tomorrow.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

Man! You just can't "have a game on the train" with Nethack!

If you want to play Nethack, stock up on food for two weeks, buy lots of deodorant and put the phones off the hook. And even then that's considered a quickie.

True Nethackers are on long-term treatment for bedsores, muscle atrophia and scurvy.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

For the life of me I cannot find the twoweapon command, must be playing nethack too much. Anyone have an idea?

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

yay
it's been ported to os2008 already
http://n770galaxy.blogspot.com/

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

I keep finding chest, i can pick them up, but how do i open them?
i tried 'o' but i had to put it down, and then i can't do anything wwith it.. Its going to be a simple answer, but i' out f ideas.

BT

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

if the chest is locked you have to "force lock" then "loot" it.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

You can also "kick" it, but their are some potions in it, they may brake ;)

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

I had a great game going and the n800 suddenly restarts when I killed my quest nemesis. It's happened several times all in the late game. Anyone have this problem?

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

LOL.. if only! I have been playing nethack for years and rarely get past the castle in the mid levels. I just can't sit down and play it for hours anymore. Its more of a diversion for me now, but its one of my "must haves."

I have had variations on nethack (Rogue, Angstrom, etc) on almost every portable device out there from WM and Palm PDAs to my n810. Still nothing beats the real thing.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

Has a newer port been released? Where?

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

Well, if nothing beats the real thing, then I would go with the original DOS version and run it through Dosbox.

I've got a copy of this myself with 3 different color patches that were applied to it by a buddy of mine.

It looks really great and doesn't affect any of the gameplay.

If there is someplace that I could upload it, I'd be more than willing to do so.

Well, I personally don't care too much for Nethack on OS 2008. It's a pretty crappy build with too many scroll bars and no on screen keyboard. Sorry Joseph. :o

There is always using Telnet and going to nethack.alt.org.

The problem with this though is that the number keys are upside down and I can't get a good font with the standard Xterm program that comes with 2008, that and the keyboard takes up a good chunk of the screen as well.

In my opinion, that absolute best option (perhaps only a possibility) is to find a great font for Xterm, going to nethack.alt.org (if you have wireless internet at home) using Telnet, only use the rotated screen option (which I still haven't figured out how to do).

With the screen rotated, I think this would produce the best looking version to play.

The only problem that I can think of for this would be setting up the custom options in your game's configuration profile thingie for playing Nethack online.

There are some really intense options that I don't know much about, such as:
align_message, align_status, ascii_map, color, eight_bit_tty, font_map, font_menu, font_message, font_status, font_text, font_size_map, font_size_menu, font_size_message, font_size_status, font_size_text, fullscreen, hilite_pet, large_font, map_mode, mouse_support, player_selection, popup_dialog, preload_tiles, scroll_amount, scroll_margin, softkeyboard, splash_screen, tiled_map, tile_file, tile_height, tile_width, use_inverse, vary_msgcount, windowcolors, wraptext, and on some operating systems, altkeyhandler, altmeta, BIOS, flush, MACgraphics, page_wait, rawio, soundcard, subkeyvalue, video, videocolors, videoshades.

I'm sure if you can figure out a good way to have the game displayed on a rotated screen, then this is definitely the way to go.

I would love it if someone could figure out the options and a good sized screen font to have the game played so that the character was in the middle of the screen at all times.

Basically, every time you move, the map moves instead of your character. I'm pretty sure this can be done, but I don't know how. Perhaps you could always go visit the people on IRC in Freenode.

Hope that makes some sense.

Well, sorry for such a long winded post.

You have my apologies. :D

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

I think it's great, there are a lot of scrollbars but I just play with the stylus in one hand and my other hand holding the 810 by the keyboard hitting hotkeys, and the scrollbars are easy with the stylus.

Has anyone figured out how to get rid of that terrible grey cloudy background for unexplored squares? I have no idea why that was chosen over simple, elegant black.

(thread is an oldie but a goodie :D )

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

Figured it out, there's a link at ~/.nethackdir/mapbg.xpm that points to the cloudy background, unfortunately the game recreates this if it's missing, so one way of solving it is to simply point it at a black image, or edit the image it points to be black, which is what I did. There might be a flag you can toggle for it, not really worth figuring out.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

Unless you're unable to go online, the best set up for Nethack is through nethack.org on Telnet and maybe even throw in Xchat as well.

You get a 80x25 display window and it looks completely old school which sounds like that is something you're looking for.

http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/5018/flat2sr6.png

Cheers!

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

Thanks for the tip, but I've always been a fan of the tiles. Also, after replacing the 32x32 tilemap with the 16x16 one (can't stand the 32x32 tiles, so bulky and cumbersome) and zooming out to the correct resolution (it starts out zoomed in 2x so it looks like they're still 32x32 tiles at first) you get a pretty good portion of the level on your screen and it's very stylus friendly.

Telnet is not so stylus friendly which is a dealbreaker with the cramped and limited keyboard, plus until I get an n900 I only get internet at home. It's so much fun to lead your little monk around with your stylus. *tap tap tap tap*

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

On which topic, and I know I've asked this elsewhere before, does anyone know if there's going to be a fully working nethack version for the n900? I ask to keep the request profile high...

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

I don't, but I'm sure someone will get something out the door in the next few months... plus due to it's 3g capabilities you might as well do as Addison suggested and just telnet to play it.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

If all else wouldn't have, Nethack on my n800 totally made the device worth it.

It's like having an endless universe (with infinite replayability) of fantasy and adventure available all the time everywhere.

I read in another thread someone saying that some apps from OS2008 would be installable on Maemo 5 without modifications. If that's true, I hope it's the case with Nethack.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

The nethack game is a true port to hildon, in the sense that it attempts to make the game playable with just stylus. This is a comparatively audacious undertaking requiring a lot of UI work and coding.

For real roguelike players like Addison, a true console build is trivial to do, needing mainly some remapping of commands to fit user preferences on N810/N900 keyboard or Bluetooth KBD.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

The neat thing about nethack.alt.org is that it pretty much will accept any window's size terminal screen.

But really, you need a minimum of 51 columns to see the failure percentage of the spells your character has learned even though I guess that's not a complete neccesity.

So there's quite a bit of flexibility on how to have it displayed on the screen.

80x25 with a 16 size font is easily possible by removing the one pixel border in the virtual machine.

You could also choose between big font, small font, big virtual keyboard or small one, landscape or portrait. Whatever you think would be the best layout for you.

My current setup with my N800 uses a 51x25 terminal screen with a friendly touchscreen keyboard.

If anyone has some good ideas on a layout, feel free to share.

By the way, does Diablo sport any transparency hacks that could be used with Xkbd? I searched but didn't see one.

Here's a pick of my gaming session through NAO.

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/2...9121510213.png

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

Gave it a try on my n900 and I can't seem to find a package for the on screen xkbd, maybe it's not ported over yet? Tried playing it just with the hardware keyboard and the arrow keys didn't work so that kind of killed it x_X probably some issue with the telnet client? But without a numpad that i can merrily jam on with my whole right hand I think I'd still have to have stylus support for it to be enjoyable, just for movement I mean. The extra onscreen stuff in the gtk os2008 version was ok, but with a hardware keyboard anything that maps to a key without needing to hit # first really doesn't deserve real estate... And most of the stuff that requires # didn't have an onscreen button for it, it was very strange which ones were chosen to have an onscreen presence.

Vulture's Eye is ok but it still needs a fair amount of tweaking to fully utilize the hardware keyboard... plus it's pretty hard to see what's what with the 3d view, but it's a fun aesthetic change.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

Yeah, I didn't care too much for the port itself.

All of the scrollbars was excessive for me, the screen was jittery, and yeah, I much would have preferred a virtual keyboard rather than all of the short cut keys which didn't feature all of them. I never did figure out how to hold two weapons in that port.

Xkbd can be found here:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...1&postcount=44

It fixes a bug in the 2008 Diablo OS so I wouldn't even mess with it on a N900 unless you're feeling frisky. :)

I wish someone would make a descent release of Xkbd, it's hard for me to not understand why this isn't one of the most featured requests for the tablet. Fanoush would the best person for this, but I doubt he would be willing to do so.

The author of Xvkbd, which is a much better keyboard, emailed me on how to hack it so it would be more tablet friendly. But since I can't code or compile not sure who I could hit up to do this.

I just now was thinking about having an 80x25 screen and using the zoom in and out keys during a telnet session so that it's easier on the eyes. I'm not sure if that would work though. I'll try it out and also edit the scroll margin options in Nethack to see if it's even possible.

Another possibility is to have two telnet sessions going on at the same time. One to play the game with your character zoomed in, and another one to watch your character in a normal screen mode. So basically the second Xterm window would be like a map screen.

A setup like that would be really awesome. :D

JC, have you tried changing the Numlock option in your config file? You would then move your character around with the alternative keys.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

Well, I think that people, myself included, feel that since there's a hardware keyboard, if much of the screen is taken up by a software keyboard that's still an unacceptable solution.

I had run into having to use xkbd a few times on the n810 and it pretty much always meant I just wouldn't use whatever program required it. The only exception would be if it was used in addition to the hardware keyboard for special keys that the hardware keyboard didn't have like vertical line and tab and such, and a stylus was already used (using your finger for kxbd i found kind of frustrating) but you can't use the stylus for telnet.

So basically I think I'm just going to wait til a basic tiles port comes out that supports stylus movement.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

Hey wick, you probably don't want to hear such a suggestion, but have you thought about running it through VNCViewer?

With the correct program and layout on your computer screen, you might get a killer solution so you're not waiting for another release.

Another suggestion might be to hack the coding yourself.

If you were able to find the tile for dark areas, you should see what else you could do.

There's plenty of documentation on the net and I think you would be surprised by the technical help and overall support you would receive with the people over at NAO.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

Yeah, it's possible... I might look into what kind of work would be involved, but the holidays are coming up so it's not the best timing :\ Also I'm kind of a nethack noob for how long i've been playing it off and on, so I'm afraid of learning all the secrets :D We'll see though, if no one else is trying to get a port on there I'll take a crack at it.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

I've currently got my best run so far on Nethack after two years! :)

I'm level 8 with an AC of -2. :o

For me, that's total domination considering I still don't have a clue on what I'm doing.

But yeah, I probably wouldn't want to hack it either just because of all the spoilers one would find.

For a great diversion, you should look into ADOM over at ancardia.ath.cx

I actually enjoy that about 10x more than Nethack.

Re: Nethack on OS2008
 

Hm, alright, I'll look into those. Currently I'm overjoyed by just now discovering scummvm, I have a mighty soft spot for those late 80's early 90's adventure games.