[ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Hi everyone.

Good news: I've ported nethack to the n900.

Check it out from extras-testing:

http://maemo.org/packages/package_in...hack/3.5.3-18/

I've decided to use the unnethack variant as a base, since vanilla nethack hasn't been updated in a decade, and unnethack fixes many bugs and balance/ui issues.

You can read about unnethack here: http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/unnethack/

P.S. I've used a fancy ncurses text-mode UI in this port, given that the tile-mode graphics are completely illegible on a screen like the N900's.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Been running this one happily for months but yours seems to be more polished, even handles full/non-full screen changes well. Well done, thanks!

Should you need a bit more descriptive icon, here's one free to be used:
http://www.ktverkko.fi/~tjheikki/gfx/nethack.png

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Hi,

Thanks for this port - looks promising, and has rekindled my interest in the game not having played for a while. Goodbye large amounts of spare time :-).

I have a couple of questions:

1) After playing for a short while, the @ representing my character and my pet inverted colours. Not quite sure why, or what I pressed to cause this!

2) Main problem I'm having is that I cannot make out any yellow monsters/objects on the white background, often to disastrous effect. Is there any way around this?

3) Any chance it could be possible to have <shift>+<arrow key> = travel as far as possible in that direction, as for example with the shifted direction keys YUHJKLBN?

Thanks for any answers!

Spann

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

1. Not sure what you mean -- they should be always inverted, actually. :)

2. AFAIK, the only way is to switch the terminal app's settings to have white text on black background. :(

3. I'll look into it, thanks.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Hey tkatchev,

Thanks for the response. Am really enjoying playing this - tried a port on the N800 a few years back, but it never really worked that well without a keyboard. Can't think why it's taken me this long to realise that it might work well on the N900!

Having a black background might work better for the yellow objects. You mention changing the terminal app's settings - any guidance on how to do this? Do you mean the xterms settings, and hence this would affect all xterm instances?

Having played a little more, I've found the only keys I use frequently which I'm forced to go to the symbol menu for are the < and > keys for moving up/down stairs. Not sure if they could be mapped somewhere, like symbol + arrow key for example. Only a suggestion!

Spann

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

In response to my own post, I figured out how to change the colours - from the font option in the menu at the top.

Now I can't really see the blue objects lol, but that's probably more to do with the screen brightness setting I use.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Same here; is it possible to tweak the shade of blue used to a slightly lighter one?

EDIT. Pretty please... gnome lords in the mines are like unto ninjas, sneaking up on me and killing me...

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

AFAIK, no, not really possible. :(

It should have been an option in the x-terminal app, but for some reason Nokia decided that you should be able to change only the foreground and background colors, not the rest of the palette...

However, I don't think I have this problem on my device. Maybe it's different with a different font and/or screen brightness setting?

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Another question, which probably has a very obvious answer!

How do I name my character? I don't see a prompt when starting the game as with nethack.

So far all my characters are stuck with the rather bland name of 'user'!

Spann

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Good point, I'll fix it in the next build. :)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

I'm sure I'd love it if i got into it, but man it's complicated to learn the controlls and all the commands...

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

With a little platung around in a text editor you can get them added to the shortcut bar at the bottom of the terminal: see here for details.

EDIT: Actually,to save the xml-phobic from hacking the file themselves, I've attached my modified version. Save it, copy it to /tmp/xterm.dump and go straight to stage 10 in the instructions in post 34 of the linked thread.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Why so? I have grown to use only tile graphs *sob* :|

But thanks for bringing this jewelry to N900.

Is it possible to implement overlay controls to right down corner of screen. It would make moving much much easier and would give us easy to use intermediate directions (up-right,up-left etc.)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Well, maybe it's just my eyes, I don't know. :)

WRT overlay controls -- maybe possible, but very difficult and quite time-consuming, I'd guess.

But anyways, hjkl-mode keyboard controls work just fine, seeing as they've been specifically designed for limited and cramped keyboards like the N900's.

(Use h,j,k,l for moving in the cardinal directions, and y,u,b,n for the diagonals. Works quite nice, especially for the non-english keyboard models without proper arrow keys.)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

There is a configuration file that Unnethack reads during startup to set various options in the game which is named

/user/home/.unnethackrc

use a text editor to edit the file and you will see the sample OPTIONS command that is used to set your name. Do note you will need to become root to edit the file.

I request the developer

1. Changes the config file ownership to user
2. Make sure installing updates saves a backup of the existing config file before overwriting it.

Enjoy!

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

I've fixed the latest release (http://maemo.org/packages/package_in...hack/3.5.3-14/) so that it asks for a username on startup.

I'll try to implement the fixed you've asked for in the next release.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

For what it's worth, I'd vote for no graphics [yes, I'm old school] and no overlays on the screen. I also think the keyboard works well, and I don't see any point in removing precious screen real estate.

As far as the colours are concerned, yes blue is tricky but fountains and gnomes have nothing on dark potions - they're practically invisible :-).

Thanks for the details on adding the < and > keys to the shortcut bar. The only other regularly used key which is slightly tricky to get to I'm finding is ctrl D for kick, where I'm not sure what the quickest way to hit ctrl uppercase D is.

Nice that you've fixed the prompt for character name - I'm aware you can change the configuration file, but this is much more convenient.

Spann

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

I've figured out where the problem is and will fix the 'dark potion' issue on Monday. Thanks. :)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

I've pushed version 3.5.3-15 to extras-testing, check it out. :)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Excellent, will take a look. I think there is a monster which is as dark as the dark potion as well, but I cannot recall what it was.

As an aside, there is a handy command built into unnethack which doesn't appear in vanilla which I thought might be worth mentioning. It is particularly helpful on a small screen, where one might have to scroll around a level in order to see everything.

The command is #overview - it gives an outline of all the notable features discovered so far level by level, such as fountains, shops, entrance to the mines and so on.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Is it possible to make this work by only asking for a player name if the option is not present in the config file? To always have to enter it even it is set in the config file is very bothersome.

I've also updated to the latest version today.

1. Thanks for changing the config file ownership to user from root as earlier requested.

2. What happened to the default color layout? I am unable to see my player now which makes the game totally unplayable.

3. I also noticed that installing the new version overwrote my previous config file unless it is renamed to a filename we were not made aware of.

Thanks for your continued efforts.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Hi,

First, thanks for doing this - much appreciated. I am an old unix hacker from many years gone by. Now a manager but still like my N900 and want to play nethack. Two questions:

1. When I download and try to install, I get errors: control return error exit status 2. Any ideas? I am SU
2. I am trying to let my kids play. In the old days, there was a debug mode and you could get "wands of wishings". I wanted to do that so my kids could have some fun.

Thanks again for doing this - I hope to be playing soon!

DZ

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

1. How exactly are you downloading it? Try running "sudo apt-get install unnethack" from the shell; does it give an error?

2. Try pressing shift-x in the game. :)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

I've reverted to the previous version, .14, for now.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Something is really wrong if you're not able to see the player!

Can you send me a screenshot demonstrating this? You can take one by pressing ctrl-shift-p.

I'll definitely fix the annoying config file business once I figure out how to handle it properly. :)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

I am sure I am doing something really, really dumb.

When I put the "sudo" in front, it asks for a password (which I do not have).

When I do sudo gainroot (to get su access) and then run "apt-get install unnethack" it says...

...reading package lists...done
...building dependency tree...done
...reading state information....done
E: Couldn't find package unnethack

Like I said, I know I am doing something really, really stupid. Thanks!

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

sudo gainroot and then apt-get. That´s correct way.

From first post link you can see that package is in testing. So you have to enable testing repository before apt-get can find it. More information about this from wiki.
http://wiki.maemo.org/Extras-testing

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

That's OK, you probably just don't have extras-testing enabled. :)

The reason it's not updating for you is most likely that you have changed /home/user/.unnethackrc. Delete or rename the file and it should update.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

The problem is that nethack is designed to run with a white-text-on-black-background colorscheme, and nokia's terminal isn't smart enough to handle a reversed black-on-white color scheme properly.

For now I've patched the scripts to change the color scheme on game start and change them back on exit. This is a very crude solution, but seems to work OK.

Check it out:

http://maemo.org/packages/package_in...hack/3.5.3-17/

I haven't figured out what to do with configfiles, since the game expects that there be only one configfile on the system... (Thus, I can't create a default configfile in /etc while letting the user set his own options in /user/home.)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

You were right - I did not have extras-testing enable. Doowp!!!

All works well now except....the colors

My colors are such that I cannot really play.

Do I need to install curses? What do I do to get playable colors?

Also - how can I update the icon to use the icon in the 2nd message?

Thanks again for making this available and for your help and support!

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Change the terminal's foreground color to white and background color to black. :)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Simply replace /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/unnethack.png with your own icon. (You need to be root.)

There's a bug where the apps list doesn't always quickly refresh changes in these icon files, so if nothing happens be patient or simply reboot. :)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Just a quick tip; this version handles changes of text font sizes really well, so when exploring you can whack the size right up to make hard-to-see/recognise monsters and features more recognisable. Then, when you need to see more of the map reduce the font size to get your bearings.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

None is displayed in the Rogue level.
How should I do?

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Could you post a screenshot showing this problem?

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

I already quit the game.
I will try to reproduce the situation.
Thank you for reply.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

I think I saw what you're talking about. :)

It should be fixed in the latest release, 18:

http://repository.maemo.org/extras-t...3-18_armel.deb

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Every time this thread is updated I keep meaning to point out that Vulture's Eye is also available if anyone's interested & didn't know. As close to a graphical experience that nethack is probably ever going to get (or should get IMHO :)).

Not that I don't appreciate this port. Good work, I LOVE playing Nethack in it's many incarnations :)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

2 things:

My last post impled that you need to go into the menu and fiddle with font sizes to zoom in/out. This is mainly because this is exactly what I thought. However, I have since discovered that the volume keys act as zoom in/out in XTem, just like in the browser, and this works just as well and much more conveniently.

Also I've updated the wiki page on getting the browser location bar to quick search various sites. Why is this relevant on this thread? Well, the file I've added includes the wikia nethack wiki, WikiHack, as one of the searches available. Go to the wiki, download the UK-centric search file and follow the instructions. Typing into your browser's search bar will search wikihack for foo.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] UnNethack: a modern nethack
 

Just wanted to say this port is great. Now you have me addicted to unnethack, and I am trying to get it to work on my Easy Debian image - I got unnetack to compile fine, but your "fancy ncurses UI" is not working for me. Is there any way you can provide details of what you did to get the UI to work the way you did?

Thanks again for an awesome port.