AceHack 3.6.0 -- General information

AceHack is a fork of NetHack, originally based on NetHack version 3.4.3. NetHack is a dungeon exploration game, a distant descendent of Rogue and Hack; Acehack aims to provide gameplay very similar to that of the official NetHack, but a better interface, fewer bugs, and a more open development process. Generally speaking, where gameplay- relevant changes have been made to the game, they are designed to make the game easier rather than harder.

AceHack 3.6.0 is the first release; the version number is chosen to avoid clashes with official versions of NetHack.

Some highlights of what is new in this fork:

• Customisable keyboard controls; the default controls are a mix of numpad and vikeys, allowing either letters or the numpad to be used for movement.
• Many controls have been generalised (e.g. < now interacts with all terrain, not just downstairs), reducing the number of commands that need to be memorised (although the old commands still work). The game can be played with just a few additional commands on top of movement.
• A generally cleaner and simpler interface.
• Many game elements are tweaked to remember things for the player (e.g. the entrance to the Mines is now a ladder, to distinguish it from the stairs deeper into the dungeons), hopefully reducing the need to keep notes.
• A huge simplification of game options; most NetHack options still exist (with a few exceptions, like number_pad which is replaced by the customisable keyboard controls), but are generally unnecessary. AceHack aims to have sane defaults for all customisable options.
• A new scoring system, which hopefully is less exploitable than the old one.

A fuller list of changes for this release can be found in the file doc/fixes36.0 in the source distribution.

AceHack save and bones files are not compatible with NetHack save and bones files, so please ensure you finish any games you may be playing before upgrading.

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Here is a fuller explanation of how to compile your code. Note that for the time being, the only supported platform and interface is the tty interface on UNIX-like systems (including Linux); support for more platforms and interfaces is planned later, but I wanted to get at least one working first.

1. Unpack the code in a dedicated new directory. We will refer to that directory as the 'Top' directory. It makes no difference what you call it.

2. Before you do anything else, please read carefully the file called "license" in the 'dat' subdirectory. The authors of NetHack are very serious about their license, and the contributors to AceHack also expect that you will follow it.

3. If everything is in order, you can now turn to trying to get the program to compile and run on your particular system. The current default system is an autoconf-based system running on Linux, although it should work on all UNIX-like systems.

   The files sys//Install. were written to guide you in configuring the program for your operating system. The files win//Install. are available, where necessary, to help you in configuring the program for particular windowing environments. Reading them, and the man pages, should answer most of your questions.

   For instructions for building via the autoconf-based system, see the file sys/autoconf/Install.ac. This is now the recommended way to compile, and has the advantage that it needs only minimal amounts of configuration by hand.

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If you have problems building the game, or you find bugs in it, email me for advice; my email address is [email protected]. Alternatively, you could try asking in a NetHack-related forum, such as news:rec.games.roguelike.nethack or irc:freenode.org/#nethack. Also feel free to submit other queries, patches, etc.; although if you want gameplay advice, it's probably a better idea to first consult the changelog (doc/fixes36.0) to see the differences between AceHack and NetHack version 3.4.3, and keeping those in mind, to ask in a general NetHack-related gameplay forum; AceHack's gameplay is very similar to NetHack's.

When sending correspondence, please observe the following:

• Please be sure to include your machine type, OS, and patchlevel, if it's potentially relevant to the bug (if you can recreate the bug on multiple systems, or have looked into the source and know why it happened, it probably isn't).

• Never send us binary files (e.g. save files or bones files); they aren't portable between systems, so this would simply end up sending large files for no reason. Instructions on how to reproduce a bug are much more useful.

• Though we make an effort to reply to each bug report, it may take some time before you receive feedback. This is especially true during the period immediately after a new release, when we get the most bug reports.

If you apply patches to the code yourself, they may well be relevant to bug reports, so explain that as well. I have no problem with people writing and applying patches to their games; however, if you write a patch to AceHack, try publicising it in a relevant place, to help avoid duplication of effort. (Patches that I like may well become part of the "official" AceHack source, and it already contains several patches that were originally third-party patches to NetHack 3.4.3; see the online repository at http://patch-tag.com/r/ais523/acehack/home for the latest source, although note that unreleased development source is unlikely to work correctly without modifications.

Also bear in mind that one of AceHack's design goals is to stay similar to vanilla NetHack, at least in the near future. If you have an idea for a feature that would stray from this aim, you may want to consider submitting your patch to a different NetHack variant instead.

              -- Good luck, and happy Hacking --