nethack(6)

NAME

nethack - Exploring The Mazes of Menace

SYNOPSIS

nethack [ -d directory ] [ -n ]  [  -[ABCEHKPRSTVW@]  ]  [
-[DX] ] [ -u playername ] [ -dec ] [ -ibm ]
nethack  [  -d directory ] -s [ -v ] [ -[ABCEHKPRSTVW] ] [
playernames ]

DESCRIPTION

NetHack is a display oriented Dungeons & Dragons(tm)

like game. The standard tty display and command structure resem

ble rogue.

Other, more graphical display options exist if you are us

ing either a PC, or an X11 interface.

To get started you really only need to know two commands.

The command ? will give you a list of the available commands (as

well as other information) and the command / will identify the

things you see on the screen.

To win the game (as opposed to merely playing to beat oth

er people's high scores) you must locate the Amulet of Yendor

which is somewhere below the 20th level of the dungeon and get it

out. Nobody has achieved this yet; anybody who does will proba

bly go down in history as a hero among heros.

When the game ends, whether by your dying, quitting, or

escaping from the caves, NetHack will give you (a fragment of)

the list of top scorers. The scoring is based on many aspects of

your behavior, but a rough estimate is obtained by taking the

amount of gold you've found in the cave plus four times your (re

al) experience. Precious stones may be worth a lot of gold when

brought to the exit. There is a 10% penalty for getting yourself

killed.

The environment variable NETHACKOPTIONS can be used to

initialize many run-time options. The ? command provides a de

scription of these options and syntax. (The -dec and -ibm com

mand line options are equivalent to the decgraphics and

ibmgraphics run-time options described there, and are provided

purely for convenience on systems supporting multiple types of

terminals.)

The -u playername option supplies the answer to the ques

tion "Who are you?". It overrides any name from NETHACKOPTIONS,

HACKOPTIONS, USER, LOGNAME, or getlogin(), which will otherwise

be tried in order. If none of these provides a useful name, the

player will be asked for one. Player names (in conjunction with

uids) are used to identify save files, so you can have several

saved games under different names. Conversely, you must use the

appropriate player name to restore a saved game.

A playername suffix or a separate option consisting of one

of -A -B -C -E -H -K -P -R -S -T -V -W can be used to determine

the character role. Likewise, -@ can be used to explicitly re

quest that a random role be chosen. It may need to be quoted

with a backslash (-@) if @ is the "kill" character (see "stty")

for the terminal, in order to prevent the current input line from

being cleared.

The -s option alone will print out the list of your scores

on the current version. An immediately following -v reports on

all versions present in the score file. The -s may also be fol

lowed by arguments -A -B -C -E -H -K -P -R -S -T -V -W to print

the scores of Archeologists, Barbarians, Cave(wo)men, Elves,

Healers, Knights, Priest(esse)s, Rogues, Samurai, Tourists,

Valkyries, or Wizards. It may also be followed by one or more

player names to print the scores of the players mentioned, by

'all' to print out all scores, or by a number to print that many

top scores.

The -n option suppresses printing of any news from the

game administrator.

The -D or -X option will start the game in a special non

scoring discovery mode. -D will, if the player is the game ad

ministrator, start in debugging (wizard) mode instead.

The -d option, which must be the first argument if it ap

pears, supplies a directory which is to serve as the playground.

It overrides the value from NETHACKDIR, HACKDIR, or the directory

specified by the game administrator during compilation (usually

/usr/games/lib/nethackdir). This option is usually only useful

to the game administrator. The playground must contain several

auxiliary files such as help files, the list of top scorers, and

a subdirectory save where games are saved.

AUTHORS

Jay Fenlason (+ Kenny Woodland, Mike Thome and Jon Payne)

wrote the original hack, very much like rogue (but full of bugs).

Andries Brouwer continuously deformed their sources into

an entirely different game.

Mike Stephenson has continued the perversion of sources,

adding various warped character classes and sadistic traps with

the help of many strange people who reside in that place between

the worlds, the Usenet Zone. A number of these miscreants are

immortalized in the historical roll of dishonor and various other

places.

The resulting mess is now called NetHack, to denote its

development by the Usenet. Andries Brouwer has made this request

for the distinction, as he may eventually release a new version

of his own.

FILES

All files are in the playground, normally

/usr/games/lib/nethackdir. If DLB was defined during the com

pile, the data files and special levels will be inside a larger

file, normally nhdat, instead of being separate files.
nethack The program itself.
data, oracles, rumors Data files used by NetHack.
options, quest.dat More data files.
help, hh Help data files.
cmdhelp, opthelp, wizhelp More help data files.
*.lev Predefined special levels.
dungeon Control file for special lev

els.
history A short history of NetHack.
license Rules governing redistribu

tion.
record The list of top scorers.
logfile An extended list of games

played.

xlock.nnn Description of a dungeon lev

el.
perm Lock file for xlock.dd.
bonesDD.nn Descriptions of the ghost and

belongings of a deceased
adventurer.

save A subdirectory containing the

saved games.

ENVIRONMENT

USER or LOGNAME Your login name.
HOME Your home directory.
SHELL Your shell.
TERM The type of your terminal.
HACKPAGER or PAGER Replacement for default pager.
MAIL Mailbox file.
MAILREADER Replacement for default reader

(probably /bin/mail or

/usr/ucb/mail).

NETHACKDIR Playground.
NETHACKOPTIONS String predefining several NetHack

options.

In addition, SHOPTYPE is used in debugging (wizard) mode.

SEE ALSO

dgn_comp(6), lev_comp(6), recover(6)

BUGS

Probably infinite.

Dungeons & Dragons is a Trademark of TSR Inc.

4th Berkeley Distribution 10 March 1996

NETHACK(6)