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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 28</font></b></font></p>
              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC"> 
                </font></b></font></p>
              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
                in loonygames:</font></b></font></p>

<P><font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">New!!</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments <a href="../../../index.html">on the front page</a>!</font></p>
              
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        <p align="center"><font size="+3" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8">Adventures 
          in ASCII<br>
          </font><font size="+3" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8"> 
          </font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          <a href="mailto:jeffmill@bellsouth.net">Jeff Miller</a></font></b></font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT">&nbsp; </p>
        <p align="LEFT">&nbsp;</p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">&quot;At that time,&quot; 
          says the Dev Team, &quot;Mike Stephenson started writing patches to 
          <b>Hack</b> 1.03. Eventually, as it became evident that Andries was 
          not going to resume work on the project, the game that had evolved from 
          <b>Hack</b> 1.03 was renamed <b>NetHack</b> in order to distinguish 
          it from its parent. The &quot;Net&quot; in <b>NetHack</b>, by the way, 
          refers to the Usenet, not to it being a networked game. The poor foresight 
          in this choice has haunted the DevTeam ever since :-)</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">&quot;The first release of 
          <b>NetHack</b> was 1.4f, and was worked on by a number of people who 
          contributed fixes and new functionality. Mike Stephenson acted as a 
          librarian and configuration manager for the code and managed the 1.4f 
          release as well as a 2.2 and 2.3 release. Somewhere in the 2.2-3 timeframe 
          - the exact chronology is unclear here although it seems to be sometime 

          in 1988 - Izchak Miller approached Mike with the idea of forming a group 
          of interested people to develop the game. An initial group of people 
          who were actively working on the code in an ad-hoc fashion at that time 
          came together, and the DevTeam was born.&quot;</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Dev Team, unlike most 
          commercial software development groups, keeps its mouth shut tight concerning 
          upcoming features, with the lone exception of promising that the Y2K 
          bug will be addressed in the next version. They don’t even announce 
          when a new version will show up or what the version number will be. 
          It just &quot;appears&quot; at the official FTP site. Loosely organized, 
          the members communicate via email, finish tasks, take suggestions (or 
          even finished code blocks, which they <b>love</b> receiving), and churn 
          out new versions.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Over the years, the Dev Team 
          (a true Internet baby with members past and present hailing from Japan, 
          the Netherlands, Israel, France, and half a dozen other nations) has 
          built <b>NetHack</b> into a remarkable game. You want features? <b>NetHack</b> 
          randomly generates most dungeon levels, but after a player visits them, 
          they remain. Objects dropped on level two stay on level two. Annoyed 
          at that nymph that stole your +3 Dragonbane? Search through the dungeon; 
          she’s hiding somewhere. In addition, there are a number of branching 
          dungeons (the Gnomish Mines and Vlad’s Tower, for example) and fixed 
          levels (Medusa’s Lair, Minetown, Fort Ludious, and the &quot;Quest Levels&quot; 
          for each class, just to name a few) all of which <b>NetHack</b>ers know 
          as intimately as their own backyards. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Monsters use wands and other 
          magical items with particular pizzazz. Meeting a gnome with a wand of 
          death is a pitiful thing to behold, indeed. The polymorph code is also 
          a marvel. With the appropriate magics, characters can transform into 
          any monster in the game, complete with that creature’s innate abilities. 
          Want a pet more powerful than the dog or cat you start out with? Polymorph 
          yourself into a red dragon and lay some eggs -- your newly hatched brood 
          will call you Mommy. You like grenades? Become a female cockatrice and 
          lay &quot;stoning bombs.&quot; Want the effects of that magic ring to 
          be permanent? Turn into a Xorn and eat it. Hell, <b>NetHack</b>’s even 
          got a kitchen sink, and if you kick it, you might cough up a ring someone 
          lost.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>NetHack</b>’s plot is 
          simple. The most powerful artifact of the gods, the Amulet of Yendor, 
          was stolen by Moloch, god of evil, and hidden away in the Dungeons of 
          Doom under the protection of the Wizard of Yendor (affectionately known 
          to fans as &quot;rodneY&quot;). You are to recover the amulet and give 
          it to your god so that he (or she) can kick every other god’s righteous 
          ass.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Be prepared to die. A piece 
          of advice before playing <b>NetHack</b>. Read the spoilers. <b>NetHack</b> 
          is very quirky and some of the most important survival tactics have 
          a tenuous justification at best. Unlike most games, spoilers don’t <i>spoil</i> 
          <b>NetHack</b>. They make it playable. Trust me.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Though its source is also 
          publicly available, <b>NetHack</b> doesn’t have nearly as many variants 
          as <b>Angband</b>. Still, you’ll definitely want to try <b>Slash’Em</b> 
          (<b>S</b>uper-<b>L</b>otso-<b>A</b>dded-<b>S</b>tuff-<b>H</b>ack-<b>E</b>xtended-<b>M</b>agic), 
          a popular variant based on earlier variants (<b>NetHack+</b> and <b>Slash</b>) 
          and developed by Warren Cheung and Kevin Hugo. <b>Slash’Em</b> adds 
          more spells, more classes, more items, more quests ... just a lot more 
          stuff than you can shake a stick at plus the ability to ride certain 
          pets. Sure, it’s a little buggy, but it’s definitely playable, and Cheung 
          and Hugo are continually releasing more stable versions.</font></p>
        <p>&nbsp;</p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>ADOM: The New Kid on the 
          Block</b></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">A few years ago, when <b>ADOM</b> 
          was first released in beta (it’s still in beta, but don’t take that 
          to mean that <b>ADOM</b>’s not a complete game -- it most certainly 
          is), it hit the <b>Roguelike</b> scene like a neutron bomb. Its initial 
          distribution had over 5,000 downloads in its first week; the latest 
          version has had over 50,000. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The brainchild of Thomas 
          Biskup, <b>ADOM</b>, which stands for <b>A</b>ncient <b>D</b>omains 
          of <b>M</b>ystery, has all the core features of a <b>Roguelike</b>, 
          but adds so much more: a large wilderness area with multiple towns, 
          dozens of quests, multiple dungeons, NPCs that talk to you (albeit simply, 
          but it’s a start), skill development, and, most important, a branching 
          plot in a coherent world: chaos seems to have taken root in the Drakalor 
          chain and it’s up to you to get to the bottom of the mess.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">&quot;I have been playing 
          roleplaying games for more than 15 years,&quot; says Biskup, &quot;and 
          when I discovered <b>Hack</b> on an Amiga CD, I really was overjoyed. 
          Sadly it was neither stable nor fast and thus I played only a few games 
          before resigning. Later I tried <b>DND</b> (even simpler than most <b>Roguelike</b> 
          games but very fascinating as far as I am concerned) and then I finally 
          stumbled upon <b>NetHack</b>, which I really liked in most respects. 
          I played for a time, but never was very successful and started to dislike 
          some of its features: the very quirky humor, the lack of atmosphere, 
          the interface, the lack of a unified background. For a day or so I contemplated 
          altering <b>NetHack</b>, but when I looked at the sources I decided 
          that it would be easier to write a new <b>Roguelike</b> game than to 
          change the sources.&quot;</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Playing <b>ADOM</b> reminds 
          me of those heady days as a kid playing <b>Ultima 2</b>, except that 
          the quests are more intricate, the mechanics more complex and the variety 
          of items, classes, and races boggles the mind. You can play as a half-elf 
          mindcrafter, a drakeling beastfighter, a half-orc necromancer -- there’s 
          over 200 combinations.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Biskup does all of the work 
          on <b>ADOM</b> for nominal fee -- if you like the game, he requests 
          that you send him a postcard. He’s received quite a few. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">&quot;There's been everything 
          from the US,&quot; says Biskup, &quot; from many countries in Europe 
          -- France, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Great Britain, Norway, Finland -- 
          lots of cards... thanks folks! -- to Sweden, Russia, Australia, New 
          Zealand and many more .... Noticeably absent are Japan, the whole of 
          Africa, if I recall correctly, and the North Pole and the South Pole, 
          although I recently got a postcard from the southern-most city of the 
          world ... Ushuaia ...sent by a nice guy from Denmark who almost managed 
          to get it sent from a station at the South Pole ...that's hard to beat 
          .... I find it a nice thought to see how a game can unite so many countries 
          with so many political views.&quot;</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>ADOM</b><i> </i>is still 
          currently in beta, but it plays like a complete game. Biskup does plan 
          to release a separate, registered version of <b>ADOM</b> that will have 
          some oft requested features -- point-based character generation, an 
          official save file mechanic, and options to turn certain features on 
          or off -- but the regular version will always be free.</font></p>
        <p>&nbsp;</p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>The Rewards of Playing 
          a Roguelike</b></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Fame, of course. <b>Angband</b>, 
          <b>Moria</b>, and <b>Nethack</b> all have very active newsgroups where 
          you can proclaim the exploits of your conquest to the entire world ...er 
          ...‘Net. And, if you get killed (which is much more likely), you can 
          post yet another <b>YASD</b> (<b>Y</b>et <b>A</b>nother <b>S</b>tupid 
          <b>D</b>eath), which are often more entertaining than the victory posts 
          anyway.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Second, because each <b>Roguelike</b> 
          game randomly generates a large part of the game, there’s enormous replay 
          value. Most RPGs collect dust once solved. Many fans of <b>NetHack</b> 
          and <b>Angband</b> have been playing non-stop for over half a dozen 
          years.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Last, when you finally <i>do</i> 
          finish the damn game, you’ll have that sense of accomplishment that 
          only comes from knowing that you’ve spent a sizable chunk of the last 
          year or so of your life just to see the text that says, &quot;Goodbye 
          Polero the Demigod. You went to your reward with 3,343,332 points ...&quot;</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Happy hunting.</font></p>
        <p>&nbsp; </p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><i>- 
          Jeff Miller is currently trying to lead Polero CXXXVIII to victory over 
          the forces of Chaos in ADOM. When he's not doing that, he writes freelance 
          in Winston-Salem, NC.</i></font></p>
        <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">Interested 
          in playing some of these games? Check out <a href="download.php">loonygames' 
          Roguelikes Roundup</a>, featuring six games you can download and play 
          in minutes! What are you waiting for? <a href="download.php">Head 
          over there, chump!</a></font></p>
        <p align="left">&nbsp;</p>
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      <p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
        Illustration &copy; 1999 Jason Bergman. Adventures in ASCII is &copy; 
        1999 Jeff Miller. All other content is &copy; 1999 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
        productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so 
        don't try it...or we'll force you to play <b>NetHack</b> for six years 
        straight. Oh wait...that's not a very good punishment. Don't worry...we'll 
        think of something especially evil. Muhahahahahaha. Really. Try it. I 
        dare you. </font></i></p>
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