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-
- Using and Installing Amiga NetHack 3.3
- (or Everything You Never Wanted to Know Before NetHacking)
- (or Not Everything That Happens Always Comes Knocking)
-
- Last Revision: 28 March 2000 for NetHack 3.3.1
-
-
- 0. Pre-intro for NetHack 3.3.1:
- Amiga-specific changes for 3.3.1:
- Most (around 99%) known bugs fixed (volunteers welcome).
- HackWB and HackCli are no longer supported. Use the main binary.
-
- We would like to thank each and every one of the people who took
- the time and effort to report bugs to us. THANK YOU!
-
- I. Introduction
-
- I.A. Overview
- Welcome to Amiga NetHack! If this is your first visit to our fair
- city, you are in for an amazing but dangerous journey; if you have
- visited us before, beware! the city has changed in many strange and
- subtle ways; it has also grown quite a bit. This missive brings to
- light those mundane tasks which must be dealt with before beginning
- your journey; for those of you who are faced with the task of
- installing the pre-fabricated version of our town, section III
- (Installing Amiga NetHack 3.3) will guide you through the task at
- hand. If you are ready to visit, the local visitors guide is in
- section II (Using Amiga NetHack 3.3); please also see the general
- guide packaged separately (the file "GuideBook").
-
- To all our visitors, a hearty Welcome! - and please be careful.
-
- [Those responsible for the previous paragraphs have been sacked. The
- documentation has been completed at great expense in a more traditional
- style. -- The Management]
-
- I.B. Getting Help
- If you have questions about strategy, weapons, or monsters, the best
- place to go for help is the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.roguelike.nethack.
-
- If you have problems with installation or think you have found a bug
- in the game, please report it by electronic mail to the development
- team at nethack-bugs@nethack.org, where it will be routed to the
- appropriate person. Include your configuration, the version of
- NetHack you are playing (use the 'v' command), whether or not you are
- using an official binary release (and if so which one) and as much
- specific information as possible. As NetHack runs on many different
- machines, be sure to mention that you are playing the Amiga version.
-
- I.C. Credits
- Olaf Seibert first ported NetHack 2.3 and 3.0 to the Amiga. Richard
- Addison, Andrew Church, Jochen Erwied, Mark Gooderum, Ken Lorber,
- Greg Olson, Mike Passaretti, and Gregg Wonderly polished and extended
- the 3.0 and 3.1 ports. Andrew Church, Ken Lorber, and Gregg Wonderly
- are responsible for the 3.2 port. Janne Salmijärvi resurrected the
- amigaport for 3.3.
-
- II. Using Amiga NetHack 3.3
- Run NetHack from the shell or from some tool that allows that,
- ie. ToolManager. See the NetHack.txt file for command line options
- and other usage.
-
- II.A. Sources of Information
- Where to go depends on what you want to find out. If you want to find
- out about distributing NetHack, read the license (in NetHack:license
- or type ?i during the game). For an introduction to NetHack, read
- the GuideBook file. To find out what options are compiled into your
- copy of NetHack, type #v during the game. Finally, for information
- during the game on all kinds of things, type ? and select from the
- menu or by pressing Help key.
-
- II.B. The Amiga NetHack WorkBench Front End
- 3.3.1 no longer supports HackWB.
-
- II.C. The Amiga NetHack CLI Front End
- 3.3.1 no longer supports CLI Front End either.
-
- Instead, use the main binary. See NetHack.txt file for the standard Unix
- flags for NetHack. In addition to those flags, Amiga NetHack accepts
- the flags -l to force non-interlaced mode and -L to force interlaced mode.
-
- II.D. Amiga-Specific Information for NetHack
-
- There are several options that are unique to the Amiga version of
- NetHack that may be specified in the NetHack.cnf file or on an
- OPTIONS line:
-
- altmeta allows the ALT keys to function as META keys. The default
- is altmeta.
- flush flush discards all characters in the queue except the first,
- which limits typeahead accidents. The default is !flush.
- silent turn off the audio output. The default is silent.
-
- The current version of Amiga NetHack also supports menu accelerators.
- See Guidebook.txt for a detailed description. Also supported is
- selecting the number of stacked objects to drop, used with the (D)rop
- command. Type the number and then select an item (or items with
- accelerators). Items with a count associated with them are denoted
- with # in place of -. I.e. 'd - 3 blessed daggers' becomes
- 'd # 3 blessed daggers'. You can clear the count by hitting esc
- while counting or deselect and reselect the item. The default
- is to drop all selected items (as before).
-
-
- III. Installing Amiga NetHack 3.3
-
- III.A. General Installation
- Installation should be easy - basically it consists of putting files
- where they belong and adding an assign to your startup. If you are
- installing from the official binary distribution, simply unpacking
- the archive in the appropriate directory will put the files in the
- places they belong.
-
- IF YOU ALREADY HAVE A PREVIOUS VERSION INSTALLED YOU MUST DELETE THE
- OLD SAVE AND BONES FILES - THEY WILL NOT WORK! This includes save
- and bones files from all previous versions of NetHack (yes, even 3.3.0).
- If you have a game in progress and want to finish it, use your
- current version and then update.
-
- Will NetHack fit on your machine?
- NetHack 3.3 is large. NetHack 3.3 is very large. You will need:
- > Any standard series Amiga: 500, 600, 1000, 1200, 2000, 2500, 3000, 4000.
- > WorkBench 2.04 or later.
- > At least 3 meg of RAM. NetHack will NOT run in 1 meg (probably even 2).
- > Mass storage: A hard drive with over 3 meg of free space is highly
- recommended.
-
- Hard Disk Installation:
- Unpack the archive to your place of choice. Since you are reading this
- you've probably done that already. Now just assign NetHack: to
- NetHack directory containing the executable and datafiles and other needed
- directories.
-
- Use the table in the next section to see where things should end up.
- Be sure that the file 8 ends up in NetHack:hack/8.
-
- Configuration
- Using your favorite text editor, edit NetHack:NetHack.cnf to match
- your system.
-
- Create the save file directory (makedir NetHack:save) and the levels file
- directory (makedir NetHack:levels), if they don't already exist.
-
- Create the score file (echo to NetHack:record) and, if desired, the log
- file (echo to NetHack:logfile), if they don't already exist. You may
- leave out logfile, but record is needed.
-
- III.B. File Location Table
- NetHack:
- amii.hlp Guidebook.txt hack.font
- license NetHack NetHack.cnf
- NetHack.txt nhdat nhsdat
- record Recover Recover.txt
- logfile (optional, but useful)
- NetHack:hack
- 8
- NetHack:tiles
- monsters.iff objects.iff other.iff
-
- IV. BBS Interface
-
- [Since HackCli and split binary is no longer supported the following
- probably doesn't apply anymore. Due to lack of a suitable environment
- it is also untested.]
-
- The BBS mode is based on the standard NetHack tty port and is designed
- for use in a BBS setting - it is specifically not recommended for use
- on the console. The current TTY mode has changed significantly since
- the preliminary version released with 3.1.2. In particular, BBS mode
- now works with split binaries (only), and now supports multiple games
- in progress at the same time for multi-line boards (note however that
- any individual user should not be allowed to run two instances of
- NetHack at the same time).
-
- To set up NetHack for use with a BBS, set OPTIONS=windowtype:tty
- and unset DUNGEONS, TRAPS, and EFFECTS in NetHack.cnf. Configure
- the BBS to expect I/O through stdin and stdout, and have NetHack
- invoked as:
- HackCLI :uid -u uname options...
- where uid is any string (without embedded spaces, colons, or slashes)
- that is unique for each BBS user and uname is some corresponding human-
- readable name for that user. Uid is used in constructing file names
- to prevent collisions between simultaneous games and to prevent
- people from using other people's save files. Uname is the name the
- character will have in the game and the name that will appear in the
- record file.
-
- The terminal is assumed to be a 24x80 ANSI-compatible terminal.
- The present version does not deal with situations such as low
- memory gracefully - as NetHack uses a considerable amount of
- memory this is particularly painful with multiple games in
- progress. Sysops are reminded to be familiar with the recover
- utility, which may be needed from time to time and which should
- probably not be available directly to users. Bug reports and
- suggestions for improvements are requested from the user community -
- this is still considered alpha software.
-
-