337 lines
18 KiB
Plaintext
337 lines
18 KiB
Plaintext
NetHack History file for release 3.7
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Behold, mortal, the origins of NetHack...
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Jay Fenlason wrote the original Hack, with help from Kenny Woodland,
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Mike Thome, and Jon Payne.
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Andries Brouwer did a major re-write while at Stichting Mathematisch Centrum
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(now Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica), transforming Hack into a very different
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game. He published the Hack source code for use on UNIX systems by
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posting that to Usenet newsgroup net.sources (later renamed comp.sources)
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releasing version 1.0 in December of 1984, then versions 1.0.1, 1.0.2, and
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finally 1.0.3 in July of 1985. Usenet newsgroup net.games.hack (later
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renamed rec.games.hack, eventually replaced by rec.games.roguelike.nethack)
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was created for discussing it.
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Don G. Kneller ported Hack 1.0.3 to Microsoft C and MS-DOS, producing
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PC Hack 1.01e, added support for DEC Rainbow graphics in version 1.03g, and
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went on to produce at least four more versions (3.0, 3.2, 3.51, and 3.6;
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note that these are old Hack version numbers, not contemporary NetHack ones).
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R. Black ported PC Hack 3.51 to Lattice C and the Atari 520/1040ST,
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producing ST Hack 1.03.
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Mike Stephenson merged these various versions back together, incorporating
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many of the added features, and produced NetHack version 1.4 in 1987. He
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then coordinated a cast of thousands in enhancing and debugging NetHack 1.4
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and released NetHack versions 2.2 and 2.3. Like Hack, they were released by
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posting their source code to Usenet where they remained available in various
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archives accessible via ftp and uucp after expiring from the newsgroup.
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Later, Mike coordinated a major re-write of the game, heading a team which
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included Ken Arromdee, Jean-Christophe Collet, Steve Creps, Eric Hendrickson,
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Izchak Miller, Eric S. Raymond, John Rupley, Mike Threepoint, and Janet Walz,
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to produce NetHack 3.0c.
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NetHack 3.0 was ported to the Atari by Eric R. Smith, to OS/2 by Timo
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Hakulinen, and to VMS by David Gentzel. The three of them and Kevin Darcy
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later joined the main NetHack Development Team to produce subsequent
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revisions of 3.0.
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Olaf Seibert ported NetHack 2.3 and 3.0 to the Amiga. Norm Meluch, Stephen
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Spackman and Pierre Martineau designed overlay code for PC NetHack 3.0.
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Johnny Lee ported NetHack 3.0 to the Macintosh. Along with various other
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Dungeoneers, they continued to enhance the PC, Macintosh, and Amiga ports
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through the later revisions of 3.0.
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Version 3.0 went through ten relatively rapidly released "patch-level"
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revisions. Versions at the time were known as 3.0 for the base release
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and variously as "3.0a" through "3.0j", "3.0 patchlevel 1" through
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"3.0 patchlevel 10", or "3.0pl1" through "3.0pl10" rather than 3.0.0 and
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3.0.1 through 3.0.10; the three component numbering scheme began to be used
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with 3.1.0.
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Headed by Mike Stephenson and coordinated by Izchak Miller and Janet Walz,
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the NetHack Development Team which now included Ken Arromdee, David Cohrs,
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Jean-Christophe Collet, Kevin Darcy, Matt Day, Timo Hakulinen, Steve Linhart,
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Dean Luick, Pat Rankin, Eric Raymond, and Eric Smith undertook a radical
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revision of 3.0. They re-structured the game's design, and re-wrote major
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parts of the code. They added multiple dungeons, a new display, special
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individual character quests, a new endgame and many other new features, and
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produced NetHack 3.1. Version 3.1.0 was released in January of 1993.
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Ken Lorber, Gregg Wonderly and Greg Olson, with help from Richard Addison,
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Mike Passaretti, and Olaf Seibert, developed NetHack 3.1 for the Amiga.
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Norm Meluch and Kevin Smolkowski, with help from Carl Schelin, Stephen
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Spackman, Steve VanDevender, and Paul Winner, ported NetHack 3.1 to the PC.
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Jon W{tte and Hao-yang Wang, with help from Ross Brown, Mike Engber, David
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Hairston, Michael Hamel, Jonathan Handler, Johnny Lee, Tim Lennan, Rob Menke,
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and Andy Swanson, developed NetHack 3.1 for the Macintosh, porting it for
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MPW. Building on their development, Bart House added a Think C port.
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Timo Hakulinen ported NetHack 3.1 to OS/2. Eric Smith ported NetHack 3.1
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to the Atari. Pat Rankin, with help from Joshua Delahunty, was responsible
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for the VMS version of NetHack 3.1. Michael Allison ported NetHack 3.1 to
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Windows NT.
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Dean Luick, with help from David Cohrs, developed NetHack 3.1 for X11.
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It drew the map as text rather than graphically but included nh10.bdf, an
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optionally used custom X11 font which has tiny images in place of letters and
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punctuation, a precursor of tiles. Those images don't extend to individual
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monster and object types, just replacements for monster and object classes
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(so one custom image for all "a" insects and another for all "[" armor and
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so forth, not separate images for beetles and ants or for cloaks and boots).
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Warwick Allison wrote a graphically displayed version of NetHack for the
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Atari where the tiny pictures were described as "icons" and were distinct
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for specific types of monsters and objects rather than just their classes.
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He contributed them to the NetHack Development Team which rechristened them
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"tiles", original usage which has subsequently been picked up by various
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other games. NetHack's tiles support was then implemented on other platforms
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(initially MS-DOS but eventually Windows, Qt, and X11 too).
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The 3.2 NetHack Development Team, comprised of Michael Allison, Ken Arromdee,
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David Cohrs, Jessie Collet, Steve Creps, Kevin Darcy, Timo Hakulinen, Steve
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Linhart, Dean Luick, Pat Rankin, Eric Smith, Mike Stephenson, Janet Walz,
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and Paul Winner, released version 3.2.0 in April of 1996.
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Version 3.2 marked the tenth anniversary of the formation of the development
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team. In a testament to their dedication to the game, all thirteen members
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of the original NetHack Development Team remained on the team at the start
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of work on that release. During the interval between the release of 3.1.3
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and 3.2.0, one of the founding members of the NetHack Development Team,
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Dr. Izchak Miller, was diagnosed with cancer and passed away. That release
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of the game was dedicated to him by the development and porting teams.
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Version 3.2 proved to be more stable than previous versions. Many bugs
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were fixed, abuses eliminated, and game features tuned for better game
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play.
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During the lifespan of NetHack 3.1 and 3.2, several enthusiasts of the game
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added their own modifications to the game and made these "variants" publicly
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available:
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Tom Proudfoot and Yuval Oren created NetHack++, which was quickly renamed
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NetHack-- when some people incorrectly assumed that it was a conversion
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of the C source code to C++. Working independently, Stephen White wrote
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NetHack Plus. Tom Proudfoot later merged NetHack Plus and his own NetHack--
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to produce SLASH. Larry Stewart-Zerba and Warwick Allison improved the
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spell casting system with the Wizard Patch. Warwick Allison also ported
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NetHack to use the Qt interface.
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Warren Cheung combined SLASH with the Wizard Patch to produce Slash'EM, and
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with the help of Kevin Hugo, added more features. Kevin later joined the
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NetHack Development Team and incorporated the best of these ideas into
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NetHack 3.3.
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The final update to 3.2 was the bug fix release 3.2.3, which was released
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simultaneously with 3.3.0 in December 1999 just in time for the Year 2000.
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Because of the newer version, 3.2.3 was released as a source code patch only,
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without any ready-to-play distribution for systems that usually had such.
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(To anyone considering resurrecting an old version: all versions before
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3.2.3 had a Y2K bug. The high scores file and the log file contained dates
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which were formatted using a two-digit year, and 1999's year 99 was followed
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by 2000's year 100. That got written out successfully but it unintentionally
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introduced an extra column in the file layout which prevented score entries
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from being read back in correctly, interfering with insertion of new high
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scores and with retrieval of old character names to use for random ghost and
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statue names in the current game.)
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The 3.3 NetHack Development Team, consisting of Michael Allison, Ken Arromdee,
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David Cohrs, Jessie Collet, Steve Creps, Kevin Darcy, Timo Hakulinen,
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Kevin Hugo, Steve Linhart, Ken Lorber, Dean Luick, Pat Rankin, Eric Smith,
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Mike Stephenson, Janet Walz, and Paul Winner, released 3.3.0 in
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December 1999 and 3.3.1 in August of 2000.
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Version 3.3 offered many firsts. It was the first version to separate race
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and profession. The Elf class was removed in preference to an elf race,
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and the races of dwarves, gnomes, and orcs made their first appearance in
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the game alongside the familiar human race. Monk and Ranger roles joined
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Archeologists, Barbarians, Cavemen, Healers, Knights, Priests, Rogues,
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Samurai, Tourists, Valkyries and of course, Wizards. It was also the first
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version to allow you to ride a steed, and was the first version to have a
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publicly available web-site listing all the bugs that had been discovered.
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Despite that constantly growing bug list, 3.3 proved stable enough to last
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for more than a year and a half.
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The 3.4 NetHack Development Team initially consisted of Michael Allison,
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Ken Arromdee, David Cohrs, Jessie Collet, Kevin Hugo, Ken Lorber, Dean Luick,
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Pat Rankin, Mike Stephenson, Janet Walz, and Paul Winner, with Warwick Allison
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joining just before the release of NetHack 3.4.0 in March 2002.
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As with version 3.3, various people contributed to the game as a whole as
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well as supporting ports on the different platforms that NetHack runs on:
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Pat Rankin maintained 3.4 for VMS.
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Michael Allison maintained NetHack 3.4 for the MS-DOS platform.
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Paul Winner and Yitzhak Sapir provided encouragement.
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Dean Luick, Mark Modrall, and Kevin Hugo maintained and enhanced the
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Macintosh port of 3.4.
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Michael Allison, David Cohrs, Alex Kompel, Dion Nicolaas, and Yitzhak Sapir
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maintained and enhanced 3.4 for the Microsoft Windows platform. Alex Kompel
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contributed a new graphical interface for the Windows port. Alex Kompel also
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contributed a Windows CE port for 3.4.1.
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Ron Van Iwaarden was the sole maintainer of NetHack for OS/2 the past several
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releases. Unfortunately Ron's last OS/2 machine stopped working in early
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2006. A great many thanks to Ron for keeping NetHack alive on OS/2 all these
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years.
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Janne Salmijarvi and Teemu Suikki maintained and enhanced the
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Amiga port of 3.4 after Janne Salmijarvi resurrected it for 3.3.1.
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Christian "Marvin" Bressler maintained 3.4 for the Atari after he
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resurrected it for 3.3.1.
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The release of NetHack 3.4.3 in December 2003 marked the beginning of a
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long release hiatus. 3.4.3 proved to be a remarkably stable version that
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provided continued enjoyment by the community for more than a decade. The
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NetHack Development Team slowly and quietly continued to work on the game
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behind the scenes during the tenure of 3.4.3. It was during that same
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period that several new variants emerged within the NetHack community.
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Notably sporkhack by Derek S. Ray, unnethack by Patric Mueller, nitrohack
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and its successors originally by Daniel Thaler and then by Alex Smith, and
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Dynahack by Tung Nguyen. Some of those variants continue to be developed,
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maintained, and enjoyed by the community to this day.
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In September 2014, an interim snapshot of the code under development was
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released publicly by other parties. Since that code was a work-in-progress
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and had not gone through the process of debugging it as a suitable release,
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it was decided that the version numbers present on that code snapshot would
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be retired and never used in an official NetHack release. An announcement
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was posted on the NetHack Development Team's official nethack.org website
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to that effect, stating that there would never be a 3.4.4, 3.5, or 3.5.0
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official release version.
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In January 2015, preparation began for the release of NetHack 3.6.
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At the beginning of development for what would eventually get released
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as 3.6.0, the NetHack Development Team consisted of Warwick Allison,
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Michael Allison, Ken Arromdee, David Cohrs, Jessie Collet, Ken Lorber,
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Dean Luick, Pat Rankin, Mike Stephenson, Janet Walz, and Paul Winner.
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In early 2015, ahead of the release of 3.6.0, new members Sean Hunt,
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Pasi Kallinen, and Derek S. Ray joined the NetHack Development Team.
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Near the end of the development of 3.6.0, one of the significant inspirations
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for many of the humorous and fun features found in the game, author
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Terry Pratchett, passed away. NetHack 3.6.0 introduced a tribute to him.
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3.6.0 was released in December 2015, and merged work done by the development
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team since the release of 3.4.3 with some of the beloved community patches.
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Many bugs were fixed and some code was restructured.
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The NetHack Development Team, as well as Steve VanDevender and
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Kevin Smolkowski, ensured that NetHack 3.6 continued to operate on various
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UNIX flavors and maintained the X11 interface.
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Ken Lorber, Haoyang Wang, Pat Rankin, and Dean Luick maintained the port
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of NetHack 3.6 for MacOS.
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Michael Allison, David Cohrs, Bart House, Pasi Kallinen, Alex Kompel,
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Dion Nicolaas, Derek S. Ray and Yitzhak Sapir maintained the port of
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NetHack 3.6 for Microsoft Windows.
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Pat Rankin attempted to keep the VMS port running for NetHack 3.6,
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hindered by limited access. Kevin Smolkowski has updated and tested it
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for the most recent version of OpenVMS (V8.4 as of this writing) on Alpha
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and Integrity (aka Itanium aka IA64) but not VAX.
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Ray Chason resurrected the MS-DOS port for 3.6 and contributed the
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necessary updates to the community at large.
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In late April 2018, several hundred bug fixes for 3.6.0 and some new
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features were assembled and released as NetHack 3.6.1.
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The NetHack Development Team at the time of release of 3.6.1 consisted of
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Warwick Allison, Michael Allison, Ken Arromdee, David Cohrs, Jessie Collet,
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Pasi Kallinen, Ken Lorber, Dean Luick, Patric Mueller, Pat Rankin,
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Derek S. Ray, Alex Smith, Mike Stephenson, Janet Walz, and Paul Winner.
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In early May 2019, another 320 bug fixes along with some enhancements and
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the adopted curses window port, were released as 3.6.2.
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Bart House, who had contributed to the game as a porting team participant
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for decades, joined the NetHack Development Team in late May 2019.
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NetHack 3.6.3 was released on December 5, 2019 containing over 190 bug
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fixes to NetHack 3.6.2.
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NetHack 3.6.4 was released on December 18, 2019 containing a security
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fix and a few bug fixes.
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NetHack 3.6.5 was released on January 27, 2020 containing some security fixes
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and a small number of bug fixes.
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NetHack 3.6.6 was released on March 8, 2020 containing a security fix and
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some bug fixes.
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NetHack 3.6.7 was released on February 16, 2023 containing a security fix and
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some bug fixes.
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The official NetHack web site is maintained by Ken Lorber at
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https://www.nethack.org/.
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On behalf of the NetHack community, thank you very much once again to
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M. Drew Streib and Pasi Kallinen for providing a public NetHack server
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at nethack.alt.org. Thanks to Keith Simpson and Andy Thomson for
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hardfought.org. Thanks to all those unnamed dungeoneers who invest their
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time and effort into annual NetHack tournaments such as Junethack,
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The November NetHack Tournament, and in days past, devnull.net (gone for
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now, but not forgotten).
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- - - - - - - - - -
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From time to time, some depraved individual out there in netland sends a
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particularly intriguing modification to help out with the game. The
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NetHack Development Team sometimes makes note of the names of the worst
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of these miscreants in this, the list of Dungeoneers:
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Adam Aronow J. Ali Harlow Mikko Juola
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Alex Kompel Janet Walz Nathan Eady
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Alex Smith Janne Salmijarvi Norm Meluch
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Andreas Dorn Jean-Christophe Collet Olaf Seibert
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Andy Church Jeff Bailey Pasi Kallinen
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Andy Swanson Jochen Erwied Pat Rankin
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Andy Thomson John Kallen Patric Mueller
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Ari Huttunen John Rupley Paul Winner
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Bart House John S. Bien Pierre Martineau
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Benson I. Margulies Johnny Lee Ralf Brown
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Bill Dyer Jon W{tte Ray Chason
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Boudewijn Waijers Jonathan Handler Richard Addison
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Bruce Cox Joshua Delahunty Richard Beigel
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Bruce Holloway Karl Garrison Richard P. Hughey
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Bruce Mewborne Keizo Yamamoto Rob Menke
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Carl Schelin Keith Simpson Robin Bandy
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Chris Russo Ken Arnold Robin Johnson
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David Cohrs Ken Arromdee Roderick Schertler
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David Damerell Ken Lorber Roland McGrath
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David Gentzel Ken Washikita Ron Van Iwaarden
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David Hairston Kevin Darcy Ronnen Miller
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Dean Luick Kevin Hugo Ross Brown
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Del Lamb Kevin Sitze Sascha Wostmann
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Derek S. Ray Kevin Smolkowski Scott Bigham
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Deron Meranda Kevin Sweet Scott R. Turner
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Dion Nicolaas Lars Huttar Sean Hunt
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Dylan O'Donnell Leon Arnott Stephen Spackman
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Eric Backus M. Drew Streib Stefan Thielscher
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Eric Hendrickson Malcolm Ryan Stephen White
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Eric R. Smith Mark Gooderum Steve Creps
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Eric S. Raymond Mark Modrall Steve Linhart
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Erik Andersen Marvin Bressler Steve VanDevender
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Fredrik Ljungdahl Matthew Day Teemu Suikki
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Frederick Roeber Merlyn LeRoy Tim Lennan
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Gil Neiger Michael Allison Timo Hakulinen
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Greg Laskin Michael Feir Tom Almy
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Greg Olson Michael Hamel Tom West
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Gregg Wonderly Michael Sokolov Warren Cheung
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Hao-yang Wang Mike Engber Warwick Allison
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Helge Hafting Mike Gallop Yitzhak Sapir
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Irina Rempt-Drijfhout Mike Passaretti
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Izchak Miller Mike Stephenson
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