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NETHACK(6)			 Games Manual			    NETHACK(6)

NAME
       nethack - Exploring The Mazes of	Menace

SYNOPSIS
       nethack32  [  -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 resemble rogue.

       Other,  more  graphical display options exist if	you are	using 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 in-
       formation)  and	the  command / will identify the things	you see	on the
       screen.

       To win the game (as opposed to merely playing to	 beat  other  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	probably 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	 scor-
       ers.   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 (real) 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 description of these op-
       tions and syntax.  (The -dec and	-ibm command line options are  equiva-
       lent  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 question "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.  Con-
       versely,	 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 request 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 cur-
       rent version.  An immediately following	-v  reports  on	 all  versions
       present in the score file.  The -s may also be followed 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 fol-
       lowed 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 administra-
       tor.

       The -D or -X option will	start the game in a special  non-scoring  dis-
       covery  mode.   -D will,	if the player is the game administrator, start
       in debugging (wizard) mode instead.

       The -d option, which must be the	first argument if it appears, 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/local/share/nethack32).
       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/local/share/nethack32.
       If  DLB was defined during the compile, the data	files and special lev-
       els will	be inside a larger file, normally nhdat, instead of being sep-
       arate 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 levels.
       history			   A short history of NetHack.
       license			   Rules governing redistribution.
       record			   The list of top scorers.
       logfile			   An extended list of games
				   played.
       xlock.nnn		   Description of a dungeon level.
       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_comp32(6), lev_comp32(6), recover32(6)

BUGS
       Probably	infinite.

       Dungeons	& Dragons is a Trademark of TSR	Inc.

4th Berkeley Distribution	 10 March 1996			    NETHACK(6)

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