[foresto]

Last time I played, after many close calls, I finally got my hands on the amulet. Knowing that the journey back to daylight was likely to be at least as dangerous as the way I had come, I took a breath, saved, and set the game aside.

That was about seventeen years ago. I still have the save file. Today's announcement got me excited about the prospect of finally finishing my game, until I saw this:

> Existing saved games and bones files will not work with NetHack 5.0.0.

Drat.

Thankfully, NetHack is not one of those modern, commercial, online-only games that make it difficult to run old versions.

** SPOILER BELOW ** (in someone's reply to me)

[chongli]

Drat.

NetHack 5.0 changes thousands and upon thousands of things from the previous release, 3.6.7, which was 3 years ago. 17 years ago is an eternity in this game’s history. The versions may not have gone up hardly at all in that time, but the fix logs are enormous.

Adding up the line counts of the fix logs for the 3.6.X releases with 5.0, I get a total of 6814 lines. That’s bug fixes only. There’s a similarly large number of gameplay changes!

All that is to say, migrating your old save file through all of those changes would’ve been a ton of extra work to support. I know Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup can migrate old save files but they have a very carefully designed system for sunsetting removed features in a way that old save files can still use them.

[abustamam]

Wait, what happened to v4??

[cturner]

This is a rough history from an outsider: the original developers (“DevTeam”) went quiet, and would not take in new talent. There was some new talent in the community, and momentum for code tidy up and new features. One group forked and called theirs nethack 4. There were other forks with a similar spirit, such as unnethack. Eventually, DevTeam decided to reach an accommodation with talent in the fork groups. Release 5 is a DevTeam release with input from what was new blood fifteen years ago.

[bhaak]

The story is a bit more convoluted. After the 3.4.3 release in 2003, the DevTeam stopped releasing new versions. They were still responsive when contacted by e-mail, though. But then we also didn't know how the development version looked like.

In 2014 the dev version was leaked to the community and in the following discussions with the DevTeam on how to handle this, the DevTeam got the first shoot of new devs in a while which lead to the release of 3.6.0 in 2015. This version was a polished version of the dev version, also incorporating some of the popular community patches at the time. The 3.6 branch received regular bugfix and security updates (3.6.7 was released in 2023).

Since 3.6.0 there's a mirror repository of NetHack on GitHub. So the development version that was internally numbered 3.7.0 which would become 5.0.0 was always accessible and, contrary to the 3.4.3 era, could be played anytime and was also installed on the public servers to play.

[tetha]

I also have a Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup with my first 3 runes around somewhere.

I'm aware I will probably lose it, but I'm also anxious to touch it. Maybe I should just get myself some good coffee tomorrow and get over with it. Biggest learning of that save is also how careful and defensive you have to play if you want to consistently get further.

[vintermann]

DCSS has also changed so much, it's hardly the same game anymore. It's maybe a better game in many ways, but it's not the game I spent time getting to know and getting good at.

Maybe an early example of "forever games" like Minecraft which just keep getting expanded forever and move ever further from the game you knew.

[why_at]

One of the oldest photos on my phone is the screenshot from the one and only time I beat Nethack. (As a tourist BTW)

[oneshtein]

Relax. It's the fake amulet. I found it twice.

[technothrasher]

As I recall from my game of many, many years ago, I got the amulet to the surface and was greeted with, “Oops, that’s the fake amulet. Go back down.” I’m pretty sure that’s the last time I played it.

[foresto]

** SPOILER ABOVE **

Would you please edit your comment, and preface it with a spoiler warning?

[caymanjim]

There's only one documented instance of someone winning without spoilers. It's a 40-year-old game.

[BigTTYGothGF]

Nethack has been around since 1987, it's a little late for spoilers.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

We’re in a thread about Nethack 5.0 release, I think it’s safe to say not everyone in this thread has finished the game.

[djao]

OP is talking about a several decade old version of nethack, not nethack 5.0.0.

[usef-]

I've never understood why something being so old is an excuse to spoil. Many people weren't old enough to be alive when it was last a cultural icon and may not have heard about it until this thread.

[jmclnx]

Not me! Maybe some day, but losing can be fun too.

[foresto]

People still play this game. Spoilers still spoil experiences for others.

[appreciatorBus]

Meh, imo spoilers only spoil experiences for people who take media too seriously.

When I consider watching a movie, one of the first things I do is read a complete plot summary, including the ending. When I do this and no longer want to watch the movie, in my mind, that’s not a sign that any experience was spoiled, but rather that it just wasn’t very interesting to begin with.

Conversely, I have played Nethack on and off for decades, have read countless spoilers about it, yet still haven’t won and still find it interesting.

[hnfong]

I generally agree.

But there are movies that can be spoiled because of the big plot twist.

Eg. The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, to name a few (and [anime] Your Name, even the recently released Cosmic Princess Kaguya)

And then there are some movies where the plot is so obvious that you could have a LLM one-shot predict the whole thing.

That said if the movie/game/whatever is released for a couple years, I think the spoiler warnings should be optional regardless.

[abustamam]

I play a lot of experimental games where not knowing what the plot is is the point of the game. Doki Doki Literature Club is one such game. The experience is the point, not the plot.

Many films are meant to be experienced, not just read or watched. Otherwise what's the point of a movie when you can just read a screen play? Or what's the point of a screen play when you can just read a synopsis?

[pests]

I disagree with your movie watching routine. A movie is more than just its plot.

[ASalazarMX]

I think that particular spoiler has been well known for many years, and knowing it would actually save a new player a huge waste of effort without any significant drawbacks.

[wetpaws]

No