
                NetHack 3.2 -- General information

NetHack 3.2 is a new enhancement to the dungeon exploration game NetHack.
It is a distant descendent of Rogue and Hack, and a direct descendent of
NetHack 3.1 and 3.0.

NetHack 3.2 is the product of two years of very intensive effort by the
NetHack Development Team and its porting sub-teams.  Many parts of 3.1 were
re-written for NetHack 3.2, and many new features were added.

The new additions and changes in the game include:

Warwick Allison has introduced enhancements the game's display code to
support a more graphical appearance with the X11, MS-DOS and Amiga display
system.  The display can now use a "tile" based system which is better at
displaying uniquely identifiable information about the player's surroundings.

The spell casting system has been dramatically changed.  The source of these
changes was the code developed by Stephen White, who wrote the NH++ patch kit.
These changes have been re-integrated into NetHack with appropriate
modifications required to balance them for the 3.2 release.

We have also added a weapons proficiency system to allow for "learning"
how to use weapons effectively and reflecting that proficiency in combat.
Also based on code by Stephen White.

Many inventory and item choice interfaces are now menu oriented with an
option to toggle back and forth to the original (3.1) interface.

These are some of the most prominent global changes, but there are many
other changes in the game, and they are no less dramatic.

This version of the game is special in one way.  During the development of
3.2 (at that point in time it might have actually become 3.1.4), one of the
members of the Development Team, Izchak Miller, passed away.  This version
of the game is dedicated to the memory of Izchak Miller, and his invaluable
contributions to the evolution of NetHack over the past 10 years.

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Please read items (1), (2) and (3) BEFORE doing anything with your new code.

1.  Unpack the code in a dedicated new directory.  We will refer to that
    directory as the 'Top' directory.  It makes no difference what you
    call it.

2.  If there is no flaw in the packaging, many sub-directories will be
    automatically created, and files will be deposited in them:

    a.  A 'dat' directory, which contains a variety of data files.
    b.  A 'doc' directory, which contains various documentation.
    c.  An 'include' directory, which contains *.h files.
    d.  A 'src' directory, which contains game *.c files used by all versions.
    e.  A 'util' directory, which contains files for utility programs.
    f.  A 'sys' directory, which contains subdirectories for files that
        are operating-system specific.
    g.  A 'sys/share' subdirectory, which contains files shared by some OSs.
    h.  A 'sys/share/sounds' subsubdirectory, which contains sound files
        shared by some OSs.
    i.  A 'sys/amiga' subdirectory, which contains files specific to AmigaDOS.
    j.  A 'sys/amiga/splitter' subsubdirectory, which contains files
        for the Amiga splitter program.
    k.  A 'sys/atari' subdirectory, which contains files specific to TOS.
    l.  A 'sys/be' subdirectory, which contains files specific to Be OS.
    m.  A 'sys/mac' subdirectory, which contains files specific to MacOS.
    n.  A 'sys/mac/old' subdirectory which contains files used by
        untested compilers.
    o.  A 'sys/msdos' subdirectory, which contains files specific to MS-DOS.
    p.  A 'sys/msdos/old' subsubdirectory, which contains files for old
        MS-DOS compilers (no longer officially supported).
    q.  A 'sys/os2' subdirectory, which contains files specific to OS/2.
    r.  A 'sys/unix' subdirectory, which contains files specific to UNIX.
    s.  A 'sys/vms' subdirectory, which contains files specific to VMS.
    t.  A 'sys/winnt' subdirectory, which contains files specific to Windows NT.
    u.  A 'win' directory, which contains subdirectories for files that
        are windowing-system specific (but not operating-system specific).
    v.  A 'win/share' subdirectory, which contains files shared by some
        windowing systems.
    w.  A 'win/tty' subdirectory, which contains files specific to ttys.
    x.  A 'win/win32' subdirectory, which contains files specific to the
        Windows NT Win32 API.
    y.  A 'win/X11' subdirectory, which contains files specific to X11.

    The names of these directories should not be changed unless you are
    ready to go through the makefiles and the makedefs program and change
    all the directory references in them.

3.  Having unpacked, you should have a file called 'Files' in your Top
    directory.  This file contains the list of all the files you now SHOULD
    have in each directory.  Please check the files in each directory
    against this list to make sure that you have a complete set.

4.  Before you do anything else, please read carefully the file called
    "license" in the 'dat' subdirectory.  It is expected that you comply
    with the terms of that license, and we are very serious about it.  In
    particular, you are prohibited by the terms of the license from using
    NetHack 3.2 for gainful purposes.

5.  If everything is in order, you can now turn to trying to get the program
    to compile and run on your particular system.  It is worth mentioning
    that the default configuration is BSD/Sun/SunOS4.x (simply because
    the code was housed on such a system).  It is also worth mentioning
    here that NetHack 3.2 is a huge program.  If you intend to run it on a
    small machine, you'll have to make hard choices among the options
    available in config.h.

    The files sys/*/Install.* were written to guide you in configuring the
    program for your operating system.  The files win/*/Install.* are
    available, where necessary, to help you in configuring the program
    for particular windowing environments.  Reading them, and the man pages,
    should answer most of your questions.

    At the time of this release, NetHack 3.2 is known to run/compile on:

        AT&T 3B1 running System V (3.51)
        Data General AViiON systems running DG/UX
        DEC vaxen running Ultrix
        Decstations running Ultrix 4.x
        HP 9000s700 running HP-UX 9.x and 10.x
        IBM PC/RT and RS/6000 running AIX 3.x
        NeXT running Mach (using BSD configuration)
        Sun-4s running SunOS 4.x
        Sun-4s running Solaris 2.x (aka SunOS 5.x)
        SGI Iris running IRIX
        386/486/Pentium boxes running Linux/BSDI

        Apple Macintosh running MacOS
        Atari ST/TT/Falcon running TOS (or MultiTOS) with GCC
        Commodore Amiga running AmigaDOS 1.3 or greater with SAS/C 6.55
                (but see Install.ami about DICE and Manx)
        DEC Alpha/VMS (aka OpenVMS AXP), running V1.x through V7.0
        DEC VAX/VMS, running V4.6 through V7.0
        IBM PC compatibles running MS-DOS with MicroSoft C, Borland C++ 3.1, or
                DJGPP.  It is recommended to have at least an 80386 processor.
        Intel (80386 or greater) and DEC Alpha desktop machines
                running Windows NT
        Intel (80386 or greater) running Windows 95

    Previous versions of NetHack were tested on the following systems,
    and we expect that NetHack 3.2 will work on them as well:

        AT&T 3B2/600 & 3B2/622 running System V R3.2.1
        AT&T 3B2/1000 Model 80 running System V R3.2.2
        AT&T 3B4000 running System V
        AT&T 6386 running System V R3.2
        DEC vaxen running BSD
        Decstations running Ultrix 3.1
        Encore Multimax running UMAX 4.2
        Gould NP1 running UTX 3/2
        HP 9000s300 running HP-UX
        Mips M2000 running RiscOS 4.1
        Pyramid 9820x running OSx 4.4c
        Stardent Vistra 800 running SysV R4.0
        Stride 460 running UniStride 2.1
        Sun-3s, -4s, and -386is running SunOS 3.x
        Sun-3s and -386is running SunOS 4.x
        Valid Logic Systems SCALD-System
        286 box running Microport SysV/AT (not extensively tested)
        386/486/Pentium boxes running 386BSD
        IBM PS/2 and AT compatibles running OS/2 1.1 - 2.0 (and probably
           Warp) with Microsoft 6.0, and OS/2 2.0 and up with GCC emx or
           IBM CSet++ 2.0.

    Unless otherwise mentioned, the compiler used was the OS-vendor's
    C compiler.

                        - - - - - - - - - - -

If you have problems building the game, or you find bugs in it, the
development team may be reached as

                    nethack-bugs@nethack.org

Please be sure to include your machine type, OS, and patchlevel.

Patches especially should be directed to this address.  If you've changed
something to get NetHack to run on your system, it's likely that others have
done it by making slightly different modifications.  By routing your patches
through the development team, we should be able to avoid making everyone else
choose among variant patches claiming to do the same thing, to keep most of
the copies of 3.2 synchronized by means of official patches, and to maintain
the painfully-created file organization.  (This process has been working since
the time when everyone just posted their own patches to 2.3.  At that time,
there were no archived bug-fixes to give to people who got 2.3 after its initial
release, so the same bugs kept being discovered by new batches of people.)
We have been successful in preventing this from happening since the 3.0
release.  Please cooperate to keep this from happening to 3.2.

It is inevitable that we will reject some proposed additions of new features
either because they do not fit our conception of the game, or because they
require more code than we consider they're worth.  If we reject your feature,
you are free, of course, to post the patches to the net yourself and let the
marketplace decide their worth.

All of this amounts to the following:  If you decide to apply a free-lanced
patch to your 3.2 code, you are on your own.  In our own patches, we will
assume that your code is synchronized with ours.

                  -- Good luck, and happy Hacking --
