Ascending isn't particularly difficult, it's just that it requires levels of attention to detail and preparation that verge on tedium for some.

One example: in order to pass through the Elemental Plane of Water on the Astral, you need to find the (moving!) portal. In order to do this with optimal safety, you want to have: genocided all sea monsters, so you don't need to worry about krakens and the like have a means of magical breathing, in case you do end up in the water rustproofed all your metal armor and other gear have a large stash of Scrolls of Gold Detection, in a Bag of Holding (itself blessed and stored inside and oilskin sack so that water doesn't get in and erase your scrolls) have a means of safely giving yourself the Confused status (reading scrolls of Gold Detection while Confused lets you detect magic portals) a means of swiftly removing said Confusion, so that you can... *use your Boots of Speed (or other speed-boosting effect) to close rapidly on the moving portal.

And that's ONE challenge on ONE level (although its deep in the endgame and considered one of the harder things in the game). Now imagine doing that for 100+ levels of gameplay... you CAN virtually guarantee a win in Nethack, but its never fast.

I spent a couple years playing hard in college. I read spoilers, and save-scummed for a while, then stopped save-scumming because it wasn't fun and I didn't need to anymore. I've lost track of my legitimate ascensions - at least one with every class, and then I started in on conducts and score maximization.

Now, I still play on and off for a week here or a week there. I can ascend about 1 in 4 times with the easy starting classes like Valkyrie. My YASDs inevitably come from rushing or not thinking things through, plus very occasionally getting screwed early by the RNG.

And I'm not particularly good at the game. Really good players can virtually ascend at will, with the only limitation being their available time.

The article is a bit low on actual details why the release happened and what events lead to it.

"Why not" doesn't adequately describe how ESR released the in-development code to the community without the rest of the devteam knowing about it. This lead directly to new members joining the devteam and the 3.6.0 release.

I've just been reading about the foundations of NetHack and other roguelikes, which is quite interesting: http://www.amazon.com/Dungeon-Hacks-NetHack-Angband-Roguelik...

Such C. Much ANSI.

    STATIC_OVL void
    mkcavepos(x, y, dist, waslit, rockit)
    xchar x, y;
    int dist;
    boolean waslit, rockit;
    {
        register struct rm *lev;
        ...
    }

Has anybody beat the game without patching the source or running it in the debugger?

undefined

I never could get into NetHack. Even today I find the game off-putting and I love rogues. I can't decide way. I think its a combination of the interface, targeting system, and spoiler knowledge required.

ADOM was my first love around 1995 I believe. It recently has had a revival but it's still showing its age particularly in the interface. I don't expect Rogue interfaces to be easy but I do expect them to be semi efficient since you are using a keyboard.

Really the only classic rogue games today that have decent interfaces (control input) that I like are Brogue and DCSS.

Does anyone know how large the codebase is?

I consider myself fairly good at roguelikes, but surprisingly I only have one Nethack ascension. For some reason I'm just not as motivated with that game as I am with DCSS or Ragnarok/Valhalla.

Most of the time though I just play Brogue. Item identification through use and the game trying to provide everything you need to win let's me optimize around the items I get and not optimize around some set strategy.

I did enjoy long hours playing Nethack.

But you know, Rogue was win-able.

undefined

Not me.

In the 80's and 90's, I decided to do other silly things with my life, like becoming a professional guitarist and being a Dad.

I know I know...how irresponsible. :)