NetHack 3.6.1: Release Notes

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The NetHack DevTeam is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1.

3.6.1 is a general patch release. It includes a large number of fixes to the 3.6.0 version, all of which have been incrementally published on the public Git repository for the game.

The DevTeam has decided that 3.6.1 will be the final "official" 3.6.x version, barring some sort of major issue that requires a new release.

After this release, 3.6 will continue to be maintained in our Git repositories, however the team will focus on a new major release. Another 3.6.x release and packaged set of binaries, is not anticipated.

Here's a synopsis of some of the changes we've made in the past two years (approximately) since the release of 3.6.0 in December 2015:

1. Personnel changes

We've added some additional members to the team since the 3.6.0 release:

Alex Smith and Patric Mueller joined the team in July 2016.

Alex created the AceHack and NetHack 4 variants and is an expert on the inner workings of the game and the ways in which they can be exploited.

Patric is probably best known as the creator of the UnNetHack variant. He also created NetHack-De (a German translation of NetHack) and has considerable involvement in the Junethack tournament.

2. Gameplay changes

There are fewer gameplay changes in 3.6.1 than in 3.6.0, but still over 500 items. Here are a few, though not necessarily the most important, examples:

General New Features

Naming Sting or Orcrist now breaks illiterate conduct
Poison breath leaves a trail of poison gas
Allow knife and stiletto as possible tin opening tools
New status line conditions Stone Strngl Deaf Lev Fly Ride
Swallowers can't re-engulf hero immediately after spitting him/her out
Allow taming monkeys and apes with bananas
Ray bounceback chance depends on the wall type
Undead #turning takes less time at higher experience level
Peacefuls may react when you attack other peacefuls
Prevent diagonal jumping through open doorways
Give feedback just before timed levitation runs out
Blinded hero or monster who eats a nurse corpse will have blindness cured
Wielding *bane have additional effects
"Elbereth" must now be the only engraved text on a square to function
"Elbereth" now erodes based on attacks by the player, not monsters scared

NetHack Community Patches (or Variations) Included

Malcolm Ryan's improved tin opener
Ray Chason's keyboard may stop responding after locking or unlocking a door when using altkeyhandler=nhraykey.dll
Ray Chason's fix: window interfaces that support transparency may give away unseen parts of the map
Ray Chason's xprname should honor iflags.menu_tab_sep
Ray Chason's punctuation for "That foo is really a mimic."
Ray Chason's proper background tiles for lava and water
Ray Chason's MS-DOS port restored to functionality with credit to Reddit user b_helyer for the fix to sys/share/pcmain.c
Ray Chason's MSDOS port support for some VESA modes
Ray Chason's Qt4 windowport
Darshan Shaligram's pet ranged attack
Jason Dorje Short's key rebinding
Maxime Bacoux's new DUMPLOG: compile-time option to enable logging of end-of-game information into a text file

For a complete, very granular, but not necessarily clear list of the changes incorporated in this release, please take a look at the file doc/fixes36.1 in the source distribution. This file has a full list of all changes to the game.

The text in this file is populated automatically for the development team's own use and is provided "as is", so please do not ask us to further explain the entries in that file. Some entries may also be "spoilers", particularly in the "new features" sections, so read at your own risk.

3. Deprecations announced post NetHack 3.6.1

3.6.1 is essentially a maintenance release and as such doesn't change much in terms of what is or is not supported. However there will be some significant changes to support in the next major release.

The following ports will be dropped from the next major release unless someone comes forward to maintain them:

Amiga
Atari
Macintosh Classic
BeOS
OS/2
16-bit MS-DOS
Floppy disk support for all platforms

Starting with the next major release, we will be dropping support for most K&R and pre-ANSI C features, including:

The Bitfield macro
K&R function definitions

Starting with the next major release, we will start using ANSI C features; which ones have yet to be determined.

If you are actively running NetHack on a system that cannot handle full ANSI C, please let us know some details and we _might_ be able to accommodate you.

Save File Portability

Save files should be portable between version 3.6.0 and 3.6.1.

We did, however, identify a bug early in the 3.6.0 release that may affect some score files. For full instructions on how to deal with this bug, please go to: fixrecord.html Yes, this is in the 3.6.0 tree as it is a 3.6.0 bug.

As with all releases of the game, we appreciate your feedback. Please submit any bugs using the problem report form.

Also, please check the known bugs list before you log a problem - somebody else may have already found it, after all.

Happy NetHacking!

For the DevTeam...

Mike Stephenson

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