NicoleTheLizard

lizard

@NicoleTheLizard

what is this i am not good with com

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NicoleTheLizard
@NicoleTheLizard
mcc
@mcc
0xabad1dea
@0xabad1dea

Nethack is a very old fashioned video game, but it has an interesting mechanic: the real world date on your computer affects your character’s luck in the dungeon.

“How bad can it be?”, I thought about a decade ago, loading a new game on Friday the 13th.

I took a single step.

“Your kitten has been crushed by a boulder.”

morayati
@morayati

there's also code in the game to make things easier or harder, respectively, on a full and a new moon. for the most part they aren't too drastic, but the new moon does make a certain almost-instakill event much more likely. if you know, you know.

also, Friday the 13th can occur simultaneously with these moon phases, which happens infrequently enough that there's a small two-column chart on the NetHack Wiki detailing the days where Friday the 13th and a full/new moon overlap.

so, the hardest days to play NetHack are/were:

  • September 13, 1996
  • August 13, 1999
  • November 13, 2015
  • July 13, 2018
  • October 13, 2023. challenge runners take note
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in reply to @0xabad1dea's post:

0xabad1dea
@0xabad1dea

so here's the thing. I knew even at the time that the first few floors have some manually coded softballs, so I assumed that a boulder trap on the first floor was the result of the luck modifier removing those safeguards. But.

The code very clearly says it does not place boulder traps on levels < 2 with no other complications. And the Friday the 13th handler is also extremely simple. But I very, very clearly remember my kitten dying graphically in the very first room and while I may not be 100% accurately remembering the death message as "crushed by a boulder" it was certainly very close to that, I remember being viscerally horrified. (I literally just quit the game on the spot, lol.) So what the hell happened to my cat?

This is a ridiculous theory, but: could it be that whatever joker compiled the package (it would have been debian or early ubuntu around the year 2006) intentionally made the game harder?

edit: the loyal discordians suggest it may have been a "falling rock" rather than a "boulder"

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in reply to @morayati's post:

joewintergreen
@joewintergreen

Reminds me of how you'd be up late at night playing Black & White (and it is night in the game too) and a ghostly whispery voice would whisper your actual name (of your windows user account)

Also characters would comment on the phase of the moon, accurate to the irl phase of the moon. Sometimes telling you to look out your window

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in reply to @mcc's post:

Zuthal
@Zuthal

Out of curiosity I looked up the control scheme for nethack and HOLY SHIT THE NON-NUMPAD DIRECTION KEY ASSIGNMENT IS THE MOST UNHINGED ONE I HAVE EVER SEEN

Why wouldn't they just make it

Y U I
H K
B N M

for eight directions on letter keys on the right side of the keyboard?

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