NAME¶
hack —
exploring The Dungeons of
Doom
SYNOPSIS¶
hack |
[-d
directory]
[-n]
[-u
playername] |
hack |
[-d
directory]
[-s]
[-X]
[playername ...] |
DESCRIPTION¶
hack is a display oriented dungeons & dragons-like game.
Both display and command structure resemble rogue. (For a game with the same
structure but entirely different display - a real cave instead of dull
rectangles - try Quest.)
To get started you really only need to know two commands. The command
? will give you a list of the available commands and the
command
/ will identify the things you see on the screen.
To win the game (as opposed to merely playing to beat other people's high
scores) you must locate the Amulet of Yendor which is somewhere below the 20th
level of the dungeon and get it out. Nobody has achieved this yet and if
somebody does, he will probably go down in history as a hero among heroes.
When the game ends, either by your death, when you quit, or if you escape from
the caves,
hack will give you (a fragment of) the list of
top scorers. The scoring is based on many aspects of your behavior but a rough
estimate is obtained by taking the amount of gold you've found in the cave
plus four times your (real) experience. Precious stones may be worth a lot of
gold when brought to the exit. There is a 10% penalty for getting yourself
killed.
The administration of the game is kept in the directory specified with the
-d option, or, if no such option is given, in the directory
specified by the environment variable
HACKDIR
, or, if
no such variable exists, in the current directory. This same directory
contains several auxiliary files such as lockfiles and the list of topscorers
and a subdirectory
save where games are saved. The game
administrator may however choose to install hack with a fixed playing ground,
usually
/var/games/bsdgames/hack.
The
-n option suppresses printing of the news.
The
-u playername option supplies the
answer to the question "Who are you?". When
playername has as suffix one of
-T,
-S,
-K,
-F,
-C, or
-W, then this supplies the answer
to the question "What kind of character ... ?".
The
-s option will print out the list of your scores. It may
be followed by arguments
-X where X is one of the letters C,
F, K, S, T, W to print the scores of Cavemen, Fighters, Knights,
Speleologists, Tourists or Wizards. It may also be followed by one or more
player names to print the scores of the players mentioned.
AUTHORS¶
Jay Fenlason (+ Kenny Woodland, Mike Thome and Jon Payne) wrote the original
hack, very much like rogue (but full of bugs).
Andries Brouwer continuously deformed their sources into the current version -
in fact an entirely different game.
FILES¶
- hack
- The hack program.
- data,
rumors
- Data files used by hack.
- help,
hh
- Help data files.
- record
- The list of topscorers.
- save
- A subdirectory containing the saved games.
- bones_dd
- Descriptions of the ghost and belongings of a deceased
adventurer.
- xlock.dd
- Description of a dungeon level.
- safelock
- Lock file for xlock.
- record_lock
- Lock file for record.
ENVIRONMENT¶
USER
or LOGNAME
- Your login name.
HOME
- Your home directory.
SHELL
- Your shell.
TERM
- The type of your terminal.
HACKPAGER,
PAGER
- Pager used instead of default pager.
MAIL
- Mailbox file.
MAILREADER
- Reader used instead of default (probably
/usr/bin/mail).
HACKDIR
- Playground.
HACKOPTIONS
- String predefining several hack options (see help
file).
Several other environment variables are used in debugging (wizard) mode, like
GENOCIDED
,
INVENT
,
MAGIC
and
SHOPTYPE
.
BUGS¶
Probably infinite. Mail complaints to mcvax!aeb .