AceHack 3.6.0 -- General information

AceHack is a fork of NetHack, originally based on NetHack version
3.4.3.  NetHack is a dungeon exploration game, a distant descendent of
Rogue and Hack; Acehack aims to provide gameplay very similar to that
of the official NetHack, but a better interface, fewer bugs, and a
more open development process.  Generally speaking, where gameplay-
relevant changes have been made to the game, they are designed to make
the game easier rather than harder.

AceHack 3.6.0 is the first release; the version number is chosen to
avoid clashes with official versions of NetHack.

Some highlights of what is new in this fork:

* Customisable keyboard controls; the default controls are a mix of
  numpad and vikeys, allowing either letters or the numpad to be used
  for movement.
* Many controls have been generalised (e.g. < now interacts with all
  terrain, not just downstairs), reducing the number of commands that
  need to be memorised (although the old commands still work).  The
  game can be played with just a few additional commands on top of
  movement.
* A generally cleaner and simpler interface.
* Many game elements are tweaked to remember things for the player
  (e.g. the entrance to the Mines is now a ladder, to distinguish it
  from the stairs deeper into the dungeons), hopefully reducing the
  need to keep notes.
* A huge simplification of game options; most NetHack options still
  exist (with a few exceptions, like number_pad which is replaced by
  the customisable keyboard controls), but are generally unnecessary.
  AceHack aims to have sane defaults for all customisable options.
* A new scoring system, which hopefully is less exploitable than the
  old one.

A fuller list of changes for this release can be found in the file 
doc/fixes36.0 in the source distribution.

AceHack save and bones files are not compatible with NetHack save and
bones files, so please ensure you finish any games you may be playing
before upgrading.

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Here is a fuller explanation of how to compile your code.  Note that
for the time being, the only supported platform and interface is the
tty interface on UNIX-like systems (including Linux); support for more
platforms and interfaces is planned later, but I wanted to get at
least one working first.

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.  Before you do anything else, please read carefully the file called
    "license" in the 'dat' subdirectory.  The authors of NetHack are
    very serious about their license, and the contributors to AceHack
    also expect that you will follow it.

3.  If everything is in order, you can now turn to trying to get the
    program to compile and run on your particular system.  The current
    default system is an autoconf-based system running on Linux,
    although it should work on all UNIX-like systems.

    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.

    For instructions for building via the autoconf-based system, see
    the file sys/autoconf/Install.ac. This is now the recommended way
    to compile, and has the advantage that it needs only minimal
    amounts of configuration by hand.

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If you have problems building the game, or you find bugs in it, email
me for advice; my email address is <ais523@bham.ac.uk>. Alternatively,
you could try asking in a NetHack-related forum, such as
news:rec.games.roguelike.nethack or irc:freenode.org/#nethack. Also
feel free to submit other queries, patches, etc.; although if you want
gameplay advice, it's probably a better idea to first consult the
changelog (doc/fixes36.0) to see the differences between AceHack and
NetHack version 3.4.3, and keeping those in mind, to ask in a general
NetHack-related gameplay forum; AceHack's gameplay is very similar to
NetHack's.

When sending correspondence, please observe the following:

* Please be sure to include your machine type, OS, and patchlevel, if
  it's potentially relevant to the bug (if you can recreate the bug on
  multiple systems, or have looked into the source and know why it
  happened, it probably isn't).

* Never send us binary files (e.g. save files or bones files); they
  aren't portable between systems, so this would simply end up sending
  large files for no reason. Instructions on how to reproduce a bug
  are much more useful.

* Though we make an effort to reply to each bug report, it may take
  some time before you receive feedback.  This is especially true
  during the period immediately after a new release, when we get the
  most bug reports.

If you apply patches to the code yourself, they may well be relevant
to bug reports, so explain that as well. I have no problem with people
writing and applying patches to their games; however, if you write a
patch to AceHack, try publicising it in a relevant place, to help
avoid duplication of effort. (Patches that I like may well become part
of the "official" AceHack source, and it already contains several
patches that were originally third-party patches to NetHack 3.4.3; see
the online repository at <http://patch-tag.com/r/ais523/acehack/home>
for the latest source, although note that unreleased development
source is unlikely to work correctly without modifications.

Also bear in mind that one of AceHack's design goals is to stay
similar to vanilla NetHack, at least in the near future. If you have
an idea for a feature that would stray from this aim, you may want to
consider submitting your patch to a different NetHack variant instead.

                  -- Good luck, and happy Hacking --