DynaHack 0.6.0

DynaHack 0.6.0 marks a large departure from the 0.5.x series by introducing quite a few gameplay and content changes aimed at eliminating tedium, improving fairness, and increasing tactical and strategic variety.

As always, changes in DynaHack tend to lean in favor of the player more often than not, so players of all skill levels will find something to appreciate.

• New body armor and shield skills: grants bonus AC and MC; heavier suits of
  armor and shields get bigger bonuses and train the skills faster.
• Magic chests! Any item put into a magic chest can be looted out of any other
  magic chest in the dungeon, placed at set locations. This eliminates tedious
  stash consolidation and transporting of items to and from stashes and fixed
  dungeon resources like altars, shops and water.
• Mazes completely removed from Gehennom!
• New resistance system: resistances gained from corpses and crowning only
  provide partial protection.
• Reflection no longer reflects breaths (except disintegration).
• Instant petrification completely replaced with delayed petrification: you will
  always have a few turns to save yourself from instant death.
• Drawbridge instant death removed: drawbridges can only be destroyed by force
  bolts when closed, not open.
• Extra turn before drowning attack instant death. Players upgrading from an
  older version of DynaHack should adjust their msgtype as described in the
  Configuration section of this changelog.
• Zombie corpses may revive (lower chance if playing a priest).
• Sokoban prizes moved to Mines End, making Sokoban much more optional.
• Nymph level moved into Town branch; Town shops are larger to compensate.
• Effect of skills on to-hit and damage raised in general.
• Items that spawn with a magical property have a much higher chance to spawn
  with additional properties.
• Slings now get damage bonuses from strength and enchantment.
• Spells can be aborted at direction, position and item prompts without using
  power or hunger.
• New repeat_prefix keymap and repeat_num_auto option for people accustomed
  to NetHack's classic number key movement scheme.
• New msg_per_line option: Shows each message on a new line in the message
  area when enabled.
• Potion color alchemy improved in favor of players, making it more of an
  alternative to NetHack's alchemy instead of a nerf.
• Curses on armor, jewelry and eyewear are now revealed when they are worn
  instead of when trying to take them off.
• More messages for things that used to happen silently: uncontrolled
  teleportation, finding secret doors/corridors while searching, items becoming
  randomly cursed.
• Iron bars can be destroyed by acid or eaten by certain monsters.

Read changelog.txt for the full list of changes.

Note: I (tungtn) will no longer be working on DynaHack after this release, so please do not email me bugs or feedback. Instead, post them to https://github.com/tung/DynaHack/issues so that other people can see them.

DynaHack 0.5.5

This release fixes a NitroHack bug with statue contents that interacted badly with 0.5.4's timer/light source fix causing the game to crash when entering a level with such statues.

DynaHack 0.5.4

This release fixes a bug where rotting corpses or light sources falling through a hole would render a save game unloadable without manual repair.

DynaHack 0.5.3

This release fixes a panic when loading the game with timed objects (e.g. rotting corpses, lit fueled light sources) in the Advent Calendar, some obscure shop-and-container bugs, #tip command corner cases, and introduces the new 'darkmsg' option to control whether past messages are darkened.

DynaHack 0.5.2

This release greatly increases save file integrity and ability to recover by fixing cases of incomplete data being logged that were overlooked by NitroHack and NetHack4.

This version is save-compatible with v0.5.0 and v0.5.1, and players of these versions are urged to update. Save files for games that fail to recover automatically can be sent to tungtn3+dynahack@gmail.com for manual recovery.

DynaHack 0.5.1

This release makes no substantial code changes, but fixes a major bug the pre-compiled Windows build of DynaHack 0.5.0 where entering certain special levels will show a warning message and produce a generic maze level instead.

This release is save-compatible with v0.5.0.

DynaHack 0.5.0

Update 2: The package for Windows players (dynahack-0.5.0-win.zip) contains a major gameplay bug to do with generation of certain special levels. Please try version 0.5.1 or later instead.

Update: If you downloaded dynahack-0.5.0-win.zip and had issues with missing libz-1.dll or libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll, try downloading it again now (the missing DLLs have been included).

DynaHack is a variant of NetHack with more content and significant changes to its interface and gameplay.

It started life as UnNetHack's content and gameplay transplanted onto NitroHack with its resizing ASCII interface, but has also come to roll in parts of NetHack4, GruntHack, UnNetHackPlus and a few original changes.

• Over 80 new special level layouts.
• Revamped Gehennom with less mazes and more caverns and special levels.
• Auto-resizing ASCII interface with multi-line message box, inventory side-bar, colored statuses and HP/Pw bars.
• Item action command menus, selectable from inventory.
• Detailed monster info with AC, resistances, attacks, etc. (press '/' and target with ';').
• Automatically-tracked dungeon overview (Ctrl-O) and resistances (Ctrl-X).
• Auto-unlock for doors and boxes, and auto-loot for boxes after auto-unlocking them.
• Enhanced travel that walks around peaceful monsters and works in Sokoban.
• Protection from walking into known traps/water/lava (optional).
• Random magical equipment, e.g. short sword of fire.
• Cross-training for related weapon skills.
• Hitting with a weapon may reveal its enchantment.
• Better ammo stacking and turn-free weapon swapping for ranged combat.
• Polearms are no longer restricted in melee combat.
• Responses to infinite pudding farming and throne farming.
• Plus a whole lot more...

The 0.5.0 version number was pulled back to give people a better idea of the completeness and polish of the game in its current state. This version comes after tags 3.4.3, 4.0.0, 4.0.1, 4.0.2, 4.0.3 and 4.0.4 in the Releases page.

DynaHack 0.5.0 can be downloaded ready-to-play on Windows, and can also be compiled to run on OS X and Linux.