hack - Exploring The Dungeons of Doom
hack [-d directory] [-n] [-u playername]
hack [-d directory] [-s] [-X] [playername ...]
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/hackdir.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Probably infinite. Mail complaints to mcvax!aeb .
OpenBSD 3.6 March 31, 1985
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