Comments on The Making of Nethack, the Legendary Game That's Still Being Improved Three Decades After LaunchTypePad2015-12-08T18:40:40ZSLHamlethttps://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/tag:typepad.com,2003:https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2015/12/nethack-roguelike-rpg-open-source/comments/atom.xml/m commented on 'The Making of Nethack, the Legendary Game That's Still Being Improved Three Decades After Launch'tag:typepad.com,2003:6a00d8341bf74053ef01bb089bc1f0970d2015-12-09T14:00:25Z2015-12-09T14:00:25ZmA now much delayed nit is that Hack (and so Nethack) shared no code with Rogue, but was rather an...<p>A now much delayed nit is that Hack (and so Nethack) shared no code with Rogue, but was rather an entirely clean implementation inspired by Rogue's play. At the time, Rogue was assuredly *not* open source. The author of Hack liked playing Rogue but was frustrated by the tendency to crash after much play time... and happened to be looking for a good programming project. It was actually an early example of the Open Source movement: closed source program doesn't work, so someone reimplements it, leaving the original behind.</p>
<p>FWIW, there's a new book out "Dungeon Hacks: How NetHack, Angband, and Other Roguelikes Changed the Course of Video Games" by David Craddock. Well researched history backed by interviews of many of the people involved.</p>