On September 14, 2017, mere six weeks before this year's /dev/null/nethack tournament was supposed to commence, its organizer Krystal let it be known that he is retiring it—for good.
To fill the void, a group of players from Team Splat came up with an idea to organize a one off Tribute tournament to conclude the long lasting tradition. Some work was already done, but there was so much more to do as the original /dev/null/nethack code was only partially available. Keep this in mind when things break or something is not perfect. There was extremely short lead time and many things had to be written from complete scratch.
The Tribute tournament will use the old /dev/null/nethack game code ported to NetHack 3.6.0. That means all the Challenges will be available as they always were. It also means that the NetHack itself will contain numerous fixes and UI improvements that should make the play much more comfortable (and much more in line with what NetHack public servers offer).
To participate in the tournament, you must create an account in hardfought.org public server, unless you already have one. To create this account you need to use ssh—please see the "Game Servers" section below.
Once you have an account set up, you can play on any of the tournament servers that are there. Visit the overview page to see what servers are available. Please note, that account info is synchronized from central server, so allow some time if you decide to play on server other than hardfought.org. Also note, that rcfile setup is local to each server and is not synchronized.
You can also choose to become a member of a clan or even create new one. For this, use the link on the clans page.
To connect to a game server you need an ssh client. On Linux and MacOS there is always one pre-installed, on Windows you need free client like the popular PuTTY.
There are three servers ready to host your games in three different geographical location. Of these, the hardfought.org is the central server you need to have an account on; the other two servers will just copy the account information. So even if you want to play on the european server, you must create an account on the central server first.
The available servers are:
| name | location | how to connect |
|---|---|---|
| hardfought.org | US East | ssh nethack@hardfought.org |
| eu.hardfought.org | Europe (London) | ssh nethack@eu.hardfought.org |
| au.hardfought.org | Australia (Sydney) | ssh nethack@au.hardfought.org |
| e6.alt.org | US West | ssh nethack@e6.alt.org |
Apart from this web, there are few useful places to go:
FreeNode IRC network — channels #devnull_nethack and #hardfought; players and admins hang on these channels, so if you need advice or help with any aspect of the tournament, this is the best place to go.
https://twitter.com/DevNullTribute — announcement bot Twitter feed
https://www.hardfought.org/nethack/rcedit/rcedit-dn36/ — Web-based rc file editor, note that this only edits local rcfile, other game servers won't see whatever you configure here.
The rules for obtaining trophies and clan scoring are made to be as similar to the original as possible. Unfortunately, the scoreboard code was not made available and the detailed scoring rules were never made public, so inevitably, there are going to be some differences.
Recognition Trophies: The "Star" trophies work just like they used to in the original tournament, the player only keeps the highest achieved one. The multi-ascension trophies (from the Birdie to the Full Monty) are now tracked slightly differently: As with original, the player only keeps his highest achievement. Unlike the original, the "With the Bells On" achievements are tracked separately from the plain achievements. Therefore achieving higher achievement does no longer nullify your "With the Bells On" achievement. That means, by the way of example, getting Grand Slam without the bells will not drop your Hat Trick With the Bells On and you will not lose the clan points associated with it.
Another difference is that in the original rules, every game must have achieved something towards the higher trophy (ie. new race, role etc.) to keep the "With the Bells On" epithet. It meant that even ascending game could break the required streak. This rule is no longer enforced.
Challenge Trophies: It is not clear how were Challenges exactly scored. We give one full point to the first player to achieve them and only a half point to all subsequent players.
Best of 13: Again it is not known with any certainty how exactly was this trophy tracked. We track it as most games that qualify within a 13 game window. There's no requirement for the games to form streak and games that duplicate the character combination do not nullify the potential to form Best of 13.
Ties: As a rule, all ties are broken by "who got there first", that is who achieved given trophy earlier.
Best of 13 – 10 pts – Achieved by player with most ascensions with different role/race/gender/alignment combination within 13 game window.
Most Ascensions – 9 pts – Achieved by player with most ascensions during the tournament.
Fastest Ascension: Gametime – 8 pts – Achieved by player ascending in the least number of turns.
Fastest Ascension: Realtime – 8 pts – Achieved by player ascending in the least amount of real time.
Lowest Scoring Ascension – 7 pts – Achieved by player ascending with the smallest score.
Best Behaved Ascension – 7 pts – Achieved by player ascending with the highest number of intact conducts.
First Ascension – 6 pts – Achieved by player with the first ascension in the tournament.
Most Unique Deaths – 6 pts – Achieved by player with the most different deaths during the tournament. What is unique death is decided by a filter list.
Highest Scoring Ascension – 5 pts – Achieved by player with the highest score for an ascending game.
Basic Extinct – 5 pts – Achieved by player who manages to extinct most monster species within a single game (the game does not have to be an ascension).
Who Wants To Be A Killionaire? – 5 pts – Achieved by player who manages to kill the most monsters within a single game (the game does not have to be an ascension, number of kills is capped at 120 per monster species).
Highest Scoring Ascension For A Role – 2 pts – Achieved by player with the highest score for an ascending game for given role.
Challenge Trophy – 1 pt – Achieved by all players who complete a challenge. Only the first player gets the full point bonus, the rest of players only get half. It is possible to get points for multiple challenges.
Full Monty – 7 pts – Achieved by player who manages to ascend all roles, races, genders, alignments and conducts (the new 3.6.0 nudist and zen conducts are not required). The achieving player is said to have "gone Full Monty".
Grand Slam – 6 pts – Achieved by player who manages to ascend all roles, races, genders, and alignments. The achieving player is said to have "hit the Grand Slam".
Hat Trick – 5 pts – Achieved by player who manages to ascend all races, genders, and alignments. The achieving player is said to have "pulled the Hat Trick".
Double Top – 4 pts – Achieved by player who manages to ascend both genders and all alignments. The achieving player is said to have "thrown the Double Top".
Birdie – 3 pts – Achieved by player who manages to ascend both genders. The achieving player is said to have "shot the Birdie".
Dilithium Star – 1 pts – Achieved by player who ascends at least one game.
Platinum Star – 0.9 pts – Achieved by player who reaches the Astral Plane in at least one game.
Gold Star – 0.8 pts – Achieved by player who reaches the Elemental Planes in at least one game.
Silver Star – 0.7 pts – Achieved by player who obtains the Amulet of Yendor in at least one game.
Bronze Star – 0.6 pts – Achieved by player who performs the Invocation Ritual in at least one game.
Steel Star – 0.5 pts – Achieved by player who obtains the Book of the Dead in at least one game.
Brass Star – 0.4 pts – Achieved by player who obtains the Candelabrum of Invocation in at least one game.
Copper Star – 0.3 pts – Achieved by player who enters the Gehennom in at least one game.
Zinc Star – 0.2 pts – Achieved by player who obtains the Bell of Opening in at least one game.
Iron Star – 0.1 pts – Achieved by player who kills Medusa in at least one game.
Lead Star – 0.05 pts – Achieved by player who completes Sokoban in at least one game.
Plastic Star – 0.03 pts – Achieved by player who obtains the luckstone from Mine's End in at least one game.
Following people are responsible for the tournament, listed in no particular order:
Krystal
Organizer of the original /dev/null/nethack tournament since 1999, author of the original code and trophy structure; the in-game challenges are directly reused in the Tribute.
K2
Hardfought.org admin who hosts the tournament's US East and European servers. He is the person who makes all the code run on real hardware in real world.
Tangles
The tournament's chief programmer. He ported the original devnull game server to NetHack 3.6.0. He replaced the old crufty and unavailable central server's cogs and gears with new machinery. He bugfixed the challenge code, merged in scores of patches and integrated it all together to make for a flawless, smooth player experience.
Mandevil
The guy who has written and designed the scoreboard website from scratch while trying to replicate the never really published scoring rules of the original /dev/null/nethack.