NetHack is Copyright (C) Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam 
and M. Stephenson. NetHack may be freely redistributed.  
See license for details.

              Installing NetHack 3.3.1 for WIN32 Platforms
              ============================================
		    (last revision: August 3, 2000)

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Hello ..., welcome to NetHack!
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This 3.3.1 official binary distribution of
NetHack 3.3.1 should run on full WIN32 platforms such
as Windows 9.x, Windows NT 4.x, and Windows 2000.

Save and bones files created with previous versions of
NetHack will _NOT_  work with 3.3.1 including those
created with 3.3.0.

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How to set up the game:
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In order to install this particular version of NetHack, you will need a 
PC running Windows 9.x, Windows NT 4.x, or Windows 2000. It may also
work on Windows 98, we're not entirely sure.

For this WIN32 binary (nh331NTi.zip) you will need just around 2 MB 
of disk space to house the expanded binary.

NetHack consumes a fair bit of RAM and the more it has available
the faster it runs.

The most straightforward method of setting up the game is to put all of
the NetHack files into a single directory - C:\GAMES\NETHACK would be
a typical choice.  Invoke the NETHACK.EXE executable in this directory 
to run NETHACK.

At this point you should have a playable game, but you quite likely 
want to poke around in DEFAULTS.NH with a text editor to set up 
pragmatic things (like where to store saved games), aesthetic things 
(like symbols to use for your traditional ASCII characters), and 
Fun Stuff (like the name of your character and your pet or horse).

With luck the comments in DEFAULTS.NH should be adequate to
figuring out how things work.


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Contacts:
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If you have problems with this package, or in general with NetHack on
WIN32, you can contact us:

Bug reports                              nethack-bugs@nethack.org
NetHack Development Team                 devteam@nethack.org

There is also a bug-report web for on the http://www.nethack.org website.

Please mention which of the 'official' nh3.3.1 binaries you are using.
and include a complete description of your operating platform.

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Frequently asked questions:
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You asked:

	Wow this is a really neat game.  Is there any way to explore it
	without dying so much?

Our staff schizophrenic replies:

Gentle Reader, I fear this is a most delicate question.  It is a
frequent theme in fantasy literature that it is far easier to be
granted a wish than it is to decide upon a good wish to make.  But I
am no djinn, and I am willing to advise you on this point as well.
And so I shall make the observation that, no matter what transpires,
you will always die the same amount, viz: once.  (Unless of course
some sort of magic intervenes.)  Perhaps what you want is a way to
avoid dying so soon?
	As it happens, this latter can be accomplished.  Death, as it
transpires, is characterisable as _finitely avoidable_ in NetHack, for
there is a Mystic Prompt known to those who have read the Man Page of
Doom, the words of which, it is sometimes whispered, are as follows:
		Die? [yn]
The benefit of being asked this question at the, shall we say,
appropriate, crucial moments is available -- for a price.
Classically, an acceptable consideration would be the player's soul;
but since according to the hallowed doctrines of most major religions,
@-signs don't have souls to sell, we will be contented with your
score....  For lo!  The game contains an X command, and by the
strangely inexplicable power of the elder gods this X standeth for the
word Discover (or EXplore, in the ancient tongue), and the typing of
this Mystic Device shall effect the deal as described above,
paragraphs 2 and 3.
	Furthermore, and alternately, IF YOU ORDER IMMEDIATELY at the
outset of a game, AS AN ADDED FREE BONUS YOU WILL RECEIVE A GENUINE
HAND-CRAFTED WAND OF THREE WISHES!  Just type NETHACK -X on the
command line and, since NetHack is freely distributable, SEND NO MONEY
NOW.  As a variation on this theme, the -D flag will put the game into
its debugging mode, IF you are a wizard... "Speak, wizard, and enter",
to paraphrase the Old Master.


You asked:

	Ok the game works.  Where do I begin to learn how to play?

A passing strange person replies:

Of course it works.  What do you think I am, a radio?
	Once you've got into the game, some good commands to try (and
they don't even count as moves!) are ? and /.  At risk of sounding
like a marketing blurb, the HELP key (which on your terminal will be
marked with a question mark - and be warned that you may have to
depress the shift key to activate this function!) gives you instant
access to our online help facility.  It's kind of a menu with lovely
options like "c" (where you get to see MY NAME in the history of
NetHack!), "i" (which gives you all the important legal blurb which
tells you about your rights and responsibilities as a NetHack
licensee), and the more boring items "a" and "b" which merely explain
all the commands and the display symbols and uninteresting stuff like
that.  What the hell.  It's there, you can use it.
	The / key is pretty good, too.  If there's something on the
screen that you don't know what it is, well, it's probably a letter or
a symbol or something.  That's wisdom, see?  But to get onto the
Eternal Verities, suppose you want to know what it MEANS?  Aha!  Hit
/, say "y", I want to specify it by cursor (cursors are blinking
underscores, and if you're British like me you can curse them with
your numeric bloody keypad, too -- Americans needn't understand this
joke), whatever it is, and then you can point out the object of your
confusion and have it explicated in frabjous detail.  Helps you avoid
getting your face et, sometimes, that.  Always nice, not having your
face et.
	Oh, right, I almost forgot.  There's the Guidebook, too, for
the quiche-eaters in our midst....  You may have got one with your
game.


You asked:

	Are ASCII characters my only choice for representing things
on the display with this binary?

A die-hard C-shell hacker responds:

Why would you want to use ANYTHING other than the traditional
ASCII graphics?  Ok, ok, fine, but it looks like you'll have to 
wait until at least the next release.  In the meantime you
can do useless things like signing the petition for a 
graphical WIN32 NetHack, or whine about the lack of one to 
your friends, relatives, and the rec.games.roguelike.nethack 
newsgroup. Or, you can code parts of it yourself and send 
the NetHack developers your source patches, and contribute 
to the effort.


You asked:

	Can I run this game on a two floppy PC?

Our entire staff choruses:

NO!
	Basically the game has gotten too huge.
It *might* still be possible to compile a stripped-down
version of the game that wouldn't need so much room....  But we
haven't tried even that approach for a long time, and there are no
guarantees at all.  Of course, if you succeed in pulling it off, let
us know; but don't get your hopes up. And you would lose a lot
of game features.


You asked:

	I was playing along with my 400 hitpoint level 8 Barbarian
	named Gorp and my dog Gumby, having a wonderful evening bashing
	heads, eating eye corpses, and generally running amok in the dungeon
	and all of a sudden the (1) the lights go out, (2) I hit the power
	cord with my sword, (3) lightning struck, or (4) the game actually
	crashed.  Now what do I do?

Our resident disaster recovery expert replies:

WHAT?  Damn, hmmm, lets see now.  Where is the plan, you
know what I mean, the PLAN!  Wait, now calm down, let me think.
Hmm.  Hmm.  Oh yea!  You have INSURANCE don't you.  I mean you
compiled the game with INSURANCE didn't you.  Well then you are
in safe hands, so to speak.  Included at no extra charge to you
is a smaller programme called recover.exe.  Its sole purpose in
life is to save your behind in cases like this.  Don't go
getting the idea that you can cheat by turning off your machine
just when you are about to die and using it to resurrect your
Wizard.  The recover program can tell you are cheating and will
delete your high score list and give you bad luck for twenty 
games.  
	To use it after a crash just go to your NETHACK directory and
check to see if you have a bunch of files ending in a number.
Like so: FRED-STALKER.0 FRED-STALKER.1 FRED-STALKER.2 and so on.  
Now run the recover programme giving it the base name of those
files above.

Example you say:

C:\games\nethack\recover FRED-STALKER

Works.

	Good enough?


------------------------------------------------------------------------
DISCLAIMERS:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Throughout this document, the word "NetHack" refers to a rather jolly
game involving a small @-sign getting its face et by dragons, and is
in no way to be construed as relating to the theory or practise of
gaining unauthorised use of or access to data or data processing
equipment (except maybe if a few of us play the game at work,
something which I want to go on record as saying is very, very naughty
indeed and not the sort of thing you want to get involved with at
all), and if any security-establishment types are reading this,
remember it's YOU folks who do the cloak-and-dagger stuff, we're
responsible professionals with real jobs and self respect and stuff
like that.

Secondly, all references to animal sacrifice, Donny Osmond, dynamic
linking, Microsoft Corporation, okapi, claviprondrophony and so forth
are made purely for the entertainment of the reader and if you think
we meant something by it, that's your problem.  Research has shown
that what people say and what they mean have so little to do with each
other that you can actually get PAID to figure out why people say,
"can you reach the salt?" when as a matter of fact they don't give a
pair of dingo's kidneys what the answer to the question is, so long as
someone provides them with some small white crystals in the near
future and look! you came up with *that* interpretation all by
yourself now didn't you.
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Special thanks to stephen p spackman who wrote the original version
of this text and who will live forever in our memories.  (Nope, he
isn't dead as far as we know, just moved on to a higher calling).
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This document is Copyright (C) 1991 Stephen P Spackman and Kevin D
Smolkowski (1993).  It constitutes part of the documentation of the PC
version of the NetHack game, and may be distributed freely subject to the
same terms set forth in the NetHack license.  Thank you for having a very
nice day indeed.  Hack On!
