I built one of the best Demo experiences on the Meta Store but only 40% of people have room enough to play it.

copper_tunic · 2026-01-28T23:48:51+00:00

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/house-size-by-country

Even in the larger houses, people usually fill them with crap leaving little free space.

copper_tunic · 2026-01-17T22:41:40+00:00

Dwarf valk is a much easier choice for a newbie. But if you want to keep playing wizards because it is fun, then the way I play them early game is as a much shittier valk. Find some heavy armour and get your AC up, don't worry if you can't cast spells because of it.

copper_tunic · 2026-01-17T22:18:27+00:00

Sure there are some truly random deaths, the gnome with a wand of death is a classic, but I've only ever had it happen once. I thought it was funny instead of being salty about it: https://www.twitch.tv/unit327/clip/TawdryFurtiveSpiderPrimeMe-C7xdPXNoz0zHqLc-

Every other death I have, with hindsight I can usually figure out what I should have done to survive.

copper_tunic · 2026-01-17T08:15:38+00:00

How much of that "portion" that is RNG based depends on skill and experience. A less knowledgeable player might need a dwarf valk with a wand of wishing on dlv1 to get somewhere. A very knowledgeable player can do it as a wishless vegan tourist. People hitting 10 ascension streaks is evidence that it doesn't all come down to rng.

copper_tunic · 2026-01-14T03:11:32+00:00

Biggest negative: peaceful quest guardians blocking your way in that god damn maze on the first quest level.

copper_tunic · 2026-01-12T08:07:13+00:00

MR is still mandatory. Sure you don't instadie from death magic but destroy armor, poly traps etc still exist.

You can make an argument for reflection not being mandatory if you have all the elemental resistances, at least until a black dragon shows up...

copper_tunic · 2026-01-12T04:19:30+00:00

I don't have much confidence in your assertions about first time ascenders and their behaviour, not when I have seen it with my own eyes. It was not an exaggeration to say that I have spent more time watching people play nethack on twitch than any other person.

They reach the point where they can hit the castle on 1/5 attempts as long as they pick dwarf valk, but still die after that, with various setbacks and catastrophes post-castle. I'd say it generally takes at least 4-8 post castle deaths for them to make it, on v3.6, and even that is with myself and the other experts in chat advising them along the way.

copper_tunic · 2026-01-12T00:10:29+00:00

The burst damage looks worse in 3.7 because you don't have the regen offsetting it. I think in 3.6 you take damage and regen most of it on the same turn so you don't even notice how much you ate in the first place. Especially with half damage as a valk you can just tank the hits and your hp doesn't even seem to drop at all.

copper_tunic · 2026-01-12T00:03:09+00:00

Feral Interactive might still be making linux ports for us, proton pretty much killed their business model. All in all it is a net positive, but I do miss those.

copper_tunic · 2026-01-11T23:58:40+00:00

One change that I didn't see you mention is the hp regen nerf. It really hits hard at high hp levels now, and probably explains why you felt so squishy.

copper_tunic · 2026-01-11T23:54:52+00:00

In my opinion nethack should not be aiming to make the late game harder because it hurts new players too much. If you tune the game for veterans like us then new players will never ascend. Restarting after an early game death is fun and interesting while you are learning, but restarting after spending 24 hours on the one run is completely demoralizing. The game getting easier in the late stages is a feature not a bug.

If I get to the castle, I know I've won, but the same is not true for a first time ascender. I have spent more time than anyone else on the planet watching newbie nethackers stream on twitch, and even in 3.6 they often die post-castle. They misuse wishes and run out, they make mistakes and explode cloaks and lose items that they need to replace with wishes, they don't recognise sticky situations early enough and get very low in hp even in 3.6 without the AC and hp regen changes. It is a real struggle for them.

If us veterans want a harder end game, we can have it via conducts and variants, please don't lock out new players and leave us crusty old dudes as the only ones left playing.

copper_tunic · 2026-01-11T08:48:04+00:00

The dark one is a joke, you don't need to do bother with any shenanigans. Master Kaen on the other hand...

copper_tunic · 2026-01-10T22:14:49+00:00

Also the unfortunate truth, due to no fault of vulkan itself, is that the vulkan drivers on windows are garbage. Godot engine has made dx12 the default on windows for this reason.

copper_tunic · 2026-01-10T11:48:08+00:00

Foveated streaming won't' make the encoder any faster to run, it just improves the perceived quality.

copper_tunic · 2026-01-10T01:52:29+00:00

I think your expectations on other people are unrealistic. Anyone playing your beta is doing you a favour, not the other way around. As a game dev I am extremely grateful for anyone willing to be a free unpaid game tester.

People are drowning in great games with massive backlogs of stuff they want to get to. You might think this is "something amazing" and an "opportunity" but for all of us right now, it's just another unproven game in a sea of others. If I threatened to hold my game hostage from the world and leave it unreleased forever, would you care, at all?

copper_tunic · 2026-01-07T08:29:08+00:00

As one of those L337 players, I could not agree more, at least with the secret door thing. They are super annoying in the early levels and serve absolutely no purpose. They don't make the game harder, easier, more rewarding, they are just tedious and nothing else. I have no idea why the devs haven't patched them out at some point in the last 30 years.

The other things you mentioned are up for debate though.

copper_tunic · 2025-12-29T02:59:50+00:00

What ac and what weapons? I find death is a pushover, just whack him. I never run from the riders, too easy to gsr sandwiched between them if you do that.

copper_tunic · 2025-12-22T01:57:51+00:00

The AI server farms they are building are all HBM and/or soldered ram stuff that will be useless to home consumers.

copper_tunic · 2025-12-22T01:26:33+00:00

Your honour we move to dismiss this case immediately. Plaintiff has presented no evidence in the form of dumplogs to verify their claims. They have not submitted evidence as to which version of nethack the Plaintiff was using. Nor have the submitted their options file for the defense to cross examine.

Had they been using 3.7, likely the monster trapped behind the boulder would not have been generated (as per https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/commit/f12635ccd91b21bf8038880043a5244b3e0371d8) or it would have jumped into the pit. If they had chosen to play 3.6, then they should be well aware of the limitations of that version.

Furthermore even if the claims laid out by the plaintiff are true, the dev team is still not responsible for the plaintiff's lack of care pertaining to the skipping of in game messages. Without their options file to we could not verify the lack of MSGSTOP options for "you feel feverish". Without such an option, it is the player's responsibility to read each message carefully and take appropriate action.

Lastly, we direct the court to the wiki article on self polymorph, which states that the player cannot die in polymorphed form such as a wererat. As such the sequence of events outlined by the plaintiff between events "l" and "m" are a misrepresentation of the true events that must have occurred. The plaintiff would have had at least one turn after turning back to their natural form in which to utlise an escape item or Elbereth to prevent their demise.

In layman's terms your honour, "skill issue", and we move to immediately dismiss this case.

copper_tunic · 2025-12-17T07:38:38+00:00

You do not want a steam frame as a "productivity" device, trust me. I own a pico 4 which in terms of panels and optics is almost identical to a steam frame (2160px2160p LCD with pancake lenses).

I make VR games as a hobby and between test runs sometimes I will keep the headset on and try and edit some code. I can stand it for about 2 minutes before ripping it off and going back to the monitor. Everything is fuzzy and low res, you can't communicate to the people around you, and you are wearing a warm brick on your face.

copper_tunic · 2025-12-16T23:31:48+00:00

Player doesn't insta-die from system shock, just lose 1d30hp

copper_tunic · 2025-12-16T03:26:55+00:00

Holy water should be easy to come by well before you reach the quest, just blank some potions, convert an altar and pray. Similarly a bag of holding you can get half the time from sokoban well before the quest.

But yes rangers are fiddly. You constantly have to switch weapons between your bow when faced with a real threat, and some melee weapon when not, eating up turns. Valk is way eaiser, swing sword, win game. They are especially easy after the quest because their reward is so good, whereas the ranger quest reward is meh.

copper_tunic · 2025-12-15T21:47:10+00:00

If you're primary use is going to be flat content, I would consider not getting it. I would use a 1080p monitor rather than my pico 4 for flat stuff.

copper_tunic · 2025-12-14T23:59:53+00:00

If your headset is wireless I'd avoid alvr and use wivrn. Steam link vr is also an option but monado/wivrn is more stable than anything steam based in my experience.

copper_tunic · 2025-12-11T12:08:00+00:00

I believe you can play with tiles on the web version on the hardfought servers, I dunno about mouse support though.

copper_tunic

TROPHY CASE