Bones Etiquette?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

I'm playing only on nethack.alt.org these days, so I am likely to find
the bones of other players and indeed to leave my bones lying around
for someone other than myself to find.

However, I used to play on my own machine, the only person to do so,
and from time to time I would find my own bones and usually have a
good idea (or an educated guess from memory) as to what the deceased
had been carrying. Makes things a little easier, wouldn't you say?

So what is the accepted etiquette? When you are the only one playing
nethack on a particular machine, would it not be the "done thing" to
go into the bones directory and delete any bones files?

--

JPD


SGFN

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

JPD wrote:
> I'm playing only on nethack.alt.org these days, so I am likely to
find
> the bones of other players and indeed to leave my bones lying around
> for someone other than myself to find.
>
> However, I used to play on my own machine, the only person to do so,
> and from time to time I would find my own bones and usually have a
> good idea (or an educated guess from memory) as to what the deceased
> had been carrying. Makes things a little easier, wouldn't you say?
>
> So what is the accepted etiquette? When you are the only one playing
> nethack on a particular machine, would it not be the "done thing" to
> go into the bones directory and delete any bones files?

It's your system, so it's up to you. What you can do is use hearse,
(just google "nethack hearse"- you'll find it soon enough) a program
which uploads all your bones files to a central internet server and
then downloads a stack of someone else's bones files in return. You can
set hearse to delete your bones from your local system after they are
uploaded if you like- that sounds liek the kind of thing that might
suit you.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Jym wrote:

> I'm almost the only one being logged in and
> certainly the only one to play nethack on it (plus
> myself as root for wizard-mode experiments).

As Philipp Lucas says down-thread, _don't do that_!
It is an open recipe for disaster.

Any long time Unix sysadmin will share with you that
logging in as root should be as welcome as a root
canal; only do it under duress, and stop doing it
the instant you stop needing root privileges.

The way things are _supposed_ to work in Unix-alikes
is that user "wizard" is a real account, who happens
to own whatever is the moral equivalent of
/usr/games on your setup, and so is able to add or
delete games from the system. That's a lot less
privilege, and thus a lot less dangerous, than
twinking around as "root", who can break pretty much
anything with a single typo.

As systems have gotten more informal, the original
restriction of wizard-mode to use only by the owner
of /usr/games makes less and less sense, and
probably the DevTeam should fix that to make the
current "game workings testing" mechanism accessible
to unprivileged users, by decoupling the "-u wizard"
from having to match a real account name, or just
let the "-D" switch suffice, reserving "-u wizard"
for real multi-system manager games account needs,
as originally intended, which certainly doesn't
include game-play "what if" explorations beyond the
limited ones eXplore more supports.

Many systems don't _have_ account names, and the
ONLY reason my current system (WinOS98SE) does, is
because I created one besides the default no-login
admin account, to give a user account name to
NetHack to avoid whatever (long forgotten) the
hideous default for NetHack save file names was
without one.

Since account names are pretty much phony on this
system, "-u wizard" works just fine despite that
(1) there is no user account "wizard", and (2) I'm
logged in when I use wizard mode, as user
"xanthian".

xanthian.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

john_p_darcy@yahoo.com.au (JPD) writes:
> So what is the accepted etiquette? When you are the only one playing
> nethack on a particular machine, would it not be the "done thing" to
> go into the bones directory and delete any bones files?

There's nothing incumbent on you to do so: if the DevTeam didn't want
bones to be created on single-user systems, they'd be perfectly
capable of preventing them being so. If you want to delete them, then
provided you delete all of them, that's fair enough (as David Damerell
has observed, this is equivalent to playing on a fresh installation
each game). _Selective_ deletion of bonesfiles, though, would be Not
On.

--
: Dylan O'Donnell http://www.spod-central.org/~psmith/ :
: "You boil it in sawdust: you salt it in glue: / You condense it with :
: locusts and tape: / Still keeping one principal object in view -- / :
: To preserve its symmetrical shape." [ Lewis Carroll, "THotS" ] :

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Boudewijn Waijers wrote:

> Dylan O'Donnell wrote:
>> _Selective_ deletion of bonesfiles, though, would be Not On.
>
> Of course. But just like you, I don't see any problem in deleting bones
> files. However, the reason given seems dubious: when I'm playing on a
> multiuser system, I can *also* very often guess what class the deceased
> player was playing, especially on the shallower dungeon levels, where
> much of a player's equipment is still from his starting inventory.
>
> Even a character's name is often a good indication: when I find a grave
> of a character named "Merlin", who is carrying two spellbooks and an
> unknown cloak, my guess would be that one of the books is force bolt,
> and the cloak is magic resistance.

It seem to me the difference is that in your case, the only knowledge
needed (from your character's point of view) is general knowledge about
specific types of people in the world he or she lives in, whereas the other
case involves intimate knowledge of a particular character. It is only the
latter that feels at all like cheating to me.

--
Benjamin Lewis

I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce. -- J. Edgar Hoover

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Boudewijn Waijers wrote:

> Boudewijn Waijers wrote:
>
>> But just like you, I don't see any problem in deleting bones files.
>
> On a related note: I just played a few games on nethack.alt.org. In my
> current game, my current samurai stumbled upon my first bones level ever
> on nethack.alt.org. Can you imagine my surprise when it appeared to be
> the bones of my just-deceased previous wizard?

Hey, I spied on that game for a little while I was wondering if it was
you. I was surprised to see your samurai become satiated by eating a tripe
ration in the mines.

--
Benjamin Lewis

I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce. -- J. Edgar Hoover

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Dylan O'Donnell wrote:

> If you want to delete them, then provided you delete all of them,
> that's fair enough (as David Damerell has observed, this is
> equivalent to playing on a fresh installation each game).

With one very small difference: the "logfile" file and "record" file
have been written to, so ghosts can have more names than in a clean
installation.

> _Selective_ deletion of bonesfiles, though, would be Not On.

Of course. But just like you, I don't see any problem in deleting bones
files. However, the reason given seems dubious: when I'm playing on a
multiuser system, I can *also* very often guess what class the deceased
player was playing, especially on the shallower dungeon levels, where
much of a player's equipment is still from his starting inventory.

Even a character's name is often a good indication: when I find a grave
of a character named "Merlin", who is carrying two spellbooks and an
unknown cloak, my guess would be that one of the books is force bolt,
and the cloak is magic resistance.

--
Boudewijn Waijers (kroisos at home.nl).

The garden of happiness is surrounded by a wall so low only children
can look over it. - "the Orphanage of Hits", former Dutch radio show.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Dylan O'Donnell wrote:

> john_p_darcy@yahoo.com.au (JPD) writes:
> > So what is the accepted etiquette? When you are the only one playing
> > nethack on a particular machine, would it not be the "done thing" to
> > go into the bones directory and delete any bones files?
>
> There's nothing incumbent on you to do so: if the DevTeam didn't want
> bones to be created on single-user systems, they'd be perfectly
> capable of preventing them being so.

Well, you could have some fake multiusers systems. On my linux, there are
about 5 to 10 registered users. I'm almost the only one being logged in
and certainly the only one to play nethack on it (plus myself as root for
wizard-mode experiments). So it may looks like a multiusers system but it
is actually a mono-user system.

Hypocoristiquement,
Jym.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Jym wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Dylan O'Donnell wrote:
>
>
>>john_p_darcy@yahoo.com.au (JPD) writes:

>>There's nothing incumbent on you to do so: if the DevTeam didn't want
>>bones to be created on single-user systems, they'd be perfectly
>>capable of preventing them being so.
>
> Well, you could have some fake multiusers systems. On my linux, there are
> about 5 to 10 registered users. I'm almost the only one being logged in
> and certainly the only one to play nethack on it

So they could prevent you from ever reloading your own bones files if
they wanted (I presume your copy of nethack is setgid and not setuid).
Since Nethack is open source the whole issue of tamperproofing is moot
anyway.

Lars

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Jym wrote:

> I'm almost the only one being logged in
> and certainly the only one to play nethack on it (plus myself as root for
> wizard-mode experiments).

Hm? There is no need to restrict wizard mode access to root. I try to
minimise the time spent as root.

--
Philipp Lucas
phlucas@online-club.de

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Philipp Lucas wrote:

> On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Jym wrote:
>
> > I'm almost the only one being logged in
> > and certainly the only one to play nethack on it (plus myself as root for
> > wizard-mode experiments).
>
> Hm? There is no need to restrict wizard mode access to root. I try to
> minimise the time spent as root.

I totally agree with you on that. But it looks like this restriction is in
the debian distribution of nethack and I don't want (yet) to compile a
nethack from scratch. If I do compile nethack once, I'll probably change
that.

Hypocoristiquement,
Jym.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Janis Papanagnou wrote:

> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
>> As systems have gotten more informal, the original restriction of
>> wizard-mode to use only by the owner of /usr/games makes less and less
>> sense, and probably the DevTeam should fix that to make the current
>> "game workings testing" mechanism accessible to unprivileged users, by
>> decoupling the "-u wizard"
>
> Am I misunderstanding you? I read that as a proposal to let any user use
> wizard mode, thus being able to (e.g.) create tons of bones that affect
> the games of the other players.

Is the ability to create wizard bones that can be loaded by regular players
actually useful for debugging purposes?

--
Benjamin Lewis

I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce. -- J. Edgar Hoover

 

[Manuel]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Seraphim wrote:
> Benjamin Lewis <bclewis@cs.sfu.ca> wrote in
> news:yy7o8y4xss7s.fsf@css.css.sfu.ca:
>
> > Is the ability to create wizard bones that can be loaded by regular
> > players actually useful for debugging purposes?
>
> Yes.

--verbose, please? I feel curious about that.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack,misc.misc (More info?)

Janis Papanagnou wrote:
> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:

>> As systems have gotten more informal, the original
>> restriction of wizard-mode to use only by the owner
>> of /usr/games makes less and less sense, and
>> probably the DevTeam should fix that to make the
>> current "game workings testing" mechanism accessible
>> to unprivileged users, by decoupling the "-u wizard"

> Am I misunderstanding you?

Yes.

> I read that as a proposal to let any user use
> wizard mode, thus being able to (e.g.) create tons
> of bones that affect the games of the other
> players.

You are confused about precisely the things that are
the issue here. The "wizard mode" for Unix and the
"wizard mode" for NetHack are now two profoundly
different things, and they need to be disambiguated
by being split into two different facilities.

Unix "wizard mode" is all about being able to
install and uninstall games, grant and revoke user
privileges, mess with wrapper scripts and records
logs and upgrades and backups.

NetHack "wizard mode" is all about being able to set
up any situation internal to the game, and test some
"what if" situation.

The two couldn't be more different, and they need to
be split, to give Unix multi-player systems NetHack
players the same "NetHack wizard mode" internal game
testing privileges that personal computer NetHack
players already enjoy, without having to set up a
special separate account "wizard" to exercise those
privileges, since that account name is a reserved
and dedicated on on multi-user Unix systems.

>> from having to match a real account name, or just
>> let the "-D" switch suffice, reserving "-u wizard"

> You need some distinction for wizard mode if you don't
> want that every user will be able to affect the others
> games. Don't you?

Yes, but that's not the _same_ wizard mode needed
for internal game testing. The problem is that we
have two very different things, but we only have one
name for them right now. They need two names, so
that their privilege sets can be appropriately split
between those names.

>> for real multi-system manager games account needs,
>> as originally intended, which certainly doesn't
>> include game-play "what if" explorations beyond the
>> limited ones eXplore more supports.

> I think that explore mode is well enough for users on a
> _multi-user_ system to test the game.

Well, no, that creates two classes of NetHack
players, giving a hugely unfair advantage at
tournament time to those who can test stuff in
personal computer wizard mode before they try it in
the tournament, compared to those who have only Unix
access to NetHack (which, and it's how we landed in
this mess, used to be "everyone").

> Otherwise you would have to remove features from wizard
> mode, then re-introduce another mode to be able to check
> the consistent game behaviour.

Exactly right, that _is_ what needs to be done; use
the alternative name it already has, "debug mode",
or come up with a better one, maybe "what-if" mode.

> No. Exploration is one thing, wizard mode another;
> don't mix them up. IMO.

The problem is that exploration mode is a "play
without dying but otherwise pretty much an unchanged
game" mode, and should be reserved for that purpose,
but the "what-if" mode is also valuable and needs to
be made available to Unix players as it is to
personal computer players, but without the
complexities that arise now because it is muddled up
with the Unix user "wizard"'s higher set of
privileges, by what is now a historical accident but
once made perfect sense.

HTH

xanthian.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

begin quoting JPD <john_p_darcy@yahoo.com.au>:
>However, I used to play on my own machine, the only person to do so,
>and from time to time I would find my own bones and usually have a
>good idea (or an educated guess from memory) as to what the deceased
>had been carrying. Makes things a little easier, wouldn't you say?

That is unfortunate, but unavoidable - as someone who does worry about
this, I just try not to take the piss. I may have known that character had
2 scrolls of genocide, but I treat them like any other unIDed scrolls, and
jumble them up with the rest of my scrolls.

>So what is the accepted etiquette? When you are the only one playing
>nethack on a particular machine, would it not be the "done thing" to
>go into the bones directory and delete any bones files?

Deleting all is fine; deleting none is fine. What's not on is selective
deletion.
--
David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Tuesday, March.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Boudewijn Waijers wrote:

> But just like you, I don't see any problem in deleting bones files.

On a related note: I just played a few games on nethack.alt.org. In my
current game, my current samurai stumbled upon my first bones level ever
on nethack.alt.org. Can you imagine my surprise when it appeared to be
the bones of my just-deceased previous wizard?

--
Boudewijn Waijers (kroisos at home.nl).

The garden of happiness is surrounded by a wall so low only children
can look over it. - "the Orphanage of Hits", former Dutch radio show.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Seraphim wrote:

> Benjamin Lewis <bclewis@cs.sfu.ca> wrote in
> news:yy7o8y4xss7s.fsf@css.css.sfu.ca:
>
>> Is the ability to create wizard bones that can be loaded by regular
>> players actually useful for debugging purposes?
>
> Yes.

In what situation would it be useful, that wouldn't also work with loading
the bones level with another Wizard?

(The change I had in mind would be to add a "wizard" flag to the bones
level, and to not permit such levels to be loaded by non-wizmode
characters. In fact, I think this is a good thing to do irrespective of
the question of permitting ordinary users to run in wizmode.)

--
Benjamin Lewis

I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce. -- J. Edgar Hoover

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack,misc.misc (More info?)

Kent Paul Dolan wrote:

> You are confused about precisely the things that are the issue here. The
> "wizard mode" for Unix and the "wizard mode" for NetHack are now two
> profoundly different things, and they need to be disambiguated by being
> split into two different facilities.
>
> Unix "wizard mode" is all about being able to install and uninstall
> games, grant and revoke user privileges, mess with wrapper scripts and
> records logs and upgrades and backups.
>
> NetHack "wizard mode" is all about being able to set up any situation
> internal to the game, and test some "what if" situation.
>
> The two couldn't be more different, and they need to be split, to give
> Unix multi-player systems NetHack players the same "NetHack wizard mode"
> internal game testing privileges that personal computer NetHack players
> already enjoy, without having to set up a special separate account
> "wizard" to exercise those privileges, since that account name is a
> reserved and dedicated on on multi-user Unix systems.

They already *are* two distinct things by default; the NetHack wizard
account is called "wizard", and the "unix wizard account" is called "root".
(Unfortunately, the Debian Linux distribution has chosen to make root the
NetHack wizard account as well, instead of something more reasonable such
as "games". This, however, is an issue with Debian rather than NetHack.)

I tend to agree, however, that allowing regular users to run in wizard mode
is a reasonable thing to do, *provided* that wiz bones can't be loaded by
regular characters.

--
Benjamin Lewis

I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce. -- J. Edgar Hoover

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Jym <moyen@loria.fr> writes:
> On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Philipp Lucas wrote:

> > Hm? There is no need to restrict wizard mode access to root. I try to
> > minimise the time spent as root.

> I totally agree with you on that. But it looks like this restriction is in
> the debian distribution of nethack and I don't want (yet) to compile a

In that case, the debian people have changed it in their source tree.
The default is to have wizard mode for user "wizard".
The debian folks probably didn't want to create another user for compiling
Nethack, and didn't realize that the wizard user doesn't need to actually
exist in the machine for compilation..

--
Jukka Lahtinen

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
>
> As systems have gotten more informal, the original
> restriction of wizard-mode to use only by the owner
> of /usr/games makes less and less sense, and
> probably the DevTeam should fix that to make the
> current "game workings testing" mechanism accessible
> to unprivileged users, by decoupling the "-u wizard"

Am I misunderstanding you? I read that as a proposal to
let any user use wizard mode, thus being able to (e.g.)
create tons of bones that affect the games of the other
players.

> from having to match a real account name, or just
> let the "-D" switch suffice, reserving "-u wizard"

You need some distinction for wizard mode if you don't
want that every user will be able to affect the others
games. Don't you?

> for real multi-system manager games account needs,
> as originally intended, which certainly doesn't
> include game-play "what if" explorations beyond the
> limited ones eXplore more supports.

I think that explore mode is well enough for users on a
_multi-user_ system to test the game.

Otherwise you would have to remove features from wizard
mode, then re-introduce another mode to be able to check
the consistent game behaviour. No. Exploration is one
thing, wizard mode another; don't mix them up. IMO.

Janis

 

[seraphim]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Benjamin Lewis <bclewis@cs.sfu.ca> wrote in
news:yy7o8y4xss7s.fsf@css.css.sfu.ca:

> Is the ability to create wizard bones that can be loaded by regular
> players actually useful for debugging purposes?

Yes.

 

[James]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

In article <422d3ab5.205338657@news.bigpond.com>,
JPD <john_p_darcy@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

>However, I used to play on my own machine, the only person to do so,
>and from time to time I would find my own bones and usually have a
>good idea (or an educated guess from memory) as to what the deceased
>had been carrying. Makes things a little easier, wouldn't you say?

Not always, not in and of itself.
Regardless of whose bones were left, I can usually deduce some things
about their situation. If it's a wizard, I know that cloak is probably
MR. If it's an archaeologist, I know one of the gray stones is probably
touch. Valks, even if they've left behind a cursed shield, it has a
good chance of being +3. That sort of thing.

If a bag is too heavy to lift, I know it's a bag of holding and probably
has a LOT of good stuff for me if I can cancel it.

>So what is the accepted etiquette? When you are the only one playing
>nethack on a particular machine, would it not be the "done thing" to
>go into the bones directory and delete any bones files?

Deleting bones files is cheating. Your bones piles can cut both ways --
sure that character has an ascension kit under the ghost, but what about
the Titan, Arch-Lich, and Archon that killed him?

Do you know about Hearse?

Hearse solves this problem completely, and adds the dimension to the
game that's missing on single-user systems.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack,misc.misc (More info?)

Benjamin Lewis wrote:
> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:

> They already *are* two distinct things by default;
> the NetHack wizard account is called "wizard", and
> the "unix wizard account" is called "root".
> (Unfortunately, the Debian Linux distribution has
> chosen to make root the NetHack wizard account as
> well, instead of something more reasonable such as
> "games". This, however, is an issue with Debian
> rather than NetHack.)

Well, let's just say "things have changed", or at
least I remember it so. "Back in the day", when I
was a junior Unix sysadmin, one of my accounts was
user "wizard", and my responsibilities with that
account

(I _also_ had the password for account "root",
but shared it with Tad Guy, the senior sysadmin)

were to maintain /usr/games.

If Linux now has that muddled with "root", all the
worse; once upon a time, they were quite separate,
and it is from that day that the NetHack user name
"wizard" derives.

Unfortunately, I cannot confirm that memory
independently; "wizard account" has become a generic
term for the same thing, without the implication
that the _name_ given to that account is actually
"wizard". "User wizard" now also has another
meaning, a tool for adding new users, and indeed the
term "wizard" has broadened to the point that a
google search overflows with results without being
useful.

The best evidence that "/usr/games" once belonged to
user account "wizard" is the usage in NetHack
itself, but that's entirely circular logic.

So, let's just say, in my fallible memory of 1985
events, user "wizard" owned the BSD Unix /usr/games
directory, and I'll otherwise withdraw from the
fray, except I _still_ think "wizard mode" needs
splitting as previously described.

Sigh. Getting old in a profession where 50% of
knowledge is superseded every 18 months certainly
has its interesting downsides.

xanthian.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Benjamin Lewis wrote:

> Hey, I spied on that game for a little while I was wondering if
> it was you. I was surprised to see your samurai become satiated by
> eating a tripe ration in the mines.

I remember accidentally eating a tripe ration once, but I don't remember
it making me satiated. Instead, I am quite sure that it confused me, as
usual, and maybe made me throw up.

--
Boudewijn Waijers (kroisos at home.nl).

The garden of happiness is surrounded by a wall so low only children
can look over it. - "the Orphanage of Hits", former Dutch radio show.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack,misc.misc (More info?)

Kent Paul Dolan wrote:

> Unix "wizard mode" is all about being able to
> install and uninstall games, grant and revoke user
> privileges, mess with wrapper scripts and records
> logs and upgrades and backups.

> NetHack "wizard mode" is all about being able to set
> up any situation internal to the game, and test some
> "what if" situation.

The solution is easy: in the source, you can specify the user name that
has special NetHack privileges. Change it to something different from
"wizard", and that new user will be the one who can use NetHack wizard
mode.

--
Boudewijn Waijers (kroisos at home.nl).

The garden of happiness is surrounded by a wall so low only children
can look over it. - "the Orphanage of Hits", former Dutch radio show.