/dev/null/nethack Tournament 2010 Announcement

[robin]

Below is the annual "official" /dev/null/nethack announcement.

The suggestion came up a few years ago that this is the longest-running
gaming tournament on the Internet so I've done some research and, though
the Myth World Cup started a year earlier but they took a year off, it
does actually appear to be true.  This year is the Tournament's 12th
year.  Yay, us.  ;-)

The Trophy structure will be continuing the same as in previous years
though with some luck we will have the new trophies for Most Murderous
Ascension and Most Extinctual Ascension as well (we are logging the
information necessary for those, but the scoreboard code isn't
finished).  As usual, we are again adding a new Challenge Trophy.  No,
we still won't tell you what this year's is; that's part of the
Challenge ...

This year will include an updated version of ZAPM which adds the new
Janitor character class (so that's a new trophy there too) and for the
first time we'll also be offering graphical NetHack thanks to the recent
release of tilehack.

We've finished this year's Challenge patch, so folks interested in
hosting a game server can sign up for administrator accounts now and
download and install the system at their convenience; we regularly add
new servers during the Tournament, so new volunteers are welcome any time.

Pre-registration opened on October 1st, and will remain available until
the start of the Tournament on Halloween; during that time you can again
re-activate your player account from previous years (provided that you
still have the same email address), rather than having to register a new
account every year.

Feel free to pass this announcement 'round and submit it to any
appropriate venues, should you feel so inclined.

See y'all on Halloween.

-robin

#####
The NetHack season is upon us once again.

On Halloween, at midnight Pacific U.S. Time, /dev/null's Twelfth Annual
NetHack Tournament (<http://nethack.devnull.net>) opens.  As with past
years, the Tournament is open to anyone who'd like to play.

We're also open to anyone who'd like to volunteer to run a game server
since, though we have our own servers in California, play can be slow
from other parts of the continent and across the transoceanic links.

We no longer try to describe the Trophy structure in these
announcements; it gets more complicated every year and this section had
reached two screens of text.  A full description is available on the web
site at <http://nethack.devnull.net/tournament/trophies.shtml>.

To participate in the Tournament, visit our web site
(<http://nethack.devnull.net>) during the month and sign up for an
account.  Pre-registration is available in the month before the
Tournament to returning players from previous years.

Server Requirements:

This year's Tournament will begin with our own servers in California and
will be bringing servers online in other parts of the United States,
Finland and South Korea as those servers are validated.  Since we always
appreciate additional volunteer servers to help speed the game play up
for folks not near an existing host, here's roughly what you need to
volunteer a game server (Remember,before volunteering, that anyone with
admin level access to a game server box is not allowed to compete; so
don't volunteer to host if you want to be a contender):

        a multi-user 3.4.3 NetHack installation (thus, probably, a Unix
of some sort; the /dev/null servers are all OpenBSD systems) built with
the Tournament's custom patches

        a multi-user 0.6.3 ZAPM installation, also built with the
Tournament's custom patches

        an installation of the Tournament's customized version of
Shell-in-a-Box

        an installed copy of our game server kit (available at
<http://nethack.devnull.net/software>)

        sufficient speed/disk/memory to support at least 5000 player
accounts and 26 concurrent players (ours used to be a P133 with 32M of
memory and 5G of disk, but that motherboard died; that small a box
should still work, though we would recommend at least 20G of disk)

        a dedicated Internet connection (ours is on the ethernet in a
colocation facility; cable modems and DSL will work fine, but it's not
really possible to do unless you have a static IP address)

        since NetHack Tournament needs real user accounts, we'd
recommend that it be a dedicated system (the players will need to be
entered in /etc/passwd to play on the box)

/dev/null is a loose association of networking geeks, unincorporated and
noncommercial.  We just do this for giggles; we make no money from this
other than what folks feel like donating and the occasional bit of swag.
#####