Announcement from the NetHack Devteam

[devteam at nethack.org]

The NetHack DevTeam is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1.

3.6.1 is a general patch release.  It includes a large number of fixes
to the 3.6.0 version, all of which have been incrementally published on
the public Git repository for the game.

The DevTeam has decided that 3.6.1 will be the final "official" 3.6.x
version, barring some sort of major issue that requires a new release.

After this release, 3.6 will continue to be maintained in our Git
repositories, however the team will focus on a new major release. Another
3.6.x release and packaged set of binaries, is not anticipated.

Here's a synopsis of some of the changes we've made in the past two years
(approximately) since the release of 3.6.0 in December 2015:

1. Personnel changes

We've added some additional members to the team since the 3.6.0 release:

Alex Smith and Patric Mueller joined the team in July 2016.

Alex created the AceHack and NetHack 4 variants and is an expert on the
inner workings of the game and the ways in which they can be exploited.

Patric is probably best known as the creator of the UnNetHack variant.
He also created NetHack-De (a German translation of NetHack) and has
considerable involvement in the Junethack tournament.

2. Gameplay changes

There are fewer gameplay changes in 3.6.1 than in 3.6.0,  but still over
500 items.  Here are a few, though not necessarily the most important,
examples:

General New Features
--------------------

    Naming Sting or Orcrist now breaks illiterate conduct
    Poison breath leaves a trail of poison gas
    Allow knife and stiletto as possible tin opening tools
    New status line conditions Stone Strngl Deaf Lev Fly Ride
    Swallowers can't re-engulf hero immediately after spitting him/her out
    Allow taming monkeys and apes with bananas
    Ray bounceback chance depends on the wall type
    Undead #turning takes less time at higher experience level
    Peacefuls may react when you attack other peacefuls
    Prevent diagonal jumping through open doorways
    Give feedback just before timed levitation runs out
    Blinded hero or monster who eats a nurse corpse will have blindness cured
    Wielding *bane have additional effects
    "Elbereth" must now be the only engraved text on a square to function
    "Elbereth" now erodes based on attacks by the player, not monsters scared

NetHack Community Patches (or Variations) Included
-------------------------------------------------

    Malcolm Ryan's improved tin opener

    Ray Chason's keyboard may stop responding after locking or unlocking a door
        when using altkeyhandler=nhraykey.dll
    Ray Chason's fix: window interfaces that support transparency may give away
        unseen parts of the map
    Ray Chason's xprname should honor iflags.menu_tab_sep
    Ray Chason's punctuation for "That foo is really a mimic."
    Ray Chason's proper background tiles for lava and water
    Ray Chason's MS-DOS port restored to functionality with credit to Reddit
        user b_helyer for the fix to sys/share/pcmain.c
    Ray Chason's MSDOS port support for some VESA modes
    Ray Chason's Qt4 windowport
    Darshan Shaligram's pet ranged attack
    Jason Dorje Short's key rebinding
    Maxime Bacoux's new DUMPLOG: compile-time option to enable logging of
         end-of-game information into a text file

For a complete, very granular, but not necessarily clear list of the
changes incorporated in this release, please take a look at the file
doc/fixes36.1 in the source distribution.  This file has a full list of all
changes to the game.

The text in this file is populated automatically for the development team's
own use and is provided "as is", so please do not ask us to further explain
the entries in that file. Some entries may also be "spoilers", particularly
in the "new features" sections, so read at your own risk.

3. Deprecations announced post NetHack 3.6.1

3.6.1 is essentially a maintenance release and as such doesn't change much
in terms of what is or is not supported.  However there will be some
significant changes to support in the next major release.

The following ports will be dropped from the next major release unless
someone comes forward to maintain them:

    * Amiga
    * Atari
    * Macintosh Classic
    * BeOS
    * OS/2
    * 16-bit MS-DOS
    * Floppy disk support for all platforms

Starting with the next major release, we will be dropping support for most
K&R and pre-ANSI C features, including:

    * The Bitfield macro
    * K&R function definitions

Starting with the next major release, we will start using ANSI C features;
which ones have yet to be determined.

If you are actively running NetHack on a system that cannot handle full
ANSI C, please let us know some details and we _might_ be able to
accommodate you.

4. Save File Portability:

Save files should be portable between version 3.6.0 and 3.6.1.

We did, however, identify a bug early in the 3.6.0 release that may affect
some score files. For full instructions on how to deal with this bug,
please go to:

https://nethack.org/v360/bugmore/fixrecord.html

Yes, this is in the 3.6.0 tree as it is a 3.6.0 bug.

As with all releases of the game, we appreciate your feedback. Please submit
any bugs using the problem report form at:

https://www.nethack.org/common/contact.html.

Also, please check the "known bugs" list at:

https://www.nethack.org/v361/bugs.html

before you log a problem - somebody else may have already found it, after
all.

Happy NetHacking!

For the DevTeam...

Mike Stephenson