New in Slash release 6! (March 29, 1996)

NOTE: Saved games are not compatible with previous versions, and delete
      any bones files you've got collected so far (bones*.*).

Bugs fixed
----------
* valkyries and Barbarians were unable to read the Book of the Dead. Oops.
* fixed specific warning from some artifacts
* the "it doesn't seem to harm" message appears only if the creature is seen
* wishing for an artifact could cause a crash later on. Urp...
* added damage amount display to explosions
* fixed bugs with explosion damage: polymorphed players and invulnerability
  wasn't working right with fireballs, gas spores, etc.
* changed // comments to /* */ to help other platforms out... :)
* also put lots of the Watcom stuff in #ifdefs
* fixed reflection message... again....
* fixed conflict & god-given pets
* fixed "You return to human form" for Gnomes
* crash bug with archeologists falling in trapdoors fixed.
* added message when necromancers gain gain undead warning

Adjustments
-----------
* id wands of healing if you zap yourself
* healing/extra-healing potions give you more permanent hit points
* weapons can be enchanted from +5 now (was +3)
* removed the "steps reluctantly" message from god-given pets... it was
  annoying and misleading
* angels don't show up unless you're in deep trouble.

Additions
---------
* weapon swap command - 'x' -- list spells is now 'X'
* added dark elven equipment -- chaotic elves are now dark elves
* invisible objects (invisible weapons get a +3 to hit monsters who can't
  see invisible; nymphs, etc. won't steal invisible objects they can't see;
  1 in 1250 random objects are now invisible)
* made a makefile for Watcom
* added/enhanced some wizard mode commands
* put in four Neutral weapons from Nehwon: Graywand, Heartseeker, Scalpel,
  and Cat's Claw.

Many people have given lots of helpful suggestions, but several have
been especially helpful and have sent me huge lists of bugs.
They are Wolfe, David Robertson, and Kentaro Shirakata.

Thanks to everyone for their help in squashing bugs. No one likes to
lose a character to a bug, and the more bugs that are found, the fewer
remain.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed in Slash release 5 (3/17/96)

Bugs fixed
----------
* fixed bug that locked up Priest, Ice Mage, and Monk quests... gulp!
* fixed bug with attacking a tame monster that needed a magic weapon to hit
* fixed another bug with undead/special creature warning
* made firing mjollnir return to quiver rather than readied weapon slot
* killer rations now leave "bodies" like they're supposed to
* corrected message for silver dragon scale mail
* made kamadans sleep resistant
* corrected message for strength-draining creatures that touch you
* fixed crash bug with quiver -- crashed if you put an item in the
  quiver, manually threw it (not 'f'ire), dropped it, and picked it up.
* fixed a bug with throwing a potion of sleeping
* fixed a bug with Hand of Elbereth & Excalibur
* put the history, license, etc. files in the binary zip (whoops)

Adjustments
-----------
* stretched out the pre-castle dungeon a bit
* put the original Gnome Mines back in, with some adjustments... heh heh...
* made the Giant Caves & Spider Caves actual levels, not minefill-ish
* made altars and graves rarer because of increased dungeon length
* toilets only appear in rooms with sinks
* made silver dragons actually reflect stuff & breathe cold instead
  of missiles
* made Lawful gods sometimes send you an angel if you pray (gotta be some
  reason to be Lawful...)
* 'W'izards can now only be neutral... after all, their patron is
   the Wizard of Balance... :<
* 'L'ycanthropes stats changed, and they sometimes go berserk.
* put gnolls on Yeenoghu's level
* ghouls & ghasts eat old, decaying bodies
* made getting a pet from sacrificing even rarer
* made dragons do more damage
* went through and fixed up the plus-weapon-to-hit monsters
* enemy characters in the dungeon now have appropriate equipment & are rarer
* because of the new life-drain protection items, made level draining a
  little nastier (magic resistance is down to 50% protection from 90%)
* put in a message for wand of speed monster
* made lightsabers one-handed & able to engrave
* made gas spore explosions neater -- chain reactions possible!
* made rings of gain strength, etc., go up to +5/-5
* fixed up the special levels a little more
* priests of Moloch are always hostile
* made gauntlets of swimming work right
* adjusted the item probabilities a little
* if you get touched by green slime, you don't drop dead quite so fast
* the studly classes -- Barbarians, Cavemen, Samurai, and Valkyries,
  have a little more trouble with some magic items
* put some more monsters in the data file to look up during the game
* put in a message when monsters flee
* undead and demonic pets will step on cursed items

Additions
---------
* new classes! 'N'ecromancers and 'G'nomes!
* new spells: summon undead & command undead (for necromancers, of course)
* added deep dragons, deep dragon scale mail; cloaks, rings & amulets of
  drain resistance
* added devas, Planetars, made Solars harder
* added spined & bearded devils
* added babau, bar-lgura, chasme, and nabassu demons
* added giant badgers (gnome pet)
* added the Temple of Moloch & Sunless Sea, new special levels
* made traps & altars color-coded
* added abandoned food shops gone wild & cockatrice nests
* made some more interesting results to human sacrifice by Chaotics
* added a couple of more Gauntlet messages

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Things that were fixed in release #4 (3/8/96)

Bugs
----
* Fixed crash caused by a god-given angelic pet
* Fixed a bug that kept soldiers & shopkeepers from having armor & K-rations
* Eating a master mind flayer increases intelligence.
* Fixed a crash bug with kicking (only happened in UNIX... :<)
* Fixed a bug with monks getting artifacts from sacrificing.

Adjustments
-----------
* You gain hit points faster -- 1.5 as fast as in release 3 for a 25
  constitution, and the lower constitution doesn't drop the speed as fast
  as it did.
* Fixed a bug with hp regeneration rounding.
* Artifacts hit as magical weapons 2 plusses better than listed.
* Made monsters that need magic weapons to hit strike as those magic weapons.
* Lightsabers can hit anything.
* Made candles more common and cheaper.
* Made getting pets less likely and artifacts more likely from sacrificing.
* Made low level bones files (levels 2, 3, etc.) less common.
* Made altars a lot more common, because they won't appear on special
  levels.
* Made level draining less likely to work, and magic resistance helps
  to protect from it (not 100%, though)
* Made the nethack directory in nethack.cnf default to '.'

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Things that were fixed in release #3: (2/26/96)

Bugs
----
* Fixed a bug with regeneration.
* Won't allow you to put worn items into the quiver.
* Fireballs will burn away slime.
* The beholder and catoblepas's death gazes do not affect undead creatures.

Adjustments
-----------
* Added release number to intro screen.
* Added "Levitate" to bottom line when levitating.
* Fixed up some of the special levels a little.
* Made monster-carried items a little rarer.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Things that were fixed in release #2: (2/18/96)

* The source is available, and named slashsrc.zip.

* If there are more bugs uncovered, the exes will continue as slash3, slash4,
  slash 5, etc. The source will consist of the affected files only, though,
  and will be named slashsr2, slashsr3, etc.

Important things (bugs)
-----------------------
* Would crash (divide by zero) after level 24... now fixed.
* Special warnings (like with Sting or Undead Slayers) fixed to show
  right monsters.
* The beholder had a "head". Not now...
* Engraving with a wand of fireballs gave the wrong message --
  "this is a wand of fire!"
* Included dos4gw.exe in zip file.


Less important things (adjustments)
-----------------------------------
* Pets won't attack gas spores very often.
* Quicklings armor class worsened considerably. (easier to hit them)
* Changed the container interface back to standard NH 3.1.1.
* Confirmed that Magicbane seems to work ok.
* Made a message for the wand of slow monster.




Old readme file
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to SLASH, the ridiculously bloated successor to Nethack++!

But first, a short history of the life of Nethack++ and SLASH-Hack:

One day, a long long time ago (~1991 or 92, I forget...), nobody played
NetHack 3.11, because it hadn't been released. Us Nethack-Junkies (tm)
played NetHack 3.0j, which had been out for a Very Long Time, and
we were getting good at the game. Good enough, in fact that two of us,
me (Tom) and my roommate (Yuval) decided one day to download the source
and start messing around with it, adding monsters, items, and all sorts of
stuff.

After a while, we decided that we Really Had Something here and decided to
upload it to an ftp site, and told everyone on rec.games.nethack about
our bloated creation, henceforth called NetHack++!

We were immediately swamped with mail demanding Our Secrets, for many people
thought we had miraculously ported NetHack 3.0j to C++!

In a flash, we re-named our creation NetHack--.

Meanwhile, the elusive DevTeam must have been chuckling up a storm, for not
one month later, NetHack 3.1 appeared, and our moment of glory was gone.

Time passes...
You feel a yearning for your distant homeland...

Eventually, however, some people ascended in Nethack 3.11, and people were
getting restless again, and someone named Chris decided to port the changes
Yuval and I made to Nethack 3.0j to Nethack 3.11, creating Nethack--
all over again, but better, because monsters could now use stuff and so
forth.

Then Nethack-The Next Generation appeared, and it was cool.

Meanwhile, I was busy puttering away on my personal version of Nethack 3.11,
adding things here and there, such as Firemen, Musicians, and wands of
fireballs -- you know.

Then Nethack Plus, by some guy named Stephen White, appeared, and it was
cool. And it had neat new classes, like Monks, and Lycanthropes,
and Doppelgangers!

So I downloaded the source and changed it all over again (a third time)
into SLASH-Hack!

Then the second version of Nethack Plus appeared, with weapon skills, and
other stuff.

And this time, I said "Screw it!", and I was not about to change everything
a fourth time.

So SLASH-Hack progressed, and time passed, and it was soon April of 1995.
And I decided to use Watcom C, because it was neat. And one day, just
as the Last Bug had been fixed, and I was about to do the final compile,
instead of typing 'del *.obj', I typed 'del *.c'.

And there was much gnashing of teeth.

I whipped out ol' trusty Norton Unerase and got almost everything back,
except for mhitu.c, uhitm.c, zap.c, and do.c

So I gave up changing things, not about to re-create everything that was
different and cool.

And I played the Right Before the Final Compile for a few months.

And I said to myself, "Hey, this is actually sorta cool."

And I thought, "Maybe I _could_ recreate the last few changes."

So, I did. Eventually.

From memory, here is the new stuff:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
SPOILERS!
SPOILERS!
SPOILERS!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The changes from Nethack Plus, except for:
   * you _can_ wish for artifacts, except there is a chance it doesn't work
   * the hit point regeneration is completely changed, and is now
     based on your Con and Max Hp. A side affect of this is a ring/amulet
     of regeneration is not so easily identified, because it doubles your
     healing rate, and that may or may not be 1 point/turn.
   * the magic-weapon-to-hit-a-monster thing is still in there, but
     significantly toned down
   * the Doppelganger no longer prompts you "want to change (y/n)?" every
     couple of dozen turns. This drove me up the wall! If you want to
     polymorph, use alt-Y and 10 energy.

About 150 new monsters. Some of the more, um, interesting ones:
   * rot worm -- Causes sickness, and is a low level monster. Fortunately,
     it's kinda slow. Unfortunately, it hides under things.
   * rhambusun -- Has a paralyzation gaze (lasts for only a couple of turns)
   * pyrolisk -- Has a fire-damage gaze
   * green slime -- Touch causes you to slowly turn into slime unless you
     burn it away.

The grand ol' list:
   a: snow ant, yellow jacket, tsetse fly, giant wasp, black wasp,
      army ant, spitting beetle, assassin bug, killer beetle
   b: jiggling blob, lava blob, crackling blob, burbling blob
   c: chickatrice, pyrolisk
   d: dingo, fox, coyote, pit bull, rabid wolf, hyena, wolverine,
      shadow wolf, mist wolf, death dog
   e: glowing eye, flaming sphere, shocking sphere, bloodshot eye,
      blinking eye, beholder, gas spore
   f: lynx, panther, werepanther, weretiger, sabre-toothed cat,
      displacer beast, hellcat, caterwaul, kamadan
   g: galltrit, jermlaine
   h: dwarf thief, duergar, master mind flayer, gnoll
   i: dretch, rutterkin, nupperibo, blood imp, larva
   j: red jelly, orange jelly, black jelly
   k: swamp kobold, rock kobold, kobold wizard, kobold warrior, Kroo
   l: leprechaun wizard, brownie, quickling, pixie
   n: Aphrodite
   o: orc, war orc, great orc, Grund, snow orc, demon orc
   p: glass piercer, roper
   q: scramper, squealer, mangler, mastodon, Jumbo, juggernaut, catoblepas
   r: rabbit, black rat, pack rat, rabid rabbit, hellrat, the Rat King
   s: centipede, recluse spider, barking spider, nickelpede,
      giant scorpion, Girtab, Shelob, werespider, carrion crawler,
      phase spider
   u: nightmare
   w: maggot, dung worm, acid worm, tunnel worm, rot worm, bloodworm
   x: arc bug, spark bug, lightning bug
   y: red light, blue light
   A: Solar
   B: rhumbat, athol, hellbat, mongbat, mobat, harpy
   D: shimmering dragon, silver dragon, wyvern, hydra
   F: disgusting mold, black mold
   G: gnome thief, deep gnome, gnome warrior, Ruggo
   H: storm giant, the Largest Giant
   I: sneaker, squeaker
   J: vorpal jabberwock
   L: arch-lich, Vecna
   M: troll mummy
   O: ogre mage, shadow ogre
   P: moldy pudding, green slime
   S: king cobra, weresnake, asphynx
   T: black troll, two-headed troll
   U: water hulk
   V: vampire mage
   W: wight
   Y: monkey
   Z: ghoul, ghast
   ': gargoyle
   @: mugger, thief, character classes (at all different levels),
      jackalwere, gibberling, grimlock, drow
    : shadow
   &: efreeti, dao, marid
   ;: shark, giant crab
   :: gila monster, salamander, rhaumbusun, basilisk, komodo dragon

There are new spells for the monsters to cast, and they will use a lot of the
new items, so be careful of the original monsters as well!

I tried to color the new monsters appropriately, and colored people
according to their clothing. There are some duplicated colors, now, though,
so be careful.

The characters are colored now, according to their preferred dress, so
the Tourist is purple, Elf green, Rogue black, Wizard blue, and so on.
Call me stupid, but this helps remind me which class I am, since I die
so often...

Pets only pick up 5 gold pieces out of a pile, and won't pick up a whole
bunch of arrows.

New terrain types: graves (you can 'r'ead the headstone, or dig it up)
		   toilets (um, you can sit, kick, drink, all sorts of stuff)

New artifacts, like the Eye/Hand of Vecna. I wouldn't use either one of
these too often, if I were you. There's also Mirrorbright the silver shield,
Whisperfeet the speed boots, and Deluder the displacement cloak. Also,
a bunch of weapons, which I don't remember too well.

Buncha special levels, like the Rat King level, the Kobold King level, Orc
level, Giant level, spider level, etc. Some are side-dungeons, others
aren't.

New rooms, like a Real Zoo (with zoo-like monsters), Leprechaun Throne Room,
Giant Throne Room, and stuff like that.

Buncha items. I remember these:

armor: silver dragon scale mail (reflection)
       shimmering dragon scale mail (displacement)
       gauntlets of swimming
       cloak of poisonousness (don't wear this)
       lab coat (poison res)
       asbestos jacket, fire helmet  (left over from my Fireman class)
       kicking boots

amulets: regeneration
	 conflict
	 polymorph

rings:   free action (no paralyzing! cool item!)
	 gain Con/Dex/Wis/Int
	 sleeping

potions: full healing
	 invulnerability (for a few turns, anyway)
	 polymorph
	 clairvoyance
	 ESP
	 fire resistance

wands:   healing
	 fear
	 extra healing
	 create horde (don't use this, unless you're studly)
	 fireball (fortunately, monsters won't zap this one because I
		   couldn't get it to work right)

Good luck, and try not to get killed by a horde of snow orcs!