1HACK(6) BSD Games Manual HACK(6)
2
4 hack — exploring The Dungeons of Doom
5
7 hack [-d directory] [-n] [-u playername]
8 hack [-d directory] [-s] [-X] [playername ...]
9
11 hack is a display oriented dungeons & dragons-like game. Both display
12 and command structure resemble rogue. (For a game with the same struc‐
13 ture but entirely different display - a real cave instead of dull rectan‐
14 gles - try Quest.)
15 To get started you really only need to know two commands. The command ?
17 will give you a list of the available commands and the command / will
18 identify the things you see on the screen.
19 To win the game (as opposed to merely playing to beat other people's high
21 scores) you must locate the Amulet of Yendor which is somewhere below the
22 20th level of the dungeon and get it out. Nobody has achieved this yet
23 and if somebody does, he will probably go down in history as a hero among
24 heroes.
25 When the game ends, either by your death, when you quit, or if you escape
27 from the caves, hack will give you (a fragment of) the list of top scor‐
28 ers. The scoring is based on many aspects of your behavior but a rough
29 estimate is obtained by taking the amount of gold you've found in the
30 cave plus four times your (real) experience. Precious stones may be
31 worth a lot of gold when brought to the exit. There is a 10% penalty for
32 getting yourself killed.
33 The administration of the game is kept in the directory specified with
35 the -d option, or, if no such option is given, in the directory specified
36 by the environment variable HACKDIR, or, if no such variable exists, in
37 the current directory. This same directory contains several auxiliary
38 files such as lockfiles and the list of topscorers and a subdirectory
39 save where games are saved. The game administrator may however choose to
40 install hack with a fixed playing ground, usually /var/games/hack.
41 The -n option suppresses printing of the news.
43 The -u playername option supplies the answer to the question "Who are
45 you?". When playername has as suffix one of -T, -S, -K, -F, -C, or -W,
46 then this supplies the answer to the question "What kind of character ...
47 ?".
48 The -s option will print out the list of your scores. It may be followed
50 by arguments -X where X is one of the letters C, F, K, S, T, W to print
51 the scores of Cavemen, Fighters, Knights, Speleologists, Tourists or Wiz‐
52 ards. It may also be followed by one or more player names to print the
53 scores of the players mentioned.
54
56 Jay Fenlason (+ Kenny Woodland, Mike Thome and Jon Payne) wrote the orig‐
57 inal hack, very much like rogue (but full of bugs).
58 Andries Brouwer continuously deformed their sources into the current ver‐
59 sion - in fact an entirely different game.
60
62 hack The hack program.
63 data, rumors Data files used by hack.
64 help, hh Help data files.
65 record The list of topscorers.
66 save A subdirectory containing the saved games.
67 bones_dd Descriptions of the ghost and belongings of a
68 deceased adventurer.
69 xlock.dd Description of a dungeon level.
70 safelock Lock file for xlock.
71 record_lock Lock file for record.
72
74 USER or LOGNAME Your login name.
75 HOME Your home directory.
76 SHELL Your shell.
77 TERM The type of your terminal.
78 HACKPAGER, PAGER Pager used instead of default pager.
79 MAIL Mailbox file.
80 MAILREADER Reader used instead of default (probably
81 /usr/bin/mail).
82 HACKDIR Playground.
83 HACKOPTIONS String predefining several hack options (see
84 help file).
85 Several other environment variables are used in debugging (wizard) mode,
87 like GENOCIDED, INVENT, MAGIC and SHOPTYPE.
88
90 Probably infinite. Mail complaints to mcvax!aeb .
91BSD March 31, 1985 BSD