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Nethack Settings for OS X

November 22nd, 2008
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There is now an update to this post.

This is a quick tutorial post for anyone requiring convenient pre-configured Nethack Files. Nethack comes from a tradition of Hack’n'slash adventure games known as Roguelikes. They are similar to text based adventures in that, originally, grapics were rendered using ASCII characters. This is still a popular way to play the games. This is the end of the similarity, though, as the gameplay is more like that of Dungeons & Dragons or other Role Playing Games.

Personally, I enjoy using ASCII graphics because I think it makes the games more readable, imaginative and because nicely rendered fonts just look better than tiny 16×16 tiles. (How can a mighty dragon be crammed into a small 16×16 bitmap?)

Nethack in Terminal.app

Nethack in Terminal.app

So, here are some things I have done to pretty up Nethack a bit for OS X. Many other people, I’m sure, use a similar setup, and many others probably differ. For added convenience I’ll include my configuration files for download.

  1. Build Nethack from source. There is a good tutorial for this on the Nethack Wiki
  2. Apply the following Source Code patches: hpmon, Menucolors and rebuild. (They provide groovy abilities like menu highlighting for easy reading)
  3. Download a copy of my .nethackrc to configure- this already has decent settings for Menucolors and well as some traditional options: (keybindings, graphics mode, etc). You can get the file here: nethackrc (save it into your home directory as .nethackrc)
  4. Make a custom Terminal.app config ad export it. I use Monaco 18pt font, no-blink cursor, autorun /usr/games/nethack. You can grab a copy of this file here: nethack
Hopefully this has helped a little in setting up classic command line Nethack on OS X (and making it look a little prettier).

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  1. Alexandre Gravier
    November 4th, 2009 at 18:00 | #1
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    Thank you Stuart.

    For the record, my gcc 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5490) doesn’t like the Menucolors patch, and hence the corresponding options have to be removed from Stuart’s .nethackrc but I still end up with a very playable version of the best game in the universe.

  2. Stuart
    November 13th, 2009 at 16:11 | #2
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    I also had problems with Menucolor but after reading your comment I went back and visited it again. Here’s an update where I have applied the menucolor and a new status color patch.

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