Nethack in Rockbox?

[Laertes]

Hi,

I've just discovered and installed Rockbox in my iRiver H320 (using wine   ) and I was wondering if Nethack  works with it. I made a few searchs in the forum and I didn't find anything about it.

Thanks.

[bluebrother]

I don't know of any existing plugin for nethack but I'm pretty sure it would work -- it only needs someone interested enough in it to actually start coding ;-)

[Laertes]

That would be great! I'm not coder myself, but I could help if anyone tries it. Do you think I should write a feature request?

[Rincewind]

that would be a really cool plugin!

If someone wants to start coding, I would like to help, but I don't have enough spare time to do it on my own (especially for the initial work).

I don't know if a feature request helps to get this started. Just keep the discussion running here.

If you want to help, you could try to find a version of nethack that was ported to a small screen/mobile device and gather as much information as possible. I think I read somewhere that there is one for the playstation portable.

[theli]

i would definitly happy if someone ports nethack to rockbox
i once started to port it by myself but was not very confident with rockbox's source at that time and after some time abandoned that project .. unfortunately i now have all source lost...

i would like to help anyone who starts to work on it, though i can't start this by myself as i work on zxbox and atari 2600 emulator for now

[Laertes]

So it seems that there is a few people interested. I would like to help but as I've said I can't code, but I can do any other thing needed. I think it's a good idea to keep the discussion running here as Rincewind suggests. Maybe we can assemble a little group to work on it.

[RaeNye]

A first step would be to create a feature request on flyspray.

If you happen to find a GPL/PD implementation (i.e., sources), add this as a comment to the request.

[theli]

btw can anyone say whether it is compatible with GPL2?

http://nethack.org/common/license.html

[lachlan]

This would be great, I hope it picks up some momentum.

[tucoz]

I think a nethack port would be perfectly possible, but what about the number of keys used when playing nethack? Would this be possible to solve on the rather limited input keys mp3-players have?
I haven't played nethack that much, so i am not sure if there are some alternative ways of controlling it. Maybe through a context menu?

Martin

[tucoz]

btw can anyone say whether it is compatible with GPL2?

http://nethack.org/common/license.html

I think it is compatible with GPL, from the nethack licence. No licence expert though.

Stated plainly: You are permitted to modify NetHack, or otherwise use parts of NetHack, provided that you comply with the conditions specified above; in particular, your modified NetHack or program containing parts of NetHack must remain freely available as provided in this License Agreement. In other words, go ahead and share NetHack, but don't try to stop anyone else from sharing it farther.

[Rincewind]

I think a nethack port would be perfectly possible, but what about the number of keys used when playing nethack? Would this be possible to solve on the rather limited input keys mp3-players have?
I haven't played nethack that much, so i am not sure if there are some alternative ways of controlling it. Maybe through a context menu?

Martin

It is long ago since I last played nethack, but I think it should be possible to have context menus for commands. Most of the the time you are running around trying to find doors and fighting anyway.

From the Nethack FAQ:

Are you porting NetHack to Palms?
    No. Other people who've written in with information about them lead us to believe that it won't work on most models, but the largest ones *might* be able to run it, if someone wrote bridge code adapting some major NetHack assumptions. The UI would actually be the easy part -- that's split off from the rest of the code anyway. The hard part is that Palms have only memory (no disk) and a very limited heap, while NetHack is designed to run in low memory conditions by writing everything not used to disk and likes to keep those varying-but- often-large numbers of monsters and objects in the heap. A couple people have gone off to look at the exact constraints, but we haven't heard anything to suggest that actual porting has started, let alone successfully finished. Aside from advising such people on NetHack internals, and merging their port code back in should such ever appear, we have no plans in that area. Some people may be making progress.

so there could be a major problem that rockbox doesn't like dynamic memory allocation, too.
But maybe we could steal the mp3 buffer and use it as a heap... I'm not very firm at this low level, I could be completely wrong here.

[Rincewind]

some links I found googling:

Nethack port to a nokia phone:
http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~moo/nethack/

Nethack port for the Playstation portable:
http://virtuamunstaz.de/nh/

[tucoz]

I think a nethack port would be perfectly possible...

Well, after googling around, maybe not perfectly possible but possible. But the lack of a PalmOS port seems to be a measure of the difficulty to port it to a portable target. Anyway, the source code has a Porting document that could be of good help to start a port. It would be fun to have a rogue like game in rockbox.

[Wett]

I'm afraid the display is a bit too small for comfortable text reading.
Anyway, that'd be great !