User:Ray Chason

I am a software developer in Columbia, MD, USA.

My NetHack credentials:

• My first game was in late 1988; the then-current version was NetHack 2.3e.
• I have ascended at least once in every class except Knight, including the pre-3.3.0 Elf class.
• Alas, I still have yet to ascend in any 3.0 version, even as a Valkyrie. These, to put it briefly, have much of the modern bestiary, but provide few of the modern resources to contend with them.
• These days, I'm as much a NetHack hacker as a NetHack player:
  • I published the Hell Patch, which I've got to get around to updating someday.
  • I brought a Spanish translation out of the realm of wouldn't-it-be-nice, though being a Gringo, I am by no means the only participant in this project.
  • For those of you who play TTY in Windows, I am the "ray" in nhraykey.dll. (Alas, this also means I am personally responsible for bug W343-4.) This was a back-port of some of the stuff I did for Spanish NetHack to improve the workings of non-USA keyboards.
• As a sort of freelance NetHack archeologist, I uncovered the PDP-11 and PC/IX ports of a pre-Brouwer Hack and also the UNI87A archive that made Hack 1.0.2 whole again.

I am presently writing up some earlier variants of NetHack, in particular those ancestral to SLASH'EM.