Forum:Question about "optional" features

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What does it mean when something "may be compiled out the game"? Does this mean that there are versions of NetHack out there without important and prominent game elements such as sinks, Kops, Elbereth and the entire Tourist role? What's the purpose of this? Does this mean that these elements are optional? How does one go about disabling or enabling them? It doesn't seem possible from the config file. ..and sort of a secondary question: why would these options be present to begin with? I don't really get it. Why would you single out Tourists in particular? Why is one not able to 'compile out' Monks or Archeologists or whatever else? And ...why sinks? Why not fountains or treasure zoos or the Oracle or anything else that may or may not be present in the Mazes of Menace? It seems so bizarre and oddly specific, and I've never seen a proper explanation of this. Even in the official instruction file that comes with the game, it's only given a passing mention when it has to clarify that sinks only appear "if your dungeon has sinks" and things like that. Very confusing. 86.145.203.49 15:55, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

If I had to guess, it's because of the weird tech levels that these things imply. The Tourist (and associated items- Hawaiian shirt, expensive camera, credit card) and the sink (Which implies modern plumbing of a level above fountains) are both of more modern technology, and the Tourist itself is even a massive reference to Discworld in how it's applied- this kind of thing, as well as the Keystone Kops being kind of insanely goofy, might take away immersion that people have by being of a different type of fantasy than the remainder of the game.

Elbereth is a weird feature that people might not know about anyway. No real reason I can think of for that one other than "making the game harder".

--Aitherion (talk) 17:01, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

The features in question are set in the source's configuration header before compiling; you can change whether they're present or not via editing include/config.h. Some variants allow you to set them via command-line options when compiling (Slash'EM, UnNetHack) or (for some of the options) in-game (NitroHack, NetHack 4). (Interestingly, SCORE_ON_BOTL is off by default; autopickup exceptions are also off by default but that's because the devteam weren't confident that that code worked properly.) Ais523 (talk) 17:12, 20 August 2013 (UTC)