Devnull Tribute
/dev/null/nethack Tribute Tournament was a NetHack tournament that took place in November 2017. It was organized as a one time replacement for the /dev/null/nethack tournament that was retired by its organizer Krystal in mid-September 2017, intended as "one last" /dev/null/nethack to conclude the long tradition of the tournament before it was replaced by a different tournament running in the same time slot.
What remained the same
- The timeframe was the same; the tournament ran from November 1st, 00:00 PDT (07:00 UTC) to December 1st, 00:00 PST (08:00 UTC).
- The tournament had the same in-game challenges as /dev/null/nethack.
- The same trophies were used.
- Clans, and their associated Best in Show trophy, worked the same way.
- Multiple servers were available.
- Bot announcements were available on relevant channels (#devnull_nethack and #hardfought.org) within the old Freenode IRC network (now Libera), although a different bot was used.
What changed
- The tournament ran on NetHack 3.6.0, rather than NetHack 3.4.3 (using effectively the same patches in each case).
- dgamelaunch was used as the game management front end, allowing for spectating and ttyrec recording.
- The scoreboard was rewritten from scratch.
- Game dumps were available (via the scoreboard).
Game servers
| server name | location | how to connect |
|---|---|---|
| hardfought.org | US East | ssh nethack@hardfought.org |
| eu.hardfought.org | Europe (UK) | ssh nethack@eu.hardfought.org |
| e6.alt.org | US West | ssh nethack@e6.alt.org |
| au.hardfought.org | Australia (Sydney) | ssh nethack@au.hardfought.org |
The first server (hardfought.org) was the master server where players registered their accounts; the other two remote servers synced the accounts from the main server (once per minute), and did not allow registrations themselves. Configuration files (rcfiles) were not synced automatically, but the dgamelaunch menu on each remote server could be used to copy the rcfile from the master server. There was also a web-based rcfile editor available at https://www.hardfought.org/nethack/rcedit/rcedit-dn36, which was the recommended way to create a configuration file. The state of challenges was shared between the servers.
Contacts
At the time of the tournament, the best way to contact the tournament organisers was via the #devnull_nethack or #hardfought channels on the Freenode IRC network. (Nowadays, #hardfought is almost certainly a better choice.)
