Yet Another New Idea

YANI is short for Yet Another New Idea, and is commonly used in the RGRN and IRC communities for NetHack to suggest new ideas to be incorporated into the game.

Description

Very, very few, if any, YANIs ever get included in the official game, unless a working patch had been provided with the YANI, in which case the chance of official incorporation is raised to slim. In variants, however, incorporation of YANIs is more common; several variants even make it a goal to implement popular YANIs.

"The artifacts need to be rebalanced" is a common one - see Artifact YANIs for details.

The NetHack Ideas Archive is a repository of YANIs posted on IRC, organized by variant, author and tags. NetHackWiki also partly acts as a repository for editors' YANIs, which can be viewed in the appropriate category.

Examples of YANIs in vanilla NetHack

While a number of YANIs were incorporated into vanilla after first being implemented in a variant, there have been a few recent ones that were incorporated directly:

• Sometime in 2017, it was suggested on IRC that the blessed scroll of fire be made target-able within a certain radius, just like the scroll of stinking cloud is. This was later added into the the-upcoming vanilla release, NetHack 3.6.1, via commit c7d13d6f.

• In 2018, Alex Smith asked on IRC for an idea for a small, easily implementable feature. Several suggestions were made, with the one that was ultimately added to NetHack 3.6.1 being oilskin sacks auto-identifying when the hero sees water slide off of them, implemented via commit 2b7b2af9.

• Several artifact YANIs are implemented as well:
  • Demonbane blocks demon gating while wielded, implemented in NetHack 3.6.1 via commit f106b578.
  • Dragonbane grants reflection while wielded, implemented in NetHack 3.6.1 via commit 06bd0d42.
  • Trollsbane prevents troll corpses from reviving while wielded, implemented in NetHack 3.6.1 via commit 14bd5504.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

• One periodically suggested idea was for the amulet of restful sleep to confer some useful property while asleep, usually greater healing so as to make the "restful" part of the name meaningful. In 2020, Paxed implemented this via commit 91c46ab5 in the form of a hungerless regeneration that stacks with ordinary regeneration while asleep with restful sleep.

• Another was allowing Fire Brand to create burnt engravings similar to a wand of fire, as seen in #4 on the YANI archive. This is implemented via commit 928677c8, with commit de31fd48 adding a comment noting this in the code proper.

• Trollsbane is improved further so that trolls killed by the artifact are marked as non-reviving, no longer requiring it to be wielded by the hero (or by any other monster, as made possible via commit 3cd45b7c). This is implemented via commit 328dc5bd and further refined in commit dd6ed502.

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"Look for other YANIs that were incorporated in the game after their suggestion. For example, Ogresmasher grants 25 constitution while wielded, and Cleaver hits up to three adjacent enemies in an arc."

Examples of YANIs in Variants

UnNetHack

• Disintegrator: The idea appeared on RGRN. 5 days later in the same thread, Nicholas Webb published a patch for this monster; it was also used in the biodiversity patch. 6 years later, bhaak included this monster in UnNetHack.
• Autounlock on containers: The YANI appeared and was unimplemented for almost a year, but once a patch was produced, it was applied to UnNetHack on the same day.

YASI

The abbreviation YASI, which stands for Yet Another Silly Idea, is sometimes used when the idea in question is impractical, ridiculous or pointless (often knowingly so, if applied by the person making the suggestion themselves). There is some amount of overlap between YASIs and Evil Patch Ideas, though most YASIs are not intended to be evil.

Small matter of programming

Small matter of programming (SMOP) might be a way of saying that a feature would be trivial to write, but can more often be an ironic way of saying that a YANI might be a good mechanic in theory, but would be a headache to code. Examples of such YANIs include:

• Hallucination gradually fades back to normal vision as the player recovers—this is successfully implemented in GruntHack, proving that SMOPs are not necessarily impossible so much as they are tedious or complicated.
• Woodchucks can pick up and throw wood golems.
• Mariliths can wield six weapons and wear six rings. Ettins can wear two helmets, two amulets, and so forth.
• Rays and projectiles can be fired at an arbitrary target square, not just vertically, horizontally and diagonally.

External links

• L's Patches via Wayback Machine, many of which incorporate common YANIs