Hack is a display oriented dungeons & dragons - like game.
Both display and command structure resemble rogue.
(For a game with the same structure but entirely different display -
a real cave instead of dull rectangles - try Quest)
Hack was originally written by Jay Fenlason (at lincolnsudbury:
29 East St., Sudbury Mass., 01776) with help from
Kenny Woodland, Mike Thome and Jon Payne.
Basically it was an implementation of Rogue, however, with 52+ instead of 26
monster types.
The current version is more than thrice as large (with such new features as
the dog, the long worms, the shops, etc.) and almost entirely rewritten
(only the display routines are the original ones - I must rewrite these
too one day; especially when you are blind strange things still happen).
Files for hack:
hack The actual game
record Top 100 list (just start with an empty file)
news Tells about recent changes in hack, or bugs found ...
(Just start with no news file.)
data Auxiliary file used by hack to give you the names
and sometimes some more information on the
objects and monsters.
help Introductory information (no doubt outdated).
hh Compactified version of help.
perm An empty file used for locking purposes.
rumors Texts for fortune cookies.
(Some of these contain information on the game,
others are just plain stupid. Additional rumors
are appreciated.)
hack.sh A shell script.
(We have hack.sh in /usr/games/hack and
hack in /usr/games/lib/hackdir/hack and all the other
hack stuff in /usr/games/lib/hackdir - perhaps this
will make the script clear.
There is no need for you to use it.)
READ_ME This file.
Original_READ_ME Jay Fenlason's READ_ME
System files used:
/etc/termcap Used in conjunction with the environment variable
$TERM.
/bin/cat
/usr/ucb/more
/bin/sh Used when $SHELL is undefined.
How to install hack:
0. Compile the sources. Perhaps you should first look at the file config.h
and define BSD if you are on a BSDtype system,
define STUPID if your C-compiler chokes on complicated expressions.
Make sure schar and uchar represent signed and unsigned types.
If your C compiler doesnt allow initialization of bit fields
change Bitfield. When config.h looks reasonable, say 'make'.
(Perhaps you have to change TERMLIB in the makefile.)
1. If it didnt exist already, introduce a loginname `play' .
2. The program hack resides in a directory so that it is executable
for everybody and is suid play:
---s--s--x 1 play 206848 Apr 3 00:17 hack
Perhaps you wish to restrict playing to certain hours, or have games
running under nice; in that case you might write a program play.c
such that the program play is suid play and executable for everybody
while all the games in /usr/games are readable or executable for
play only; all the program play does is asking for the name of a game,
checking that time-of-day and system load do not forbid playing,
and then executing the game. Thus:
-r-sr-sr-x 1 play 13312 May 24 12:52 play
---x------ 1 play 206848 Apr 3 00:17 hack
If you are worried about security you might let play do
chroot("/usr/games") so that no player can get access to the rest
of the system via shell escapes and the likes.
If you #define SECURE in config.h then hack will not setuid(getuid())
before executing a chdir(). Hack will always do setuid(getuid()) with
a fork. If you do not define UNIX then hack will not fork.
3. The rest of the stuff belonging to hack sits in a subdirectory hackdir
(on our system /usr/games/lib/hackdir) with modes
drwx------ 3 play 1024 Aug 9 09:03 hackdir
Here all the temporary files will be created (with names like xlock.17
or user.5).
4. If you are not really short on file space, creating a subdirectory
hackdir/save (modes again drwx------) will enable users to save their
unfinished games.
The program hack is called
$ hack [-d hackdir] [maxnrofplayers]
(for playing) or
$ hack [-d hackdir] -s [listofusers | limit | all]
(for seeing part of the scorelist).
The shell file hack (in this kit called hack.sh) takes care of
calling hack with the right arguments.
Send complaints, bug reports, suggestions for improvements to
mcvax!aeb - in real life Andries Brouwer.
