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# 2025-08-02 - NetHack & DawnHack Tileset
Recently i discovered two fun NetHack items on the Internet Archive.
# 1993 Japanese NetHack Guidebook With Anime Style Art
NetHack Guidebook Cover Page
I cannot read Japanese. I like this guidebook for its anime style
art. The art looks reminiscent of the amateur sketches in the
original D&D manuals. It includes all of the character classes,
monsters, item types, and spreads of various special weapons and
items. I was surprised by the quantity of drawings. I found it
charming that the artists had extensive NetHack knowledge.
NetHack Guidebook (Download the COMPRESSED version)
# DawnHack NetHack JRPG Style Tileset
DawnHack Screenshot
DawnHack is a JRPG style tileset for NetHack. This gives a very
different "flavor" than the default tileset. I plan to use it with
the DOS port of NetHack 3.6.7.
NetHack 3.6.7 for DOS
DawnHack Tileset
The zip archive contains .BMP files for different versions of NetHack
and different tile sizes. I extracted nethack_3.6.1/dawnhack_16.bmp
and copied it into my nethack directory.
The DOS port expects an indexed 8-bit .BMP file, but this tileset
is a 24-bit .BMP file. It needs to be converted first.
To convert the file, i installed NetPBM from DJGPP.
DJGPP NetPBM
I converted the .BMP file to PPM format.
C:\nethack>bmptoppm dawnhack_16.bmp >dh24.ppm
Linux$ bmptoppm dawnhack_16.bmp >dh24.ppm
I scaled the .PPM file from 24 to 8 bit color depth.
C:\nethack>ppmquant -fs 255 dh24.ppm >dh8.ppm
Linux$ pnmquant -fs 255 dh24.ppm >dh8.ppm
The DOS port of NetHack uses the color palette from the BMP file for
the text and windowing system. When the colors are in the wrong
order, it can make the text difficult to read. I used ppmhist to
create a colormap based on the PPM. Then i hand edited the map to
reorder the colormap lines.
For the first half of the lines, i matched the colormap in
nethack_3.4.3/dawnhack_16.bmp.
For the last half of the lines, which represent grayscale colors, i
sorted from darkest to lightest luminosity.
C:\nethack>ppmhist -map dh8.ppm >dh8.map
C:\nethack>copy dh8.map dh8.bak
Linux$ ppmhist -map dh8.ppm >dh8.map
Linux$ cp dh8.map dh8.bak
I converted the PPM file to a .BMP that NetHack can use.
C:\nethack>ppmtobmp -windows -bpp=8 -mapfile=dh8.map dh8.ppm
>dawnhack.bmp
Linux$ ppmtobmp -windows -bpp=8 -mapfile=dh8.map dh8.ppm \
>dawnhack.bmp
Below is a screenshot demonstrating the results.
Cavewoman With Drum In The Gnomish Mines
Below are download links for the converted tileset and colormap.
DOS Compatible Dawnhack Tileset
Hand Edited Colormap
tags: retrocomputing
# Tags
retrocomputing
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