For what it's worth, I've send a missive to the NetHack maintainers (via their web based "Contact Us" page) asking for clarification on the whole "licensing vs iPhone SDK restrictions".
Not promising anything, mind you, but hopefully I can get an official "yeah" or "nay".
NetHack
So I've heard back from somebody on the NetHack dev team regarding the whole license vs iPhone SDK restrictions:
So all I need now is the time when I'm not trying to crank out paying iPhone apps/updates (so if you feel like contributing to the "NetHack motivation fund", please check out my other various applications and see if there isn't something that you might like to own), and we just might see a real NetHack for the iPhone port...So there's no objection to many/most users not actually being able to
recompile, as long as they theoretically *could* if they went to enough
trouble. You have to make the source you used (derived from the NetHack
code) available so they can make the attempt; what the platform sticks in
their way is not your fault.
close!
Wow, you are moving right along. I have become quite partial to the graphic tiles in rogue, call me spoiled. I assume you would be doing the same with Nethack. I wonder if you could use the tiles from the QT nethack interface. But, then again, you might what to have your own look.
I'm planning on supporting at least one of the "popular" NetHack tile sets, possibly more (the one used for Rogue is based on a tile set for Angband, actually). But initially getting the "ascii" version working is the first step (throwing the "character graphics" on top of that was actually quite simple - many, but not all, parts of NetHack are designed with a complete independence to the output device and platform, so tweaking the ascii output to use the equivalence of "dos characters" was easy. Note, of course, the phrase "many, but not all")
Ultimately I want it to work a lot like Rogue - landscape gives you mono-spaced 80x24 ascii (or character graphics if you enable them), portrait gives you a tile view + proportional labels, etc...
It is still a long ways from usefully playable (for example, no inventory support is available yet, character creation is purely random, no save). Still, you can walk around, kill stuff, and get bogged down with everything you walk past.
Ultimately I want it to work a lot like Rogue - landscape gives you mono-spaced 80x24 ascii (or character graphics if you enable them), portrait gives you a tile view + proportional labels, etc...
It is still a long ways from usefully playable (for example, no inventory support is available yet, character creation is purely random, no save). Still, you can walk around, kill stuff, and get bogged down with everything you walk past.
Even if it were ready for release today, it wouldn't make it through AppStore approval by Christmas. And unfortunately, it isn't ready for release (unfortunately, this is has to be worked on in the "unpaid free time"). However, I have been making slow but steady progress, though I'm about to break pretty much everything and do some refactoring that will allow the core app to be shared better between Rogue, NetHack, and potentially other rogue-likes...
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occamrazor
- Posts: 4
- Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2008 10:35 am
