SLASHEM(6)                                             SLASHEM(6)



NAME
       slashem - Exploring The Mazes of Menace

SYNOPSIS
       slashem [ -d directory ] [ -n ] [ -p profession (role) ] [
       -r race ] [ -g gender ] [ -a alignment ] [ -[DX]  ]  [  -u
       playername ] [ -dec ] [ -ibm ]
       slashem  [ -d directory ] -s [ -v ] [ -p profession (role)
       ] [ -r race ] [ -g gender ] [ -a alignment ] [ maxrank ] [
       playernames ]

DESCRIPTION
       SLASH'EM  is  a  display oriented Dungeons & Dragons(tm) -
       like game.  The standard tty display and command structure
       resemble  rogue.   It is an extension of SLASH which is an
       extension of NetHack.

       Other, more graphical display options  exist  if  you  are
       using either a PC, or an X11 interface.

       To  get started you really only need to know two commands.
       The command ?  will give you a list of the available  com­
       mands  (as  well  as  other information) and the command /
       will identify the things you see on the screen.

       To win the game (as opposed  to  merely  playing  to  beat
       other  people's high scores) you must locate the Amulet of
       Yendor which is somewhere below the 20th level of the dun­
       geon  and  get it out.  Nobody has achieved this yet; any­
       body who does will probably go down in history as  a  hero
       among heros.

       When  the  game  ends, whether by your dying, quitting, or
       escaping from the caves, SLASH'EM will give you  (a  frag­
       ment of) the list of top scorers.  The scoring is based on
       many aspects of your behavior, but  a  rough  estimate  is
       obtained  by taking the amount of gold you've found in the
       cave plus four times  your  (real)  experience.   Precious
       stones  may  be  worth  a  lot of gold when brought to the
       exit.  There is a 10% penalty for getting yourself killed.

       The  environment  variable  SLASHEMOPTIONS  can be used to
       initialize many run-time options.  The ? command  provides
       a  description of these options and syntax.  (The -dec and
       -ibm command line options are equivalent to the  decgraph­
       ics  and ibmgraphics run-time options described there, and
       are provided purely for convenience on systems  supporting
       multiple types of terminals.)

       Because  the  option  list  can be very long (particularly
       when specifying graphics characters), options may also  be
       included  in a configuration file.  The default is located
       in your home directory and named .slashemrc on  Unix  sys­
       tems.   On  other  systems,  the default may be different,
       usually SLASHEM.cnf.  In DOS and MS-Windows  the  name  is
       defaults.nh, while on the Macintosh or BeOS, it is SlashEM
       Defaults.  The configuration file's location may be speci­
       fied  by  setting SLASHEMOPTIONS to a string consisting of
       an @ character followed by the filename.

       The -u playername option supplies the answer to the  ques­
       tion  "Who  are  you?".   It  overrides  any name from the
       options or configuration file, USER,  LOGNAME,  or  getlo­
       gin(), which will otherwise be tried in order.  If none of
       these provides a useful name, the player will be asked for
       one.   Player names (in conjunction with uids) are used to
       identify save files, so you can have several  saved  games
       under  different  names.   Conversely,  you  must  use the
       appropriate player name to restore a saved game.

       A playername suffix or a separate  option,  -p  profession
       can  be  used  to  determine  the character role.  You can
       specify either the male or female name for  the  character
       role,  or  the  first  three  characters of the role as an
       abbreviation.   -p  @  has  been  retained  to  explicitly
       request  that  a random role be chosen.  It may need to be
       quoted with a backslash (\@) if @ is the "kill"  character
       (see  "stty")  for  the  terminal, in order to prevent the
       current input line from being cleared.

       Likewise, -r race can be used to explicitly request that a
       race be chosen, -g gender the gender of the chareacter and
       finally -a alignment to chose the alignment of the charac­
       ter.

       Leaving out any of these will result in you being prompted
       during the game startup for the information.

       Instead of chosing the above seperately you can  add  them
       as  suffixes  to  the  playername: -u playername-race-gen­
       der-alignment

       The -s option alone will print out the list of your scores
       on  the  current  version.   An  immediately  following -v
       reports on all versions present in the score file.  The -s
       may be also be followed by player type arguments ( -p , -r
       , -g and -a ) to print the scores of particular  types  of
       players  only.   It  may  also  be followed by one or more
       player names to print the scores of the players mentioned,
       by  'all' to print out all scores, or by a number to print
       that many top scores.

       The -n option suppresses printing of  any  news  from  the
       game administrator.

       The  -D or -X option will start the game in a special non-
       scoring discovery mode.  -D will, if  the  player  is  the
       game  administrator,  start  in  debugging  (wizard)  mode
       instead.

       The -d option, which must be  the  first  argument  if  it
       appears,  supplies  a  directory  which is to serve as the
       playground.  It overrides the value from NETHACKDIR, HACK­
       DIR,  or the directory specified by the game administrator
       during compilation (usually /usr/local/slashemdir).   This
       option  is  usually only useful to the game administrator.
       The playground must contain several auxiliary  files  such
       as help files, the list of top scorers, and a subdirectory
       save where games are saved.

AUTHORS
       Jay Fenlason (+ Kenny Woodland, Mike Thome and Jon  Payne)
       wrote the original hack, very much like rogue (but full of
       bugs).

       Andries Brouwer continuously deformed their  sources  into
       an entirely different game.

       Mike  Stephenson  has continued the perversion of sources,
       adding various warped character classes and sadistic traps
       with  the  help  of many strange people who reside in that
       place between the worlds, the Usenet Zone.   A  number  of
       these  miscreants  are immortalized in the historical roll
       of dishonor and various other places.

       The resulting mess is now called NetHack,  to  denote  its
       development  by the Usenet.  Andries Brouwer has made this
       request for the distinction, as he may eventually  release
       a new version of his own.

       Tom  Proudfoot  took  NetHack and rendered it into SLASH -
       SuperLotsaAddedStuffHack,  adding more character  classes,
       levels monsters and all manner of changes.

       Warren  Cheung  took  SLASH and rendered it into SLASHEM -
       SuperLotsaAddedStuffHack  -  Extended  Magic,   with  more
       improvements to the bloated behemoth.

FILES
       All    files    are    in    the    playground,   normally
       /usr/local/slashemdir.  If DLB was defined during the com­
       pile,  the  data files and special levels will be inside a
       larger file, normally nhdat,  instead  of  being  separate
       files.
       slashem                     The program itself.
       data, oracles, rumors       Data files used by SLASH'EM.
       options, quest.dat          More data files.
       help, hh                    Help data files.
       cmdhelp, opthelp, wizhelp   More help data files.
       *.lev                       Predefined special levels.
       dungeon                     Control  file for special lev­
       els.
       history                     A short history of SLASH'EM.
       license                     Rules  governing   redistribu­
       tion.
       record                      The list of top scorers.
       logfile                     An extended list of games
                                   played.
       xlock.nnn                   Description   of   a   dungeon
       level.
       perm                        Lock file for xlock.dd.
       bonesDD.nn                  Descriptions of the ghost and
                                   belongings of a deceased
                                   adventurer.
       save                        A subdirectory containing the
                                   saved games.

ENVIRONMENT
       USER or LOGNAME      Your login name.
       HOME                 Your home directory.
       SHELL                Your shell.
       TERM                 The type of your terminal.
       HACKPAGER or PAGER   Replacement for default pager.
       MAIL                 Mailbox file.
       MAILREADER           Replacement for default reader
                            (probably        /bin/mail         or
       /usr/ucb/mail).
       NETHACKDIR           Playground.
       SLASHEMOPTIONS       String predefining several SLASH'EM
                            options.

       In  addition, SHOPTYPE is used in debugging (wizard) mode.

SEE ALSO
       dgn_comp(6), lev_comp(6), recover(6)

BUGS
       Probably infinite.



       Dungeons & Dragons is a Trademark of TSR Inc.



                         23 December 2000              SLASHEM(6)
