NetHack is a roguelike game where a player must retrieve the Amulet of Yendor from the lowest level of the dungeon. Commonly played via telnet, the entire game is represented with ASCII graphics. The game is extremely challenging and requires knowledge of many game mechanics in order to succeed.
For the purposes of this challenge, assume that the entire dungeon is a single level and only 5×16 characters. Furthermore, assume that this is a "safe" dungeon or that you are only implementing a prototype—there will be no monsters, concerns about hunger, etc. In fact, you must only track the location of the character and the amulet and the game will effectively end when the player arrives at the same location as the amulet.
Challenge requirements
- There will be a 5×16 dungeon (single level).
- Give the player a starting location (optionally random) and the amulet a separate random (different each time the program is run) starting square inside the dungeon. That is, the amulet is not allowed to start on the same square as the player.
- Accept four input keys which move the player one square at a time (four cardinal directions). Reading/processing other input is allowed (a readline() function that requires pressing 'enter', etc).
- Travelling outside the bounds of the dungeon is not allowed. E.g., if the player is on the right edge of the dungeon pressing right should do nothing.
- After initial generation and after each movement, print the state of the game. As this is code golf and printing is rather uninteresting, ignore the character count for the print function and function call assuming no state changes. Empty cells should be shown as period (
.), amulet as double quote (") and character as at symbol (@). - The game is over when the player "discovers" the amulet (arrives at the same square)
Winning
This is a code golf challenege, the shortest code to meet the requirements one week from today will be declared winner.
Example
Here is an example solution in C# (ungolfed) to show basic requirements and sample output.
using System;
namespace nh
{
class Program
{
static Random random = new Random();
// player x/y, amulet x/y
static int px, py, ax, ay;
static void Main(string[] args)
{
px = random.Next(0, 16);
py = random.Next(0, 5);
// amulet starts on a position different from the player
do { ax = random.Next(0, 16); } while (px == ax);
do { ay = random.Next(0, 5); } while (py == ay);
print();
do
{
// reads a single keypress (no need to press enter)
// result is cast to int to compare with character literals
var m = (int)Console.ReadKey(true).Key;
// Move the player. Here standard WASD keys are used.
// Boundary checks for edge of dungeon as well.
if (m == 'W')
py = (py > 0) ? py - 1 : py;
if (m == 'S')
py = (py < 5) ? py + 1 : py;
if (m == 'A')
px = (px > 0) ? px - 1 : px;
if (m == 'D')
px = (px < 16) ? px + 1 : px;
// print state after each keypress. If the player doesn't
// move this is redundant but oh well.
print();
// game ends when player is on same square as amulet
} while (px != ax || py != ay);
}
static void print()
{
Console.Write('\n');
for (int y=0; y<5; y++)
{
for (int x = 0; x < 16; x++)
{
if (x == px && y == py)
Console.Write('@');
else if (x == ax && y == ay)
Console.Write('"');
else
Console.Write('.');
}
Console.Write('\n');
}
}
}
}
Total character count is 1474, but ignoring calls to the print function and its definition the final character count is 896.
Output when the program is run:
................
...."...........
..........@.....
................
................
Output (including above) after the 'a' key is pressed twice:
................
...."...........
..........@.....
................
................
................
...."...........
.........@......
................
................
................
...."...........
........@.......
................
................
