NextHack v1.5.1

NextHack 1.5.1 — a hotfix + polish pass over 1.5.0. Saved games from 1.5.0 still load.

Two binaries are attached: nexthack.nex (ZX Spectrum Next) and nexthack128.tap (ZX Spectrum 128K — load the .tap on a real 128K or an accurate emulator).

Fixed

• ZX Spectrum 128K: entering a hand-drawn special level crashed the machine to BASIC. A code bank had silently outgrown its 16 KB, and the tape loader truncated it — clipping the template data. The 1.5.0 .tap is affected on roughly one in nine depths below 2; 128K players should update. (The build now refuses to pack an oversized bank, so this cannot ship again.)
• A dropped item now lies on the floor as itself — a dropped potion showed the weapon tile, which made it look like some unrelated item from your pack.
• Traps no longer generate inside shops (a trap door mid-shopping was possible), matching NetHack's rule.

Changed

• Held-key movement now paces like a keyboard (typematic repeat): a tap is exactly one step, and holding a direction walks steadily after a short beat. Fast turns used to fire 2-3 steps per tap, making it hard to stop on the cell you meant.
• 128K: walking corridors is now as fluid as walking inside rooms — a corridor step repaints only the handful of cells the light touched, not the whole viewport.

Full changelog: https://github.com/lrrosa/nexthack/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md

NextHack v1.5.0

NextHack 1.5.0 — wands, and fluid big rooms on the 128K.

Two binaries are attached: nexthack.nex (ZX Spectrum Next) and nexthack128.tap (ZX Spectrum 128K — load the .tap on a real 128K or an accurate emulator).

Added

• Wands (z) — a new class of item (/) that zaps magic and carries a handful of charges. Five kinds turn up as you descend:

  • striking — a bolt that hammers the first monster in its path;
  • cold — a ray that freezes every monster along the line;
  • sleep — drops the first monster it hits into a doze;
  • teleportation — whisks the first monster away elsewhere on the level;
  • digging — bores straight down through the floor, dropping you to the next level (no aiming needed).

  Aim a beam in any of the eight directions; it flies over your pet and the shopkeeper before it acts, and each zap spends one charge.

Changed

• Big rooms on the ZX Spectrum 128K are now fluid. Moving inside a large lit chamber used to lag a second or two per step; the 128K now repaints only what actually moved and lets monsters chase you by line of sight, so even a crowded cavern keeps up with the keyboard. (The Next was already fast.)

Note

• Saved games from 1.4.x will not load in 1.5.0 — the new wand loot shifts dungeon generation, so the save format and the world both change. Finish any game in progress before upgrading.

Full changelog: https://github.com/lrrosa/nexthack/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md

NextHack v1.4.1

A polish pass over 1.4.0. Two binaries as always — nexthack.nex (ZX Spectrum Next) and nexthack128.tap (real 128K).

Changed

• Your pet dog now heals slowly over time (up to 12 HP), so a careful companion can be kept alive instead of inevitably wearing down.
• d now drops an item onto the floor (to be picked back up later), as well as selling it when you're inside a shop.

Fixed

• A scroll of teleportation now always moves you to a different room — before it could land you back in the same room, or even on your own square.
• Displacing your pet onto a hidden trap now springs it.
• You can no longer drop or sell the Amulet of Yendor (which could leave you able to "win" without carrying it).
• Several messages that overran the 128K's 32-column line are shortened, and a latent buffer overflow in the item-description code is fixed.

See the CHANGELOG for details.

NextHack v1.4.0

One codebase, two binaries — nexthack.nex for the ZX Spectrum Next and nexthack128.tap for a real 128K.

New this release

• A pet dog — every game starts you with a loyal dog. It heels at your side, bites adjacent monsters (and can be hurt or killed fighting them), and follows you up and down stairs, into shops and all. Walk into it to swap places, not attack.
• Throwing (t) — the first ranged attack: pick a weapon and a direction and it flies until it strikes the first monster or thuds into a wall. It then lies on the floor where it lands, so you can walk over and pick it back up. Throwing your wielded weapon asks first.
• Prayer (p) — call on your god to fix your worst trouble (cure starvation, heal a critical wound, lift poison/blindness/confusion, or uncurse an item), with a cooldown. Pray on an altar to lift the curses from everything you carry.
• Search (s) — search the ground to reveal hidden traps as ^; a revealed trap still springs if you step on it.
• A ? help screen listing every command, on both targets.

Under the hood, the fog-of-war pool moved into Bank 5 and each target gained a third code bank, reclaiming the resident RAM the new features needed.

See the CHANGELOG for the full list.

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Run nexthack.nex on a ZX Spectrum Next or in CSpect. Load nexthack128.tap on a real 128K (or ZEsarUX); saving needs a DivMMC. Retrieve the Amulet of Yendor from Dlvl 50 and climb back out alive.

NextHack v1.3.0

NextHack v1.3.0 adds three NetHack mechanics on top of the v1.2.0 systems, on both the ZX Spectrum Next (nexthack.nex) and the plain 128K (nexthack128.tap).

New

• Two deeper monsters — the homunculus (i, Dlvl 6+) whose bite can put you to sleep, and the wraith (W, Dlvl 8+) that drains your maximum HP.
• Elbereth — press E to scratch the word in the dust; while you stand on a live engraving, adjacent monsters dare not strike (~30 turns, wiped when you change level).
• Altars (_) — appear on some levels; step onto one and it reveals the blessed/uncursed/cursed state of everything you carry.

Under the hood

• Reclaimed ~420 B of resident RAM (the fog-of-war LRU pool, FOV_SLOTS 8 -> 6) to fit the new features in the tight Z80 budget: ~258 B free on the Next, ~262 B on the 128K.
• Deterministic generation throughout — altars use a side hash that never touches the RNG stream, so per-depth persistence stays in sync.

Downloads

• ZX Spectrum Next: nexthack.nex
• ZX Spectrum 128K: nexthack128.tap (bank-paging tape loader; runs on real 128K emulators)

Mechanics verified on ZEsarUX and play-tested on the 128K.

NextHack v1.2.0 — NetHack mechanics

A big gameplay update bringing core NetHack mechanics to both the ZX Spectrum Next and 128K builds.

What's new

• Status effects — confusion (you stumble in a random direction), blindness (you see only your own cell and monsters vanish), sleep/paralysis (you forfeit turns), and poison (HP drains over time), shown as tags on the status bar.
• Item identification — potions and scrolls start unidentified, shown by a per-game random appearance ("a blue potion", "a scroll labeled XYZZY") until you use one and learn what it is. Drinking an unknown potion is now a real gamble.
• Blessed / uncursed / cursed — equipment has a hidden BUC state, revealed when you wear it. Blessed gear performs better; cursed gear is worse and welds itself on (you can't switch away).
• Monster special attacks — venomous snakes poison you, leprechauns steal your gold and vanish, and yellow lights blind you, plus more monster variety as you descend.
• Traps — hidden trap doors, dart traps and sleeping-gas traps from dungeon level 2 onward, sprung the first time you step on them.

Saves from earlier versions are not compatible (the save format changed).

Downloads

• nexthack128.tap — ZX Spectrum 128K (run on real hardware or an accurate emulator; save/load needs a DivMMC).
• nexthack.nex — ZX Spectrum Next.

NextHack v1.1.1 — ZX Spectrum 128K fluidity

A performance pass for the ZX Spectrum 128K build. No gameplay changes; the ZX Spectrum Next build is functionally unchanged.

Smoother movement on the 128K

• The ULA cell blits (status/message text and map tiles) are now hand-written Z80 instead of C.
• The status bar redraws only the cells that changed -- about 1 of 64 per turn instead of all 64.
• The monster-chase pathfinding resets its distance map with a tight Z80 fill. This was the main reason movement slowed down when monsters were near.
• Lighter held-key movement throttle (in_pause 40 -> 6 ms).

Downloads

• nexthack128.tap -- ZX Spectrum 128K (run on a real 128K or an accurate emulator; save/load needs a DivMMC).
• nexthack.nex -- ZX Spectrum Next.

NextHack v1.1.0 — ZX Spectrum 128K port

NextHack now runs on the plain ZX Spectrum 128K as well as the ZX Spectrum
Next — both built from one dual-target source tree.

ZX Spectrum 128K (new)

• ULA display, hand-drawn 1-bit map tiles, an edge-scrolling 32-column viewport over the 80-wide map
• SCR title/victory screens, beeper sound, esxDOS save/restore (needs a DivMMC)
• code-banked via port 0x7FFD; press ? in-game for the key list

ZX Spectrum Next

• refreshed title-screen art

Downloads

• nexthack128.tap — the 128K build; loads on real hardware and accurate emulators (Spectaculator, Fuse, …)
• nexthack.nex — the ZX Spectrum Next build (CSpect / real Next)

NextHack v1.0.1

NextHack v1.0.1

A small patch over v1.0.0, polishing shops based on playtesting.

Changes

• The shopkeeper greets you on entering a shop, and a shop is now obvious at a glance: its walls are warm tan/brown bricks, and the shopkeeper has his own orange-robed tile (no longer identical to the hero).
• Buying asks "Buy for N gold? (y/n)" first, so you can't spend by accident; the look prompt reads "(, to buy)" inside a shop.
• Shops never contain a staircase, and are always a room big enough to stock -- a shop now holds ~4-8 items instead of sometimes just one.
• Bumping a wall while standing on an item re-announces the item ("You see here X") instead of hiding it behind "It's a wall".

Save files from v1.0.0 are not compatible (shop-level generation changed).

Play it

Download the zip, unpack it, and run nexthack.nex on a real ZX Spectrum Next or in CSpect / ZEsarUX. Released under GPL-3.0-or-later (see LICENSE).

NextHack v1.0

NextHack v1.0 — first public release

A from-scratch, NetHack-inspired roguelike for the ZX Spectrum Next (Z80N), written in C with z88dk. The original roadmap is complete.

Highlights

• A 50-level dungeon, generated procedurally and deterministically — each depth regenerates identically, while the changes you make (gold taken, monsters killed, items picked up) are remembered across revisits.
• Field of view with fog of war; colourful 8×8 pixel-art tiles on the Next's hardware tilemap (80×32).
• Turn-based combat against a depth-scaled bestiary that chases you with BFS pathfinding; XP and experience levels.
• Items and equipment — weapons, armour, potions, food, scrolls and rings with enchantment and erosion; wield/wear the best you carry; the inventory shows each item's tile.
• Shops, and special levels: the cavernous Big Room, guarded treasure vaults, and five hand-drawn maps (temple, maze, fortress, cavern, crypt).
• Hunger and HP regeneration, beeper sound effects, and NetHack-style save & quit.
• Pixel-art Layer 2 title and victory screens.
• The goal: bring the Amulet of Yendor up from the bottom of the dungeon.

Play it

Download the zip, unpack it, and run nexthack.nex on a real ZX Spectrum Next or in CSpect / ZEsarUX. (Save/restore needs a writable SD filesystem — see the README.)

The engine is code-banked (>64 KB) and needs the nightly z88dk to build from source. Released under GPL-3.0-or-later (see LICENSE).