Jay Fenlason's Hack

Jay Fenlason's Hack is the name given in this article to the original Hack as written by Jay Fenlason and friends, and to two other versions of Hack of different lineage than Andries Brouwer's Hack.

The exact content of the original Hack is unknown. No source for this game has ever been published. Three derivatives are known to exist:


 * "hack121" is a DOS Binary available at Ali Harlow's website as hack121.zip. No source for this program is known to exist.


 * PDP-11 Hack was published on Usenet in February 1985, and a port of this to a Unix clone called PC/IX was published in May. They are archived at Google Groups at:
 * PDP-11 Part 1
 * PDP-11 Part 2
 * PDP-11 Part 3
 * PDP-11 Part 4
 * PDP-11 Part 5
 * PC/IX Part 1
 * PC/IX Part 2
 * PC/IX Part 3
 * PC/IX Part 4
 * PC/IX Part 5


 * Hack 1.0 was developed by Andries Brouwer and posted to Usenet in December 1984. All other versions of Hack and NetHack are descended from this version.

The rest of this article covers mainly PDP-11 Hack and "hack121".

Overview
These games do not have distinct roles for the player to pursue. "Hack121" begins with a screen from which the player may buy equipment; PDP-11 Hack starts the player off as a sort of generic fighter character.

The exact goal of the adventurer is uncertain. The Amulet of Yendor is nowhere mentioned in either game.

Both games have shops. Other special rooms in hack121 are uncertain at this time. PDP-11 Hack has several special room types, including some that appear in Hack 1.0. PDP-11 Hack apparently has vaults, but they are implemented very differently than in Hack 1.0.

PDP-11 Hack starts the player off with a little dog. Hack121 apparently does not have pets.

Bestiary
The bestiaries of hack121 and PDP-11 Hack are listed below, along with the Hack 1.0 bestiary for comparison. The monster symbols for hack121 are not available at this moment; also, other monster descriptions may be lurking in other parts of the binary.

Main monster list
These are given in the order of their appearance in the code; it will be seen that the lists are quite similar.

Other monsters kept in separate structures
All versions of Hack and NetHack prior to NetHack 3.0.0 have various monster description structures floating around in their source code, for monsters with special functions. These are listed here, with monsters having the same function in the same row. The large dog appears both here and in the above table because the structure in the above table is used for wild dogs, and the one shown below is used for pets. In Hack 1.0, the shopkeeper is moved to the main monster list.