SLASH'EM History file for release 0.0.7

Behold, mortal, the origins of SLASH'EM...

Jay Fenlason wrote the original Hack with help from Kenny Woodland,
Mike Thome, and Jon Payne.

Andries Brouwer did a major re-write, transforming Hack into a very different
game, and published (at least) three versions (1.0.1, 1.0.2, and 1.0.3) for
UNIX(tm) machines to the Usenet.

Don G. Kneller ported Hack 1.0.3 to Microsoft(tm) C and MS-DOS(tm), producing
PC HACK 1.01e, added support for DEC Rainbow graphics in version 1.03g, and
went on to produce at least four more versions (3.0, 3.2, 3.51, and 3.6).

R. Black ported PC HACK 3.51 to Lattice(tm) C and the Atari 520/1040ST,
producing ST Hack 1.03.

Mike Stephenson merged these various versions back together, incorporating
many of the added features, and produced NetHack version 1.4.  He then
coordinated a cast of thousands in enhancing and debugging NetHack 1.4 and
released NetHack versions 2.2 and 2.3.
 
Later, Mike coordinated a major rewrite of the game, heading a team which
included Ken Arromdee, Jean-Christophe Collet, Steve Creps, Eric Hendrickson,
Izchak Miller, Eric S. Raymond, John Rupley, Mike Threepoint, and Janet Walz,
to produce NetHack 3.0c.  The same group subsequently released ten patch-
level revisions and updates of 3.0.

NetHack 3.0 was ported to the Atari by Eric R. Smith, to OS/2 by Timo
Hakulinen, and to VMS by David Gentzel.  The three of them and Kevin Darcy
later joined the main development team to produce subsequent revisions of
3.0.

Olaf Seibert ported NetHack 2.3 and 3.0 to the Amiga.  Norm Meluch, Stephen
Spackman and Pierre Martineau designed overlay code for PC NetHack 3.0.
Johnny Lee ported NetHack 3.0 to the Macintosh.  Along with various other
Dungeoneers, they continued to enhance the PC, Macintosh, and Amiga ports
through the later revisions of 3.0.

A scant one month before the next major version  release  of Nethack,  two  
adventurous souls undertook their own modification to the sacred Nethack
formula. Tom Proudfoot and  Yuval  released Nethack++,   which  was rapidly
renamed Nethack--,  containeing new monsters,  items and other miscellaneous
modifications.
 
Headed by Mike Stephenson and coordinated by Izchak Miller and Janet Walz,
the development team which now included Ken Arromdee, David Cohrs,
Jean-Christophe Collet, Kevin Darcy, Matt Day, Timo Hakulinen, Steve Linhart,
Dean Luick, Pat Rankin, Eric Raymond, and Eric Smith undertook a radical
revision of 3.0.  They re-structured the game's design, and re-wrote major
parts of the code.  They added multiple dungeons, a new display, special
individual character quests, a new endgame and many other new features, and
produced NetHack 3.1.

Ken Lorber, Gregg Wonderly and Greg Olson, with help from Richard Addison,
Mike Passaretti, and Olaf Seibert, developed NetHack 3.1 for the Amiga.

Norm Meluch and Kevin Smolkowski, with help from Carl Schelin, Stephen
Spackman, Steve VanDevender, and Paul Winner, ported NetHack 3.1 to the PC.

Jon Watte and Hao-yang Wang, with help from Ross Brown, Mike Engber, David
Hairston, Michael Hamel, Jonathan Handler, Johnny Lee, Tim Lennan, Rob Menke,
and Andy Swanson developed NetHack 3.1 for the Macintosh, porting it for
MPW.  Building on their development, Barton House added a Think C port.  

Timo Hakulinen ported NetHack 3.1 to OS/2.  Eric Smith ported NetHack 3.1
to the Atari.  Pat Rankin, with help from Joshua Delahunty, is responsible
for the VMS version of NetHack 3.1.  Michael Allison ported NetHack 3.1 to
Windows NT.

Dean Luick, with help from David Cohrs, developed NetHack 3.1 for X11.
Warwick Allison added in the "tiled" version of the game and generated most
of the individual tiles for NetHack 3.2.

Time passed,  and Nethack-- was ported to 3.11 by Chris.

Stephen White then released his own  modification  known  as Nethack  Plus,
which  contained  new  character classes.  Unbeknownst to the world at large,
Tom Proudfoot  took  this  source and combined it with his Nethack--.
Stephen White went on to add weapon skills,  which were eventually integrated
into  the  next version of Nethack,  and other features.

In February 1996,  Tom Proudfoot released SLASH V1.  Including part of
Stephen White's Nethack Plus and his  own  Nethack--, leaving  unmentioned
his own slew of further modifications,  this is perhaps the best known of
the Nethack modifications.  Six versions of this,  ending with SLASH V6,
are known to exist.

The 3.2 development team, comprised of: Michael Allison; Ken Arromdee; David
Cohrs; Jessie Collet; Steve Creps; Kevin Darcy; Timo Hakulinen; Steve
Linhart; Dean Luick; Pat Rankin; Eric Smith; Mike Stephenson; Janet Walz; and
Paul Winner, released version 3.2 in April of 1996.

Version 3.2 marks the tenth anniversary of the formation of the development
team.  In a testament to their dedication to the game, all thirteen members
of the original development team remained on the team at the start of work
on the current release.  During the interval between the release of 3.1.3
and 3.2, one of the founding members of the development team, Dr. Izchak
Miller, passed away.  This release of the game is dedicated to him by the
development and porting teams.

Version 3.2 proved to be more stable than previous versions.  Many bugs
were fixed, abuses eliminated, and game features tuned for better game
play.

SLASH V6 was picked up by Enrico Horn managed to synchronize it  with the
3.2 source.  The new SLASH 4.1.2 was released as far back as November 1996
went through at least 4 editlevels (E5, E6, E7)  with  the  latest  version
being 4.1.2E8,  synchronized with Nethack 3.2.2 and the Blackmarket option
available,  released in June 1997.

Nathan La began the arduous task of drawing  tiles  for  the SLASH monsters.

Kentaro Shirakata ported SLASH 4.1.2E8 to Unix.

Lief Clennon ported SLASH 4.1.2E8 to OS/2.

Romain Dolbeau ported SLASH 4.1.2E8 to Macintosh.

Warren Cheung combined SLASH 4.1.2 and Wizard Patch to  create SLASH'EM 0.1
in November 1997.  Several revisions including new spells and other minor
additions have led to SLASH'EM  0.0.3. Steven Uy has generously made
additional modifications.

Dirk  Schoenberger has continued updating the SLASH/SLASH'EM monster tiles.
He has also ported SLASH'EM to Linux.

Lief Clennon ported SLASH'EM to OS/2 EMX.

Kevin Hugo ported SLASH'EM to Macintosh,  and has also contributed
additional changes and improvements.

Robin Johnson finished arduous task of drawing tiles for the SLASH'EM
monsters.  He has also contributed many more new tiles.

Kevin later joined the DevTeam and incorporated the best of these ideas
in NetHack 3.3.

JNetHack (the Japanese version of NetHack) has been around since at least
1994, developed by Issei Numata and others. The GTK interface was written
for this variant and released in 1999.

Mitsuhiro Itakura headed a team which began the process of redrawing the
NetHack tiles in 8-bit color at 32x32 pixels.

The final update to 3.2 was the bug fix release 3.2.3, which was released
simultaneously with 3.3.0 in December 1999 just in time for the Year 2000.

The 3.3 development team, consisting of Michael Allison, Ken Arromdee,
David Cohrs, Jessie Collet, Steve Creps, Kevin Darcy, Timo Hakulinen,
Kevin Hugo, Steve Linhart, Ken Lorber, Dean Luick, Pat Rankin, Eric Smith,
Mike Stephenson, Janet Walz, and Paul Winner, released 3.3.0 in
December 1999 and 3.3.1 in August of 2000.

Version 3.3 offered many firsts. It was the first version to separate race
and profession. The Elf class was removed in preference to an elf race,
and the races of dwarves, gnomes, and orcs made their first appearance in
the game alongside the familiar human race.  Monk and Ranger roles joined
Archeologists, Barbarians, Cavemen, Healers, Knights, Priests, Rogues,
Samurai, Tourists, Valkyries and of course, Wizards.  It was also the first
version to allow you to ride a steed, and was the first version to have a
publicly available web-site listing all the bugs that had been discovered.
Despite that constantly growing bug list, 3.3 proved stable enough to last
for more than a year and a half.

Warren Cheung combined SLASH'EM 0.0.5E7F1 and NetHack 3.3 to create
SLASH'EM 0.0.6 and maintained the DOS and Microsoft Windows ports.

J. Ali Harlow incorporated the GTK interface and Mitsuhiro Itakura's 32x32
tileset into SLASH'EM 0.0.6 and maintained the UNIX port of SLASH'EM 0.0.6.
Peter Makholm maintained the Debian package.

Paul Hurtley maintained the MAC port of SLASH'EM 0.0.6.

The 3.4 development team initially consisted of Michael Allison, Ken Arromdee,
David Cohrs, Jessie Collet, Kevin Hugo, Ken Lorber, Dean Luick, Pat Rankin,
Mike Stephenson, Janet Walz, and Paul Winner, with Warwick Allison joining
just before the release of NetHack 3.4.0 in March 2002.

As with version 3.3, various people contributed to the game as a whole as
well as supporting ports on the different platforms that NetHack runs on:

Pat Rankin maintained 3.4 for VMS.

Michael Allison maintained NetHack 3.4 for the MS-DOS platform.
Paul Winner and Yitzhak Sapir provided encouragement.

Dean Luick, Mark Modrall, and Kevin Hugo maintained and enhanced the
Macintosh port of 3.4.

Michael Allison, David Cohrs, Alex Kompel, Dion Nicolaas, and Yitzhak Sapir
maintained and enhanced 3.4 for the Microsoft Windows platform. Alex Kompel
contributed a new graphical interface for the Windows port. Alex Kompel also
contributed a Windows CE port for 3.4.1.

Ron Van Iwaarden maintained 3.4 for OS/2.

Janne Salmijarvi and Teemu Suikki maintained and enhanced the
Amiga port of 3.4 after Janne Salmijarvi resurrected it for 3.3.1.

Christian `Marvin' Bressler maintained 3.4 for the Atari after he
resurrected it for 3.3.1.

Warren Cheung, Christian Cooper, J. Ali Harlow, Paul Hurtley, Pekka Rousu
and Darshan Shaligram combined SLASH'EM 0.0.6E5F2 and Nethack 3.4
to create SLASH'EM 0.0.7

The Slash'EM home page is at http://www.slashem.org/.

			   - - - - - - - - - -

From time to time, some depraved individual out there in netland sends a
particularly intriguing modification to help out with the game.  The Gods of
the Dungeon sometimes make note of the names of the worst of these miscreants
in this, the list of Dungeoneers:

    Adam Aronow               Izchak Miller             Mike Stephenson
    Alex Kompel               J. Ali Harlow             Norm Meluch
    Andreas Dorn              Janet Walz                Olaf Seibert
    Andy Church               Janne Salmijarvi          Pasi Kallinen
    Andy Swanson              Jean-Christophe Collet    Pat Rankin
    Ari Huttunen              Jochen Erwied             Paul Winner
    Barton House              John Kallen               Pierre Martineau
    Benson I. Margulies       John Rupley               Ralf Brown
    Bill Dyer                 John S. Bien              Ray Chason
    Boudewijn Waijers         Johnny Lee                Richard Addison
    Bruce Cox                 Jon W{tte                 Richard Beigel
    Bruce Holloway            Jonathan Handler          Richard P. Hughey
    Bruce Mewborne            Joshua Delahunty          Rob Menke
    Carl Schelin              Keizo Yamamoto            Robin Johnson
    Chris Russo               Ken Arnold                Roderick Schertler
    David Cohrs               Ken Arromdee              Roland McGrath
    David Damerell            Ken Lorber                Ron Van Iwaarden
    David Gentzel             Ken Washikita             Ronnen Miller
    David Hairston            Kevin Darcy               Ross Brown
    Dean Luick                Kevin Hugo                Sascha Wostmann
    Del Lamb                  Kevin Sitze               Scott Bigham
    Deron Meranda             Kevin Smolkowski          Scott R. Turner
    Dion Nicolaas             Kevin Sweet               Stephen Spackman
    Dylan O'Donnell           Lars Huttar               Stephen White
    Eric Backus               Malcolm Ryan              Steve Creps
    Eric Hendrickson          Mark Gooderum             Steve Linhart
    Eric R. Smith             Mark Modrall              Steve VanDevender
    Eric S. Raymond           Marvin Bressler           Teemu Suikki
    Erik Andersen             Matthew Day               Tim Lennan
    Frederick Roeber          Merlyn LeRoy              Timo Hakulinen
    Gil Neiger                Michael Allison           Tom Almy
    Greg Laskin               Michael Feir              Tom West
    Greg Olson                Michael Hamel             Warren Cheung
    Gregg Wonderly            Michael Sokolov           Warwick Allison
    Hao-yang Wang             Mike Engber               Yitzhak Sapir
    Helge Hafting             Mike Gallop               
    Irina Rempt-Drijfhout     Mike Passaretti           

