Study of the sources and this helpful
document showed me the way to creating new Nethack monsters, and I
was ready to zap my wand of meta-create monster. But which dinosaurs to pick? I thought about that old
AD&D monster manual table that lists about 50 kinds of dinosaurs in
great detail and somehow manages to make dinosaurs boring. No, I would
only pick a representative sample of dinosaurs.
My patch provides but three painstakingly selected lizard-beasts:
the fastest dinosaur ever, the smartest dinosaur ever, and the most
popular dinosaur ever. The balance is probably off and there's a lot
more that could be added (treatment of the fact that, while many
dinosaurs have hands, they can't really do much with them; also, I
guess you could saddle and ride the smaller dinosaurs), but it makes
me happy.
(3) Fri Nov 05 2004 22:23 PST Nethack Dinosaur Patch:
At last I got some time to mess around with Nethack. But what to do?
Something simple to start with. What is Nethack missing, I asked
myself? The obvious answer was dinosaurs. It's got all sorts of
fantastical creatures, but none of the truly fearsome beasts from
Earth's own past. That was my internal sales pitch, anyway.