2025-08-02 - NetHack & DawnHack Tileset ======================================= Recently i discovered two fun NetHack items on the Internet Archive. 1993 Japanese NetHack Guidebook With Anime Style Art ==================================================== NetHack Guidebook Cover Page I cannot read Japanese. I like this guidebook for its anime style art. The art looks reminiscent of the amateur sketches in the original D&D manuals. It includes all of the character classes, monsters, item types, and spreads of various special weapons and items. I was surprised by the quantity of drawings. I found it charming that the artists had extensive NetHack knowledge. NetHack Guidebook (Download the COMPRESSED version) DawnHack NetHack JRPG Style Tileset =================================== DawnHack Screenshot DawnHack is a JRPG style tileset for NetHack. This gives a very different "flavor" than the default tileset. I plan to use it with the DOS port of NetHack 3.6.7. NetHack 3.6.7 for DOS DawnHack Tileset The zip archive contains .BMP files for different versions of NetHack and different tile sizes. I extracted nethack_3.6.1/dawnhack_16.bmp and copied it into my nethack directory. The DOS port expects an indexed 8-bit .BMP file, but this tileset is a 24-bit .BMP file. It needs to be converted first. To convert the file, i installed NetPBM from DJGPP. DJGPP NetPBM I converted the .BMP file to PPM format. C:\nethack>bmptoppm dawnhack_16.bmp >dh24.ppm Linux$ bmptoppm dawnhack_16.bmp >dh24.ppm I scaled the .PPM file from 24 to 8 bit color depth. C:\nethack>ppmquant -fs 255 dh24.ppm >dh8.ppm Linux$ pnmquant -fs 255 dh24.ppm >dh8.ppm The DOS port of NetHack uses the color palette from the BMP file for the text and windowing system. When the colors are in the wrong order, it can make the text difficult to read. I used ppmhist to create a colormap based on the PPM. Then i hand edited the map to reorder the colormap lines. For the first half of the lines, i matched the colormap in nethack_3.4.3/dawnhack_16.bmp. For the last half of the lines, which represent grayscale colors, i sorted from darkest to lightest luminosity. C:\nethack>ppmhist -map dh8.ppm >dh8.map C:\nethack>copy dh8.map dh8.bak Linux$ ppmhist -map dh8.ppm >dh8.map Linux$ cp dh8.map dh8.bak I converted the PPM file to a .BMP that NetHack can use. C:\nethack>ppmtobmp -windows -bpp=8 -mapfile=dh8.map dh8.ppm >dawnhack.bmp Linux$ ppmtobmp -windows -bpp=8 -mapfile=dh8.map dh8.ppm \ >dawnhack.bmp Below is a screenshot demonstrating the results. Cavewoman With Drum In The Gnomish Mines Below are download links for the converted tileset and colormap. DOS Compatible Dawnhack Tileset Hand Edited Colormap tags: retrocomputing Tags ==== retrocomputing