I am new to Nethack, English is not my first language, and the first game screen shows:
NetHack, Copyright 1985-2018 By Stichting Mathematisch Centrum and M. Stephenson. Version 3.6.1 Unix, revised Sep 16 16:35:42 2018. See license for details. Shall I pick a character's race, role, gender and alignment for you? [ynaq]
Looking at each letter in the option list, I presume that they mean:
- y: yes
- n: no
- a: unknown
- q: quit or exit
What does the "a" option do?
Best Answer
Choosing
a
means no takebacks are allowed for this choice.The explanation can be found in the game's code. For example, lines 544 through 548 of
/win/tty/wintty.c
(windows version, console menu) state:so it appears that choosing the
a
option does the same as choosing they
option (randomize your role), but does not allow you to confirm or cancel if you got a combination you don't want to play, instead it will immediately start the game.Looking a bit further at line 950:
The boolean
getconfirmation
is always false ifpick4u
(containing the player's choice) is set toa
. Thus the program will not run the code asking for confirmation, instead leaving the function and presumably going on to setup the game.