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       # 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
       
 (IMG) 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.
       
 (HTM) NetHack Guidebook (Download the COMPRESSED version)
       
       # DawnHack NetHack JRPG Style Tileset
       
 (IMG) 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.
       
 (DIR) NetHack 3.6.7 for DOS
       
 (HTM) 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.
       
 (HTM) 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.
       
 (IMG) Cavewoman With Drum In The Gnomish Mines
       
       Below are download links for the converted tileset and colormap.
       
 (IMG) DOS Compatible Dawnhack Tileset
       
 (TXT) Hand Edited Colormap
       
       tags: retrocomputing
       
       # Tags
       
 (DIR) retrocomputing