This might interest you <| sep |> don ' t tempt him . <| sep |> CC uais 523 , uElronnd , uhackedhead If you honestly stand behind everything you just said including your statements about the healthy source code division between document and view then prove this wholeheartedly FOREVER . Forsake the requirement that Nethack be a kernelTTY application . Divorce ALL interfaces other than network sockets . Divorce ALL protocols except public spec VT 100 Z and the proprietary Nethack protocol you need to retain sanity . Put the entire game server into it ' s own daemon listening on a dedicated numbered socket for VT 100 Z connections . Put 100 % of the viewcentric code into an agnostic public source VT 100 Z client that has no special cases for Nethack , just like no native console has any special cases . Make both the server binary and the VT 100 Z client available for public download . Offer the VT 100 Z as an official open source project so that it can become very portable Offer a public server at newhack . alt . orgAll players who were already downloading PuTTY to play will NOT see any issue with downloading a native VT 100 Z client . They will understand why it exists and why it does not have native support everywhere early on . All players who were using native consoles will be FORCED to download the public VT 100 Z client or download one of the various protocol guis . Chances are they will embrace the VT 100 Z client because they can retain an ASCII flavor . I want to remind you that a VT 100 Z client by definition does 100 % of everything all existing native console VT 100 ' s do . So out of the gate , anybodyeverybody who would complain that some native console behavior is lost must remain silent or complain and look silly . I want to remind you that one of the reasons for the VT 100 Z is to address the fact that none of us ever had any say or control in the design of any of the industry hardware terminals 40 years ago . We all just had to agree to live within what was delivered . I remind you that we have ZERO burden to continue to live with the legacy hardware console constraints . We have ZERO burden to continue to be a kernelTTY app . We can decide to define our own public spec console in a very healthy multipurpose way and move forward . Limiting client side choices has a way of bringing focus to game design . I offer 40 years of history inside 80 x 24 x 1 ASCII as evidence . I am not suggesting an increase in client side options but rather a decrease as a method to force focus going forward . As for the windows port players and curses players , they lose nothing . They can still play the way they do now . But if they want access to any progression in the NewHack game design they will need to download the public VT 100 Z client or pick one of the protocol guis . History shows that the players follow the game designers . The server devs and client devs are just a pragmatic reality of the game design . The VT 100 Z initiative offers client side source code under open source control but not only that it gives the community original control over the entire VT 100 Z spec that informs the VT 100 Z open source code project . If the goal of FutureHack is to intentionally continue to be a kernelTTY app , then I concede that VT 100 Z solves no existing problem . But I favor a future where Nethack permanently ceases to be a kernelTTY app because cutting that umbilical chord will create a golden age for the game design . In that chord cutting case , I ' m sure you agree that a correctly defined VT 100 Z client is absolutely necessary to stop the bleed .