What's this then?
This is the extremely bare-bones website of the fdshack public server.
This server is based off of NAO's patched
version of NH3.4.3, with a few tweaks by thp, bd,
and others. Further changes are forthcoming, including new roles to play,
redesigned dungeons, and entirely new content.
Okay, so how do I play?
At the moment, the fdshack server is dead. I'd like to get it back up and
running again but I was not confident about the security of the old setup
and I've taken it down until I can make sure it's properly secured.
What's New?
Lucifer, the Light Bringer, was spotted at Lowe's today purchasing salt and looking pensively at the snowblowers on offer
So, Nethack 3.6.0 was officially released today. (Whoops, yesterday. It's past midnight now.)
whaaaaaaaaaat
I naturally immediately snagged the source and started poking at it. I'm really impressed so far, a lot of the code has been cleaned up significantly. It's not just a bugfixes-and-cruft update, either. It looks like the DevTeam has slipped in a lot of sneaky rebalancing; there's many seemingly minor changes that actually obliterate entire strategies for abusing Nethack. Pudding farming just doesn't work anymore, holy water is harder to abuse, the E-word is no longer a get-out-of-absolutely-anything-except-elves-free card, and so forth.
Just as naturally, I soon began looking into setting up 3.6.0 on the fdshack server. Looks like most of the community patches I have in the existing 3.4.3 have been folded into 3.6.0, with some minor exceptions. I'm currently working on reimplementing/porting over the statuscolors patch-- the "hilite_status" feature in 3.6.0 is experimental, and kind of jank. It only supports a single rule per stat, which means you can't do cool stuff like graded HP colors that the old patch did fine. On the other hand, you can do stuff in the new hiliter you couldn't do with the 3.4.3 patch, like highlighting values when they change and so forth. So at the moment I'm trying to split the difference between the old and new styles, by implementing a loader for the new rules that allows you to specify multiple hilite_status rules (Actually that part's already done, but I'm having trouble getting the renderer to support the rules now.) If I like the way that patch looks in the end, I will probably post it up here or something for anyone who's interested to use.
Once I get the nethack 3.6.0 source looking the way I want it, it shouldn't be too hard to transition to it on the server. The main headache there will be porting my custom leaderboard logging functionality over. In any event it'll probably be near-vanilla 3.6.0 to begin with. I suspect that all fdshack's features won't just port magically over to the new codebase without a lot of merge-conflict wrestling on my part; too much has changed (for the better) out from under it between 3.4.3 and 3.6.0.
I'm so excited by these developments, if it wasn't obvious. Beyond the simple joy of getting a new official version for the first time in some twelve-odd years, the specific version we got looks really interesting. Nethack 3.6.0 seems to incorporate a lot of the huge kick-in-the-pants balance-tweaking that the game really needed, and I am glad to see the good old DevTeam still cares. :D
What is different in fdshack?
It's still nethack, if that's what you're asking. We're committed to
preserving what we consider the ineffable, essential nature of Nethack while
adding our own stuff to it. In particular, the goal is to add more interesting
options (such as new game mechanics, new classes, and so forth) to the game
to make for more varied gameplay, without making it into a different game
entirely in the process. The Dungeons of Doom should, by and large, remain
the same familiar halls you know and love (and hate)-- just slightly
different, with a bunch of new places, denizens and treasures to surprise you
along the way.
What new stuff are you working on?
I don't really have a timeframe for updates, since it's basically just
"whenever thp feels like hacking on nethack and completes a feature". If
there's games in progress on the server and I'm pushing an update that will
break saves, I try to hold off and schedule a release for a time that people
aren't playing. Future updates may include one or more of the following
things, all of which I have source branches and partial code for already:
- Reimplementing fdshack's salient features on top of 3.6.0 is
definitely a goal, but we'll see if that ever happens.
- Reworking Gehennom to be more frustrating and less boring. Non-maze
level generation for Gehennom, for one; although mazes will still
occasionally show up.
- Another new role, again with its own unique
combat mechanics and gameplay. Unlike the Pirate, the new
mechanics this time around require a whole new framework to
be implemented, as the nethack source doesn't include
anything like the level of complexity needed for it.
- A bunch of new monsters, some of which will have their own dungeon branches
- A new wrinkle added to the Quests
- back-end AI framework upgrades; nothing you'd notice, but there's a lot of stuff we want to do that requires enemies to be smarter than "while(player_alive) attack_player();"
If you have any other ideas/recommendations, you can always drop me (thp)
a line on my blog or elsewhere and suggest things. I may not go for the
implementation but I'm always listening for new ideas.
Is there a scoreboard/stats?
There is! Click that link (or the one at the top
labeled "Scoreboard") to go there. Right now it's a little bare-bones, but
sometime Real Soon Now I'll have user stats and stuff put together.
(c)2012-2014 the FDS krew plus bd. Hosting thoughtfully provided by thirdeye networks and tachyon.