Forum:XanaHack
A few months ago, while browsing this Wiki and reading about NetHack variants, I stumbled upon NetHack brass official homepage. Yes, it's in Japanese, but I happen to know the language a little, so I didn't leave immediately and looked through it. The bottom of the page contained a link simply named 'XanaHack', that led to this page. XanaHack archive (containing x86 Windows binary) can be downloaded by clicking on the fourth screenshot. I played it several times and really loved it. It seems to be an alternative GUI version as opposed to a gameplay veriant per se, but I may be wrong - a thorough investigation is needed. I didn't find any info about it here, on this wiki, so it is probably an overlooked gem. I get the feeling that it is based on NetHack 3.4.3, and the version of XanaHack itself is 0.03. I think that the development is halted, and we are dealing with alpha (or beta) version here. It has some nice and even cute features like background music, sound effects and tiles, with player and monsters even being animated. Player weapons, armour and status changes are also roughly reflected by tiles. Again, I didn't notice any gameplay changes (though I'm quite inexperienced when it comes to NetHack, so it may be my fault), but I think there are some bugs present too, unfortunately: the inventory can get glitchy if you pick a lot of items - the game for some reason can assign two items to the same letter of the same case, and after that one of the items becomes completely un-droppable. The 'adjust' command doesn't help, and when you try to drop the bugged item, the game just says that it does not exist in your inventory. It spoils the impression, of course, but I think it can't be helped, since it's just probably unfinished. The changelog (can be found in the game's folder in the file called 'change.txt') seems to indicate some fixed bugs related to the new interface and some minor changes... (you can press Ctrl+F in-game to get a centered mini-map of the current dungeon level). The project is probably abandoned, and even the Japanese people themselves (meaning those who know about NetHack) don't seem to be aware of XanaHack existence. If you have access to NicoNico Douga (kinda like the Japanese YouTube), please take a look at this video as well: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm1282403. This is a footage of XanaHack's gameplay (wasn't made by me). I would be glad to know more about this mysterious variant of NetHack (even if it will be just your personal opinion/impressions) from anyone who is interested! I think that we might add the information about XanaHack on this Wiki too, either as a separate page, or within the 'NetHack variants' chart. Axia (talk) 22:44, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
- After reading this post I decided to try out this variant... Played a little bit around but didn't go much far. It looks like a fine graphical-port, done to look like a retro RPG-- there are sounds, animated-sprites and visual-effects. I can't read Japanese so the homepage made no sense to me and there isn't much information on the XanaHack page too so it won't help even if I could. It looks like it has gone defunct and thats probably why no one knows about it. The page itself offers little information, there's only a win32 binary without any source-code (it might be in violation of the NGPL but thats another story).
- Gameplay-wise the game is good, the interface (a reminiscent of the old GameBoy RPGs of the 90s) shows all of the important information, including HP and Power, properly (a feature lacking in many graphical-ports like Falcon's Eye). There are animated graphics instead of static-tiles, there are several sound-effects and background-music and perhaps many other features that I've overlooked. From what I've played it feels much like the original 3.4.3-release but I can's say for sure. I also don't know if the game is complete or not and it'll take a while to figure it out. Fortunately Wizard-Mode is compiled into the game so I guess I can do a mock-ascension.
- If the source was available I guess someone could bring this back to life as it looks like a really cool game but for now I don't think we should put this up in the wiki's variant page as it doesn't distribute the modified source-code thereby violating Paragraph-2 of the NGPL.
- --Hexman (talk) 06:29, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
- It's good to hear that at somebody got interested in XanaHack, I already started to think that my post would get no answers! So, there are some license issues... This is very sad, really - because it effectively prevents making this variant known to NetHack public, and thus XanaHack's fate is probably going into oblivion eventually - that page can easily become "404" with time too... The license, if I understand it correctly, tells developers to provide some means to get the code in case the source wasn't included in the release. So, maybe there's a potential of getting the sources through contacting the developer (things will really be easier if the developer turns out to be the same as NetHack Brass one). And if this potential exists, there is no violation of NGPL at least on this term, is it? This is really a tough legal situation - should similar problems with defunct variants arise, the current license seems to demonstrate lack of flexibility. Oh, and have you encountered the messed-up inventory or any other bugs so far? Yes, doing Wizmode ascension is a great idea, I hope that some useful info about this game can be discovered this way.--Axia (talk) 21:59, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
