SpliceHack
SpliceHack is a variant of NetHack 3.6.x and SLASH'EM developed by AntiGulp. The goal of SpliceHack's development is to create a balanced variant that is easy to pick up and play without extensive use of outside materials, which also incorporates a very large number of new and dynamic monsters, items, and features. SpliceHack is actively developed, and regularly incorporates ideas and feedback from the community. Discussion of SpliceHack occurs on the Hardfought IRC channel. Bugs can be reported there or on the issues page.
The current version of SpliceHack is 0.7.0.
Design philosophy
- All features and changes must be clear enough that a player from vanilla NetHack can learn to play SpliceHack without undue difficulty.
- Game balance must be carefully considered before making an addition.
- Any object or monster added must be unique in some way, be it in abilities, flavor, or special features.
- The endgame must be interesting and engaging. Additions that add variety to an ascension kit are highly valued.
- When possible, additions should be extensible in some way, such as monster steeds, new behaviors, or object materials, so that items and monsters added in vanilla can take advantage of them.
- A fully functioning tileset must be maintained at all times.
How to play SpliceHack
If one is familiar with vanilla NetHack, SpliceHack plays extremely similarly. New players may want to examine the list of new roles and races, the rules changes or the SpliceHack strategy guide. Regardless of whether one plays online or offline, SpliceHack comes with a fully functional tileset, and can be played in tiles or in ASCII mode.
- Online: SpliceHack v0.6.4 is hosted online on Hardfought.
- Offline: Developmental versions of SpliceHack can be compiled on unix systems using the source on GitHub.
Character Creation
- All vanilla roles and races are available in SpliceHack, as well as numerous additional roles and races, some of which are unique to SpliceHack. Additionally, some role and race combinations that were restricted in vanilla are available for play. The full table of playable combinations can be found on the Roles and Races Page.
- Players have the option of playing as male, female, or nonbinary, all of which have different gameplay implications.
- Players can define the sexuality of their character in the options via
sexuality=?. Currently available sexualities are straight, gay, bisexual, and asexual. Sexuality has no gameplay impact outside of interactions with monsters with seduction attacks.
