...what would you want to see in it?

(I may dabble in it for amusement, no serious undertakings happening...yet.)

My list, in no particular order:
-Online high scores
-Scripted, rather than hard-coded, enemies (Lua is easy enough)
-Easily modified content (plug-ins, etc, perhaps Escape Velocity-style)
-Various algorithms for map generation
-Actual, meaningful dialogue
-Animation

A while ago, I was considering a scheme where a server would supply a seed for the rng every week so that everyone would be playing in the same dungeon, and there would be an online scoreboard for who discovered the most rooms first, or killed the most monsters, or found the most gold, or gained the most levels. Then the next week, there might be rooms named after the top scorers, and there would be a long-term scoreboard for the various scoring categories.

- map generation ofcourse
- 3D (unity maybe) with nice Graphics, particle effects (like: fire and lightning) and shaders (like: fur)
- Hallucination effects
- Penalties for farming (i.e.: black puddings)
- being able to worship more than one deity

3D isn't going to happen, sorry, but pfx, probably. I'll try to find an excuse to make things explode. The diety and magic systems seem mighty confusing to me, but I'll see what I can do.

Some random ideas:

• Haggling for items, spells etc.
• Shops in the dungeons.
• Random is good, but consistency is nice too.
• Text only mode (I always liked that).
• Black and white mode (if old school then really old school ;-) )
• hate the dog!
• Options, lots of them :-)
  

Love your network ideas! I always was more of a moria fan then nethack though.

Yeah, I'll make an option to automatically go past the dog when using the click-around mode.

I think that writing a text-only mode will be way too much trouble. Better to just make a set of images that have letters on them and have an option to switch to that set.

I think the coolest parts of NetHack include:

• amusing gravestone passages (ex: "Here lies my wife. Hear her lie! Now she is at rest, and so am I.")
• Incubus/Succubus "interactions"
• praying to your deity if you're in a jam, but if you pray too much you get punished
• hallucination effects
• polymorphing
• the kinds of pets you can get (also, if you're polymorphed into a female creature, many times you can lay eggs to get pets; a game where male/female actually makes a difference at times!)
• many other things I can't think of off hand right now
  

I would have to say that NetHack is one of the most detailed games I've played. I often think it would be nice to make a 3D conversion of it, but that would take quite a bit of work to get it to interface correctly, especially with keeping things such as the direction of the player. (since that kind of thing was never a problem when it came out)

For a "NetHack-like game", while 3D would be nice, isometric with decent animations would be more than adequate. I'd only ask that there is always a path available to the next level without needing to have a pick ax, some way of teleporting, etc.

I don't have an artist. Anyone want to volunteer? The timeline for this will be very...long, so there won't be a rush. First I just need some walls, and a basic player image, and animations for him if you like. Plus some rats or something.

Isometric is reasonable. I'm going to start off with rectangular tiles and no animations, like the current OS X graphical Nethack port, but converting to an isometric view won't be a big issue. And remember, this isn't a Nethack _clone_, it's just "Nethack-inspired."

I just hope I can implement A* properly.

Just in case you need some inspiration, the best graphical version of NetHack (and the related Slash'Em) that I've seen for the Mac is Vulture's. (Vultures's Eye is NetHack, and Vulture's Claw is Slash'Em)

Vulture's quits immediately after the startup screen shows.

diordna Wrote:Vulture's quits immediately after the startup screen shows.

Copy it out of the disk image; yet another game which writes to the application directory...

How unpleasant.

I wouldn't want to make my game have graphics like that. I don't like the way the walls look, and I think it's difficult to find your way around.