Kill the dead. End their suffering.
On the off-chance it helps, you will find the full README for DCSS v0.19 here and the source code here.
HCSS is the game I want to play. It will be focus on an undead/unholy adventure. No spoilers, but including a story means reducing the amount of options the player has. You won't be able to play a vampire or a mummy, that's for sure. And you will have to pick a "good" God to worship, or take none at all.
One of my personal design goals for HCSS is to have a simpler version of DCSS, with less tedium. As such, I decided to use Hellcrawl as my starting place.
I am sure I will make a ton of decisions in HCSS that the creators of Hellcrawl and indeed DCSS will not like. That's fine. The online gaming world is notoriously persnickety, and I won't defend my choices. This fork is just for my own lawls, and I expect most people will continue playing the awesome games I forked from.
Unlike DCSS, HCSS has a very linear branch map. There is one central stalk of levels, with side branches that dead end. And the difficulty of the side branches should be commensorate with the main branch at that point in the game. You shouldn't have to memorize some bizarro branch order to play, and run back and forth trying to optimize the levels. To reduce the mental tedium, here is a map of the game.
- Branch Map - Map of the Game