Patch notes

2026-10-16, build 1 download (6.2 MB) · HD images (707 MB) · HD movies (61 MB)

Fixes from a pass over memory use and crashes

• Cleansing flames leaving your sight could make the game read freed memory (a possible crash).
• Games you host: kicking a player who had a vote of their own running could crash the server, and so could a lasting spell that set off a monster generator's script.
• Games you host: connections that never finish joining are dropped after 10 seconds, as in the original (enough of them could make the server refuse everyone as full).
• Closing the game after using the 3D view is clean.
• Without the HD images, the game keeps less image memory over a long session.

2026-10-14, build 7

Line of sight

• What you can see is worked out exactly as the original game does: a wall junction seen from one side no longer shows its hidden arm, half-seen doors and pillars show as they should, box-shaped obstacles block sight with their real shape, and an earthquake's shake no longer shakes what you can see.
• Soft Shadow Edge in Options works: the original's soft edge along the line of sight's shadow, on by default as in the original.
• Fade Objects in Options works, on by default as in the original: something you saw stays drawn for a second after it leaves your line of sight, fading out, before it's hidden. The map's scenery (furniture, doors, bushes, obelisks) fades too, effects on a fading thing go with it, and Ghosts are see-through by distance, as in the original.
• Things off screen or behind walls no longer show for a moment as you come into an area (mana obelisks did, with Fade Objects), and the pickup ring no longer shows on them. Effects, name plates, health bars, team names and the dots over your creatures appear, fade and go with what they belong to, as in the original; sparks that leave your sight go.
• Loose particles (sparkles, fire on something behind a wall) no longer show over the black.
• No more thin lit line between a shadow's soft edge and its black (beside pillars and columns).
• Walls, better than the original: walls just past the edge of the screen are drawn whole instead of cut off, a corner you see is no longer cut through its pillar, and low walls stay drawn across a door's shadow (the console's noxsdl walls classic on shows them as the original draws them).

Options

• The options menu changed: its settings panel has two tabs, General and More. More holds the ones changed least often: Soft Shadow Edge, Fade Objects, Render GUI and Frame Rate.

HD images

• A new HD pack (25,937 images): animated scenery (torches, flames, candles, lamps, gears, elevators, portcullises, fountains, water ripples, lava and mud), missiles and spell effects (fireballs, lightning, meteors, explosions, poofs), breaking barrels, bones and debris, and every monster generator. Floors meet with smooth HD edges (this build is needed for those).
• The floor never waits more than half a second for its HD art, and long sessions use less memory.
• The Great Sword has its serrated edge back. See-through parts (glows, the Death Ball's rim, water ripples) keep the original's colours.

NoX Core

• Capture the Flag: the flag icons left of the health and mana tubes, as the original shows them: each team's flag at home, carried or dropped, your own team's framed, with their tooltips.
• The weapon-swap key's letter sits in the weapon ring's tab again, and the HUD's key letters and counts are drawn at the game's own text size.
• With HD images, window borders and spell icons no longer show dark seams or lines at their edges at window sizes that scale them unevenly.
• Solo: ending a chapter while the game saved could freeze the game for good.
• Solo and games you host: arriving on a new map through an exit while running no longer leaves you frozen, running on the spot as if against an invisible wall (first seen on the wizard campaign's second map). Loading a save made there frees you. Things carried to the next map keep their place in the game's order, as in the original.
• Servers running the original game: with Smooth Movement or Smooth Network your own character runs at an even pace (the original game sends its place rounded, in steps of 6 and 8). Smooth Network suits these servers best: it also evens out their uneven timing.

Games you host

• Running into a wall no longer jitters, and Meteor's explosion shows again.
• Your own character moves evenly when running and stops without the small back-and-forth: the server tells noxsdl the exact place the original game's update leaves out (players on the original game get the same updates as before).
• Your own server no longer waits for your screen: a slow frame, loading the map as you join, opening Server Settings or the first map vote no longer hitches the other players.
• Leaving the game no longer freezes the window while the router's port is closed, and leaving a Delving Mode game no longer waits for its next levels to finish.

2026-10-13, build 2

HD images

• A new HD pack with much more of the game redrawn: the Ember Demon and the Urchin, every wall and every door, and the static scenery (trees, bushes, rocks, furniture, statues, obelisks and more): 20,032 images, up from 13,737.
• It's stored GPU-compressed: a smaller download than before, a quarter of the video memory, and far faster to load. It needs this build or a newer one (older builds show the original art with it).
• No more low-resolution flashes: a map's own images load while it loads (it's shown once they're in, about a second), and the ones any map can need load at start-up, so the original art no longer shows first and swaps to HD a moment later, and there are no hitches as new parts of a map come into view.

NoX Core

• The developer test commands are no longer in the program.
• Server Settings: the Server Name, Lesson / Capture Limit and Time Limit fields can be typed in again (a click on one used to lose the keys at once).
• Without the HD images, window borders (the login screen's box, dialogs) no longer show a dark tick at every join between their pieces at window sizes that scale the menus unevenly.

Games you host

• A player running into another player, a creature or a box is no longer shown going on past where they stop, then pulled back.
• The server's frame is a little cheaper.

2026-10-12, build 2

NoX Core

• The program is now called NoX Core (its window's title), and the download carries its licence (GNU GPL v3 or later) and notices.
• Three downloads: the program, the HD images and the HD movies. The HD images are no longer bundled with each build: download them once, unzip them next to noxsdl.exe and keep them. They're only updated when the art changes, and the download card says when they were exported.
• Host Custom: the mode's drop-down sits under the title, so its open list no longer covers OK and Cancel.

Playing on servers you don't host

• An update that arrives out of order, as packets sometimes do over the internet, no longer puts you (or anything) back a step: the occasional kick back while running. F10's counter shows "late N" when it happens.
• Meteor Shower's meteors are seen falling, not only bursting on the ground, in games a NoX Core server hosts.

Undead Tide

• Stages: slaying the night's guardian at wave 20 carries the party to a new biome, a stage harder, till everyone falls. The run's strip and its results show the stage. Harder throughout: a tougher, bigger tide as the night goes on.
• A wizard's or conjurer's mana tube shows the run's XP, for players on the original game, which has no window of the run's.
• Difficulty: Adventurer, Veteran, Nightmare or Oblivion, chosen in the lobby with ?difficulty; NoX Core asks at the gate.
• 25 more powers (12 to 15 for each class), 16 pickups, armour only for the party's classes, and more creatures in each biome, some with specials.
• No ankhs; scenery doesn't block you; fewer effects at once (soul gems merge, one swarm or cloud at a time).

Delving Mode

• An ambush room's walls open again from a lever outside, for a fallen player who comes back after they shut.
• In Delving Mode and Undead Tide, quitting never overwrites your character with the mode's stripped one.

2026-10-11, build 4

Undead Tide (new)

• A new survival mode: survive a 20-minute night in a generated arena against an ever-growing tide of undead and beasts. You don't cast or swing: your weapons fire by themselves (12 to collect by class, from the sword and arrows to Fireball, Meteor and a ring of Force of Nature balls).
• The soul gems the fallen drop level you up, each level a pick of three: a new weapon, a weapon's next level, or one of six passives. Elites drop chests with a free pick, rare armour comes warded or repelling, and the night's guardian rises two minutes before dawn.
• A fallen player can be brought back at a revive shrine; the lobby's board keeps the best runs.
• noxsdl shows an XP bar, the clock, your weapons' waits, the picks as cards and the results. On the original game the picks come as chat lines and you answer 1-3.

Delving Mode

• Every run is new (a fresh seed), and a fallen party goes back to the lobby with nothing.
• Records of the deepest runs: ?record in chat, and the lobby's board tells the best.
• Difficulty modes, chosen in the lobby with ?difficulty: Adventurer, Veteran, Nightmare, Oblivion.
• Blessing rooms: one of three run-long boons at the altar (Vigor, Wisdom, Might, Swiftness, Thirst, Warding, Renewal, Fortune); noxsdl picks from cards.
• A bonus objective in each fight from depth 2 (Purge, Hunt a named elite, Seals, Swift), with a tracker beside the MAP button.
• Elites have traits (Swift, Vampiric, Reflective, Tough, Regenerating); from act 2 some guardians are champions played by bots.
• Barrels and crates hold things; at most one shop and two campfires on any way through an act; mysteries remade; shopkeepers have names.

Quests

• The shared key: its icon beside the ankh (with its window and sound when the mode turns on), and each player's silver and gold keys in the F9 quest list.
• Out of lives, the game over screen: your tallies, then continue with a penalty or quit (a 30-second timer on a client).
• Locked quest doors show their silver or gold lock until opened; the GreenZap, a warp's explosion and green spark bursts are drawn.
• Quitting a quest you joined saves your character first ("CharacterSaved"), as the original.

Hosting

• The game list: a click outside a game's description box closes it.
• Host Custom: the game list's Host Quest button is now Host Custom, with a drop-down of Quest, Delving Mode and Undead Tide (OK / Cancel). Delving Mode and Undead Tide are hosted here as the noxhub servers run them: the lobby, then a run from its portal, with your multiplayer character.
• Your strength, carry capacity, speed and level reach your client, as in the original (the inventory's stats were wrong); a respawned player's items show to everyone.
• The server's work a frame is about halved again (G_CryptD with 8 players: 0.7 ms down to 0.35 ms), and objects take a seventh of the memory they did.
• Searches over an area go in the original's order, so outcomes match it where the order matters: which of two bodies in one place a missile hits, area damage's reach, what a push moves, what's under the cursor.
• Things update in the original's order: a resting dead body's poison and enchantments stand still, and a steam pipe doesn't push a player standing still beside it.
• More of the original in games you host: War Cry interrupts spells in the original's order and Nullify reaches casting monsters; a teleported player's pixies come along; a reflected or bounced missile goes back as far as the original's; quest generators stop making monsters once too many are on screen.

2026-10-10

Quests

• The ankh under your buff icons shows your extra lives ("X 2"), as in the original, with its tooltip; the quest player list (F9) shows each player's lives and health.

Hosting

• Games you host run lighter: about a seventh of the server's work a frame on a busy quest map (G_CryptD with 8 players: 5.0 ms down to 0.7 ms) and far less memory, with the game playing exactly as before.
• Things move and come to rest as in the original: still bodies no longer keep pushing each other every frame, and frozen creatures in mid-air fall.
• Counterspell on a Death Ball breaks it into three fragments that bounce about and hurt, as in the original (it just vanished).
• One key opens both halves of a locked double door.
• Delving Mode: multiclass fixes (a conjurer's mana in the stats, glyphs counted right, any class's weapon wieldable by a warrior's strength); the run's map branches inside an act too; crumbling floors back with a way round, locked double doors in wide corridors, traps that grow with the depth (fists, fire skulls).
• Spell and ability books in a shop show their tooltips.
• Delving Mode: noxsdl players learn and use every class's spells, abilities and weapons in a run, with one book and spell bars that take both (the original client plays its own class); loops, ambush rooms that seal until their guards die, locked doors with their key nearby, crushers, and a mana obelisk now and then; the run's map reads left to right, each act's rooms spaced out along a winding path, its guardian forking into the next two acts on lanes above and below; the HD download draws each room with its own icon.
• Fixed: doors swung all the way open against a rock or other fixture stayed open for good (CapFlag's double doors). They swing shut again, a little late, as in the original.
• Fixed: a wizard's traps that he carried and dropped at his death weren't his any more, so he set them off himself and his trap count never came back down (he could be unable to lay any more).
• A quiver you pick up joins a matching one you carry, as in the original.
• Gold made by map scripts holds gold; it was empty.
• Quest items aren't dropped when you die, and dropping a bow takes its endless quiver with it, as in the original.
• Staffs' magic properties show on other players' clients.
• Delving Mode: keyless chests; traps and puzzles wired by the level's script.

Gameplay

• Hovering a fish no longer counts as aiming at a creature.

2026-10-09

Hosting

• Fixed: after the map changed in a game you host (Go from the chat map, a match's end, a vote), your items didn't match the new map's, so swapping weapons only played its sound. Now your inventory is the new map's, and a conjurer's creature cage empties as the creatures stay behind, as in the original.
• Map vote: the in-game menu's Vote Map calls a vote and the vote window takes your pick through noxsdl's own messages. Saying "?MapVote" or a map's number in chat is for players on the original game.
• Damage numbers show over players and monster generators too.
• Teleport marks show only to the player who made them, as in the original.
• Solo Quest no longer turns Items Respawn off in nox.cfg.
• Your creatures show the dot in your team's colour over their heads; the server never told your client which creatures were yours.
• Things switched off from the start stay hidden, such as So_Druid's team flags.
• Fixed: a player joining or still loading during the end-of-match map vote sat on a black screen until the next map. They now get into the game and see the vote.
• The server list on XWIS counts people only, not the Bots tab's bots.
• Bots: wizards don't teleport in among their enemies, and bots walled in on three sides back out and find another way.
• Delving Mode: rooms of many shapes (halls, crosses, rings, pillared halls, caverns), a layout style per kind of place and larger levels; floors blend wherever two meet and torches stand on the walls. Fixed: potions picked up on an earlier level didn't work with the quick potion keys.

Graphics

• Smooth FX (Options) draws Force Field as a glass barrier round you, staying round you as you run. With Smooth FX off it's the original's animation.

Joining

• You can join a quest someone else is running; before, the server turned noxsdl away.

Gameplay

• Aiming: with the cursor on a creature or player, attacks and spells aim where it stands, as in the original. Before, they aimed at the point under the cursor: over a flying bat's head, or past a body.
• Fixed: a shot whose thrower was killed hung in the air, shaking. It now flies on and is gone like any other.
• Equipping a weapon or armour needs the strength it asks for, as in the original (it matters for low-level campaign characters), with the original's message; no weapon changes during Berserker Charge or War Cry. A secondary weapon your class or strength can't use is refused.
• Books show what they are in their tooltips in games NoX Core hosts, shops included.
• A two-handed weapon and a shield can't be worn together: equipping one takes the other off, as in the original.
• Armour you pick up goes on in place of the starting outfit's (sneakers, a plain wooden shield, a plain wizard's robe), as in the original: a steel shield replaces the wooden one, boots the sneakers.
• Fixed: a spent staff whose swing was cut short (a jump, a weapon swap) never fired again, even recharged.
• Poison ends when you respawn.
• Delving Mode servers: a MAP button beside the meters shows the run's map.

Solo play

• Fixed: a loaded save showed the chests you'd opened as unopened (and you couldn't use them). They now show as opened, and broken things as broken.

2026-10-08

Hosting

• Players on the original Nox can join games hosted by noxsdl (or noxserver). Before, they timed out connecting ("Timeout waiting for connection acknowledgement") or got a black screen after downloading the map. They also no longer get a black screen when the map changes and they load it more slowly than the others, and they see every player's status as they join. Everything sent to a joining or map-loading player now waits until their game is ready, in the original's order, and they get the host's Server Settings as the original sends them.
• Team chat now reaches only your own team, as in the original; before, everyone could read it.
• Host now starts you on So_Druid, the chat map, with the original's Server Settings window up: pick the game type and map, set the limits and press Go. "Form a new game" brings you back there, and Home (or the in-game menu's Gameplay Controls) opens the window in any game you host.
• Server Settings is complete. The Game page sets the name, type, maps, limits and team options, with Defaults. Server > General sets force respawn, the message of the day, the map cycle, items respawning, the camper alarm, noxsdl's Update Rate and Map Vote, and its Advanced page sets bones, gestures and latency compensation. Server > Access sets the player limit, ping limits, a closed game with its allowed list, a private game with its password and the classes refused, and handles kicks, bans and the banned list. Server > Teams puts players into teams and renames teams.
• The Game page's Advanced window sets each map's rule files (save, load, delete) and which spells, weapons and armour are allowed. Go writes them into the map's user.rul, and the server enforces them.
• A Bots tab adds warriors, wizards and conjurers to your game, sets their difficulty (a range, from one level to another) or sends them away. They run on their own thread on your computer.
• Map voting: when a match ends, everyone votes for the next map. Four maps for the game's type are offered for 20 seconds. noxsdl players see each map drawn from above with its name and click one; players on the original game say its number in chat. The most votes wins; with no votes the map cycle goes on as before. During a match anyone can say ?MapVote (or use the in-game menu's Vote Map) to call a vote, once every 5 minutes, and more than half the players picking the same map changes it at once. On a chat map the vote offers the other chat maps. An arrow at the vote window's top right folds it to one line at the top of the screen, out of the fight's way. Server > General's Map Vote box switches it off.
• The camper alarm works: a player who stays in one place too long is marked on everyone's map, with the alarm sound. It is always on in Capture the Flag and Elimination, as in the original.
• Update Rate (Server > General): noxsdl players in a game you host get the characters' and spells' positions 60 times a second by default (30, 60, 90 or 120). The game itself, and players on the original game, stay at 30. With Smooth Network this cuts the added delay from about 50 ms to about 20 ms. Your own server runs on its own thread, so it keeps that rate however fast your screen draws.
• Players who don't have your map download it from your game, as the original sends it.
• Host Quest on the game list works: a quest others can join. It starts on So_Druid, as Solo Quest does.
• The message of the day (motd.txt in your Nox folder) shows when you join a game.
• noxsdl asks your router to open your game's port by UPnP. If that fails, a message in the game says which port to forward by hand.
• Logged in to Westwood Online (XWIS), the game you host is listed there for others to join.
• Starting Capture the Flag or Flag Ball from the chat map asks to make two teams (red and blue), as the original does, and the teams now reach every player (their colours on names, the flags in their colours, bots that know their side): before, the teams' news was lost as the map changed. The scores are cleared on the new map.
• The minimap shows each flag in its team's colour, as the original does. Flags lying on the ground are in their team's colour too: they showed white until picked up.
• F9 shows the scoreboard again, and Home opens Server Settings in a game you host.
• The game's name applies as soon as you leave its field. Names on the banned and allowed lists match whatever their case.
• Fixed: if you were dead when the map changed, your spell bar stayed greyed out on the new map until you died again.

Joining

• The game list's Join box: clicking a game opens the original's description of it beside the mouse (its name, ping, type, map, players and, for hosted games, the resolution and the spells, weapons and armour turned off), with its Join game button.
• On a NoX Core server your moves reach the server sooner, by about 17 ms on average.
• Downloading a server's map shows its progress bar again: it was a black screen until the map arrived. A big map from a server running the original game takes a minute or two, as it did in the original.

Westwood Online chat

• After logging in to XWIS you arrive in the original's chat lobby. It has the lobbies with their user counts, the users, chat and emotes, private messages to the users you pick, and Games for the game list, whose Back returns to the chat. Find / Page, Options, the server list and the user menu (ignore, kick, ban) aren't there yet.

Solo play

• The main menu's Solo plays the whole campaign on NoX Core's own server. That covers new characters, continuing a save, the save slots, the chapters' briefings and cinematics, NPCs who fight beside you, shops, dialogs, books, signs and the journal.
• Fixed: the campaign's scripted scenes end again. In the Conjurer's tunnel collapse and the Wizard's urchin ambush the black bars stayed down and you stayed frozen. What the maps' scripts tell a monster to do when it reaches a waypoint, dies, sees you and so on now happens.
• Urchins' thrown stones and imps' shots hurt what they hit, as in the original.
• The main menu's Solo Quest hosts a quest on your computer, with its How to Play and stage screens. A level's results screen takes your click again to go on. The quest's lives display and game-over screen are still to come.

Movies

• The start-up movies, the main menu's Intro and the endings play. Escape or a click skips one where the original allows it; holding Shift at start-up, or --no-movies, plays none.
• New separate download, HD movies: the Nox and Westwood logos upscaled to 1920 x 1200. Unzip it next to noxsdl.exe (it makes an HDVideo folder). The intro and the class endings stay as they were: no upscale of them came out well enough.

Graphics

• HD floors: with Use HD Images, every floor is drawn from new 4x art, with smooth blends between tiles (Water stays the original's). The HD pack is about 20% smaller and loads faster; it needs this build.
• Much less graphics memory (about 0.6 GB instead of 1.45 GB with HD images), and new images load without hitches.
• The menus' button text is in the original's large font, centred.
• Messages in the middle of the screen, as the original shows them: signs, spell results, flag events, secrets found and more.
• The main menu's lit buttons keep the HD art of the unlit ones, with only the glow added.

Smoothing

• This week's smoothing rework was undone: Smooth Network, the default, is as it was before it.
• Smooth Movement is new: it eases each thing to its next position over about one server frame. Please try it and say whether things overshoot.
• Off shows each position as it comes. A new choice, Lock to 30 FPS, draws one frame per server frame (--smoothing lock30).
• The Options menu changed (Smoothing, Display, VSync); its screenshot on the home page is updated.

Fixes

• Elevators move smoothly; Fist of Vengeance and Meteor fall from the sky; arrows, bolts and harpoons point the way they fly.
• Doors and secret walls make their sounds; the minimap shows every wall in multiplayer games; the spellbook can be dragged.
• F9 does nothing in a solo game; Options' Screen Resolution works in a game; warriors keep their one spell set; Escape closes the inventory; disabled gears and pulleys stand still.

2026-10-05

Hosting

• The main menu's Host button starts a game on your computer (Estate, arena, for now) and joins it. Others join it like any server, on port 18590 (or the next free one), if they can reach it.
• It runs NoX Core's own server, a remake of the original's that's still being finished. The multiplayer modes work (arena, capture the flag, flagball, King of the Realm, elimination), as do teams, items, spells, monsters and the maps' scripts. Most sounds are still missing, and solo and quest play aren't there yet.
• The console (F1) runs the host's commands (load MAP, set, kick, ban, broadcast ...) and test commands: nx help lists them (spawn a thing, give an item, god mode, an enchantment, level, goto ...).
• From the command line: --host MAP, with --host-mode, --host-time, --host-lessons, --host-teams, --host-port, --host-name and --host-sysop.
• Picking up another class's weapon, armour or potion plays the "can't" sound.

Options

• A Display choice: Windowed, Fullscreen Windowed (a borderless window the size of your screen) or Fullscreen (the screen at your desktop's resolution). It applies at once and is remembered; --display windowed|borderless|fullscreen sets it for a run.
• A VSync switch, on by default: off, frames are drawn as fast as the computer can (--vsync / --no-vsync for a run).
• In all three the picture keeps its shape, with black bars on a screen of another shape.
• Options and the key bindings, opened from the in-game menu, show the still pointer as the original does, not the rotating in-game arrow.
• The Smoothing list opens over the Display box below it, and its choices can be clicked.

Walls

• Walls are drawn in the original's order: the walls behind you are always under you, so standing at the edge of a wall no longer puts the wall over your character, and the walls in front of you are drawn over everything.
• Only the walls that face you from below turn see-through, as in the original. A wall below you that runs away to the side stays solid; before, every wall lower than you went see-through.
• Wall hangings (shields, banners) are drawn as in the original: behind anyone standing at the wall, no longer over them.

Weapons

• Swapping weapons (V) no longer flashes the bare fist on the weapon panel.
• Swapping off a bow and back puts your quiver back on, as in the original; no more reloading.
• The inventory's secondary weapon box, on the character page with "V" in it: drag a weapon from your inventory onto it to make it your secondary (a quiver only while a bow or crossbow is worn), drag your worn weapon onto it to put it away, or right-click it to swap.
• Dropping a weapon into an empty inventory cell no longer makes it your secondary (the original doesn't); dropping your worn weapon on another weapon in the inventory wears that one instead.

Graphics

• Light sources are drawn at full brightness, as in the original: the Death Ray and Force of Nature staves, among other glowing items, are no longer dark on the floor.
• Drain Mana's orbs show when you drain an obelisk, not only another player.
• Lightning on many targets no longer halves the frame rate: its glow is drawn far more cheaply and looks the same.
• Line of sight: no more thin lines of light cutting into the black where walls meet.
• Things out of sight can't be hovered or clicked.
• The spell bar's target pips are drawn over the "Spell Set" title, no longer under it.
• Poisoned, the health tube's sides turn green as well as its fill.
• The HD image pack is the latest export (2242 images), with a seamless window border.

Online

• Skip Login on the Westwood Online screen joins games with no account name at all.

2026-10-04

Downloads

• Two downloads from now on: the plain build, and one with the HD image pack beside noxsdl.exe (Options' "Use HD Images" turns it on). The plain one plays the same with the original art.
• The HD image pack has grown from 632 images to 2250: the HUD and menu art, the spell and ability icons, the items, weapons and armour, and more of the player's and monsters' animations, mostly at 4x. Its redraws now match the originals' brightness and colour (the Lesser Fireball Wand no longer has a blown-out rim, for one).

Graphics

• Bloom is softer: still on by default, at 0.2 strength instead of 0.5 (--bloom N, 0 to 1, sets it for a run).
• HD images drawn smaller than their full size (the spell icons, buttons and HUD art on a 1080p screen) come out smooth, without the jagged edges and harsh strokes they had beside the original art.

Online

• Westwood Online now opens the original's login screen: your saved logins, name and password, and "Save This Login?". Logging in makes the name your account name in games. A name nobody has yet becomes your XWIS account with the password you type; for one registered at xwis.net, use the game password shown at xwis.net/ga. A wrong password is refused with XWIS's message.
• Skip Login (or Network on the screen before) goes to the game list without logging in, as before.

On screen

• The end of a match shows the original's victory or defeat banner with the winner's words ("Congratulations! You are the Master!", "Your team won!", "It's a tie!" and so on).
• The weapon panel's ammo is the original's: a bar beside the weapon that empties as you shoot (arrows or bolts in the quiver, a staff's charges), and the count in the green bead above it.
• Your summons have a dot over them in your team's colour in team games, as in the original.
• The ring at the feet of what's under the cursor is one solid thick line, as it looks in the original.
• The arrow cursor turns red over an enemy and blue over an ally or anything else, as in the original.
• Charges in the inventory are white and bold, easier to read than the original's blue.
• Kill feed weapons are drawn in their own colours, as in the original.
• The weapon panel shows a fist when you hold nothing, as the original does, instead of an empty panel; a charge or ammo count sits centred in its bead.

Fixes

• A running jump lands straight into the run, without a frame of walking or standing in between.
• A dead flag carrier no longer shows a flag over the body beside the real one on the ground.
• The harpoon's head stays on whoever it struck, at the end of the rope; it trailed behind.
• Players who went out of your view no longer stay behind running on the spot.
• Your own summons get the blue ring under the cursor; they had the enemy's red one.
• An invisible enemy who's walking stays steadily half visible instead of flickering in and out.

2026-10-03

On screen

• A window of another shape than your resolution no longer zooms the game in: the view keeps its shape, centred, with black bars at the sides or top and bottom, and the mouse stays on the game's area.
• The ring at the feet of what's under the cursor, as the original draws it: flickering red round an enemy, white and blue round anything else.
• The kill feed, as the original draws it: the latest kills centred at the top of the screen for a few seconds, each with the killer (and a helper), the icon of what killed and the victim; yours in green. Options' new Kill Feed switch turns it off (kills then show in the console only).

Game list

• Servers running NoX Core's own server come first, their names in light blue after a diamond ("noxcpp" under From). noxsdl asks each server beside its usual ping; the game's own servers ignore the question.

Fixes

• Long games: after a long time on one server (sooner in busy games), items you picked up stopped showing in the inventory and the potion slots, and the server then refused more potions ("can't carry any more"). Deaths, respawns, health and enchantments could go unseen the same way. noxsdl now takes the server's important messages as the original does, so they keep coming however long you play.
• Potions sit centred in their slots; they were 8 pixels too high.
• Dun Mir's fire basins and other two-state flames animate again; they stood still.
• The door by blue's flag on FlagWar shows again.
• A field of spike traps no longer stutters its sound as it comes into view.
• Chat from an observer, or from the server's console, shows with a speaker instead of as the server's.
• While you observe, players' name plates keep their team colours; they went white unless the player was talking.
• Your ping no longer shows as 0 to everyone else: noxsdl now answers the server's way of measuring it, as the original client does every 2 seconds.
• The scoreboard (F9, or the one a game's end opens) no longer takes the mouse: with it up you can still move and fight. This was the "clicks do nothing, keyboard still works" freeze.
• A dedicated server's host no longer stands in the map as a plain grey figure.
• Chat bubbles of players off screen stay readable: a bubble pushed to the edge of the window keeps off the HUD (the quickbar, the meters, the inventory strip), as in the original, instead of hiding under it.
• In a game, the map viewer's N, L and V keys no longer do anything (N turned every player's name off).

Online

• noxsdl joins with your saved Westwood Online login as the account name, as the original does; it sent a blank one. --account NAME sets another.

The log

• noxsdl-log.txt is still emptied each time noxsdl starts, and now stops at 4 MB in one run.

Invisibility

• Invisible players are drawn as the original draws them: standing still they can't be seen at all, moving they show as a faint ghost, plainer the faster they go. You and your teammates always show, green while standing; with Infravision the invisible show green.

Damage numbers

• The numbers float up over whoever is hit, as in the original: red over you, yellow over anyone or anything else.

Effects

• With Smooth FX off, the toxic cloud's puffs and Fist of Vengeance's smoke are see-through and fade away as in the original; they showed as solid blobs with black edges.
• With Smooth FX on, the soft versions move as the original's do: the cloud's puffs rise straight up at the same speed and last as long, and the fist's smoke stays where it lands.

HD images

• The HD image pack has grown to 632 images, up from 216: the player now also walks, taunts and war-cries empty-handed in high definition, with in-between frames for smoother motion. Turn it on with Options' Use HD Images.

Options menu

• The Options menu has changed since the last picture of it here (Kill Feed, Use HD Images, Win Mouse Accel, the Mouse speed slider and the Smoothing drop-down are new); the screenshot on the home page now shows it as it is.

2026-10-02

Mouse

• The mouse is read as the original read it: the mouse's own movement, one step of it moving the cursor one pixel of the game's screen, whatever the window's size.
• Options (advanced) has Win Mouse Accel, on by default: Windows' pointer speed and acceleration on top, as the game felt back in the day. Off at Mouse x1.00 is exactly the original's raw movement.
• A Mouse slider sets the cursor's speed, x0.25 to x3.
• The cursor stays inside the window while the game has the focus, as the original's did; Alt+Tab lets go of it.
• Alt+Tab lets go of a spell being dragged and of the target cursor.

Smoothing

• Options has a Smoothing drop-down: Off (the world exactly as the server last sent it, like the original), Smooth Movement (the default: the map's scrolling and your own character glide instead of stepping, with aiming as the original) and Smooth Network (everything glides; aiming at moving targets needs a little more lead).
• The smoothing delay adapts to your connection, about 50 ms on a steady line; the frame-rate counter shows it.
• Rest the mouse on any of noxsdl's own switches in Options to see what it does, with its upsides and downsides.

Chat, players and flags

• Chat bubbles that would overlap move apart, as in the original. Team chat is marked "Team:" in the bubble and the console.
• The console's mute / unmute work as the original's: a muted player's chat and bubbles are hidden until they leave the game.
• Quest games: other players' health bars show beside them while the small bars beside you are on (click a tube on the HUD), green while they're poisoned.
• In games that label flags, a flag on the ground shows its team's name.
• Poisoned, your health tube and small health bar turn green, as in the original, and the small bars' frames have the original's colours.

Shops, NPCs and the inventory

• Shops and NPC dialogs: point at a shopkeeper or someone who talks for the Trade or Talk hand, then click. Buy, sell and repair (part of a stack asks how many; the shopkeeper's offer comes up to accept); dialogs show the NPC's words, their spoken line and your answers.
• Inventory: the journal and stats pages, icons for what's enchanting you (with their names on hover), identifying unknown items, dropping part of a stack, and the Caution hand.

Creatures, scoreboard and observing

• Pointing at a creature in the summon cage, or at its order button, shows it (or all of them) blue in the world, as the original. Frozen creatures are drawn blue, invulnerable ones flash blue and white, afraid ones grey.
• The scoreboard opens by itself when a game ends, takes the mouse while it's up, and has the original's Westwood Online and quest views.
• Other players who are observing aren't drawn; while you observe, your own body is half see-through, as in the original.
• Fix: the trap / bomber tray's small button closes the tray on the first click.

Fixes

• Back from a game, the game list refreshes properly. The main menu's Quit asks first, as the original's does.
• Things riding an elevator down sink into the floor.
• The birdies over a confused, held or charmed player are drawn above the head.
• Converging glows and smoke embers are drawn in front of or behind things correctly.

HD images

• The HD image pack holds the player standing empty-handed, in all eight directions, the mana obelisk and the mechanical golem, upscaled 4x (Use HD Images in Options, advanced). It also carries in-between frames for smoother animation, which noxsdl doesn't draw yet.
• Packs now hold only the images that changed, which brings the download from 152 MB to about 20 MB.

2026-10-01

The summon panel, tooltips and cooldowns

• Conjurers' summon panel: your first summoned or charmed creature brings the creature cage down in the top right. Each creature shows with its picture and a health bar (green while poisoned); click one for its commands (Banish, Observe, Guard, Escort, Hunt), or the round button on top to command them all. The button shows their current order.
• Tooltips, as in the original: the spell bar's spells, abilities and buttons, the health and mana tubes and potion slots, the book's tabs, the weapon panel, and items in the inventory or on the ground, with their full names (enchantments included; books say what they hold).
• Warriors: a recharging ability is darkened again, the clear part rising as it recharges.
• Creatures' lines read as text ("Escorting...") instead of codes.

HD images (work in progress)

• Options, advanced: Use HD Images (off by default). With it on, noxsdl draws from the HD image pack that now comes in the download instead of the game's own images: upscaled images where there are some, the originals everywhere else.
• Note: the HD art hasn't actually been generated yet. The pack in this build is only a test of the pipeline (the player standing empty-handed); the option is there to try it out, not because there's HD art to see yet.

Traps, bombers, levers and keys

• Wizards' traps and conjurers' bombers: the spell bar's right end opens a tray of three trap sets of three spells, filled from the book or the bar; its button or T lays the trap or summons the bomber. Trap sets are saved with your character.
• Levers, switches, buttons and chain pulls: point at one within reach for the Use hand, then click.
• Options, Input Config: the game's own key binding window (click a key cell, press the new key or mouse button), with Reset, Defaults and the pickup mouse button.
• Insert / Delete change the brightness (the game's gamma), F12 saves a screenshot, F10 shows network stats.
• Main menu: the pointer's sparks (drawn with the smooth effects) and the background's blinking eyes.

Sound

• Music, sound effects, the maps' ambient sounds and speech, played as the original plays them (the same sounds, volumes, ranges, priorities and channel limits) with modern mixing. The menus' music resumes where it left off when you come back from a game.
• Spells are chanted as you cast them, in your character's voice, with their hand gestures round the middle of the screen.
• NPCs and shopkeepers speak their lines; every menu, window and HUD button makes its original sound.
• Options: the effects, speech and music sliders and switches work, live.

The spellbook and spell sets

• The spellbook (B, or the book button by the spell bar): a list of your spells, then a page each with mana cost, how it's cast, your power level and its description. The second tab is the field guide's creatures.
• Your five spell sets are yours to build: drag spells from the book onto the bar, swap slots, drag one off to remove it. They're saved with your character, as the original saves them, and a new character starts with one of its class's original sets.
• Clicking a slot casts a spell that goes on you at once; any other waits for your next click, with the target cursor. The light above a slot shows a spell cast on yourself: click its corner to change it, or hold Shift to flip the whole set. A button shows all five sets at once.
• When a quest teaches you a spell, the book opens on it with a burst of sparks and the spell goes to an empty slot.

Getting started

• Just run noxsdl.exe: it finds your Nox install by itself, as OpenNox does (GOG, Origin, Nox Reloaded or the original CD install), and writes noxsdl-log.txt on its own. No more .bat files, and the download holds only noxsdl.
• Joining a game on a map you don't have shows the original's map download screen, with Abort download.

Playing

• The scoreboard: F9 steps through the original's views (teams and players, teams only, the top three, then off), with scores, class, ping, who carries the flag, ball or crown, your rank, the lesson limit and the time left.
• Weapon swap (V) as in the original: your secondary weapon goes on and the old one becomes the secondary, or with none set V swaps between your weapon and bare hands. A weapon you pick up while holding one becomes the secondary; you can also choose one by dragging it to an empty inventory cell. Works with staffs.
• Taunt, Point and Laugh play their animations.
• The spell bar darkens a spell as you run short of mana, as in the original. New: a spell turns dark red while the server would refuse it because your last one is still out (Force of Nature, Fist of Vengeance and Meteor one at a time; Magic Missile and Pixie Swarm up to their count).
• F1 opens the game's console with its commands, plus noxsdl's own switches.
• Options: the old renderer's low-end switches are gone. New: Smooth Motion (off draws the world exactly as the server last sent it, like the original).

The world

• Map flames and torches were missing; they now show, animate and light the map (Inferno's lava, ManaMine's torches). Fire pits show their flames inside the ring.
• Obelisks and mana crystals show their charge: they glow when charged, dim as they're drained, recover as they recharge, and their light follows.
• Pressure plates are drawn. Elevators, teleport pentagrams, buttons and spikes follow the server's frames.
• Things lying on the floor (pits, plates, scorch marks) are drawn under what stands on them, and objects sit at the original's heights.
• Front walls are see-through, as the original's Translucent Front Walls, so you can see whoever is behind a wall south of you.
• Fist of Vengeance and Meteor start in the air and fall. Items that give light light you up.
• Poison clouds and a landing fist's dust are soft particle clouds instead of hard-edged sprites (turn off Smooth FX in Options for the original look).

2026-09-30

• First playable builds: attack, jump, cast spells and use warrior abilities.
• The game's own main menu, game list, character select and creation, HUD, inventory screen and cursor.
• Options: resolution, game window size, the advanced options, and noxsdl's switches (frame rate, bloom, per-pixel light, smooth effects).
• Chat (Enter), the map (TAB, 1 / 2 to zoom), the game's own key bindings.
• A fixed view like the original: you see the area of your chosen resolution at any window size. Walking or running depends on how far the cursor is.
• Closed doors and solid objects block line of sight. Capture the flag: flags in team colours, drawn on their carrier.
• Chat bubbles, and enchantments: tints, shields, bubbles and more.
• Many more effects (summons, turn undead, toxic clouds, vortices, screen shake), with per-pixel lighting, smooth effects, glows and bloom (Direct3D 12).

2026-09-29

• The server browser.
• Name plates over players.
• Effects: sparks, explosions, smoke, beams (lightning, energy bolt, drain mana, heal, charm), and the effects missiles make as they fly.