A modern client for Nox (Westwood Studios, 2000): the game as you know it, cleaned up, with new features, for today's hardware, on Windows and Linux.
NoX Core plays just like the original and speaks its network protocol, so NoX Core players and players on the original game join each other's games, on the original's servers and on ours. Bugs that cheaters and troublemakers could use are fixed; the quirks players have come to rely on are kept. It is written from scratch, from our own analysis of how the game behaves; no code from the original game is included.
- Website and ready-made Windows builds: https://noxhub.net/
- Everything it adds: https://noxhub.net/features.html
- What changed lately: https://noxhub.net/patch-notes.html
- Video walkthroughs (map editor, scripting, mods): https://noxhub.net/walkthroughs.html
You need your own copy of Nox (GOG, Origin or the original CD). NoX Core contains none of the game's art, sound, music, maps or text; it reads them from your installed game when it runs.
- Co-op Campaign: play the Warrior's, Wizard's or Conjurer's story with up to three friends, original-game players included.
- New modes: Delve (endless generated levels) and Undead Tide (survive the night), alone or with a party.
- Map Editor inside the game: walls, floors, objects, scripts with a reference and suggestions, play-testing with F5, and editing together with friends.
- Hosting from the menus with the original's full server settings, bots, map voting and faster updates for NoX Core players.
- Graphics: widescreen, any window size, per-pixel lighting, bloom, and an optional pack of HD images.
- Mods: game modes written in Luau, loaded from the
modsfolder. - The NoX Content Editor for the game's files, saving changes into content packs.
Short version (full details, prerequisites and options in BUILDING.txt):
Windows (Visual Studio 2022 with "Desktop development with C++"), from a Developer PowerShell:
cmake --preset msvc-release
cmake --build --preset msvc-release
The client is build\msvc-release\noxsdl\noxcore.exe.
Linux (GCC 13+, CMake 3.25+, Ninja, glslang and SDL3's development packages; the Ubuntu 24.04 package list is in BUILDING.txt):
cmake --preset linux-release
cmake --build --preset linux-release
The client is build/linux-release/noxsdl/noxcore.
The first configure downloads the pinned third-party libraries, so it needs a network connection.
Start noxcore.exe (Linux: noxcore). It finds your Nox install by itself: its own folder, the
current folder, then the usual GOG, Origin and CD installs (on Linux, the usual Wine, Lutris and
Heroic prefixes). Point it at another copy with --game-dir DIR or the NOX_DATA environment
variable. The folder it chose, and why, is written to noxcore-log.txt beside the program.
| Folder | What it holds |
|---|---|
noxcore/ |
The engine library: the game's file formats, its network protocol, and the game simulation that hosted games run on. |
noxsdl/ |
The NoX Core client on SDL3: menus, play, hosting, rendering, audio and the map editor. |
modes/ |
The built-in game modes (Delve, Undead Tide, the co-op campaign) and the Luau scripting that mods use. |
mods/ |
Mods written in Luau: Deep Delve, an action-RPG mode in development and the example to learn from. |
videotools/ |
The NoX Content Editor (noxcontent). How to use it: videotools/CONTENT_EDITOR.txt. |
docs/original_bugs.md |
The bugs found in the original game, and which are fixed or kept. |
docs/vanilla_deviations.md |
Where NoX Core deliberately behaves differently from the original, and why. |
cmake/, .github/, packaging/ |
Build settings and pinned dependencies, the automatic build, and a debug launcher. |
Bug reports are welcome as GitHub issues. Please include noxcore-log.txt (it's beside the
program) and say whether the game was hosted by NoX Core or by the original game.
NoX Core is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or (at your option) any later version: see LICENSE and NOTICE.txt. The third-party code it uses, and those licences, are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt.
NoX Core is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Electronic Arts or Westwood Studios. Nox is a trademark of Electronic Arts Inc.