May 12th, 2000

Nox 1.2 + Expansion Pack

In this version of Nox, we have added a new game mode: The Quest. Our goal was to create a game experience that allows friends to adventure together and set their own pace. Nox Quest can be played as a solo adventure, or with up to 6 friends on a LAN or over the Internet via Westwood Online. We hope you enjoy this new cooperative game mode – you asked for it, you got it! Take the challenge and see how far you can go in this never ending Quest!

Patch 1.1

Many thanks for all the feedback and support that we’ve received from the public. This patch addresses many issues that were reported. This patch updates your Nox to version # 1.1.

Warrior Specific:
1.1 Berserker Charge: Berserker charge can no longer be stopped by a weapon dequip (V-key).
1.2 Berserker Charge: If a warrior kills someone with Berserker Charge, the game now immediately recharges this skill so the warrior can immediately do another Berserker Charge.
1.3 Berserker Charge: The warrior can no longer Berserker Charge through any walls and go out of bounds using observer mode.
1.4 Harpoon: The warrior’s harpoon has been improved so it works more reliably everywhere.
1.5 Harpoon: The warrior’s harpoon has been improved so it tracks enemies in front of the warrior.
1.6 Harpoon: The warrior’s harpoon now has a time limit. Once it has latched onto someone, it only lasts a short duration.
1.7 Harpoon: The harpooned player can no longer use jump to escape/break out of being harpooned.
1.8 Harpoon: The warrior harpoon will no longer collide with the harpoon source.

Conjurer Specific:
2.1 Bombers: The conjurer may only summon 2 bombers now. If you have an old save game with more than 2 bombers you will still have the additional bombers, but you won’t be able to summon any more until you have less than 2.

Wizard Specific:
3.1 Energy Bolt &: The game now disallows the use of energy bolt and lightning at the same time.
Lightning
3.2 Reflective Shield: The reflective shield now animates.
3.3 Swap Location: When inverted, the Swap Location spells are now automatically destroyed.
3.4 Teleport to Marker: Casting Teleport to Marker on other players is no longer allowed. However, it can still be used on yourself, or in a trap.
3.5 Teleport to Target: It is now safe to use the Teleport to Target spell in a trap. The game will no longer crash.
3.6 Illegal Enchantments: In the solo game, it was possible to become infinitely enchanted with some hostile spells such as anchor and stun. This has been fixed.
3.7 Obliteration: Before, if you save a game while the Obliteration spell is going off, and load this game back up, you won’t be able to move or continue with the game. This has been fixed.

General Issues:
4.1 Console: Player chat is now shown in yellow in the console to be more readable.
4.2 Cursors: Targeting circles are always blue for friends and friend’s monsters, and red for all others. And, friendly monsters have a dot in their team color over their head.
4.3 Custom Hotkeys: The hotkeys for quick-potions now update themselves if the player changes them while in game.
4.4 In Game Map: The overhead map now moves around with the camera location. This allows the map to be correct/current while observing other players.
4.5 Restart after Death: Before, if you had your inventory window open and were holding an item on your cursor when you got killed, the game would prevent all future input from the mouse. This is now fixed.
4.6 Run Enchantment: Players can now attack while enchanted with the Run spell. However, spell casters can no longer continue to cast the following spells when they are enchanted with run: Force of Nature, Drain Mana, Greater Heal, Channel Life, Reflective Shield, Energy Bolt, and Chain Lightning.
4.7 Spell Casting: Before, if you had the GUI off (F11), you couldn’t cast some spells “on others” by holding the SHIFT-key. This problem is now fixed. This is only for spells that are allowed to be cast on others; for example, Vampirism.
4.8 Staff of Oblivion: Before, if the user fired the Staff of Oblivion and clicked on a target repeatedly, the Staff of Oblivion would stop using its charges (essentially infinite charges). Now, the staff will continue to drain/use up its mana charges.
4.9 Win 2K Mouse: The mouse now works properly with Windows 2000 / DirectX7. The player will no longer have the “continuous run” problem.

Solo Chapters Specific:
5.1 All Characters: The game’s internal item ID system has been modified to prevent certain lockups caused by multiple items sharing the same ID.
5.2 All Characters: Fixed a problem caused by loading games containing monsters with Force Field on. Sometimes, these monsters would be loaded with infinite shield strength making them impossible to kill. This is no longer possible.
5.3 Warrior – Chap 7: Before, The house across from Maximillian’s could be opened by any silver key. The user could’ve used the silver key from the 2nd level of the tower to open this door. Doing so would often prevent the player from advancing beyond the 2nd level of the tower. Now, the player must use the harpoon to drag the guy inside the house to the door to open the door. This door no longer requires a silver key.
5.4 Warrior – Chap 10: In this chapter, there is a monster that turns from a bat to a knight. Before, if the player hit this monster with the harpoon from afar (only when that creature was in its bat form), the game would sometimes crash to the desktop. This is now fixed.
5.5 Wizard – Chap 1: Fixed the initial Horvath and the Urchins event so it will no longer lockup the game in certain rare instances.

Multiplay Specific:
6.1 Advanced Menu: The disabled-spells-list in the advanced menu is now showing reliable information.
6.2 Assisted Kill Credit: The warrior will now be credited with a full kill if he reflects a Force of Nature with the Great Sword which then kills another player.
6.3 Auto Assign Team: With “auto assign” turned on, the game will shuffle the teams after a game has been completed. Teams will no longer be shuffled after exiting a social map.
6.4 Camper Alarm: The new camper alarm shows the camper on the map. This works in much the same way as the Tag spell. No alarm SFX will be played when the camper alarm kicks in.
6.5 Chat Room: Now, Japanese and Korean users can type messages in their own local language in Westwood Online. Players using other language versions of Nox can download the Asian text fonts to see these messages too.
6.6 Console Command: Typing “show motd” on a client no longer crashes the client.
6.7 Console Command: The “set spell ON” command now works from the console, and the change is reflected in the advanced menu. For example, to disallow the blink spell, pull down the console using the F1-key, the type “set spell “SPELL_BLINK” off.
6.8 CTF: These spells no longer affect the flag carrier: Blink, Invisibility, Invulnerability, Swap, Teleport to Marker 1/2/3/4, Teleport to Target, and Teleport to Random. However, the flag carrier can still teleport by following other player’s teleport wakes.
6.9 CTF: Before, you would only hear the flag capture/drop/taken sounds if you were nearby. Now these events can be heard at full volume by everyone.
6.10 CTF: The game will no longer allow a player to blink to a destination which has line of sight to the enemy flag’s home.
6.11 CTF: Flags are now displayed in the overhead map at all times.
6.12 CTF: Stun and Confuse are now disallowed in all CTF games.
6.13 CTF & KOTR: The game now picks a random starting location in KOTR games. The player will no longer respawn at the same location.
6.14 CTF & KOTR: Before, some spells could not be cast when you were carrying the flag, ball, or crown. Now, not only can you not cast those spells, but those spells have no effect on you when cast on you by another player. However, you may now cast one of these restricted spells by placing them in a bomber or trap. Spells affected by this are: Blink, Invisibility, Invulnerability, Swap, Teleport to Marker 1/2/3/4, Teleport to Target, and Teleport to Random.
6.15 Flag Ball: Before, if you had the ball last and you killed the player with the ball, you would not be able to pick up the ball. Now you can pickup the ball in this situation.
6.16 Flag Ball: If a player threw the ball at the enemy flag, and an enemy hit the ball with a fireball, the ball became “owned” by the enemy, and no point was gained if the ball then hit the flag. This has been fixed.
6.17 Game Select Screen: For all Internet games, the multiplay game select screen now defaults to “list” instead of “map”.
6.18 Game Name: The default server name has been changed from “NoxWorld” to “User Game”.
6.19 Kick/Ban System: Added a simple voting feature to kick unwanted players out of a game. Players can access this via the esc-key. Kicking a player requires 2 votes in a team of 3, 3 votes in a team of 4, or 4 votes for teams of 5 or more.
6.20 Kick/Ban System: Ban is now done using a player’s WOL name in all Internet games. The banned player can no longer return to the game by using another in-game name.
6.21 Kick/Ban System: At each map change, the ban list is now saved. Now, if the game goes down for some reason, you can still revert to the last ban list.
6.22 Kick/Ban System: When you get kicked from a server, your character is now automatically saved.
6.23 Lag Compensation: Before, if the server set the lag compensation to minimum and a new player joined the game and started to download the map (which would appear to have the lag of zero), the lag compensation would automatically go to zero, too. Now, the game ignores this while the new player is downloading maps.
6.24 Magic + Normal Shield: Before, if the warrior had a regular shield up and a Force Field on, when the Force Field was destroyed, the warrior’s HP would go down to 1 hit point (same for wizard and conjurer). This was wrong, because the warrior was protected by the normal shield under the Force Field. Now, when the Force Field is damaged and goes off, the warrior’s HP would stay at the same level if the shield can block the damage.
6.25 Observer Mode: The player can no longer be poisoned while in the observer mode.
6.26 Observer Mode: In an elimination game, the system is now set to auto observe the person who eliminated you, if possible.
6.27 Observer Mode: The conjurer will no longer disappear while observing one of his summoned creatures.
6.28 Observer Mode: Before, the player might not have been able to cycle through all the players while in the observer mode. Now the game allows the player to cycle through all the active players in the game.
6.29 Observer Mode: Before, if you hit spacebar while in observer mode, the camera would “detach” but remain static. Now, when the camera is so detached, it can be moved around with the cursor and right mouse button.
6.30 Observer Mode: Players are now automatically dropped into the observer mode if the system doesn’t receive any input for 90 seconds.
6.31 Observer Mode: Now, SFX will play as soon as you join a multiplay game. While in observer mode, you no longer have to cycle to another player to activate the SFX.
6.32 Observer Mode: Now, the player can go into the observer mode after joining a ladder game.
6.33 Pet’s Chat Bubbles: Now, charmed and summoned creatures’ chat bubbles can only be seen by their owners.
6.34 Proxy Server: Multiple players can join the same game through a proxy server.
6.35 Ranking GUI: Added WOL login name to F9 list for both clients and server. The game now displays each player’s name in the following form: (). For example: Scoob(TrueScoob), or Flinn(Flinn2501).
6.36 Server Selection: A button has been added on the WOL chat screen to allow the user to change game servers.
6.37 Splash Damage: You will now take damage when hit by your own splash damaging devices such as Fireball or Force of Nature. This is true even if team damage is turned off.
6.38 Team Assignment: After shuffling teams, the game now reselects the player starting locations.
6.39 Team Game: When a player changes teams during a team game, the game now immediately relocates that player.
6.40 Team Game: The game now auto selects a new player start location when the player comes out of observer mode.

1.7 MISCELLANEOUS

Q: How do I run a dedicated server for Nox?
A: Page 36 of the Nox manual is incorrect. The actual command line to start Nox as a dedicated server is: C:\Westwood\Nox\Nox.exe -serveronly
(The manual has it listed as -server only with a space… this is incorrect)

Q: What is the “Buddy Disc” packaged with Nox?
A: This disc is an extra copy of the game for Multiplayer use only. Using this disc, you and a buddy can play over a Local Area Network, Modem, or Westwood Online.