Hi Noxcrew community!

Hasn’t January dragged this year?! Honestly I thought we were about to roll into March not February! But you know what hasn’t dragged? Noxcrew’s drive to get things done (smooth segue there).

MCC is getting closer and closer and a lot of exciting changes have been made! A few games have been improved (I’ve heard a rumour that Dodgebolt has had particular attention) and some quality of life stuff has been added so it should be even better than it was last time. Dangthatsalongname has also been hard at work organising the teams, a few of which got announced yesterday! Head over to the MCC Twitter to find out who's competing, we’ve got a few familiar faces and a few exciting first-timers….

DvD is going through its final series of tests as we speak, as we check over some added voice lines and other small additions made throughout the week. Hopefully, if all goes well with the big group test and there aren’t too many bugs found, DvD will be off for clearance by the beginning of next week!

Thanks to all that, the mechanics team have finally jumped over the Codename: Cow and gotten a proper look at it. On the back of last week’s discussions about Codename: Cow’s activities and the time we want to spend getting this project to you guys, there have been a few changes made to get it out of the door.

This mostly includes the removal of a few mechanics we had planned to add but, on reflection, realised they were more showcases rather than essential to the map we wanted to make. They'd have been fun experiments and interesting features in the world but would have taken forever to implement without bringing all that much to the overall experience. Not to worry though, I’m sure they’ll pop up in something else down the line, no idea is truly abandoned in Noxcrew, it just joins the increasing pile of ‘things we’ll get back to one day’

Thanks to these removals, the team have been able to focus their attention on implementing the quests and activities we did want to add, working with Andrej to ensure everything is fine-tuned and ready. We’ve also found some familiar faces hidden around the world. I wonder what they’re up to...

Finally, Mega Moustache Tales has been storming ahead. Despite a few real-life things slowing down progress, the level designers have absolutely rocketed through the colour blocking phase of the build process!

Colour blocking is a build system we sometimes use where the builders develop the broad strokes of the world, such as scenery, buildings and structures, using untextured blocks but with an idea of what those textures will be. This allows the team to get a head start on developing the world while giving the art department time to perfect their textures and develop any planned entities. This can make the initial world look kinda trippy, with everything all built up in primary colours, but I promise, once the textures are in it’ll look less like a children’s playground and more like a proper Noxcrew world.

And that’s your lot!

I hope you have a great week when we finally hit February and I’ll see you all next time!

Noctis

Crazy colours and cool cows