Dinos and Dragons

Hi Noxcrew community!

Did you enjoy our announcement at the weekend?

For those who haven’t seen, MC Championship returns on the 9th of February 8pm GMT for more high-octane competition and mini-game madness! We’ll be announcing the players and the teams in the next couple of weeks over at the MCC Twitter so keep an eye out over there for all the news! And, if you want to get involved in MCC but haven’t been invited to take part we run occasional sessions to test new games, stress test updates and make sure everything runs smoothly for the big night. To take part, sign up to our testing team over at the Noxcrew Discord by filling in this form.

While all that excitement has been going on, the rest of the team continue to crack on.

DVD had its first full playtest on Wednesday after the mechanics found and crushed some big blocking bugs earlier in the week. All in all things seem to be running quite well. There’s a few mechanics that need refining, some areas that need streamlining and some mob balancing but that was all to be expected and is all part of the testing process. Hopefully it shouldn’t take too long to add this final layer of polish. 

In the meantime, Codename: Cow spent the week jumping between Java and Bedrock for some extra build touch ups (we’re never happy), but has finally settled down in Bedrock town. It still needs a bit of love and attention so the mechanics will be hard at work on it soon, once DvD stops being such an attention hog. 

Finally I have a special treat for you guys this week. Our incredible artist Skyao has given me a sneak peak at some upcoming updates for Adventurer’s Dream, including The Dragon Update! She took me through this exciting change coming to one of our oldest maps and what brought it on!

A lot has changed in Minecraft since Adventurer’s Dream was released in 2017. Back then, despite wanting to completely reimagine Minecraft’s default mobs, we just didn’t have the tools and the model support to do anything more than a mild texture change. Zombies became goblin scouts, skeletons were goblin archers and creepers were greeper sappers, but lacked the diagonal lines we wanted to alter their posture and make them into true goblin creatures. 

Nowadays, things are different. Not only does Minecraft now support diagonal models and improved texturing, but we as a team have become more experienced in developing these mobs and entities, thanks to the Creative toolbox and GDLU series. Not only that, but we have exciting new mobs to join the cast of creatures we can develop, such as Drowned, Strays and Husks. Using our hard earned experience and artistic flair, we slowly but surely brought them up to this new standard. The goblins can now lean forward, have characteristic noses and big floppy ears. They can even have regional variants with Husks and Strays becoming sandy goblins that roam the desert landscape, and drowned becoming water adapted goblins so that not even the rivers are safe.

But that’s not all. These changes even extended to all of our non-hostile critters such as foxes, pigs, pandas, cats and sheep, including this cute little baby one! 

However, Adventurer’s Dream has always been inspired by 2 things: Adventure Time (It’s in the name) and Dungeons and Dragons. The former has a wonderful kind of pride in embracing the over the top implausible nature of fantasy in its aesthetic, with its abstract designs and bright colour palette even for dark or scary characters and areas.

DnD, while being more straight laced with its fantasy elements, brings depth and intrigue to its worlds.The books are full of colourful, evocative artworks of creatures and characters all of which can be used wholesale or as a starting point to develop your own mythology. 

It was these inspirations, plus the recent addition of bees to Minecraft that gave us the opportunity to really go wild and and play around with these re-imagining mobs in a more whimsical way. Not only will our new bee friends be transformed into beautiful fairy dragons, serving as both enemy and pet, allowing you to experience this beautiful beast in multiple ways, but a whole army of new and exciting dragonkin will be brought along to terrorise the land, sea and sky!

First off, the existing baby dragons, that were little more than retextured chickens will be getting a revamp to be more in keeping with their draconic heritage. Next we’ll be altering dolphins to become the serpents of the sea, inkeeping with dragon’s associations with all the elements of the world. Finally, the big boss dragon will be undergoing a terrifying transformation, making him bigger and badder than he’s ever been before! 

We’re delighted to bring these new changes to you so keep an eye out for them sometime in February!

And that’s your lot! 

Until next time, have a great week! 

Noctis