Why I Like Nox | Hacker News Reader

Why I Like Nox

hynek.me

19 pointsgilad13 comments

Note that you can play Nox online here: https://playnox.xyz/

That's a different Nox. This article is about the Python testing utility: https://pypi.org/project/nox/

while this isn't about that Nox, I hoped it was and appreciate the link

EDIT: after playing for a bit i remember just how many things i love this game has, I never had a group of people to play with so I never spent much time in it, but the gameplay seems immaculate

i spent a lot of time with Bloodline Champions and Battlerite which are descendants in some way, and i'm glad Nox is still around in this form (with multiplayer?!). i may have to host a server

I also only clicked on this link because I assumed it was Nox (the game).

There is also opennox [1]

[1]: https://github.com/noxworld-dev/opennox

I had a huge amount of fun playing this when it came out. It was a little clunky, and very quirky, but it had a lot of good ideas in it.

I wish it had been more successful in the market.

It is a downright shame that that game never got a sequel.

I love Nox!

Wow, I'm actually surprised at how unconvinced I am. Moving from a declarative config syntax to arbitrary Python is rarely a good idea, and "the point of this is to run commands" feels pretty flat to me - after all, the "point" of setup.py was to run commands, but we all know the problems that caused.

"This declarative configuration format is great, but having to define 100 items by hand is tedious and error-prone. Let's make a DSL that supports conditions and loops!"

"This custom DSL is great, but there's zero tooling for it. Let's use a real language instead!"

"This Python-based config is great, but my config file takes ages to run, and even longer to understand. Let's make a simple declarative configuration format!"

The circle of life

Very good write-up. It has certainly made Nox pique my interest.

Sadly, I don't think I'll use it. It's hard to justify jumping into a project using Tox and replacing it without reason.

However, if at any time something breaks with Tox, or I need to so something that's feeling super hacking, I'll definitely consider it.

I did a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAkMVIBTFbQ converting, as a proof of concept, an OpenStack project to use nox. I liked it, and anytime I went "oh no, it doesn't do X" I found it does, and I learned how.

It's always hard to evaluate a young project vs an older one; but nox seems good and I would likely use it for a greenfield project in the future.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com