As we indicated in our earlier Dev Goals post (below), one thing we're working on is our final transition into full-color character sprites with shading and color swapping.
The first character to get this upgrade will be Paul. We are making steady progress on his art and hope for full-color Paul to be playable in-game later this month. The next will be Billy, then either Noel, Lewis or Nick. The last to get upgraded will be Marv since his animations are the most complex.
In our finished sprites we will actually use two layered images per frame of animation. One has only lineart and shadows with a standard sprite shader (written for us by TooMuchAbstraction, the developer of Waves of Steel--check his game out when you get a chance!), then a second sprite contains only flat shades of gray which is run through the swap shader.
Before rendering a sprite set up for color swapping, this shader reads the intensity (lightness/darkness) of its pixels. Each shade of gray maps to different color within a palette texture, and the shader assigns that color. Then to change character color palettes we just switch palette textures. Each of those is just an 8x1 pixel image, so they're easy to make and, in theory, anyone could do it.
Thanks for your continued support. Hand drawn art is very labor intensive and time consuming, but we're really excited to be entering this stage of development.
Version 0.948d Update (Hotfix)
Bug Fixes
Fixed a really obscure bug with timed variants like BLITZ or BULLET where if a player locked in their move exactly one frame after running out of time, they would sometimes start peforming their chosen action and then enter the timed out state, and the time indicator would be stuck glowing red. This led to some very rare and high-execution softlocks.
Corrected damage calculation in training mode when a player is hit out of a back jump, or if the player resets training mode in the middle of a combo.
Version 0.948c Update (Hotfix)
This is a quick fix to a couple Steam Leaderboard issues. You can view your position on the leaderboards in the Steam Community Hub.
Bug Fixes
When the game submits a score to the leaderboard, it should no longer overwrite your high score if you submit a lower one.
The Normal Survival leaderboard is now based on your Normal Survival high score, not your Normal Paul Zone high score.
Version 0.948b Update (Hotfix)
Bug Fixes
In Survival, enemy HP now goes up by 200 every 4 wins, instead of every 2. Originally it was supposed to be 100 every 2 wins, but then I made the HP boost upgrade stronger, which unintentionally also helped the AI.
Billy's new jumping C now works correctly for both players.
Leaderboards
Added a new leaderboard that keeps track of your online level ("bravery") and how it stacks up with other players. Bravery, measured in "kiloSagans," levels up in increments of 10 as you win (or to a lesser extent, lose or spectate) online matches. It can never go down, but it takes increasingly more points to increase your Bravery as you go up in levels.
Survival Update (Version 0.948)
This patch contains a mix of new features, quality of life improvements and some extra visual polish.
Enhanced Survival Mode
Survival now has a power-up system to make the mode more fun and dynamic. They are simple stat upgrades this version, but I plan to expand these offerings later on.
After winning a round you can either heal yourself for +500HP, increase your max HP by +200 and heal yourself by 100, increase your regeneration between rounds by +100, or give yourself a stacking %20 Damage boost.
Opponents will gradually get stronger. Right now they will gain 1 level of Max HP every other fight, and 1 level of Damage every 3 fights. The progression of the AI's strength may be tuned up with time.
This is a very new feature that has not gotten extensive testing. We'd love your feedback on it, and your ideas for interesting upgrades for the player and AI opponent.
High scores for Survival (and Paul Zone) are now tracked separately by difficulty. In Normal or Hard mode, you'll now be able to submit your high score to a Steam Leaderboard, to demonstrate how cool you are to the world.
New Menus!
The Arcade Menu for selecting single-player modes has updated art and designs by our artist Alan.
Loading up a new mode will now display a Versus screen with character key art.
We will likely do some tweaking on the design and behaviour of these screens based on testing and player feedback.
Balance Changes
B attacks are now -20 if they whiff just outside of max range (was -10).
This is actually a pretty big change as previously, there was not much universal counter play to just spamming B beyond the commital option of walking up and blocking it. Most characters have at least one "anti B" option, but in testing, this change seems to have really expanded players' options in the neutral game. B is still an amazing normal, but you can now lose significant offensive momentum if you're throwing it out there too predictably.
Billy jC now travels 2 spaces, but has 1/1 ground/air range, as opposed to 2/0 before. It now does 100 chip, as a currently unnamed special move.
This gives him a risky way to move 2 spaces in one turn to get past things like repeated Noel vines, which previously he could not avoid at all. It is still a slow option that is beat by basically any anti-air attack, so use it wisely.
Marv jC does 100 chip now. It was the only special move that did not do chip.
Visual/Animation Changes
The standard "being hit" animation for most hits has been shortened to improve game flow.
The pushback effect from B combos has been increased in speed.
The "delay" icon will no longer show up during replays.
Characters won't delay as much before blocking a jump in.
If you block a "minus" attack, you won't visually appear to be stuck in blockstun for as long.
Noel plant animation is now slightly longer so that it has the same duration as the vine grow animation
Performance Improvements
A few oversized textures (such as the "cash splash" in some endings) have been reduced in size.
The hard disk footprint of the game has been reduced by about 25%, to roughly 830MB!
The pushback effect from B combos has been increased in speed.
Online Lobby Improvements
The code that syncs up the round count between players should now work better. This should also fix an issue with the round syncing code that could rarely lock up an online match.
The Online Mode console is a little more verbose, giving you more information about the lobbies you are joining when you attempt to connect.
You should no longer be able to join a lobby if the host is running a different version of the game, even via invite. The invite should fail and the game will now warn you in the Lobby console if you try to do this.
The Online Mode "cancel" button now leaves the target Steamworks lobby in addition to cancelling your client connection.
If you attempt to join a nonexistent lobby, the operation will now fail with an error message instead of putting you in a new Steamworks lobby.
Bug Fixes
Fixed issue where Steam Cloud would not sync properly. It should work now.
Fixed Noel's position "popping" off-axis when someone blocks Vine and Fightning Flail at the same time.
Fixed a rare issue where the training dummy would lock up when hit by a Vine off of a Backflip when Noel is cornered.
Fixed training mode not displaying damage sometimes.
Fixed Noel inexplicably knocking Lewis across the screen if PileDebunker trades with Fightning Flurry and Vine is active.
Fixed Noel just absolutely shredding health bars with 1000+ damage combos under very specific and unintended situations.
Demo
The free Demo is back on Steam until roughly the end of the Steam Remote Play Together Fest. I may keep it longer if it looks like people are downloading and playing it on Steam.
This patch will break many of your old replays. To play the previous version and play back old replays, enter the password 'rollinrollinrollin' in the 'private betas' menu under 'properties' for this app. This will enable the "backup-jan8patch" beta branch, which will remain open for a couple months at least.
Version 0.9476b Update (Hotfix)
Music
Previously we used "Metalicious" by Alexander Nakarada as the theme for "The Paul Zone" and "Strive Mode." While we have a license for this use, it came to our attention that a few streamers were getting ContentID flags for streaming or making videos about parts of the game that use this song.
After getting ahold of Alex he let me know that this was not intentional, and caused by a transition to a new copyright system. Still, I've started the process of commissioning an original music track to replace "Metalicious." For now, we're replacing the track "Metalicious" with "THE CALLOUT" where it appears in-game.
A temporary beta branch (access code 'breatheinbreatheout') will allow you to play the game with the "Metalicious" music track intact, until we're able to replace it and/or introduce an option that lets you choose whether you want to use it or not.
Version 0.9476 Update
Bug Fixes
If you air throw Noel while she jumps in with vine active, this can no longer cause a trade. Noel will just get thrown (as intended).
Fixed a situation where Noel Fightning Flurry could do multiple combo hits trading against Lewis using Fist of Euphoria on wakeup.
A "smart tip" related to punishing correctly will now correctly show up when you're the one doing the punishing, not the other way around.
System Changes
A recent change gave Noel bonus damage if she hits with an A or B attack when her vine is active, but not hitting directly. This was intended to increase only her combo damage, but it was also making her trades hit harder. For this reason, this bonus now only takes effect if her attack lands first. Vine will no longer make her do more damage during a trade.
Knockdowns now appear visually to advantage the attacker by +12 instead of +14. This is to bring the perceived frame advantage closer to the actual frame a advantage of a knockdown used for calculating which attack wins in a clash. That number is unchanged at +10 (or +20, as Billy). The visual change was implemented in part to fix the issue noted above with Fightning Flurry.
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These changes will break some replays involving Noel. A temporary beta branch (access code 'breatheinbreatheout') will allow you to watch replays from this version.
If you ever encounter a bug in-game, or you just have some feedback for the dev team, simply press F8 in-game to send us a message directly.
Year in Review & 2024 Dev Goals
We've been putting a lot of effot into improving the game this year as Early Access rolls on. We released about 20 patches this year! We'll recap some highlights, then share some of our plans for 2024.
2023 Recap
All year long, we have been revamping the game's visuals. We still have a ways to go on this front, but every character now has work in progress sprites hand-drawn by our illustrator Alan McMillian, and they're at a higher level of detail and quality than our first art update in January.
We also implemented a new HUD and conversation UI, clickable mouse controls, a new main menu, and a few new stages (Marv's, Lewis's, and the training stage). Attacks now have hitstop and hitspark effects. Side switches and chip damage look a lot more natural than they did at launch, too.
On the audio front, we have 3 new music tracks (Lewis theme by DankPasta2099, options menu and character select themes by Nabil Anthony) and a new set of announcer lines recorded by Joe Dawson.
We also made some adjustments to the game balance. Paul was taken down a peg by reducing the chip on his Firepaul, and Billy was made competitively viable by a series of buffs. Noel got Vine Armor to make her vine set safer, Nick's Cheesy Dust Loop was made more consistent and given an actual animation.
The online has gotten a lot of improvements and new features. You can play timed variants or select a random character online now. The lobbies have more quality of life options now, and matches are now listed on the Steam's more robust lobby system instead of our matchmaking VPS.
Training mode got some new functionality like "reset to corner," and you can now watch saved replays of your multiplayer matches. We've made some efforts to improve the new player experience by making a more forgiving AI on Easy and Normal and laying the ground work for a hint system. We've also started setting up text for localization, but there's not much to show there yet. Load times got a little faster thanks to the game now packing everything into atlases, and you can now carry your progress across different devices (and your Steam Deck!) because the game now supports the Steam Cloud. Finally, the game is now compatible with a wider selection of controllers thanks in part to some extensive testing by community member Sente.
2024 Goals
If all goes well we hope to continue development in 2024 at the same pace as 2023. In no particular order, here are some of the goals we're going to work on:
Continue developing character animations toward full color finished sprites and swappable palettes:
Begin testing one or two of these new characters, perhaps with placeholder art at first:
Revamp the menus. Here's a preview of our upcoming tutorial menu redesign:
Introduce new character stages:
Implement new ending animatics (which are partially done, just not implemented:
Start prototyping an enhanced survival mode with roguelike elements:
Localize more game text into more languages:
As a disclaimer, we have a very small team with one programmer, one artist and no publisher money, so we may or may not make as much progress as we'd like toward these goals. Still, we expect to be on track to leave Early Access by 2025 or so. If you want to support our continued work on the game, one great way to do that is to join our Patreon.
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Finally, we're announcing that the price of Mega Knockdown will go down to $9.99 USD or regional equivalent after the Steam Winter sale is over. Our goal with this price reduction is to lower the barrier of entry to playing the game in order to grow our community of players. It's also to give players from certain South American/Middle Eastern countries a little bit of a break, as they have been seeing huge price increases all over Steam thanks to changes in Valve's regional pricing policies.
Thanks for your continued support!
MEGA Update Part 2 (Version 0.9475)
A few things couldn't make it into the game in time for the MEGA Update. We didn't want to sit on them until the next content patch, so we're releasing them now in a bonus update!
New Noel Animations!
Noel's animations and sprites have been improved across the board! We upgraded about half of them in the last patch, but now all of them are at a higher level of detail and quality. Future sprite updates for Noel and other characters are planned as we continue in Early Access.
Noel's throw now has a special new animation when Jerma mode is on.
Noel's special anti air combos now do twice as many hits, but less damage per hit. This is a purely cosmetic change as the total damage is unchanged.
There is a new vine animation replacing the old programmer art.
If a vine doesn't directly hit, it will be drawn behind the players.
New Hint System!
There are a few game mechanics that are covered briefly in the tutorial, but players miss or forget about. For this reason, we are adding a hint system to Arcade mode.
Under some specific conditions such as getting counter hit, anti-aired, etc, the game will very briefly pause, issue a chime, and display a text box explaining what happened.
These hints will only be shown once each, as they are usually just repeating some information from the tutorial. If you want to see the hints more than once, you can reset them in the game options.
Updated Billy Stage
Since beta, we were using one of Andrea Demetrio's (graciously donated) vacation photos for Billy's stage. Our artist Alan is in the process of retouching it into the new "Bridge to Japanland" stage. We're still working on it, but the in-progress version is now in-game.
Other Changes
The input display now says "next move" in single player when it's showing a prediction. This is because players often don't notice (or forget) that the game gives information about the AI player's next move, unless you're playing on Hard. Feel free to drop a comment below if these patch notes informed you about this feature for the first time.
If you're anti-aired by a ground attack, the game now says "anti air" similar to other notifications like "counter."
Strife Mode no longer gives a bonus to combo damage. This was causing certain moves like normal attacks to do disproportionately more damage than single hit specials. Plus, damage was a little too high in Strife Mode anyway.
Noel's throw animation now uses two sprites: one for her, one for the plant. This should have a slight positive effect on performance.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where a player using j.B would not get a full combo against Marv j.C in some very specific situations.
Fixed a bug where a vine would sometimes not appear if you planted it twice in a row too quickly.
Attempted a fix for a rare training menu bug that would send players back to main menu at inappropriate times.
MEGA Update Now Available!
We're wrapping up the year with another major update!
Lots of New Sprite Art for Nick, Lewis & Noel!
Hundreds of draft-quality sprites have been replaced with higher-quality drawings with improved lineart. Thanks to illustrator Alan McMillian for his continued hard work.
For Nick and Lewis, this is a total visual overhaul. For Noel, about half of her animations have been improved, and the rest will come in a future update.
Ultimately our goal every sprite to be at a similar level of quality to the full-color idle sprites. Hand drawn art is a painstaking and time consuming affair, so your patience is greatly appreciated.
Better Online Lobbies
The game now searches for open Steam Lobbies when checking for matches, instead of our own matchmaking server. Players should now be able to host a lobby for long periods of time without the match getting de-listed.
In lobby, there are four new buttons. One mutes the lobby BGM while in the lobby menu only (for alt tabbed lobby hosting). Another copies an invite URL to your clipboard. You can paste this URL into discord or somewhere to invite friends to your open lobby. A third button directly opens the Steam Invite Friend dialogue. Lastly, the spectate button flags you as a spectator. You will automatically go to the end of the line and get sorted behind active players. You can toggle this off by clicking again, or by readying up to play.
Nick's Cheesy Dust Loops
Nick's dustloop passive now lets him do an enhanced extra rep of his B Combo in the corner, for a total of 250 damage.
Previously his passive would tack on a total of 167-200 damage over the course of a combo.
The game is more consistent about checking if Nick has corner. The special Cheesy Dust Loop combo should now always trigger if the opponent is in the corner or the space next to it, and if Nick is close enough to the corner space to kick it with his B attack.
Cheesy Dust Loop no longer incorrectly gives Nick bonus damage if he anti airs an opponent jumping out of the corner, or if he lands a max range jB against an opponent standing next to the corner.
There is a new achievement "I'm Not a Bad Guy" for doing a max damage Cheesy Dust Loop combo.
Noel's Vine Armor
If Noel would be hit by a very slow attack (adjusted startup longer than 40 frames) on the same turn as she places a Vine, her Vine will immediately be expended to protect her with Vine Armor.
Vine Armor reduces the damage of a single incoming hit by 100 (to a minimum of 100). The attacker may not combo, and if the attack would normally knock down, Noel will stay on her feet.
Throws bypass Vine Armor. All of Billy's attacks automatically break this armor as well.
Previously, if the Noel player set a vine at the wrong time, she could be punished by even the slowest of attacks, losing a lot of health and possibly giving the opponent oki. Now it's a little less risky to deploy her signature setup move when you have the advantage, but you can still be easily called out for it if you don't.
Throw Changes
Noel's throw now causes push and no longer has any hitstop.
Lewis and Nick's air throws were reverted to 1 square of push so they can get some meaningful offense going after a successful air throw.
Other Visual Changes
For attacks that do a medium amount of damage (100-200), hitstop has been reduced slightly.
Rapidly hitting attacks now have less hitstop.
In Strife Mode, the amount of extra hitstop has been reduced significantly.
Air juggle animations have been adjusted across the board for less rotation.
Many character foot positions have been adjusted for consistency. Some characters might be effectively taller as a result.
Characters now react differently to Lewis' grab.
UI Changes
Removed non functional blue highlighting from some buttons in the rebinding menu.
On Steam Deck, the mouse (touch) controls menu is bigger so that you can actually press the buttons with an adult sized finger.
In lobbies, the Salty Chat text is now a little smaller.
A few menus have been translated to Brazillian Portuguese by community member Stealphie. You can access this partial translation by entering -language=pt-BR into the launch settings. More menus are being set up for localization in future updates. If you want to assist us with localizing the game into other languages, please join our Discord.
Performance Improvements
Many old and no-longer-used draft-quality sprites have been removed from the game files to keep file sizes, memory usage and load times in check.
Some achievement tracking variables have been moved back to PlayerPrefs for better performance.
Bug Fixes
If player 1 or player 2 disconnects from a lobby match, it should now correctly bring all players back to lobby. Previously this only happened if player 2 lost connection. However if player 1 is the host, the lobby will still close if they disconnect.
Fixed an issue where accepting a Steam invite from some menus would bring you to the Online menu without joining the lobby. It should "just work" now.
Fixed a persistent and long standing bug where round win counts were not properly syncing for spectators.
Potentially fixed an issue where client players were rarely not able to send commands to the host.
Paul no longer gets Nick's bonus counter hit damage in the tutorial.
PileDebunker should no longer appear to briefly teleport when it is punished.
Paul no longer stands there for an extra half second after doing his throw.
Watching Old Replays? Revert to the Last Patch
Note that this change will break some replays from the last patch. If you want to go back and watch or record videos of those replays, you can roll back to the last patch by entering the beta code "backupbackup" into the "private betas" field in the game's Steam prefernces. We recommend saving your past replays to video as we don't promise to keep these beta builds open forever.
