Billy's jab (A attack) is now +20 on block, up from +10.
Billy's stomp (N+C) and drop kick (jB) are still +10, but +20 when used meaty (i.e. when the opponent blocks it on their wakeup).
These changes are intended to improve Billy's pressure game, and will hopefully make him a more competitively viable character.
Other changes
Fixed a visual flickering artifact that occurred after some knockdowns.
Fixed an issue related to arrow keys and menu navigation.
Adjusted some menus for better Steam Deck compatibility.
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We've been making some steady progress on Marv's new art. Expect that to drop next month!
Version 0.911 Update (Hotfix)
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where Noel's Fightning Feet was starting up faster than it was supposed to in some cases.
Lewis will now properly do his alternate B combo animation after connecting with a j.B.
Jerma Lewis will no longer appear to morph into his Paul after connecting with j.B.
Jerma Nick will no longer appear to morph into normal Nick during his throw whiff.
Fixed a softlock that would sometimes occur in Bullet mode when a player started their turn too quickly after a knockdown.
These bugs were all found by community members on the Mega Knockdown Discord. 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.
Major Art Update Available Now!
Mega Knockdown is getting a major graphical face-lift, and this is just the beginning! More visual updates to come throughout Early Access.
A New Hand-Drawn Art Style!
Paul, Billy, Lewis, Nick and Noel are now animated in-game with hundreds of character sprites hand-illustrated by artist Alan McMillian.
Sprites for Marv will be added in the next regular update.
Players can choose between the new art style and the old ones ('Green Screen Jeremy' and 'Abstract') in character select.
Work on these hand-drawn sprites and animations is ongoing, and fully finishing them will take some time. There will be regular updates to further improve and polish the game's graphics.
New Comic-Style Story UI
In the Arcade story mode, the old dialogue windows have been replaced with speech bubbles, flanked with large character illustrations.
Added a camera zoom effect to the transition between dialogue and gameplay.
Endings have not been significantly updated yet. We plan to replace these with new illustrations (and in some cases, expanded dialogue) in a future update.
Other Visual Improvements
Main menu screen has been overhauled with new key art.
The 'side switch' effect has been improved to look more natural.
Chip damage now displays instantly, instead of after a delay.
Wakeup animations now take 20 frames to complete, so they are easier to see. This is not a balance change, as the frame advantage of a knockdown is still +10 (the attacker is now delayed slightly during the opponent's wakeup).
Character sprites can no longer block the input display at the bottom of the screen.
If a character is hit or grabbed, their sprite will now (usually) be drawn behind the opponent's.
The 'frame disadvantage' (clock) icons now have outlines for better readability against different colored sprites.
The hitbox grid is now a little more transparent.
Tutorial and Training Modes
Paul is now the player character for the tutorial, and Nick is his opponent.
If a player hasn't done any tutorial missions and hasn't selected a difficulty, the game will default to Easy. Otherwise it will default to Normal mode.
In training mode, displayed damage numbers have been multiplied by 100. Training mode now displays correct damage values for moves with (previously) fractional amounts of damage.
Audio
Lewis has a new music theme by @DankPasta2099.
Dialogue sounds now vary in pitch slightly from word to word.
Gameplay and Balance
The damage of Billy's normal throw has increased.
Billy's normal Sweep (forward/back+C) is now the same speed as other sweeps (effectively 40f), but is still armored. His Sweep now does 250 damage (down from 350). This move should now be much more useful in Neutral,
Air throws and PileDebunker now send the opponent 2 squares away (up from 1).
Online
When playing online, you should now be able to see if the opponent has locked in their moves, if you are still choosing yours.
Art Style toggle is now a drop down with 3 options: Default (hand-drawn), Abstract, or Greenscreen.
Interface
The game should now be able to map buttons to "unknown controllers" not in its hardware database.
As a debug option, you can now hold L1 for 2 seconds in the main menu to reset all your gamepad bindings. This may be useful if there is a problem with the bindings that you have set.
Changed the execution order of the input system to (hopefully) counter possible issues caused by Steam modifying which controllers are 'seen" by the game
Bug Fixes
Hit-detection is now more consistent versus jumping attacks.
Fixed issue where sometimes characters would appear to teleport if they attempted to backflip after whiffing an air throw.
Fixed issue where hitting a throwing player with a dragon punch would de-stabliize the game state.
Fixed issue where throw animations would sometimes not display properly against a waking-up player.
Fixed an issue where N+A would sometime beat N+Throw if the throwing player was -20. Some competitive players actually liked this quirk, so this may later be added back in as a feature, not a bug.
Demo Updates
Demo updated with all the recent changes to the main game, except Online Lobbies, which requires the full game.
Paul and Nick are now the two characters playable in the Demo (previously Paul and Marv).
Miscellaneous
The character previously named Dr. Flatskin is now Dr. Flaskin. She now goes by her first name (Noel) in-game.
The game's credits have been updated.
When playing with time controls, you should now have an extra second to act on your first turn.
2023 roadmap and planned price increase
Mega Knockdown hit Early Access in July of 2022 with a one-of-a-kind premise and finely tuned gameplay, but with very limited art assets and no native online multiplayer. Since then, we've implemented a robust online lobbies system that can support truly worldwide netplay, and we're now working hard on a full overhaul of the game's art, including a set of sprites for the whole cast hand-drawn by artist Alan McMillian.
This is an ambitious, expensive and time-consuming undertaking, so to get these improvements into players' hands as fast as possible, it will happen in phases, and on a rolling basis: first, characters will get 'rough draft' quality animations, and over time we will polish them up. I'm happy to report that as of this posting, four of the game's six characters (Paul, Billy, Lewis and Nick) are playable with revamped 'rough draft' art in the beta version of the upcoming Art Update, which you can learn more about here:
The first phase of the Art Update is planned to drop toward the end of January, with rough sprite art for five of six characters, in addition to other improvements. Marv's new art is slated to release in February as he will be considerably more complicated to implement. After that, we'll work on improving the menus and replacing rough animations with finished art.
After the Art Update has been out for one week, the base price of Mega Knockdown will increase to about $12 USD. Prices in other currencies will also be updated accordingly around this time. We feel strongly that this new price will reflect the value that's been added to the game since release, and will help us secure funding for continued improvements to the game. Thank you for playing Mega Knockdown!
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Q: Can I still play as Jerma after the new sprites are in? A: Yes, we'll be keeping the old Jerma-based animations fully intact and implemented. The Jerma sprites will still be selectable and fully playable like they are now.
Art Update now in Open Beta
First Art Update: Coming Next Month! For the past month or so, we have been working on implementing overhauling the in-game art with hand-drawn character sprites. This is an very large change that will take some time to complete, so we will be rolling it out over time, and in phases. We hope to finish rough draft art for the whole cast in the near-term, then go back and polish the graphics up. And you'll still be able to play as Jerma.
As of today, we have a test build which includes overhauled art for Billy, Paul and Lewis. Nick is on track to be implemented by early next month. We'd like to get this build in the hands of players now, so that we can isolate and fix any issues that might come up before rolling these changes out in the the next major update. For this reason, we will be running a public beta branch.
To access the public beta branch:
Right-click Mega Knockdown in your library and click Properties
Navigate to the Betas tab. Select the Art Overhaul Beta.
Launch the game. You are now playing the beta!
If you have comments or encounter any issues, please press F8 to notify the dev. Your feedback will ensure that this feature will launch as smoothly as possible. You can also hop on the discord (https://discord.com/invite/bGVftKK) to find matches and discuss the new update.
Private Lobbies / Version 0.901 Update
Matchmaking:
In the online mode, you can now create private lobbies that are hidden from the match browser, accessible only via Steam Invites.
The game is now pointed at our new matchmaking server.
Matchmaking scripts have been updated slightly.
Balance:
Billy's HP has been increased slightly to 17.
Justification: Most characters have seen slight increases in their HP, and baseline HP has increased from 14 to 15. Billy has avoided getting any increase up to this point, so this change should (relatively speaking) put his HP closer to where it was before, relative to the baseline.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed issue where Tutorial Mission 13 would freeze if the player is punished by the AI.
Fixed issue where Billy's armor would not trigger vs another Billy's jumping attacks
The move timer will no longer count down when the game is paused. (The timeout animation will still play, but that will be fixed later.)
Fixed an issue where Paulcano could cause the opponent to glitch out if they attempt to walk up and jab while minus.
Fixed an issue where lewis and flatskin could end up in the same space if lewis got hit by a vine next to the corner when flatskin does lightning legs.
The AI will no longer explode if players somehow end up in the same square due to an error.
Fixed some problems with hit detection involving backward jumping moves.
Fixed an issue where the training mode achievement would trigger too fast.
These bug fixes were possible in part due to community submitted bug reports. To make a report, you can press F8 at any point while in-game to send feedback directly to the developer.
Online Lobbies Update
Mega Knockdown has a brand new online multiplayer system: Online Lobbies! Additionally, Mega Knockdown is now Steam Deck Verified, and has native Linux support!
Online mode features:
Up to 4 players can currently be in the lobby at once (Players beyond the second can spectate).
"Level up" your bravery rating by winning, losing or spectating online matches.
Player rotation! The loser of a match goes back to the end of the line, and the next spectator in line gets to play. Players can also pass their turn and go back to the end of the line, if they want.
Match length (First to X, unlimited rematch, etc) can be customized by the host.
Steam Invite support
Double blind character select.
Mid-match lobby joining.
Lobby chat. Press Enter in lobby to chat/send chat messages. Also works on Steam Deck, or a controller (if Big Picture Mode is enabled).
Waiting awhile for a match? Feel free to alt-tab. If someone joins your lobby while the game is minimized, an alert will draw your attention back to the game. You can also hop on the Official Discord to find a match.
Planned features for online mode:
Timed variants and Strife Mode toggles (Not enabled yet for lobby)
Option to keep spectating/stay at the end of the line
Private lobbies
Controls:
If there are no controllers plugged in, the game will now assign the first controller plugged in to Player 1, even if that device was previously assigned to Player 2.
Platform support:
After many rounds of improvements to the Steam Deck experience, Mega Knockdown is now Steam Deck Verified!
Mega Knockdown can now be natively played on Linux without a compatibility layer like Proton. Now you can play Mega Knockdown while acting smug and superior to your friends who don't understand FOSS the same way you do.
Future directions:
The Mega Knockdown dev team now has an artist, Alan McMillian! Over the next few months we will be revamping the look of the game, a little bit at a time. Below is a an art piece with Alan's new designs for the cast so far. With your support, together we can make something really great!
Online Lobbies now in open beta
Since launch, I have been working on an online lobby system to allow players to play online multiplayer without relying on Steam Remote Play or Parsec. I'm pleased to report that it is now available for a public test. To play this beta, follow these instructions:
Instructions for playing the beta
Right-click Mega Knockdown in your library and click Properties
Navigate to the Betas tab. Select the Online Lobbies Beta Test beta.
Launch the game. Navigate to the Globe icon and select it.
You can now create a room, or join an open room. Pinging the @Netplay role in Discord can help you find an opponent if you have a lobby open and are waiting for a match.
I strongly recommend joining the discord if you want to play online: https://discord.com/invite/bGVftKK. This will make finding and organizing online matches much easier.
Online mode features:
Up to 4 players can currently be in the lobby at once (Players beyond the second can spectate).
"Level up" your bravery rating by winning, losing or spectating online matches.
Player rotation. The loser of a set goes back to the end of the line, and the next spectator in line gets to play. Set length (First to X, unlimited rematch, etc) can be customized by the host. Players can also pass their turn and go back to the end of the line, if they want.
Steam Invite support
Double blind character select.
Mid-match lobby joining.
Chat system for lobby. Press Enter in lobby to chat/send chat messages.
In-game chat.
Planned features:
Timed variants and Strife Mode toggles (Not enabled yet for lobby)
Option to keep spectating/stay at the end of the line
Private lobbies
***
If you have problems, please press F8 to notify the dev. Your feedback will ensure that this feature will launch as smoothly as possible.
Version 0.855 Update
Patch 0.855:
Gameplay
Marv's HP has been increased to 14 (same as Lewis). This should allow Marv for slightly more room for error, while keeping him tied for the lowest HP in the game.
Steam Deck Compatibility
Changed how the game checks if it's running on Steam Deck. This should allow the Steam Deck specific improvements from the previous patch to work as intended.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where you could (unintentionally) lock in the next turn's inputs while waiting for your opponent to lock in theirs.
Version 0.85 Update
Patch 0.85:
Mega Knockdown is now confirmed "Playable" on Steam Deck! This patch is intended to increase the Steam Deck compatibility of the game even further.
Gameplay
Big Billy now has resistance to side switch effects on a successful block, due to his large stature. On hit, those moves (jC, back throw) can still side switch him. Side switches are especially debilitating for Billy due to his slow speed, so this will reduce the viability of hit-and-run timer scam strategies against him.
User Interface
If you are using a gamepad or the Steam Deck, gamepad specific hotkeys should now display, in general.
Certain PC-specific tooltips and images no longer display when playing on Steam Deck.
Increased the size of fonts in the Controls Rebinding menu.
An adjustment was made to how custom controls were saved. As a result, players with custom controls will have to set them again.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where your max HP could keep getting higher indefinitely when playing on Easy Mode survival.
Fixed an issue where buttons in the Controls Rebinding menu were not always consistent in size and shape.
