Mega Knockdown update for 12 February 2024

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.