Election Year Knockout News

More boxing? You know it! To celebrate the launch of Leftovers KO, enjoy a special bundle discount! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/54408/Take_Out_The_Trash/

Howdy fellow presidents, we got several reports that controllers weren't working on Windows anymore, this hotfix fixes these issues!

This hotfix is for Windows only, since macOS seemed to be working as intended.

If you encounter bugs like this and want to help us improve EYKO, then be sure to let us know either here on Steam or through our support email at: [email protected]


Note: if you're trying to play using a Switch Pro controller on Windows, then you'll need make sure that under your Steam Settings, in the Controller section, under External Gamepad Settings, that you have "Enable Steam Input for Switch Pro controllers" toggled to On.

Thank you for your support, from all of us at ExceptioNULL Games!

This update adds the long awaited Leaderboard System! Compete with others around the world for the best times on all fights in multiple speed run friendly categories such as In-Game Time (IGT) and Real-Time Attack (RTA), as well as leaderboards for each EX fight, the bonus fights, and even separate leaderboards for Casual difficulty!

We’ve also added a feature that so many of you have requested both here, as well as on Discord. Now you can disable the News Scene that plays at the end of every fight! This should make restarting fights to get better times on the leaderboard much quicker.

There is now also a dialog that displays the times that you got on your fight, as well as your boosts used, and damage, punches, and specials taken and received too. This appears at the end of every fight (including Thump and EX Thump), and has convenient buttons for restarting a fight from there!

The addition of these systems was made possible by all of you, and were designed for all of you. ExceptioNULL Games thanks you for your love and support! Be sure to support us further by wishlisting the upcoming sequel, Knockout 2: Wrath of the Karen!


Here are the detailed changes for this update:
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• Added in-game plus Steam community leaderboards, 6 per fight: Casual IGT, Casual RTA, IGT, RTA, EX IGT, and EX RTA. Accessible from both the Fighter Dialogs as well as the Challenges Scene. Personal bests are tracked for each leaderboard, and synced across all devices that you’re logged into with Steam. Leaderboard entries can be tapped to display the customizations that the player had equipped at the time that they completed that leaderboard entry.
  
• Added a new Fight Results Dialog that is displayed at the end of every fight (including Thump and EX Thump), which displays the boosts used, damage, punches, and specials dealt and taken, as well as the in-game time and real-time taken during the fight.
  
• Added a toggle to the Settings Dialog that you can use to enable and disable the News Scene that plays at the end of a fight. I imagine this highly requested feature will be useful for you speed-runners!
  
• Collected all the latest community translations as of February 23rd, 2024. If you’d like to help out with our community driven translation effort please join our Discord Server!
  
• Improved the overall look for Dialogs, especially the Fighter Dialog and the new Fight Results Dialog, so that the portraits and the gradient go to the exact border of the dialog, rather than being cut off short and the rounded edges not being exact.
  
• Improved our save file system by writing to the disk asynchronously.
  
• Improved our loading scene system so that Skeleton Data is preloaded prior to entering a scene, rather than loading on entering a scene.
  
• Corrected bad punctuation for our translations, as well as ASCII characters that have somehow been slipping past us with each update.
  
• Fixed a crash when navigation up from the Kim Jong BOOM fight in the Fighters List Dialog.
  
• Fixed an issue where we no longer handling “keyboard” tip variants.
  
• Fixed a long standing bug where the transition was playing the wrong transition when going from one scene to another.
  
• Fixed a bug where the music didn't fade back in to the volume it was at before getting knocked down, after getting back up.
  
• Fixed a long standing bug where EX Mike Pious didn't use his TKO dialogue when TKO’ed.
  
• Fixed an old bug where the Award Currency Dialog said “ Influence!” and not “ Votes!”.
  
• Fixed a bug where holding the window bar of the game would cause it to freeze.
  
• Fixed a bug where the game would freeze when trying to Alt+Tab away from/back to the game, and when hitting the Windows key.
  
• Fixed an issue where Screenshots couldn’t be taken on Windows.
  
• Fixed controller/keyboard navigation in several dialogs and scenes.
  
• Fixed sounds in the Wardrobe Scene from playing too quietly.
  
• Fixed several missing “click” sounds when tapping on things, e.g. the Shop Cards on the Shop Dialog.
  
• Fixed an issue with the buttons in the Settings Dialog playing the wrong sounds.
  
• Fixed the Credits Scene being spaced somewhat oddly and inconsistently at times, as well as not scrolling all the way past the top edge of the screen.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Challenges Scene was navigable with controllers/arrow keys while any dialog was being displayed.
  
• Fixed a soft-lock on the Map Scene after returning from defeating EX Thump for the first time after closing the dialog nodes that appear in the wrong order. This was causing a crash on macOS.
  
• Fixed the wrong opening and/or closing quotation for Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Simplified Chinese.
  
• Fixed an issue where the strings json files still had some strings that used \n and \" instead of [⁠newline] and [⁠quote], which made the translation script work extra hard.
  
• Fixed a bug where the bonus fights could in rare instances not unlock.
  
• Fixed a bug where switching between Fullscreen, Windowed, Borderless, and back to Fullscreen caused the windows to be too large on a retina display, as well as the fullscreen being too large when returning to fullscreen from the windowed modes.
  
• Fixed a bug where switching from Windowed to Bordered would center the window on the primary monitor, not the monitor where the window is moved to.
  
• Fixed an issue where the loading scene was still adding textures to the cache, even if that texture failed to be loaded.
  
• Fixed a bug where the player was too small in the PlayerCustomizationScene, and where the touch listener for the "wiggle" was over the buttons. This caused it to 'eat' the touch input for some of the buttons at certain spots.
  
• Updated the entire game from Cocos2d-x v3.17.2 to Axmol v2.1.3, which is a fork of Cocos2d-x v4.0 that is actively maintained and updated (unlike Cocos2d-x itself).
  
• Updated the game to 64-bit Windows, and added Apple Silicon macOS support.
  
• Removed unused libraries and updated the used ones in order to improve stability and performance.

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Vladimir Bootin and his pet bear Dmitry join the roster as an optional boss fight.

In this hard-as-nails boss fight, Vladimir Bootin expertly trades blows in a hectic brawl for survival. As he takes damage, he gets more and more desperate and fights with abandon. His stomp attacks are devastating, but they leave him wide open to counter attacks and haymakers. The optional second EX fight included in this update contains a heart-stopping surprise and is a true Mike Tyson-level challenge for long-time fans.

The addition of this new character is made possible by the outpouring of love and excitement from you, the players. Please enjoy Vladimir Bootin and Team Bear as a free expansion of Election Year Knockout on Steam. To fight him, collect enough votes to unlock him in the Prize Fight area of the campaign map.


Here are the detailed changes for this update:

• Vladimir Bootin and Team Bear join fight for president! Thanks to all the Beta Testers on Discord who helped us test!
  
• Minor rewrite to the “end” of the game where the previous fighters team up to take you down, pushing players to beat all EX fights before “beating” the game.
  
• Brand new fancy animations for the EX Thump fight
  
• Added several more clothing options to unlock and equip (some are even hidden!)
  
• Rewrote all of the “Counter all of [character]’s attacks” to avoid ambiguity
  
• Created a new fighter list dialog for the bonus fighters in the Prize Fight Boxing Ring on the map
  
• Created a new conditional gendered string system, most useful for improving translations with gendered nouns
  
• Implemented the latest and greatest translation work by the wonderful volunteers in our translation crew on Discord!
  
• Update Credits for most recent translations and enthusiasts
  
• Changed Justin Turbeau’s portrait
  
• Fixed a bug where EX Chief Warren’ would teleport from her upper left attack to her arrow counter attack when the player missed their haymaker
  
• Fixed a crash when pressing the “Quit” or “Retry” button at the same time as the “Continue” button on the pause dialog
  
• Fixed a positioning error with the percentage complete in the “Campaign” button on the title scene for all languages
  
• Fixed a bug where the Maverick tutorials introducing EX fights could extend past the speech bubble for some languages, like Portuguese
  
• Fixed a bug where the player couldn’t navigate to the “Credits” button in the settings dialog with a controller
  
• Fixed a bug where the player couldn’t select a language in the settings dialog with a controller
  
• Fixed a bug where EX Mike Pious and EX Kim Jong BOOM could both be defeated by decision
  
• Fixed a bug where non-EX Justin Turbeau was always winning by decision at the end of round 5
  
• Fixed a bug where the music wouldn’t always fade out to exactly 0 (most noticeable on iOS with the volume turned way up)
  
• Fixed a bug where the dropdown didn’t jump back to the beginning when closing it and then reopening it
  
• Fixed all strings referring to Trudeau to say “Turbeau” (these lines were written before Turbeau existed within the game)
  
• Fixed the visual artifacts in the Uncle Joe fight while on low graphics mode
  
• Fixed a bug where Justin Turbeau could sometimes idle indefinitely
  
• Fixed a bug where A-Oh! would become invulnerable after dodging her follow-up punch from dodging her windup special attack.
  
• Fixed a bug where enraged EX Thump would sometimes play no animation when countering his Stormy Smash special.
  
• Fixed an issue where enraged EX Thump idled until the end of the round after hitting the tell state for knocking him off balance with a regular punch
  
• Fixed a bug where sounds in the fighter intro Cut Scenes would still start playing after the player tapped to skip the cut scene.
  
• Fixed a bug where controller triggers didn’t work for the Get Back Up minigame, nor for advancing through the News Scene.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur if the player spammed the "Campaign" button with clicks.
  
• Fixed an issue where some character names were partially covered by the fight buttons in the Challenges Scene for some languages (e.g. Traditional Chinese)
  
• Fixed an animation where EX Thump shorts were flipped
  
• Fixed a bug where EX Thump's 'Jab Bush' attacks are vulnerable to regular punches and cheese
  
• Fixed an improved the Timescale system throughout the game (no more slowdowns that last too long or end too early)
  
• Updated Steamwork SDK library

Hello there political pugilists, the ExceptioNULL Games team is back with another new update for Election Year Knockout! We've got this update jam-packed with goodies and bug fixes that will hopefully make EYKO an even better experience for both veteran and new players.

Some of the main new features here we've taken and improved upon from the Mobile version of EYKO include:

• Six new player heads to further customize your look and experience!
  
• Multi-language support with the following user translated languages: French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian (though some lines my still be machine translated), and the following machine translated languages: German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. Thanks so much to our Discord users realFactsNLogic, Felipe Castor Xavier Bastos, The Trollge, Sonic Chiquito, Culex64, Ruseus, Santicolor, jeps2, Giusejoe, Junhyun Ahn, kiler_d2, and deee for their work in translating EYKO. If you'd like to help join our community translation efforts join the Discord here!
  
• New and improved background for the Title Scene, now the flag is animated waving in the cool breeze.
  
• Tons and tons of bug fixes, and small improvements. See below for details
  

Detailed Update Notes for Patch 1.2.0:

• 6 New player heads, 3 for male body types, and 3 for female body types.
  
• Multi-language support for: French, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.
  
• Animated the Title Scene's background image.
  
• Updated and added the game's credits to the Settings menu, viewable outside of a fight.
  
• Change to the controller/keyboard navigation to the Map Scene when returning from a fight after already having beaten all other fighters (i.e. when hunting for achievements).
  
• Fix for the navigation focus being lost when changing resolutions from the Settings menu.
  
• Fixed an issue with the Punching Bag tutorial where the Pause menu in that fight always said "swipe up" no matter what control type the player was using.
  
• Fixed an issue with Kim Jong BOOM's Rest Scene tips where it talked about how he was too short or to 'watch the side' for some punches, when on Casual difficulty where the punch type doesn't matter.
  
• Fixed a navigation issue with Dropdown boxes, where pressing the Back button would close any dialog displayed on top of the Dropdown box, as well as closing the Dropdown box itself.
  
• Fixed a navigation issue with Dropdown boxes, where the player could override the navigation of a dialog displayed on top of the Dropdown by navigating up or down instead of left or right.
  
• Fixed an issue with the "Round #" under the players health would only change to the next round number after the announcer said "FIGHT!"
  
• Fixed an issue when holding the Block button on a controller, and then pressing and releasing the Down button on the D-Pad, which would then cause the player to stop blocking.
  
• Fixed an issue when holding the Block button on a controller, and then pressing the Up button on the D-Pad, which wouldn't cause the player to switch their block position from lower to upper blocks.
  
• Fixed an issue where "Click to Continue" would get cut off of the screen if the player switched from Keyboard and Mouse to Controller while the message is on screen.
  
• Fixed a bug where pressing the Escape key or Back button in the Wardrobe Scene would cause the player to navigate back to the Title Scene, even when the Wardrobe was opened from the Map Scene.
  
• Fixed a typo in the final credits of the game where our company name was written "ExpectioNull" and not "ExceptioNULL Games"
  

Stay tuned for more updates, happy punching, and we here at ExceptioNULL Games wish you all an amazing weekend! :)