M.M. Lewis Update

Full color sprites for Lewis

This patch marks our 4th character with finished art: M.M. Lewis!
A few of Lewis' moves have new effects, namely his throw and PileDebunker. Also, his slide has a new look, and sports afterimages like all other "late moving" attacks.
Of the starting 6 characters, this just leaves Marv and Noel. Both of these characters will be technically challenging to animate because of their designs, so we plan to work on them in tandem. It may be at least 2 months befoe Noel or Marv is finished.

New air throw for Nick

Nick's visuals were technically unfinished in the last couple patches because his air throw was not complete. Hence overnight we have gone from 2 to 4 visually 'finished' characters.
Functionally the move is the same as before, but it has gained an extra visual flourish: after throwing the enemy down, he will descend into a butt slam on top of them.

Gameplay and System Changes

Lewis' slide attack, Slippery Slope, has been adjusted to be more predictable and consistent. Startup speed is now 35~45f depending on spacing (ranged from 25~55f before). Slide no longer has bonus speed vs other late moving attacks, except Lewis' backward moving specials. Slide's speed used to be adjusted by +10f if the opponent walked backward or reduced by the same amount if they moved forward, now this modified is halved to 5f. This modifier cannot reduce the startup below 35 or above 45.
Nick's A combo now always steps forward if there is room. Previously he would not do the step if he was already in Cheesy Dust Loop range.
The Tutorial UI's alignment has been adjusted slightly.
Hitboxes are now drawn behind the UI once again.
The slurs plugin in the online lobbies chat has been replaced with a new one that is less likely to trigger false positives.

Bug Fixes

Fixed a literally four year old bug where, in situations where players are three squares away and both jumping toward each other, Player 2 would get priority for the square in the one specific screen position where Player 1 was supposed to, creating a very slight screen position advantage for Player 2.. at least on paper.
Fixed an uncommon softlock that could sometimes occur when whiffing a move in a punish situation.
Fixed a turn order glitch that would occur if the player spammed low attacks vs a neutral jumping training dummy
Fixed a hit detection problem causing asynchronous trades in some anti air situations.
Fixed a problem where characters were reacting to grabs out of sync with the grab in some cases.
Marv jC is now consistently -20 for both Player 1 and Player 2. Previously there were some specific ranges where it was plus, and these were not consistent among both players.
Player 1 can now break Noel's plant armor. Player 2 already could do this, but there was a bug on P1 side.
Fixed Noel's attacks causing no hitstop during a plant assisted combo.
Fixed Noel's opponent taking attack damage plus vine damage if her vine traded hits with a 10f attack, but her actual attack was slower than 10f.
Fixed player 2's animations (only) getting delayed in a vine trade situation.
If Noel whiffs jA but hits with Vine, she can still pick up a high damage OTG combo afterward into knockdown, but this no longer includes the damage of her whiffed jumping attacks. This interaction is a little bit unintended so we may revisit it in the future.
Fixed two Noel players sometimes doing inconsistent amounts of knockback on each other if they hit each other with vines while doing other, slower (interrupted) attacks.
Fixed Lewis taking less chip than intended when blocking a vine together with a normal attack.
Fixed a problem sometimes causing Lewis to end up in the same square as his opponent while using his Slide.
Fixed Lewis popping forward during Slide when hit by Lewis Fist of Euphoria.
Fixed Slide inconsistently winning or losing vs Fist of Euphoria depending on corner position.
Fixed PileDebunker looking strange while trading with Slide
Fixed Fist of Euphoria having extra range during a punish.
Fixed the coloring of a Paul sprite that didn't have white eyeballs.
Fixed Jerma Nick appearing to teleport forward during his A Combo.
Fixed a flickering hitbox issue sometimes affecting air throws.
The "Punish" label in the input indicator no longer dissapears when a player is hit.
Fixed an issue where, if you're in the Matchmaking Queue and find a match, your lobby might break in the transition back to the lobby scene if the game would try to look for other lobbies in the ~1 frame it lingers in the Lobby Browser scene.
Thanks to community members Sente and hypergrav for helping hunt down several bugs and other issues in the recent weeks. To report a bug or send feedback, you can always press F8 in game.

Meta Changes

The game has a new icon (featuring Paul) for the .exe, Steam library and Steam community. Goodbye, Knocked Down Stick Figure Man. You served us well.
Mega Knockown now has Steam Community Avatars you can choose for your Steam profile.