Mega Knockdown News

Balance Change

• 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!

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.

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.
  

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:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1492750/view/6578101268069028096

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.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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.