Mega Knockdown News

A few things couldn't make it into the game in time for the MEGA Update. We didn't want to sit on them until the next content patch, so we're releasing them now in a bonus update!

New Noel Animations!

• Noel's animations and sprites have been improved across the board! We upgraded about half of them in the last patch, but now all of them are at a higher level of detail and quality. Future sprite updates for Noel and other characters are planned as we continue in Early Access.
  
• Noel's throw now has a special new animation when Jerma mode is on.
  
• Noel's special anti air combos now do twice as many hits, but less damage per hit. This is a purely cosmetic change as the total damage is unchanged.
  
• There is a new vine animation replacing the old programmer art.
  
• If a vine doesn't directly hit, it will be drawn behind the players.
  

New Hint System!

• There are a few game mechanics that are covered briefly in the tutorial, but players miss or forget about. For this reason, we are adding a hint system to Arcade mode.
  
• Under some specific conditions such as getting counter hit, anti-aired, etc, the game will very briefly pause, issue a chime, and display a text box explaining what happened.
  
• These hints will only be shown once each, as they are usually just repeating some information from the tutorial. If you want to see the hints more than once, you can reset them in the game options.
  

Other Changes

• The input display now says "next move" in single player when it's showing a prediction. This is because players often don't notice (or forget) that the game gives information about the AI player's next move, unless you're playing on Hard. Feel free to drop a comment below if these patch notes informed you about this feature for the first time.
  
• If you're anti-aired by a ground attack, the game now says "anti air" similar to other notifications like "counter."
  
• Strife Mode no longer gives a bonus to combo damage. This was causing certain moves like normal attacks to do disproportionately more damage than single hit specials. Plus, damage was a little too high in Strife Mode anyway.
  
• Noel's throw animation now uses two sprites: one for her, one for the plant. This should have a slight positive effect on performance.
  

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where a player using j.B would not get a full combo against Marv j.C in some very specific situations.
  
• Fixed a bug where a vine would sometimes not appear if you planted it twice in a row too quickly.
  
• Attempted a fix for a rare training menu bug that would send players back to main menu at inappropriate times.
  

We're wrapping up the year with another major update!

Lots of New Sprite Art for Nick, Lewis & Noel!

• Hundreds of draft-quality sprites have been replaced with higher-quality drawings with improved lineart. Thanks to illustrator Alan McMillian for his continued hard work.
  
• For Nick and Lewis, this is a total visual overhaul. For Noel, about half of her animations have been improved, and the rest will come in a future update.
  
• Ultimately our goal every sprite to be at a similar level of quality to the full-color idle sprites. Hand drawn art is a painstaking and time consuming affair, so your patience is greatly appreciated.
  

Better Online Lobbies

• The game now searches for open Steam Lobbies when checking for matches, instead of our own matchmaking server. Players should now be able to host a lobby for long periods of time without the match getting de-listed.
  
• In lobby, there are four new buttons. One mutes the lobby BGM while in the lobby menu only (for alt tabbed lobby hosting). Another copies an invite URL to your clipboard. You can paste this URL into discord or somewhere to invite friends to your open lobby. A third button directly opens the Steam Invite Friend dialogue. Lastly, the spectate button flags you as a spectator. You will automatically go to the end of the line and get sorted behind active players. You can toggle this off by clicking again, or by readying up to play.
  

Nick's Cheesy Dust Loops

• Nick's dustloop passive now lets him do an enhanced extra rep of his B Combo in the corner, for a total of 250 damage.
  
• Previously his passive would tack on a total of 167-200 damage over the course of a combo.
  
• The game is more consistent about checking if Nick has corner. The special Cheesy Dust Loop combo should now always trigger if the opponent is in the corner or the space next to it, and if Nick is close enough to the corner space to kick it with his B attack.
  
• Cheesy Dust Loop no longer incorrectly gives Nick bonus damage if he anti airs an opponent jumping out of the corner, or if he lands a max range jB against an opponent standing next to the corner.
  
• There is a new achievement "I'm Not a Bad Guy" for doing a max damage Cheesy Dust Loop combo.
  

Noel's Vine Armor

• If Noel would be hit by a very slow attack (adjusted startup longer than 40 frames) on the same turn as she places a Vine, her Vine will immediately be expended to protect her with Vine Armor.
  
• Vine Armor reduces the damage of a single incoming hit by 100 (to a minimum of 100). The attacker may not combo, and if the attack would normally knock down, Noel will stay on her feet.
  
• Throws bypass Vine Armor. All of Billy's attacks automatically break this armor as well.
  
• Previously, if the Noel player set a vine at the wrong time, she could be punished by even the slowest of attacks, losing a lot of health and possibly giving the opponent oki. Now it's a little less risky to deploy her signature setup move when you have the advantage, but you can still be easily called out for it if you don't.
  

Throw Changes

• Noel's throw now causes push and no longer has any hitstop.
  
• Lewis and Nick's air throws were reverted to 1 square of push so they can get some meaningful offense going after a successful air throw.
  

Other Visual Changes

• For attacks that do a medium amount of damage (100-200), hitstop has been reduced slightly.
  
• Rapidly hitting attacks now have less hitstop.
  
• In Strife Mode, the amount of extra hitstop has been reduced significantly.
  
• Air juggle animations have been adjusted across the board for less rotation.
  
• Many character foot positions have been adjusted for consistency. Some characters might be effectively taller as a result.
  
• Characters now react differently to Lewis' grab.
  

UI Changes

• Removed non functional blue highlighting from some buttons in the rebinding menu.
  
• On Steam Deck, the mouse (touch) controls menu is bigger so that you can actually press the buttons with an adult sized finger.
  
• In lobbies, the Salty Chat text is now a little smaller.
  
• A few menus have been translated to Brazillian Portuguese by community member Stealphie. You can access this partial translation by entering -language=pt-BR into the launch settings. More menus are being set up for localization in future updates. If you want to assist us with localizing the game into other languages, please join our Discord.
  

Performance Improvements

• Many old and no-longer-used draft-quality sprites have been removed from the game files to keep file sizes, memory usage and load times in check.
  
• Some achievement tracking variables have been moved back to PlayerPrefs for better performance.
  

Bug Fixes

• If player 1 or player 2 disconnects from a lobby match, it should now correctly bring all players back to lobby. Previously this only happened if player 2 lost connection. However if player 1 is the host, the lobby will still close if they disconnect.
  
• Fixed an issue where accepting a Steam invite from some menus would bring you to the Online menu without joining the lobby. It should "just work" now.
  
• Fixed a persistent and long standing bug where round win counts were not properly syncing for spectators.
  
• Potentially fixed an issue where client players were rarely not able to send commands to the host.
  
• Paul no longer gets Nick's bonus counter hit damage in the tutorial.
  
• PileDebunker should no longer appear to briefly teleport when it is punished.
  
• Paul no longer stands there for an extra half second after doing his throw.
  

Watching Old Replays? Revert to the Last Patch

• Note that this change will break some replays from the last patch. If you want to go back and watch or record videos of those replays, you can roll back to the last patch by entering the beta code "backupbackup" into the "private betas" field in the game's Steam prefernces. We recommend saving your past replays to video as we don't promise to keep these beta builds open forever.
  

More New Sprites Coming Soon!
Artist Alan McMillian has been working hard on polishing and refining our character animations to the next level of quality. I'd like to put out a big update in December with a visual overhaul for Nick and possibly Lewis. At this point Nick's new animations have been implemented in our internal build, so I figure it's a good time to let the community try out these changes and give feedback. In addition to art changes, this beta also has a new achievement, and overhauls Nick's "Cheesy Dust Loops" ability by giving him new corner combo routes.

To access the public beta branch:

• Right-click Mega Knockdown in your library and click Properties
  
• Navigate to the Betas tab. Select the "nick patch" Beta (it might have another name if you've participated in a past 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.

Despite our small team (consisting of one programmer and one artist) and shoestring budget, we have been working hard since well before launch on making Mega Knockdown the best game it can be. Since July of last year we have put out upwards of 20 patches, and we don't plan to throw in the towel any time soon. If this game has been a source of joy for you, think about tossing a nomination our way!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a rare but serious issue where exiting the Sound settings menu without previously entering the Graphics menu would cause the game's resolution to be reduced to a very small value. If this happened to you before, it should now fix itself.
  
• Fixed the default selectable on the graphics menu.
  

Art Updates

• A little few animations from Nick's in-progress art update (walk and hit) have made it into this version. A much bigger animation update is coming next month.
  

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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.