Mega Knockdown News

Full color Noel sprites!

• This patch marks our 5th character with finished-quality art: Noel!
  
• Noel was partially done in the last patch, but now (almost) all of her animations are in. The one missing piece is the devouring animation on her ground throw, which will get finished up later.
  
• Noel's air throw animation has been redesiged, and as a result we have reduced the push it causes to 1 square (from 2).
  
• Marv will be the next to get finished sprites, which may take about 2 months because of how complex his animations are. A few of his 'being hit' animations are in this build, but we haven't turned on his color shader yet.
  

New Opponent Character: Nils

• At the end of Nick's arcade mode, you may remember a fight with a character named Wooly, named after Nilson "Wooly" Seegmiller, a character from my previous game 'Nick Beard: The Fedora of Destiny' and the short lived Nick Beard comic.
  
• Wooly, now calling himself Nils, is now his own character. His move set is modeled after "charge" based zoners like Guile. His art is currently in an early draft state (similar to what other characters were looking like last year) while we flesh out his gameplay.
  
• You can fight Nils at the end of Nick's arcade mode, but we are also testing him out as a playable character. Join our Discord if you're interested in helping out with the testing process.
  

Improved Replay System

• To help you analyze your matches, the replays viewer now has controls to pause or resume playback, or step through the replay a turn at a time. These controls are attached to the mouse driven 'Strategic View' interface which can be toggled on or off.
  
• You can now record replays in single player if you finish matches in the "One on One" (versus CPU) mode.
  
• There is now a slight delay at the beginning of a replay before the action starts. Previously the characters would jump the gun a little bit.
  

New Color Choices and Unlocks

• The number of color palettes per character has been increased from 6 to 10.
  
• A few existing palettes have been reorganized to different slots.
  
• Most of these new colors are unlocks that you can earn by playing the game, effectively adding a some mini-achievements for each character.
  
• Color 7 is unlocked when you beat Arcade mode on Normal or higher difficulty.
  
• Color 8 is unlocked when you beat Arcade mode on Hard difficulty. Colors 7 and 8 will require a fresh Arcade run because of how Arcade progress was tracked in the past.
  
• Color 9 requires a score of 5+ in Survival mode to unlock. This may already be unlocked for some of your characters.
  
• You can actually skip doing the unlock process for the above colors by toggling on "Unlock Everything" in the options. This will not affect your saved progress, it just bypasses the requirements while this option is turned on.
  
• Color 10 is unlocked with purchase of the Supporter Colors DLC. (The old Color 6 palettes were moved to this slot).
  

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3067270/Mega_Knockdown__Supporter_Colors/

Gameplay and System Changes

• Now if someone blocks an attack which is minus, the blocking player appears to stay in blockstun for less time. This is a cosmetic change to help the flow of the game--the actual frame advantage of moves is not affected.
  

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an uncommon issue where the game wouldn't know when to hand off a controller to Player 1 in some gamepad related situations, causing problems with navgating menus.
  
• Thanks to King9999 for helping hunt down this bug. To report a bug or send feedback, you can always press F8 in game.

Our small team (of two) has been working hard on making Mega Knockdown the best it can be. Since July of 2022 we have made staggering improvements to the game, and we hope to make it out of early access next year. If you like the game, why not show us some support with a nomination?

New sprites for Noel (Phase 1)

• Most of Noel's animations have been overhauled with full-color, hand-drawn, finished quality sprites. Some of her animations are not ready yet (mostly her normal attacks) so the rest will come in the next regular content update.
  

New Status Icons

• A new set of icons appear when a player is punished or is at frame disadvantage, replacing the old programmer art.
  
• There are two variants of the frame disadvantage icon. When a player is -20, more minus signs appear compared to -10. The icon also appears more reddish in color. (The old version had two variants too, but they were harder to tell apart.)
  
• The new icons now appear above the characters instead of on top of them, so as to not get in the way of the action.
  
• These icons now appear during replays by default. There may later be an option to toggle them on/off depending on player feedback.
  

Palette enhancements for Noel and Marv

• Noel and Marv now use 10 total colors rather than 8 for their palettes, and there should be better fidelity between the defined palette colors and what is rendered in game.
  
• These additional colors give better flexibility for alternate palettes, including user created custom palettes. For instance, Noel's lips used to be locked to the same color as her shirt. Now they are on different shades.
  
• Most of the default palettes for Noel and Marv have been adjusted slightly to account for their access to more colors. For instance, Marv and Jayne now have green accents in their Color 6.
  
• Noel has a new "armor" palette that appears for a brief instant if her Plant Armor triggers.
  

System changes and fixes

• While a player is hit by Noel's rapid whip attacks, their position will jitter slightly. Additionally, the "knockdown" animation will now only trigger on the last hit.
  
• Fixed an issue with Paul sometimes snapping slightly below the stage if Paul is hit during a specific frame of Paulcano.
  
• Paul's back throw has been adjusted in appearance slightly. It is still somewhat of a placeholder, like other back throw animations.
  
• Hit sparks have been moved forward in the sorting order so that they aren't drawn under the hit player's lineart. This behaviour may need to be revised more in the future.
  
• Fixed some odd knockback effects during Noel's Fightning Flail
  

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.
  

Bug Fixes & System Changes

• Fixed a bug where Marv jumping C would always beat neutral+B, not just when the B attack is out of range
  
• Fixed a bug where Marv jumping B would play no sound when hitting Marv's Blazing Ent
  
• Fixed issue where Marv would be hit instantly by a vine if it would connect with Jayne's limb. The timing of this hit is now more plausible.
  
• Fixed a bug where Noel's partial Vine damage bonus would stack with the direct hit Vine bonus in the corner (not intended)
  
• Fixed a bug where Noel would add the full damage of her attack to vine damage on a trade, even if her slower attack is interrupted.
  
• Fixed an odd situation where Noelswould not delay the same amount of time if trading vines.
  
• When a trade happens involving a vine, the vine will now knock down more consistently
  
• If Noel's plant armor triggers, she is no longer immune to side switching.
  
• Billy's stomp no longer makes a sound if it is interrupted at the exact wrong timing
  
• Adjusted Nick's back walk to end in the idle pose.
  
• Adjusted timing of anti airing jumping C moves so the interaction looks more natural
  
• If you change the resolution to an approved aspect ratio while you are displaying an aspect ratio warning, it should clear the warning.
  

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Thanks to our community on Discord for finding these issues. You can press F8 in game at any time to report a bug or give feedback.