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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

New Feature: 'Find Match' While Playing Other Modes

• There is a new "Find Match" button in Online mode. This lets you queue up for a match while playing other modes (training, arcade, etc). Other players can see your Lobby listed without you actually having to wait in it.
  
• If a Lobby is open or someone is waiting in Find Match, a special icon will display in the Main Menu next to the Online button.
• You can still wait for players in the lobby screen by selecting New Lobby.
• Opening the Online Mode now automatically searches for open lobbies. The old "Join Lobby" button is now "Refresh Lobbies."

• Going back to our roots a little bit here. It's a green screen! On this stage you can take screenshots or videos and easily edit out or replace the background if you want.
• Currently the Green Screen Jeremy DLC needs to be active for you to use this stage. It's free, however.

• Lewis' shoes are now on a separate palette color from his turtleneck. Lewis' shoe color is now different in some palettes as a result.
• One new Lewis animation is in. Lewis is the next character who will get finished art.
• Billy's fearsome air throw now has a name (Tengoku Chaos Dunk)
• Nick's back jump was reworked to have more similar timing to other back jumps.
• Improved hit detection when whiff punishing Jayne's limbs after Marv's special attacks.
• If the game is launched in an "Ultra Wide" aspect ratio (which is not supported), the game will attempt to correct it to 1080p. This has not yet been tested, so it may not work. Let's just say this is a feature that's in beta.
• If the game is changed to an unsupported resolution (such as by dragging the game window), a warning message will display when you change menus.
• When using a jumping C attack giving a successful side switch, the displayed hitboxes are now different, though the actual range of these attacks has not changed.
• Adjusted frame disadvantage delay in situations where both players walk+block
• Your bindings have been reset again to fix a controller mapping issue (sorry).

• Nick's counter hit bonus has been reworked to be simpler. He gets the bonus if his attacks are same speed or faster than the opponents, unless it's during a trade or an anti air. (Old rule: nick got bonus damage if his ground attack interrupted another ground attack that would have hit)
• Counter hit damage bonus now 50 (was 100) because this is a much more common situation.
• Lewis Fist of Euphoria chip reduced (75->50). This move is just really good, so some toning down is in order.
• Lewis PileDebunker chip increased (75->100). It's supposed to be a big swing, and anyway you eat a big punish when this move is blocked.
• Marv Gravity Spike is now -10 (was +10). This move does everything. It probably does not also have to be plus on block.
• Characters with "short" jumping C attacks (Nick, Paul, Billy) now have extra 1 range against late moving attacks. This is to prevent dead zones vs moves like PileDebunker.

• The Big Billy Buster now does the extra 50 damage only when there is a wallbounce. There were a few stage positions where it would get the damage without a wallbounce.
• Fixed Marv's Vapor Strike not pushing on hit in some situations (grounded, player 1 side only).
• Noel's Fightning Flail now does full damage against jump ins (previously the first hit would sometimes whiff--not intended).
• Some low-hitting specials (Lewis slide, Billy stomp) are no longer able to hit Jayne's limbs after Marv's specials whiff. This was notintended.
• PileDebunker can now properly whiff punish Jayne's extended limb after Vapor Strike at round start spacing, as intended.

• Fixed a serious misalignment of health bars in 16:10 resolution. This was a new issue caused by rearranging the game canvases.
• Fixed a problem where the resolution would update unexpectedly when closing menus for sound, gameplay, etc.
• Fixed a problem where dragging the game window to a new monitor would cause the Graphic Options to default to native resolution instead of whatever resolution you're actually using
• Fixed directional control bindings for menu navigation not saving properly after closing the game.
• Fixed the timing of certain jumping moves when they are jumping over attacks without an anti air hitbox (fireballs, slide, etc).
• Fixed sprite positions when Lewis is hit out of his Bravery Step specials (Fist of Euphoria, PileDebunker), or punished when those moves are blocked.
• Fixed a sprite error in Nick's low block.
• Fixed a sprite error in Nick's wakeup animation.
• Fixed a misalignment in the glyph circles in the input display panel.
• Fixed not being able to select Color 6 on gamepad while in the online lobby, even if you have the DLC
• A timing issue was fixed when using Blazing Ent vs players jumping on wakeup.
• "C" attacks are now called "Salty" attacks on the rebinding menu and nowhere else. This is classified as a bug because this change was supposed to happen last patch, but did not because of an error.

Full Color Sprites for Nick

• Almost all of Nick's animations have been revamped with finished art, except for his Air Throw related animations. Those will be finished soon.
• The next character to get an art update will be Lewis, and we expect this will take about two months.

• Nick now steps forward 1 square when doing his A combo, instead of slipping back to his starting square. This keeps him at a desirable range after landing an A combo instead of pushing the opponent to an unfavorable distance.
• The corner distance for Cheesy Dust Loops is checked AFTER this step, meaning that Nick can now do his enhanced A corner combo from a further distance than before. His B combo is unaffected.

• Now, whenever you pull up the clickable mouse controls (also known as the 'Strategic View') by clicking the game window during a match, a new Combat Log will appear.
• This log contains detailed information about the inner workings of the game, and it will explain in text why a player got hit, the current frame advantage situation, how much damage was dealt, and so on.
• All of the above can be learned without pulling up the log, but my hope is that inexperienced players to the fighting game genre can use it to better understand the game.
• You can click to "pin" this view so it always shows up if you want a "turn based strategy" style view, or you can disable this feature entirely in the options menu for a more immersive fighting experience.
• Currently the log requires the clickable mouse controls to be active, but the log can be toggled on or off separately. In a future patch we may decouple the log from the mouse HUD.

• The input display on the bottom of the screen is now glyph-based, to make it easier to read at a glance, and to make the layout more consistent.
• In single player, you can now see your own input choices before locking in both actions. This information is still hidden in Versus, for obvious reasons.

• When a player is hit in the air outside of the jumping state, they will play a Juggled animation. If a player is hit on the ground despite electing to jump, they will no longer be Juggled. This is entirely a cosmetic change, and does not influence things like Noel's anti air combos.
• Mega Knockdown is now compatible with the Game Recording Beta. We're not currently using any special API features, but you can follow the instructions in the link to make easily sharable clips of gameplay.
• When the Guide is open, the mouse menu will be temporarily hidden so it doesn't cover up Guide elements.
• Adjusted the shape of Player 2's mouse controls to match Player 1.
• C attacks are now labeled "Salty" attacks in the rebinding menu, and nowhere else. (was: "Spicy")

• Fixed Player 2 not being able to rebind gamepad controls from the Options menu.
• Fixed Jerma appearing during some of Marv's animations after a KO.
• Fixed the red "damage" bar not recovering in Training mode when Recover HP is enabled.
• Fixed a bug where Faith Smasher would sometimes appear to trade with attacks, instead of winning.
• Fixed a rare issue where certain jumping A attacks would sometimes trade "asynchronously" with other jumping attacks.
• Fixed an issue where cutscene conversations could not be advanced by clicking the mouse.
• Fixed a brief "jitter" that would happen when a special move name is displayed on the input display HUD.
• Fixed a mousing issue sometimes causing the selected lesson to change when loading a Tutorial lesson.

You may be wondering, who's the guy on the poster?
That's Sensei Bob. He runs Greenville's only karate dojo, although he is techically a master of Bob-Kyu, a martial art he invented himself. He claims to have won some kind of secret underground tournament in Southeast Asia back in the 70s or 80s, but we're not sure if that's true or not. Revamped Tutorial

• In this update, Bob replaces the disembodied narrator of Tutorial mode, which has a new HUD and support for glyphs representing game actions and dynamic hotkeys which respond to your actual key/button bindings and choice of controller.
  
• Lesson Select has a new look and some extra flavor text.
  
• Bob now appears in Arcade Mode's Smart Tips (now Sensei's Tips) to remind you of important game mechanics. He'll offer some encouragement if you lose in Arcade Mode, at least the first couple times. These tips only appear once each, but you can reset them in the options mode at any time.
  

• The Rebinding menu has a new look which includes the same new Glyph system as the Tutorial. In Character Select, the menus can now be opened or closed independently on a per-player basis (so Player 2 can adjust their settings while Player 1 is customizing their controls, or vice versa).
  
• Observe that A, B and C attacks now have proper names: Light, Medium and Spicy. (C attacks, while slow, tend to be "tricky" rather than "heavy" attacks.)

• Several more text fields, including the full tutorial, have been set up for localization and mostly translated into Brazillian Portuguese thanks to community member Stealphie. (To play the partially translated portuguese localization type -language=pt-BR into the Steam launch options) Other languages are not as far along, but this work will help future translations.

• The game has been updated to a newer version of the Rewired Input Manager plugin, which manages game inputs and controller support.
• Various text fields have been moved over to TextMeshPro from UI Text

• Fixed some problems with controller navigation of the Online menu
• Fixed an issue where a B attack would not combo at some ranges
• Fixed an issue where Billy's armored attacks would sometimes excessively push Billy

Sign up here: https://challonge.com/tournaments/signup/U3e3V6ZL5f#/signup/14umqeh8hzb The Mega Knockdown League is a friendly online competition that can be played at your own pace. Free to enter. No region restriction. Players must be on the Mega Knockdown Discord to receive communciations. Prize: First place gets a minimum of $100 USD via Matcherino, contributed by the TO. 2nd/3rd may get a payout if Matcherino raises beyond $100. Format: Round Robin. Participants will be divided into groups. Once the tournament begins, you will have roughly 1 week to play a match with everyone else in their group. Matches will be played either over the in game Lobbies. The top 2 players of each group by Match Wins will enter into a finals bracket. The winner of the finals bracket will win the league. Disqualification: If a scheduled match is not played by the end of the month, it is either a draw or a win, according to TO's discretion. It is understood that some player matchups may not be possible due to scheduling and time zones. Tournament Rules

• Best 3 out of 5 games per match.
• Winner of prior game must keep same character
• Loser of prior game may switch character
• "Standard" time setting (15 second timer)
• Players must be on the Mega Knockdown Discord to receive communciations.

Online Lobby Fixes In Online mode, fixed a Null Reference Exception issue preventing players from readying up after returning to lobby. Fixed a bug forcing player 2 to play as Jerma in online mode.

Surprise! The last update was great and all, but we had a few loose ends to tie up. Completed Full Color Sprites for Billy

• A few of Billy's animations and sprites that were not yet ready for the last update are now finished, most notably his ground throws and throw techs. All of his art is now at a finished level of quality, though we might make some minor adjustments and fixes as Early Access continues.
• Billy now has a proper visual effect for when his Iron Will of the Otaku armor passive triggers, when using his finished sprites.
• Nick will be the next character to get an art update, and work has already begun on his final sprites. We may finish him by the end of next month, if all goes well.

• The achievement "Is That Jeremy?" now requires starting a match with the legacy art style turned on.
• Fixed a rare issue that would occur when a jumping A attack collides with a jumping C attack at a far distance
• Fixed some pixelation artifacts in Paul's idle pose
• In the demo, you can now unlock the legacy art style by beating the shortened demo arcade mode
• In the demo, changed the appearance of the "lock" icon in char select

Full Color Sprites for Billy

• About 90% of Billy's animations have been revamped with finished art, with the exception of a few throw-related animations. We plan to finish the rest this week or so.
• The next character to get final-quality art will be Nick, who should be finished in about 2 months.

• Every character now has five color palettes to choose from in addition to the legacy green screen and abstract art styles, the latter you can now "unlock" by completing Arcade mode for that character.
• If you activate the Green Screen Jeremy DLC, which has been available for free since launch, the legacy art styles will all unlock for you immediately.
• We plan to add many more color options to the base game in the future, and the game has robust palette modding capabilities--see this guide to learn more about how to make custom colors:

• Character Select has been rebuilt from the ground up with a new design and more functional UI.
• Char Select has a new submenu for easy selection of character color, timer settings, "Strife" mode, as well as stage & music when in Versus mode.
• A few visual improvements are planned to this screen (such as enhanced portraits), but this is a starting point.
• Added Random Select to offline play.
• Favorite color is now remembered per-character.
• The rebinding menu within char select has a new look, and it is now a small submenu for each individual player instead of a fullscreen two-player menu. These submenus can be opened or closed without affecting what the other player is doing in character select.

• In addition to the 5 initial colors we've added to start for each characater, a 6th palette per character is available for owners of the new Supporter Colors DLC. This is a small cosmetic perk we're selling to raise money for further development of the game. It's five bucks adjusted for your region, and you can grab it here:

• Online lobbies have full color selection just like offline, though stage and music options will come later to online.
• Making a Private lobby is now done via a button instead of toggling a hotkey before making a lobby.
• More menu strings have been set up for future localization.
• Several minor improvements have been made to the functioning of the Options and Arcade menus

• Replays will now remember your chosen colors, stage and music.
• If you select one of the legacy art styles, the AI will pick that too, otherwise it will default to the new art style.
• If both players pick the same color (except the legacy art styles), player 1 gets priority and player 2 will be switched over to Color 2 or 3.
• Certain keys such as L3 and the Function keys, which used to be "protected" to control certain menus, can now be bound to other things.
• Billy and Paul's air moves now (mostly) travel in a more parabolic arc. Other chars will get this enhancement with their new art.
• As you progress through Survival or Paul Zone, the color of opponents is now randomized in the higher stages.

• Fixed an issue where certain types of throw wouldn't push back during a tech.
• Fixed some very rare and specific hit detection issues

• Fixed an issue where a wakeup throw would sometimes be out of sync with the opponent's reaction to the throw, causing unnatural looking movements.
• Fixed a problem where imported custom palettes would sometimes not map to the correct colors in-game.
• Fixed the position of character move lists in the Training mode pause menu.

Gameplay and Balance Changes

• Lewis' forward and neutral throws now side switch, and his back throw leaves him on the same side.
• This is somewhat for flavor, but it is a buff when Lewis is cornered, and a nerf when Lewis is in the corner. In recent patches I have been working on toning down the oki situation off neutral throws. Lewis still gets great oki off a throw, but a side switch is not always desirable.
• Lewis max hp reduced to 1350 (from 1400).
• Piledebunker damage/chip reduced to 350/75 from 400/100.
• Pile is a risky move but at far ranges where it is often used, the risk reward seemed to favor Lewis a little too much.
• Lewis 4A, Lewis 4C and Paulcano now have extra whiff disadvantage from an extra square away.
• This makes blocking a little better as a callout for these moves, even a little past round start distance
• Nick now does extra chip to Lewis. The amount depends on the attack, but it's usually 25 more chip than lewis would take from other characters
• Previously, Lewis and Nick's chip related passives did not stack.
• Billy's air throw is now untechable.
• Billy's 5T now does a wallbounce when close-ish to the corner, though the rebound is rigged to leave the opponent 1 space away each time, as before.
• Billy's throws have all been reduced in damage by 50 each. 5T can still do 500 with a wallbounce, otherwise "just" 450 (Still a lot).
• Billy's throws are really strong because of the oki situations they create. It'll be harder than ever to get up from a KD now that you can't even air tech him, so I'm reducing the reward of his throws a bit.

• Characters now do unique variations of their throw when doing a back throw. Some of these are works in progress.
• Billy now has an alternate P2 palette for the mirror match, and moddable palettes. See our recent guide on how to make custom palettes.
• Manual color selection and full color sprites for Billy are coming later this summer. Your patience is appreciated as our artist is hand drawing hundreds of images.

• Fixed issue where sometimes the host would move to the next round before clients are ready, messing up replays and probably other things
• Fixed an old bug where a joining player messes up online win counts
• Fixed syncing of win counts to players joining an in progress match
• Fixed how survival high scores are submitted. If you have an old high score that isn't showing up right, launching the game should fix it automatically.
• Note, some of these online mode improvements have not gone through extensive testing. If you encounter issues, please press F8 any time when in game to send a bug report.

• Fixed a visual bug related to blocking a meaty jab
• Fixed a rare issue leaving Noel in the wrong square after a blocked plant followed by a whiffed air throw
• You can now see the opponent's special move list in single player when you pause or show guide
• Fixed too-low position of the special move guide popups
• Fixed another rare situation where characters would face the wrong way after a side switch
• Fixed training menu not remembering your choices re: HP recovery and attack data if you open and close the menu

• If the mouse controls overlay is open when you beat Arcade mode, it should now correctly disappear while the story scene plays.
• Fixed a typo in the online lobby menu
• Updated Version text in main menu
• Added additional Brazillian Portuguese localization (To play the partially translated portuguese localization type -language=pt-BR into the Steam launch options)

Full Color Sprites for Paul

• Full overhaul of every single Paul animation. This was a massive undertaking as it required finishing over 100 hand drawn sprites split into lineart and fill layers with palette swap support.
• Currently only the default palette is avaialble, or a special alternate palette during mirror matches. We plan to add support for maual color selection in character select later this summer.
• In the meantime, we've opened up Paul's character palette to modding. See the Steam Guide for documentation on how to make your own custom character colors.
• This is a whole new way of handling sprites in-game, so there might be some issues we haven't caught in testing. We may also continue to fine tune Paul's anims, but likely nothing drastic.
• The next character to get final-quality art will be Billy, we're aiming for late summer or so.

• Paul's throw now does push, except in the tutorial. There are now only 2 characters that can do a midscreen throw loop with N+T: Lewis and Nick.
• Overall I'm trying to phase out midscreen frame 0 throw loops for most of the cast, and this change is consistent with that.
• Firepaul is now -20 at a distance of 2 spaces (was -10) and -10 at round start range (was +10). Beyond this distance it is still +10.
• Paul could noncommitally rack up a lot of chip and be at advantage if the opponent blocked his projectile at round start spacing, a really common situation. Now the opponent gets initiative at this range at the cost of some health. Racking up 150 damage in exchange for being -10 at a very safe distance is still a pretty good deal for Paul honestly.
• Lewis slide is now safe (-20) at max range, but its chip is reduced.
• Stand blocking at max slide distance is not the hard callout it used to be now that 5B is -20 at this range. This change is intended to make Slide more fun and less frustrating to use. Although the opponent doesn't get a free punish at max distance anymore, with 20f of point blank advantage they do get to put Lewis in a tricky spot.
• Lewis slide now hits 10f earlier vs other late moving moves (e.g. Lewis specials, Noel flurry).
• Lewis' slide startup depends on the spacing between him and the opponent, this is an adjustment of this calculation. Now this move will sometimes trade in situations where it would almost always lose.
• Nick now has 50 more HP to reflect how sturdy and strong he is. And to help him make maybe one more mistake or take a little more chip in executing his basic gameplan.
• Nick currently needs a little help balance wise as the recent 5B nerf was not great for him. He may see other buffs in the future.
• Billy's max Shiko Slam damage is now a flat 350 (was 400 at point blank, which was uncommon). The move's chip was reduced slightly to 175 (from 200).
• Shiko Slam is a plus on block low that does a massive amount of damage on hit or block. Billy does need it, but this is in line with recent reductions in chip damage across the board.
• Billy loses side switch protection since he has an option to chase down retreating opponents (jump C).
• Previously billy could not travel 2 spaces and was vulnerable to timer scams. Now he has a risky option to get back in if the opponent runs away.
• Jump C can now hit adjacent air opponents, has 5f faster startup and some character specific properties. Billy, Paul and Nick have vertically traveling jC's that don't reach as far, but do some chip and are -20 on block. Noel and Lewis have more horizontal jCs that do less chip reach a little further on the ground, and can be up to -10 when spaced. Marv still has his unique jC that is plus on block and evades N+B attacks.
• Previously jB was the only really consistent jump in and jC was a hard callout to get a knockdown on side switch. Now jC should be more useful in more situations.
• Jump B is now -10 when used on wakeup or if your forward movement is totally blocked.
• This is meant to reduce the potential reward of jumping while already in someone's face to avoid throws and "beat" blocking. jB is still +10 when used at any other spacing, which is most of the time.
• If you are more than 5 spaces away from your opponent (e.g. out of range of all normal attacks) with 10 seconds remaining, the clock will tick at half speed. This is to discourage very passive runaway play with the life lead, which theoretically could be a problem in some matchups.

• Noel has a new (draft) stage, the Greenhouse. This was a safe haven for many exotic and endangered plants before it was ruined by Montero's thugs. The plants that survived have become twisted and overgrown.
• Paul mirrors now take place in the Dojo, because it's a nice looking stage.

• Adjusted delays and timings of attacks so that many interactions should look more natural. This is an ongoing process and there will be some things that still need to be cleaned up.
• The maximum height at which characters can be juggled has been reduced.
• Sweeps now have 5 fewer active frames across the board to look better with hitstop
• Total duration of some moves such as jA, jC and Firepaul have been reduced slightly by reducing the number of recovery frames. This is a cosmetic change not affecting block advantage, intended to help the flow of the game.
• Jerma Paul's throw now hits multiple times. This is a cosmetic change with no effect on gameplay.
• Paul's Paulcano dragon punch now does 2 hits. This is a cosmetic change as it does the same amount of total damage even in the rare/unlikely situation that only 1 hit lands.

• Under the hood, more menus are now ready to be translated.
• Community member and 10+ time tournament winner Stealph is helping translate the game into Portuguese. Paul's story mode and most of the menus are now available in pt-BR. To play in portuguese type -language=pt-BR into the Steam launch options.
• We still need to get the in-game text boxes and tutorials ready for translation and that will come in a later update, hopefully this summer. When the game is more or less fully translated, we will make the localization option easier to get to in-game.

• Further optimized the game by packing menu and stage images into atlases to improve filesize and loading times. The filesize went DOWN in this patch to 740MB (from 830MB) despite the many new Paul sprites.
• Better console logging during F8 bug reports
• jC will no longer play the "switch" animation if the game detects that you will be hit out of it.
• The online lobby can detect certain kinds of disconnects better and will respond accordingly, preventing "ghost" players from staying in a match in rare instances.
• The Versus screen pops in sooner after character select.
• Paulcano is now listed in the training menu as 5f to match its actual startup (it previously said 1f). No gameplay or visual difference here as it is still fully invincible on startup
• Revised the wording of the "Different Types of Throws" mission
• Fixed bug where you could change characters during the versus screen popup
• Fixed a bug where jB was -20 on whiff at some spacings
• Fixed a bug where sometimes you get the wrong Tutorial mode opponent
• The tutorial mode opponent now lets you hit him in situations where he used to block.

Our next patch has a full overhaul of Paul with color sprites and several system and balance tweaks. Why not try it out and give us some feedback?
Patch notes: https://pastebin.com/1ksjnNhj To access the public beta branch:

• Right-click Mega Knockdown in your library and click Properties
• Navigate to the Betas tab. Select the Marv Beta.
• Launch the game. You are now playing the beta!

As we indicated in our earlier Dev Goals post (below), one thing we're working on is our final transition into full-color character sprites with shading and color swapping. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1492750/view/3888359911119183911?l=english
The first character to get this upgrade will be Paul. We are making steady progress on his art and hope for full-color Paul to be playable in-game later this month. The next will be Billy, then either Noel, Lewis or Nick. The last to get upgraded will be Marv since his animations are the most complex.
In our finished sprites we will actually use two layered images per frame of animation. One has only lineart and shadows with a standard sprite shader (written for us by TooMuchAbstraction, the developer of Waves of Steel--check his game out when you get a chance!), then a second sprite contains only flat shades of gray which is run through the swap shader. Before rendering a sprite set up for color swapping, this shader reads the intensity (lightness/darkness) of its pixels. Each shade of gray maps to different color within a palette texture, and the shader assigns that color. Then to change character color palettes we just switch palette textures. Each of those is just an 8x1 pixel image, so they're easy to make and, in theory, anyone could do it.
Thanks for your continued support. Hand drawn art is very labor intensive and time consuming, but we're really excited to be entering this stage of development.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a really obscure bug with timed variants like BLITZ or BULLET where if a player locked in their move exactly one frame after running out of time, they would sometimes start peforming their chosen action and then enter the timed out state, and the time indicator would be stuck glowing red. This led to some very rare and high-execution softlocks.
• Corrected damage calculation in training mode when a player is hit out of a back jump, or if the player resets training mode in the middle of a combo.

This is a quick fix to a couple Steam Leaderboard issues. You can view your position on the leaderboards in the Steam Community Hub. Bug Fixes

• When the game submits a score to the leaderboard, it should no longer overwrite your high score if you submit a lower one.
• The Normal Survival leaderboard is now based on your Normal Survival high score, not your Normal Paul Zone high score.

Bug Fixes

• In Survival, enemy HP now goes up by 200 every 4 wins, instead of every 2. Originally it was supposed to be 100 every 2 wins, but then I made the HP boost upgrade stronger, which unintentionally also helped the AI.
• Billy's new jumping C now works correctly for both players.

• Added a new leaderboard that keeps track of your online level ("bravery") and how it stacks up with other players. Bravery, measured in "kiloSagans," levels up in increments of 10 as you win (or to a lesser extent, lose or spectate) online matches. It can never go down, but it takes increasingly more points to increase your Bravery as you go up in levels.

This patch contains a mix of new features, quality of life improvements and some extra visual polish. Enhanced Survival Mode

• Survival now has a power-up system to make the mode more fun and dynamic. They are simple stat upgrades this version, but I plan to expand these offerings later on.
• After winning a round you can either heal yourself for +500HP, increase your max HP by +200 and heal yourself by 100, increase your regeneration between rounds by +100, or give yourself a stacking %20 Damage boost.
• Opponents will gradually get stronger. Right now they will gain 1 level of Max HP every other fight, and 1 level of Damage every 3 fights. The progression of the AI's strength may be tuned up with time.
• This is a very new feature that has not gotten extensive testing. We'd love your feedback on it, and your ideas for interesting upgrades for the player and AI opponent.
• High scores for Survival (and Paul Zone) are now tracked separately by difficulty. In Normal or Hard mode, you'll now be able to submit your high score to a Steam Leaderboard, to demonstrate how cool you are to the world.

• The Arcade Menu for selecting single-player modes has updated art and designs by our artist Alan.
  
• Loading up a new mode will now display a Versus screen with character key art.
  
• We will likely do some tweaking on the design and behaviour of these screens based on testing and player feedback.

• B attacks are now -20 if they whiff just outside of max range (was -10).
• This is actually a pretty big change as previously, there was not much universal counter play to just spamming B beyond the commital option of walking up and blocking it. Most characters have at least one "anti B" option, but in testing, this change seems to have really expanded players' options in the neutral game. B is still an amazing normal, but you can now lose significant offensive momentum if you're throwing it out there too predictably.
• Billy jC now travels 2 spaces, but has 1/1 ground/air range, as opposed to 2/0 before. It now does 100 chip, as a currently unnamed special move.
• This gives him a risky way to move 2 spaces in one turn to get past things like repeated Noel vines, which previously he could not avoid at all. It is still a slow option that is beat by basically any anti-air attack, so use it wisely.
• Marv jC does 100 chip now. It was the only special move that did not do chip.

• The standard "being hit" animation for most hits has been shortened to improve game flow.
• The pushback effect from B combos has been increased in speed.
• The "delay" icon will no longer show up during replays.
• Characters won't delay as much before blocking a jump in.
• If you block a "minus" attack, you won't visually appear to be stuck in blockstun for as long.
• Noel plant animation is now slightly longer so that it has the same duration as the vine grow animation

• A few oversized textures (such as the "cash splash" in some endings) have been reduced in size.
• The hard disk footprint of the game has been reduced by about 25%, to roughly 830MB!
• The pushback effect from B combos has been increased in speed.

• The code that syncs up the round count between players should now work better. This should also fix an issue with the round syncing code that could rarely lock up an online match.
• The Online Mode console is a little more verbose, giving you more information about the lobbies you are joining when you attempt to connect.
• You should no longer be able to join a lobby if the host is running a different version of the game, even via invite. The invite should fail and the game will now warn you in the Lobby console if you try to do this.
• The Online Mode "cancel" button now leaves the target Steamworks lobby in addition to cancelling your client connection.
• If you attempt to join a nonexistent lobby, the operation will now fail with an error message instead of putting you in a new Steamworks lobby.

• Fixed issue where Steam Cloud would not sync properly. It should work now.
• Fixed Noel's position "popping" off-axis when someone blocks Vine and Fightning Flail at the same time.
• Fixed a rare issue where the training dummy would lock up when hit by a Vine off of a Backflip when Noel is cornered.
• Fixed training mode not displaying damage sometimes.
• Fixed Noel inexplicably knocking Lewis across the screen if PileDebunker trades with Fightning Flurry and Vine is active.
• Fixed Noel just absolutely shredding health bars with 1000+ damage combos under very specific and unintended situations.

• The free Demo is back on Steam until roughly the end of the Steam Remote Play Together Fest. I may keep it longer if it looks like people are downloading and playing it on Steam.

Music

• Previously we used "Metalicious" by Alexander Nakarada as the theme for "The Paul Zone" and "Strive Mode." While we have a license for this use, it's come to our attention that a few streamers are now getting ContentID flags for streaming parts of the game that use this song.
• This is a problem, and we're working on geting this sorted out. In the meantime we're replacing the track "Metalicious" with "THE CALLOUT" where it appears in-game. I've also started the process of commissioning an original music track to replace "Metalicious."
• A temporary beta branch (access code 'breatheinbreatheout') will allow you to play the game with the "Metalicious" music track intact, until we're able to replace it and/or introduce an option that lets you choose whether you want to use it or not.

Bug Fixes

• If you air throw Noel while she jumps in with vine active, this can no longer cause a trade. Noel will just get thrown (as intended).
• Fixed a situation where Noel Fightning Flurry could do multiple combo hits trading against Lewis using Fist of Euphoria on wakeup.
• A "smart tip" related to punishing correctly will now correctly show up when you're the one doing the punishing, not the other way around.

• A recent change gave Noel bonus damage if she hits with an A or B attack when her vine is active, but not hitting directly. This was intended to increase only her combo damage, but it was also making her trades hit harder. For this reason, this bonus now only takes effect if her attack lands first. Vine will no longer make her do more damage during a trade.
• Knockdowns now appear visually to advantage the attacker by +12 instead of +14. This is to bring the perceived frame advantage closer to the actual frame a advantage of a knockdown used for calculating which attack wins in a clash. That number is unchanged at +10 (or +20, as Billy). The visual change was implemented in part to fix the issue noted above with Fightning Flurry.

We've been putting a lot of effot into improving the game this year as Early Access rolls on. We released about 20 patches this year! We'll recap some highlights, then share some of our plans for 2024. 2023 Recap All year long, we have been revamping the game's visuals. We still have a ways to go on this front, but every character now has work in progress sprites hand-drawn by our illustrator Alan McMillian, and they're at a higher level of detail and quality than our first art update in January.
We also implemented a new HUD and conversation UI, clickable mouse controls, a new main menu, and a few new stages (Marv's, Lewis's, and the training stage). Attacks now have hitstop and hitspark effects. Side switches and chip damage look a lot more natural than they did at launch, too. On the audio front, we have 3 new music tracks (Lewis theme by DankPasta2099, options menu and character select themes by Nabil Anthony) and a new set of announcer lines recorded by Joe Dawson. We also made some adjustments to the game balance. Paul was taken down a peg by reducing the chip on his Firepaul, and Billy was made competitively viable by a series of buffs. Noel got Vine Armor to make her vine set safer, Nick's Cheesy Dust Loop was made more consistent and given an actual animation. The online has gotten a lot of improvements and new features. You can play timed variants or select a random character online now. The lobbies have more quality of life options now, and matches are now listed on the Steam's more robust lobby system instead of our matchmaking VPS. Training mode got some new functionality like "reset to corner," and you can now watch saved replays of your multiplayer matches. We've made some efforts to improve the new player experience by making a more forgiving AI on Easy and Normal and laying the ground work for a hint system. We've also started setting up text for localization, but there's not much to show there yet. Load times got a little faster thanks to the game now packing everything into atlases, and you can now carry your progress across different devices (and your Steam Deck!) because the game now supports the Steam Cloud. Finally, the game is now compatible with a wider selection of controllers thanks in part to some extensive testing by community member Sente. 2024 Goals If all goes well we hope to continue development in 2024 at the same pace as 2023. In no particular order, here are some of the goals we're going to work on: Continue developing character animations toward full color finished sprites and swappable palettes:
Begin testing one or two of these new characters, perhaps with placeholder art at first:
Revamp the menus. Here's a preview of our upcoming tutorial menu redesign:
Introduce new character stages:
Implement new ending animatics (which are partially done, just not implemented:
Start prototyping an enhanced survival mode with roguelike elements:
Localize more game text into more languages:
As a disclaimer, we have a very small team with one programmer, one artist and no publisher money, so we may or may not make as much progress as we'd like toward these goals. Still, we expect to be on track to leave Early Access by 2025 or so. If you want to support our continued work on the game, one great way to do that is to join our Patreon. * * * Finally, we're announcing that the price of Mega Knockdown will go down to $9.99 USD or regional equivalent after the Steam Winter sale is over. Our goal with this price reduction is to lower the barrier of entry to playing the game in order to grow our community of players. It's also to give players from certain South American/Middle Eastern countries a little bit of a break, as they have been seeing huge price increases all over Steam thanks to changes in Valve's regional pricing policies. Thanks for your continued support!

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.

• 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.

• Since beta, we were using one of Andrea Demetrio's (graciously donated) vacation photos for Billy's stage. Our artist Alan is in the process of retouching it into the new "Bridge to Japanland" stage. We're still working on it, but the in-progress version is now in-game.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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!

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.

• 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.

Achievements

• New achievement "I Went Home With a Feeling of Accomplishment" for beating Arcade mode on Normal difficulty. If you already have the Hard achievement, you should get this when you launch the game.
• New achievement "Say GGs Right Now" for playing an Online Lobbies match. If you've done this already, you should get this when you launch the game.
• Nick's chip damage achievement is now called "Still Got it!" (was: "I Went Home With a Feeling of Accomplishment").
• Updated a few achievement descriptions slightly.

• Fixed an issue where the game defaults to Hard when playing for the first time in situations where Easy appaears to be selected.

Difficulty Adjustments

• Easy (and to a lesser extent Normal) CPU players will use Neutral+Throw less often at close range. Hard AI has not changed.
• N+Throw is a powerful close range option that many new players don't often know the answer to, especially if they skip the tutorial, and the AI would use it a lot, to the extent that the AI can do midscreen throw loops on a new player. This change should make Easy difficulty easier, and Normal difficulty slightly easier.

• In Tutorial mode, you can now see which lesson number you are on at the top.
• The win/stage number text now has a slight outline.
• Fixed the kerning of the "ARCADE" text in the main menu.
• In the options and main menu, switching between mouse and keyboard controls will no longer appear to highlight 2 different options.

Expanded Controller Support

• Third party controllers boards using the Brook Universal Fighting Board PCB, such as the Snackbox Mini, should now work properly in their default configuration. Previously they had issues because they were recognized by the input plugin as an "Unknown Controller," and the "Unknown Controller" template was not set up correctly.
• The game is now using the most recent version of the Rewired input plugin.
• Your saved key/button bindings have been reset. Sorry!
• Thanks to Exalchion of Junk Food Arcade for testing this change on their Snackbox controllers, and to community member Sente for testing this change on several sticks and pads at their local.

• Some menus have been set up for future localization into other languages.
• Community member Andrew Mirror has translated the Main Menu, Arcade Menu and Lesson Select Menus into Russian. Everything else is in english still. To access this partial translation, enter -language=ru into your command line settings.
• If you want to assist with translating the game, join the Mega Knockdown Discord (link below).

• If a player does not make it 3/4 of the way through the tutorial, the game will default to Easy difficulty. You can still change it as you like. The game already did this for players who did no tutorial lessons at all, but this will help out those players who try out the first few lessons, then jump straight into arcade just to get thrown in the trash by the Normal AI.

• Fixed air throw displaying a hitbox if it whiffs at max travel distance. Air throw doesn't actually reach that far.
• Hard AI will no longer do a couple "dumb" options in specific situations.
• Clicking the "reset defaults" button in the rebinding settings with a mouse will now reset your gamepad and keyboard bindings, rather than your keyboard bindings only.
• Fixed special move prompts appearing when you hold Guide when the rebinding menu is active.
• Fixed Paul's throw not making the right sound effect in the tutorial

• The options menu has an updated appearance and has been overhauled under the hood to behave more similarly to the Main Menu. This is not the final Options Menu, but this version is a lot more modular and will allow me to add more settings much more easily.
• Pressing the Fullscreen button will only toggle the setting once you close the menu.
• If you are running on a non standard aspect ratio, the game will let you know in the Graphics settings
• You can now set the difficulty in the Options menu, in addition to the slider in the Arcade menu.
• There are new options available in the Options menu. You can now turn off grid lines entirely, or disable replay autosaving.
• There is a new category for Gameplay settings. The Mouse menu can now be turned on or off in this category instead of Graphics.
• You can now access the Controller Debug menu from the Options menu instead of pressing a secret button in the main menu. This lets you manually adjust the assignment of controllers to players (although navigating the main menu with a controller will still auto assign it to player 1). The game's intelligent auto assignment is good enough for most purposes, but for everything else, you can try the debug menu.

• You can now scroll through replay files with a mouse in the replay browser.
• Adjusted the Hint and Goal panels in the tutorial to not cover Paul's face at round start. The text in these menus will wrap now. This is not the final tutorial UI, we're planning some further overhauls of these in the future.

Online Lobby Improvements (Experimental)

• In an online match, you can now see the total number of wins for each player during the current set, up to the rematch limit.
• Once the rematch limit has been reached, the loser will go to the back of the line (if applicable) and the win counters will reset.
• Returning to lobby no longer resets the match win count or sends you to the back of the line.
• Spectators will now auto-ready after a short delay when players return to the lobby, or the queue order changes, instead of instantly every time the queue changes. This is to prevent an issue where a player would be incorrectly recorded as readied-up if the player ahead of them passed their turn.
• Spectators will no longer un-ready when someone disconnects. They can still manually un-ready if they want to.
• Note: Some of these changes will need some live testing and may get rolled back.

• Fixed input display appearing during cutscenes
• Fixed inconsistent recording of the Survival achievement
• Fixed asterisk annotations showing up at incorrect times in the Training mode panel
• Fixed word wrapping in Character Select for some resolutions/aspect ratios
• You may now select your monitor's native resolution in the options menu, if it was not listed before.
• Fixed some inconsistent behavior when changing the resolution.
• In training mode, you can now see Player 2's command list in addition to your own.
• Player 1's archetype tag now appears in single player character select.

This patch represents a continuation of our efforts to improve the visuals of the game, and some helpful improvements on the technical side. About one year ago we started collaborating with an illustrator, and the game has come a very long way since then. Updated Visuals For Billy

• Nearly all of Billy's animations have been upgraded with more finished sprites as part of our ongoing efforts to improve the game's art.
• Billy has a redesigned air throw that slams the opponent into the ground. His air throw no longer causes push, so the opponent is left knocked down and adjacent to Billy. Jerma Billy also has a new air throw animation.
• The "fling" at the end of Billy's ground throws no longer shows a hitspark or generates hitstop, and sounds more like a fling than a hit. It still technically does damage.
• Many of Billy's sprite pivot positions have been adjusted to be in line with other characters. He will appear slightly taller as a result.
• Billy's normal ground throw brings the opponent lower while he breaks them over his knee.
• The hitspark for Billy's normal ground throw is now lower so it does not obscure his face.

• You can now reset training mode to a corner position (hold forward or back while pressing restart in training)
• You can now change the AI difficulty in training mode
• The default dummy behavior is now repeat custom, with "Dummy" as the action.
• In training mode the AI can now do "Dummy" + a direction to walk without blocking or attacking, or "Dummy" + jump to jump in place without attacking. "Dummy" + "Neutral" is the training dummy's default state (dummy stands and doesn't block).

• Cleaned up several old and unused sprites from the sprite atlas, freeing up ~100MB of size from the game's install footprint. This should speed up load times and reduce memory usage.

• If a player is combo'd into Noel's vine and they are too close to be damaged by the vine, they now take an extra 100 damage (as opposed to 300 for a direct hit).
• Marv Vapor Strike can now be damaged by a vine at the right spacing.
• If Marv uses Tornado Blitz on wakeup, it can now hit two spaces in front of Marv, to match the animation. This change applies to Jerma Marv too.

• Shotokan Artist Paul earned his yellow belt in karate from Sensei Bob in this quiet strip-mall dojo. It is now the game's training and tutorial mode stage, replacing the desert.
• All stage grid lines are now more transparent when the square is unoccupied, they are down to 15% opacity (previously 35%). This is so that they will not clash as much the art of our hand drawn backgrounds.

• Paulcano now appears to travel a shorter distance horizontally. Its range is unchanged.
• The Reset button has been removed. This was an alpha feature that would let you keep playing if you encountered a softlock. Frankly it hasn't been needed for awhile. You can now bind stuff to the "B" and "V" keys, if you want.
• Updated some text in Noel and Marv's command lists to align with the characters' new art.
• BLAZING SALT, the character select theme, has been added to the soundtrack, for those who own it.

• Fixed a bug where Noel's fighting flurry would do no damage if a vine absorbed a fireball on the same turn.
• Fixed an issue involving switching training dummy states during a punish. Now the dummy cancels their punish in this situation.
• Fixed some odd visuals related to delay and fireballs
• Fixed an issue where the wrong category of controls would sometimes appear in the rebinding menu
• Fixed some inconsistent pushing behavior for moves like Fist of Euphoria and Fightning Flail
• Fixed issue where lewis would appear to teleport if he uses his slide on wakeup and is hit out of it
• Fixed wrong command sometimes showing up for Blazing Ent in the command list and other places
• Fixed an rare bug involving certain side switching moves behaving oddly during a trade
• Adjusted position of guide text in character select to be more consistent at different resolutions
• Fixed issue where character archetype labels in character select would sometimes be cut off on the Steam Deck
• Removed a blue stripe on the main menu at the Steam Deck's default aspect ratio
• Fixed issue involving online replays that would occur if a player handle contained a period
• Fixed issue involving hitsparks getting knocked out of place by some moves.

We've overhauled the look of hit impacts, added some polish to the HUD, and made some adjustments to both the competitive balance and the new player experience. New Hit and Block Effects

• Attacks now have hitstop. (When an attack hits or is blocked, both players now 'freeze' for a few frames to emphasize the impact. Projectiles only 'freeze' the recipient.)
• When a player is hit by an attack, a hitspark particle effect is displayed. Bigger hits cause larger hitsparks.
• Blocking an attack also generates sparks. Block sparks look different depending on the frame data of the blocked attack. Blocking a slightly minus attack causes a small spark, blocking a punishable attack causes an exaggerated spark shower. Blocking "plus" attacks creates yellow-tinged sparks, to indicate that the blocker is now at a disadvantage.
• Teching a throw also causes a unique spark effect.

• The AI will now be less difficult at lower difficulty levels. It will make more mistakes, and sometimes stand still when you're playing on Easy.
• Mega Knockdown's AI is quite aggressive compared to most fighting games (except at their harder difficulties), and will quickly KO you for making a mistake. Many new players ignore what used to be the primary upside of Easy and Normal, which is that you get information about the opponent's next move. Now the AI will sometimes back off or do something sub-optimal, giving the player some room to experiment and learn. On Hard, we didn't make any changes to the AI, so it will still try to ruin your day.
• Reduced the Easy mode HP bonus from 300 to 100 to account for the easier AI.
• Difficulty is now displayed next to the current stage in Arcade mode

• PileDebunker and Fist of Euphoria are now -20 instead of -10 if they whiff just outside of range. Paulcano is now -20 if it whiffs just outside of its unsafe range.
• You still need to block to take advantage of this situation on defense. If you whiff a -10 move versus a -20 move, the difference is 'fuzzed out' and you will both return to neutral.
• Marv's Blazing Ent is now performed with Forward + B instead of Neutral + B. Previously he did not have a standard Neutral + B, which left him without a noncommital oki or space control option at range 2. This change should round out Marv's suite of zoning options.
• Marv's Blazing Ent does 50 more chip damage (now 150) to discourage players from simply walking and blocking into close range every time.
• Marv's Gravity Spike (J+A) does 50 damage (now 250) to make it more rewarding to land.
• Fightning Flurry now does 150 base damage + 100 if the follow up hits land, at any range. It used to do 200 to 250 damage, single hit, depending on range. This adjustment, which utilizes the new multi-hit system, makes Flail less rewarding on trade and (usually) more rewarding on hit.

• The mouse controls menu has a new layout designed by artist Alan McMillian.
• Fixed mouse menu buttons lighting up at inappropriate times
• The mouse menu should no longer come up if you click the out-of-focus game window to focus the game.
• Increased minimum size of input display bar so that it usually stays the same size.

• There is a new Character Select theme: BLAZING SALT by Nabil Anthony (Nabooli)
• Implemented a new music system that allows looping segments of songs.
• Fixed the "tech" sound effect sometimes not playing in sync with the visuals.

• PileDebunker no longer causes the opponent to teleport on hit.
• Fixed blocking characters appearing to shrink slightly while entering a block animation
• Fixed Paul's idle sprite sometimes flashing in place of Jerma when Jerma skins are enabled
• Fixed some parsing issues with names in replays
• Potentially fixed an issue where the arcade stage would sometimes not reset after winning arcade mode

• If you win the round on a combo starter, it will no longer continue into a combo. If you win mid-combo, you'll finish the combo normally.
• Reduced delay on anti air moves so they hit further off the ground
• Attack animations have been adjusted to have better synergy with hitstop (usually by reducing the number of 'active frames').
• When a player blocks, they no longer take on a green tint.

• Each stage's grid lines are now lighter/less opaque.
• Lewis' new draft stage shows up when player 2 is using the hand drawn art style, and the old stage shows up if using jermas. Removed the debug key binding that would toggle this stage aesthetic. Eventually both will be directly selectable in the character select menu.

• You can now select a random character in online multiplayer.
• If you lose in arcade mode and rematch, it won't replay the story scene. If you want, you can play it again by going back to character select.
• The Soundtrack's regional price has been adjusted to Valve's recommendations. This has resulted in a price increase for some currencies.
• Fixed Flaskin displaying her old name in the character bio screen
• Adjusted listed archetypes in character bios for consistency
• Optimized some scripts that handle scene changes. This might reduce load times slightly.
• The demo has been updated with current changes.

This may be one of our biggest updates yet! See below for a full list of changes. New Replay System!

• The game will now save logs of your multiplayer matches to your machine.
• The logs themselves are human-readable summaries of your matches, including the inputs chosen by each player on each of their turns.
• Replays for each saved log may be played back within the game's Replay Browser, now accessible within the main menu.
• Replay browsing and playback are likely to expand with new features depending on community feedback.

• You may now play the game entirely with the mouse!
• To bring up the clickable mouse controls, click anywhere on screen in-game. If you like using this control method, you can press the "pin" button to pin the mouse tray to the screen. You can also disable it entirely in the options.
• The game will let you freely switch back and forth between using gamepad, keyboad and mouse inputs. Mix and match, do whatever you feel is most comfortable.
• Although we don't recommend playing local versus with only the mouse, we're not going to stop you. The game will hide your clicked inputs if you're using the mouse controls in this mode.

• While waiting for the next turn, you can press and hold down the buttons corresponding to your next input or movement choices. These choices will trigger immediately at the start of the next turn.
• Reduced the cooldown between successive input choices from 6 to 3 frames.

• Packed character sprites into Atlases. This has dramatically reduced the filesize of the game by about %35 overall and significantly improved load times.
• The AI now selects its actions once per turn, not once per frame.
• In-game music is now "Streamed" instead of preloaded. This should also help to cut down on load times.

• There is a new music track by community member and one-time tournament winner Nabooli. The new track plays in the options and replay menus.
• This track can now be enjoyed as part of the Official Soundtrack.

• The game will now save data into AppData\LocalLow\Counter Hit Studios\Mega Knockdown instead of your device's registry. This is also where your replays are located.
• This change should make the game compatible with Steam Cloud!
• Most of your existing saved information will carry over to the new system.

• Certain two-player menus that required keyboard or gamepad input from player 2 can now be controlled with just the mouse.
• You can now rebind the menu navigation horizontal/vertical axis buttons for the new menus.
• After rebinding some UI menu controls, the selection cursor will now return to the confirmation buttton, as intended.
• Improved the labeling of certain moves in the input display.
• Sped up the animations of some of the older menus.
• Fixed the wording of one of the Main menu tooltips.
• The round clock updates at a slower rate. If it would tick twice in 0.25 seconds, it will appear to decrement by 2 seconds.
• Stage timer can no longer show negative numbers.

• Lewis' stage is The Planetarium, which has fallen into disrepair over the years through neglect and mismanagement.
• You can preview an early version of Lewis' new stage by pressing the period key. The game will remember your choice, and you can switch between his two stages at any time.

• Tutorial prompts now ask you to hold, not press, the guide button to see the controls.
• Tutorial mission 5 (throws) now includes an extra reminder to look at the controls.

• You can now play as Paul or Marv in this version of the demo.
• Your save files and Steam Cloud from the Demo will carry over to the main game when you buy it.
• Training mode is no longer playable in the demo.

• If you're playing online, you won't be able to lock in your inputs until the opponent has loaded the match. This will help prevent an uncommon type of softlock.

• Billy's armor damage reduction kicks in at 500 hp instead of 900hp. Below this threshold, armor reduces incoming damage to a flat amount of half instead of increasing from 50% to a maximum of 75%.

• After an empty walk (walk + block), the game will wait a few frames before transitioning to idle. The effect of this is to stop a flickering idle sprite from appearing when rapidly chaining walk + block.

• Fixed a bug where Billy could sometimes freeze in place during the Big Billy Buster animation and appear to slam the other player into the ground using the power of telekinesis.
• You can no longer use the mouse click an invisible "next mission" button in the tutorial mode.
• Fixed desync issue involving Noel's vine and Bullet mode.
• Fixed an issue where navigating the training mode menu would lock in inputs for the following turn.
• Fixed Jerma Nick morphing into Illustrated Nick during a throw tech.
• Fixed Easy difficulty inputs not displaying correctly sometimes.
• Fixed the input display not registering some of Paul's moves correctly on P2 side.
• Fixed issues with some toggles not saving correctly in the options menu.
• Fixed some minor UI glitches in the Rebinding menu.
• Fixed a typo in Nick's story mode.
• Fixed bug where vine would not damage Marv at all on a Jayne hit.
• Fixed bug where Billy would do less damage than intended on a Jayne hit.
• Fixed bug where a player could meaty another player on their own wakeup during a double knockdown situation
• Fixed an issue where Jerma would briefly morph into Paul during a throw whiff on Player 1 side.

Sign up here: https://challonge.com/tournaments/signup/SrmRd3gKkC#/signup/jpnz7igdn9a The Mega Knockdown League is a friendly online competition that can be played at your own pace. Free to enter. No region restriction. Players must be on the Mega Knockdown Discord to receive communciations. Prize: First place gets a minimum of $100 USD via Matcherino. Runner-up gets an extra key to Mega Knockdown to give away to a friend. Format: Round Robin. Participants may be divided into groups if there are a large number of participants. Once the tournament begins, you will have until the end of the month to play a match with everyone else. Matches will be played either over the in game Lobbies. The player with the most match wins will win the league. If the top players are within 1 win of each other, a FT3 Grand Final may be scheduled by the TO. Disqualification: If a scheduled match is not played by the end of the month, it is either a draw or a win, according to TO's discretion. It is understood that some player matchups may not be possible due to scheduling and time zones.

Tournament Rules

• Best 2 out of 3 games per match.
• Winner of prior game must keep same character
• Loser of prior game may switch character
• "Standard" time setting (15 second timer)
• Strife mode off
• Because this is a "friendly tournament," you may run your set with different rules by mutual prior agreement.

We overhauled Mega Knockdown's optional turn-timer, so now you can play the high-speed "BLITZ" and "BULLET" variants online! We've also added some improved animations for Paul, and reworked Billy's balance. Improvements to Timed Variants

• In online play, lobby hosts can now set a turn time limit.
• Like in local play, the options are Unlimited, Standard (15 seconds), BLITZ (3 seconds) and BULLET (1 second). Once a player receives their opponent's inputs, the timer starts ticking down. As in local play, when time expires, the timed out player stands there and loses their turn.
• The turn timer is now a progress bar integrated with the input display.
• The turn timer now pauses when you're contemplating a punish.
• Several under-the-hood changes were made to the "timed out" state for improved stability and online compatibility.

• Improved art and animations for most of Paul's moveset, including his air throw, sweep, jumping A, jumping C, backflip, Paulcano, Firepaul, knockdown, blocks, throws, back walks and throw techs.

• Billy's A attack: Startup decreased from 30f->20f. First hit damage decreased 250->150
• Billy's B attack: Startup decreased from 40f->30f. First hit damage decreased 250->150. No longer safe on block.
• Billy air throw: Damage increased 400->500
• Billy stomp: Chip damage increased 150->200
• Billy HP: Decreased 1700->1600
• Billy's extremely slow normals made him a very one dimensional character in neutral. He relied a lot on knockdowns and +20 situations to do much of anything. However at a high level, if the opponent wasn't making mistakes and handing him free punishes and frame advantage, he had to make very hard reads to not lose neutral. Now he should have more options in neutral, but his damage/HP advantages are being pulled back to compensate.

• Fixed an issue where round win counts would be incorrect for a late joining spectator.

• The in-game input display now shows the full names of special moves, instead of their internal placeholder names.
• You can now see players' ping in the online lobby.
• Spectators in online games can now see which player(s) have locked in their moves, and an estimate of how much time is left on their turn timer.

• Your saved key bindings have been given another one-time reset to defaults to fix a bug with the input system. Sorry!
• All in-game sprites have been compressed (losslessly). This is intended to decrease load times.
• You can no longer press Block to cancel a punish. This option didn't serve a gameplay purpose, and caused some unintended issues.
• Some changes were made to the "training dummy" for improved stability.
• Unless you're playing a Jerma mirror match, the overhead side switch icons will no longer display--they are no longer needed if you're using the new sprites.
• Removed the ability to lock a keyboard in Versus mode. This was useful as an anti-cheat feature for Steam Remote Play, but these have been replaced by the newer Online Lobbies. On that note, the achievement for locking a keyboard has been removed.
• The achievement that triggers when you use Steam Remote Play has been removed. You can still play online with Steam Remote Play, but the Online Lobbies are a much better option.

Balance Changes

• Firepaul damage reduced from 300->250.
• This change is intended to bring the damage done by Firepaul more in line with other zoning moves.
• Billy Stomp damage increased from 300->350 at range 2. It still does 400 damage at range 1.
• Generally, Stomp is used at range 2. This change is intended to increase the reward for using Stomp at its most effective range.

• Created a new internal variable to help keep track of when players will need to start listening for remote inputs. This will hopefully reduce the occurrence of desyncs.
• Improved the internal logging of Commands/RCP's sent back and forth between players. These logs are automatically attached to bug reports sent to the developer by pressing F8, when problems are found.
• Fixed a common 'null reference exception' in the matchmaker code.

This update contains some updated in-game art for Paul and Billy, and balance tweaks for competitive play. New art!

• Updated animations for the Big Billy Buster, Paul A & B attacks and combos, Paul's Air Throw, and Paul's walk.

• Firepaul Chip reduced from 200->150.
• Previously, this move did so much chip that opponents were forced to take overly big risks against Paul to avoid getting whittled down. Now players can afford to block a couple more fireballs during a match.
• Noel Fightning Feet Chip reduced from 100->75 at max range, otherwise it still does 100.
• In situations where noel can safely use raw legs, the reward is a little less. Closer up, when she has a knockdown or plant set up, she keeps the full benefit of her chip damage. This might prevent some checkmate situations.
• Noel Fightning Feet base damage increased from 200->250, but it still does 200 at max range.
• This slightly improves the move's damage when used as a punish, or during okizeme.
• Noel setting a plant no longer makes you -10 if the opponent blocked
• Setting a plant vs block is a good read, and now you're not penalized for it.
• Nick jC chip reduced 150->100
• This is in line with making chip a little weaker across the board.
• If Billy's HP is below 900, he receives half damage from hits he armors through. If his HP is below 500, he receives 25% damage while his armor is active.
• If Billy is at low health, he couldn't really benefit from armor, and he could get stuck in certain checkmate scenarios. Now he can survive an armor trade or two when at low when he still has ~1HP.

• Put in a potential fix to an issue where some players sometimes had difficulty selecting Rematch in the online mode.
• Players should no longer lose the round when at a very small, but nonzero, amount of HP.

• Your saved key bindings have been given a one-time reset to defaults to account for some input system changes.
• Sending the developer a bug report with F8 now sends me a log with more information about the game state, to help me isolate and fix issues.

This update is intended to improve the experience of navigating menus, and should allow for more consistent controller support. Menu Navigation, UI and Mousing Improvements

• Fixed issue where clicking outside of a button in the main menu would sometimes activate that button.
• Fixed recent bug where an object was blocking raycasts to menu options near the bottom of the screen.
• Fixed an issue where clicking stuff on the main menu would play the clicking sound twice.
• In the newer menus using Unity's event system (main menu and online menus) you will more easily be able to resume keyboard/gamepad navigation after clicking away from the buttons.
• If the game launches out of focus and you click the window, we've made it harder to accidentally click a menu option.
• If you highlight something with your mouse and navigate to some other option with the keyboard/gamepad and you select something, the game will prioritize whichever button was actually pressed.
• The Discord button is back, it is now navigable with a keyboard or gamepad.
• In the rebinding menu, P2 will no longer 'forget' that they are using a gamepad the second time you open the menu. P2 will now appropriately return to the 'done' button after they are done rebinding.

• The controller you're using in menus and online or single player modes should automatically become player 1. (This change was needed because depending on your user settings and hardware, sometimes Steam creates a virtual controller for player 1, and your actual controller would get assigned to player 2.)
• You can now press L3 in the main menu to bring up a hidden debug menu to assign specific plugged in controllers to Player 1 or Player 2. For now, the goal is that you shouldn't need to use it. Smart controller assignment should 'just work.'

• Billy's stomp animation has improved line art. Later this month there will be more graphical/visual updates.

This update continues our string of improvements to the game's graphics by introducing an all new HUD!
New HUD, graphics and audio

• Redesigned health bars, round timer, text, input display, status popups and round transition graphics.
• Greenville Forest (Mahogany Marv's stage) has been revamped!
• When characters take damage, the health bar's depletion is now animated.
• Character mini-portraits added to top of HUD.
• All-new announcer lines for round start/KO
• New round win markers.
• Input fades out when locked in, turns red when you're being punished.

• Jerma Marv's throw now pushes back, same as normal Marv's throw.
• On Steam Deck, the default runtime is now Linux. This should help compatibility with our online lobby system.
• In Steam Deck and Big Picture Mode, fixed a bug where closing the onscreen keyboard without sending a Salty Chat message would cause the menu to get stuck.
• During the Tutorial, some text has been adjusted for Steam Deck players for improved compatibility.
• Steam Deck players will now see a unique version of the Controls guide popup.
• Fixed Noel's name display in multiplayer lobbies
• The current version # now displays on the Main menu.
• A new Demo version has been released, bringing it up to date with recent gameplay additions.

The graphical overhaul of Mega Knockdown continues with a set of hand-drawn sprites for Mahogany Marv, and the forest spirit Jayne! Now all six characters have a rough set of sprites which we will continue to update, improve and add to over time. All new art for Marv!

• Marv and Jayne are now animated in-game with several dozen character sprites hand-illustrated by artist Alan McMillian.
• As before, players can choose between his new art style and the old ones ('Green Screen Jeremy' and 'Abstract') in character select.

• If a double KO or draw occurs during the first round, both players will get a round win.
• If a double KO or draw occurs during match point, sudden death will take place as usual.
• If a double KO or draw occurs and the round count is 0-1 or 1-0, nobody will get a round win.
• Hence is no longer possible to win a game outright on a double KO or draw, but otherwise the game will be pushed closer to a conclusion.

• If Billy gets a knockdown, he gets more frame advantage than usual (+20, up from +10).
• Previously Billy's knockdown was not that rewarding, since the opponent could use almost any attack to stop Billy from pressing the advantage. Now opponents might have to actually block him sometimes on wakeup, allowing Billy to keep the pressure going with meaty attacks or go in for a throw.
• Marv's throw now pushes opponent back. This was mostly implemented for visual reasons, but it helps achieve his gameplan of making space between himself and the opponent. Marv players using the Jerma sprites will still get the typical throw behavior, at least for now.
• Moves that side switch will no longer push the opponent back.

• Adjusted the arc of Paul's j.B to look more natural.
• Fixed an issue where characters would flash their idle sprite for a single frame when recovering from a 'delayed' state.

Marv Update: Coming Next Week! In the last update, we released a set of rough, hand-drawn character sprites for every character except Marv, which was the first phase of our ongoing art overhaul.
Why wasn't Marv in the last update? Well, our design for him is very ambitious and complex. In the placeholder graphics, his forest spirite Jayne appears during some of his special moves, but in the redesign, Jayne is always present, and, for story reasons, is doing basically all of the fighting. In a sense, Marv is a "reverse puppet character"!
We hope that you will enjoy this new addition, and we appreciate your patience as we continue to roll out updates to the game's visuals. To access the public beta branch:

• Right-click Mega Knockdown in your library and click Properties
• Navigate to the Betas tab. Select the Marv Beta.
• Launch the game. You are now playing the beta!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Billy's jab not having the correct frame advantage on player 2 side.
• Fixed Billy's jab not making any sound when blocked.
• Fixed Lewis' new music track not playing on his stage.

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.

• 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.

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.

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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Lewis has a new music theme by @DankPasta2099.
• Dialogue sounds now vary in pitch slightly from word to word.

• 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).

• 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.

• 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

• 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 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).

• 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! *** 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=37kN3pS9h14;full][/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!

Matchmaking:

• In the online mode, you can now create private lobbies that are hidden from the match browser, accessible only via Steam Invites.
• The game is now pointed at our new matchmaking server.
• Matchmaking scripts have been updated slightly.

• Billy's HP has been increased slightly to 17.
• Justification: Most characters have seen slight increases in their HP, and baseline HP has increased from 14 to 15. Billy has avoided getting any increase up to this point, so this change should (relatively speaking) put his HP closer to where it was before, relative to the baseline.

• Fixed issue where Tutorial Mission 13 would freeze if the player is punished by the AI.
• Fixed issue where Billy's armor would not trigger vs another Billy's jumping attacks
• The move timer will no longer count down when the game is paused. (The timeout animation will still play, but that will be fixed later.)
• Fixed an issue where Paulcano could cause the opponent to glitch out if they attempt to walk up and jab while minus.
• Fixed an issue where lewis and flatskin could end up in the same space if lewis got hit by a vine next to the corner when flatskin does lightning legs.
• The AI will no longer explode if players somehow end up in the same square due to an error.
• Fixed some problems with hit detection involving backward jumping moves.
• Fixed an issue where the training mode achievement would trigger too fast.

Mega Knockdown has a brand new online multiplayer system: Online Lobbies! Additionally, Mega Knockdown is now Steam Deck Verified, and has native Linux support! Online mode features:

• Up to 4 players can currently be in the lobby at once (Players beyond the second can spectate).
• "Level up" your bravery rating by winning, losing or spectating online matches.
• Player rotation! The loser of a match goes back to the end of the line, and the next spectator in line gets to play. Players can also pass their turn and go back to the end of the line, if they want.
• Match length (First to X, unlimited rematch, etc) can be customized by the host.
• Steam Invite support
• Double blind character select.
• Mid-match lobby joining.
• Lobby chat. Press Enter in lobby to chat/send chat messages. Also works on Steam Deck, or a controller (if Big Picture Mode is enabled).
• Waiting awhile for a match? Feel free to alt-tab. If someone joins your lobby while the game is minimized, an alert will draw your attention back to the game. You can also hop on the Official Discord to find a match.

• Timed variants and Strife Mode toggles (Not enabled yet for lobby)
• Option to keep spectating/stay at the end of the line
• Private lobbies

• If there are no controllers plugged in, the game will now assign the first controller plugged in to Player 1, even if that device was previously assigned to Player 2.

• After many rounds of improvements to the Steam Deck experience, Mega Knockdown is now Steam Deck Verified!
• Mega Knockdown can now be natively played on Linux without a compatibility layer like Proton. Now you can play Mega Knockdown while acting smug and superior to your friends who don't understand FOSS the same way you do.

• The Mega Knockdown dev team now has an artist, Alan McMillian! Over the next few months we will be revamping the look of the game, a little bit at a time. Below is a an art piece with Alan's new designs for the cast so far. With your support, together we can make something really great!

Update 11/1: Beta has ended! Online will be coming soon to the main branch. Since launch, I have been working on an online lobby system to allow players to play online multiplayer without relying on Steam Remote Play or Parsec. I'm pleased to report that it is now available for a public test. To play this beta, follow these instructions:
Instructions for playing the beta [olist]

Patch 0.855: Gameplay

• Marv's HP has been increased to 14 (same as Lewis). This should allow Marv for slightly more room for error, while keeping him tied for the lowest HP in the game.

• Changed how the game checks if it's running on Steam Deck. This should allow the Steam Deck specific improvements from the previous patch to work as intended.

• Fixed an issue where you could (unintentionally) lock in the next turn's inputs while waiting for your opponent to lock in theirs.

Patch 0.85: Mega Knockdown is now confirmed "Playable" on Steam Deck! This patch is intended to increase the Steam Deck compatibility of the game even further. Gameplay

• Big Billy now has resistance to side switch effects on a successful block, due to his large stature. On hit, those moves (jC, back throw) can still side switch him. Side switches are especially debilitating for Billy due to his slow speed, so this will reduce the viability of hit-and-run timer scam strategies against him.

• If you are using a gamepad or the Steam Deck, gamepad specific hotkeys should now display, in general.
• Certain PC-specific tooltips and images no longer display when playing on Steam Deck.
• Increased the size of fonts in the Controls Rebinding menu.
• An adjustment was made to how custom controls were saved. As a result, players with custom controls will have to set them again.

• Fixed an issue where your max HP could keep getting higher indefinitely when playing on Easy Mode survival.
• Fixed an issue where buttons in the Controls Rebinding menu were not always consistent in size and shape.

Patch 0.845: Gameplay

• The player now has about 20% more HP when playing against the AI in easy mode.
• The AI should now be a bit smarter about wakeup options. It will press "neutral" more often on wakeup for more effective blocking and abare.

• Steam integration moved from Steamworks.NET to Facepunch. This should not be a noticeable change for the player.

• Fixed a rare issue where Lewis' Back + A would cause a softlock. (Same fix as last patch, but extended to jumping moves)
• Fixed an issue where a grabbed player would sometimes not display the "grabbed" animation, and would instead continue doing attack animations.
• Fixed an issue where the character names would not display properly in the last 2 tutorial missions.
• Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes launch in a tiny window.

Sign-up link: https://challonge.com/MegaKnockdownSeptember2022 The Mega Knockdown community will be hosting a friendly online competition that can be played at your own pace. Free to enter. No region restriction. Players must be on the Mega Knockdown Discord to receive communciations. Once the tournament begins, you will have one week to play a match with everyone else, in any order (round-robin format). The top player is the player who has the most wins. If there is a tie, the winner of the head-to-head match wins. Format may change if there are a large number of participants. Participants should have sufficiently reliable internet to play via Steam Remote Play, or Parsec. If not, creative solutions are encouraged.

Patch 0.842: Gameplay

• Lewis' PileDebunker can now hit jumping opponents at its maximum range.
• If both players block, the input buffer is cleared. This should help prevent unintentionally buffered inputs from carrying over to the next turn.

• New sounds added for Flatskin's plant.
• There are now two different icons for the "delayed" state. If an attack is very "minus," a clock with a double outline is shown. If an attack is just a little bit "minus" or "plus," the existing clock is shown. This should make it easier for advanced players to quickly identify the correct amount of 'frame advantage' in a given situation.

• If you activate the difficulty slider sub menu in the Arcade menu, you can now get out of it without pressing the 'cancel' button, simply by mousing over another menu item or pressing Left. This behavior should be more intuitive than before.

• Fixed a rare, but troublesome issue where Lewis' Back + A was causing the match to lock up when interacting with certain moves.
• Patched an issue where some anti-air moves that knock down would sometimes cause a jumping animation to repeat.

A Message From the Developer First of all, I would like to thank the testers, players and fighting game fans who have made this launch possible. So far it seems that this game has managed to fly a bit under the radar, but I am grateful to everyone who has supported the game so far. Mega Knockdown is in Early Access, meaning that it will continue to evolve and change over time. By playing the game and providing feedback, you can actively influence the direction of the game. Conveniently, there is a feedback system integrated into the game. To leave feedback, you can press F8 at any point while in-game to send me a comment or a bug report. This will also snap a screenshot of the game, which will help me reproduce your issue. In a future update I will provide a roadmap of features I'd like to add to the game between Early Access and release. This will likely include additional characters, and a native online mode that does not rely on Steam Remote Play. I am highly motivated to continue updating the game for a long time, but because this is a hobby project I have been maintaining in my spare time, updates will be less frequent at times. *** Patch 0.84: Gameplay

• Nick has a new ability, Faith Smasher.
• Faith Smasher is an instant back throw, similar to the universal N + Throw. Just like the universal N-throw, if it connects, it has priority over attacks, regardless of speed.
• Strategically this can be used to position the opponent in the corner, and threaten huge damage with Cheesy Dust Loop combos.

• In the demo, Arcade mode now includes story content.
• Two characters are unlocked in the demo, and the demo version of Arcade ends after Stage 4.
• As before, the updated demo includes Arcade, Survival, Training and Versus modes, and 20 interactive tutorial lessons.
• The demo download button is now blue, and has moved to the right side of the store page.

• The game's soundtrack is now available for purchase on Steam.
• If you already own the game, it is %10 off by default. You can also get both bundled together for 10% off.
• If and when more music tracks are added to the game, they will be added to the soundtrack.

• Animation timings have been adjusted for blocking attacks. This should improve the visual flow of combat, and fix some occasional bugs related to the behavior of very slow attacks on block.
• Please note that the above change has affected hundreds of possible interactions. Please be on the lookout for any blocking-related issues; press F8 to submit a report if you notice anything.
• The default resolution is now your screen's native resolution. If you have a monitor with a non-standard aspect ratio, you will probably want to change that in the settings.

• You can now press the Skip button twice to get to the main menu faster, after beating Arcade. This should also fix a rare lockup that a player reported when they skipped the credits.

• Fixed an issue where if you were at frame disadvantage after a sweep on Player 2 side, your sprite would be misaligned on the next turn.

• Logging has improved behind the scenes. This should help me reproduce in-game issues when you use F8 to send in bug reports.

Patch 0.823: Gameplay

• A new, special interaction can now happen between Paul and Flatskin when the game is at match point and both players are at low health.
• A new achievement has been added which relates to this interaction.

• Transcoded videos to Webm VP8 to help compatibility with Steam Deck. This has also reduced the game's file size by a fair amount.
• Boosted loudness of Nick's ending theme.
• Improved support for non standard 16:10 resolutions to improve Steam Deck compatibility.
• Adjusted appearance of the "Difficulty" menu in 16:10 resolutions.

• The game will check for achievement unlocks less often.

• Changed some scripts related to the mouse cursor. This will hopefully fix a rare issue causing the mouse cursor to lock to the center of the screen after winning the game.

Presentation

• 2 new music tracks added: Marv character theme, and Nick ending theme.
• A "Skip" hotkey tooltip now appears during cutscenes.
• Added a clue about a secret unlock to the Arcade Clear screen.

• Fixed rare issue where moves would sometimes incorrectly cause chip damage.
• Added code to keep the Strife Mode camera from getting stuck in the zoomed-in state.

New feature: Sudden Death

• In the rare situation that a double KO would end the match, a sudden death final round is played.
• In sudden death, Strife Mode is turned on and characters start at half health.

• Updated portraits for the "Cream Team" mirror characters in the arcade story mode.

• The "Emergency" round reset button should no longer change the round win count.
• Added color coding to time controls/keyboard lock settings so you can tell at a glance if they are enabled.
• If you're using a gamepad, the gamepad-specific controls for changing skin, time controls and keyboard lock will show up in character select.

• Fixed some issues with Player 2 not being able to set time controls/keyboard lock.
• Fixed "Fight" text lingering after round start.
• Fixed some unintended issues with Strife Mode zoom and COUNTER text.
• Fixed an issue that prevented an earlier HP rebalance from taking effect. As a result, character HP has been rebalanced.

Patch 0.82: New feature: Story Scenes!

• In Arcade mode, each character has short, unique story scenes where they talk to the opponent before the fight.
• If you win Arcade mode, you will see a short ending scene, followed by the game credits.
• The final Arcade opponent will have more HP than usual. However, Strife Mode is now active in every final Arcade mode battle.
• In Arcade mode mirror matches, some opponents get name changes (no effect on gameplay).

• Billy's Sweep and Stomp are now 10f faster. They were previously so slow as to be almost useless as pokes. Now they are merely "bad" pokes. Yes, they still have armor.

• When the match starts, a "Fight!" animation and voice line plays.
• You can now get the secret code to enable Strife Mode (formerly known as 'Strive Mode') by beating all characters' arcade modes.
• The intentionally distracting camera zooms in Strife Mode will happen a little less often now.

• If the game launches out of focus, clicking the window is less likely to result in accidentally choosing something.
• The Space bar is now yet another "select" button in the default key maps.
• You can now press L1 or L2 to change art style when using a gamepad. L3 and R3 can be used for time settings and keyboard lock on gamepad, respectively. This should help with Steam Deck compatibility.
• Clarified wording in a lesson about throw techs in the Tutorial mode.

• Fixed an issue where going to character select in the middle of an Arcade mode would give you the wrong opponent.
• Fixed an issue where player names would flicker between Arcade/survival mode matches.
• Fixed an issue where certain music tracks would play at unintended times.
• Temporarily disabled rebinding from the single player modes menu, because it looked weird. You can still do it from character select or in the options screen.

Demo Extended

• The game's demo will remain available for free forever, and continue to receive updates.
• Versus mode was planned to partially lock after Next Fest. Instead, it will remain fully unlocked until Early Access releases in July. Challenge your friends!

• Greenville Streets (Nick Beardguy's stage)
• Greenville Meadow (M.M. Lewis' stage)
• Greenville Forest (Mahogany Marv's stage)
• Greenville Fields (Doctor Flatskin's stage)
• Greenville Bridge (Big Billy's stage)
• Greenville Desert (Training/Tutorial stage)
• Paul will continue to use Greenville State Park as his stage.
• Stages are determined by P2's character. Stage selection will come in a future update.

• New animated title text for KO and match end.
• New "KO" voice clip.
• For many characters, sprite colors have been adjusted when the Flat Color art style is active. These colors should be brighter and easier to see.
• Color selection will come in a future update.

• The AI will now block more often after a knockdown.
• In Arcade mode, the final opponent has more health.
• Health reduced in the "block punish" tutorial exercise. This is to get you to the "retry" menu more easily if you mess it up.

• There is now a box around each player's displayed inputs, to improve visibility.
• Fixed some UI elements getting cut off when the resolution is 16:10.
• Revised some character tooltips in Versus mode.
• Edited end-of-Arcade mode title card for the demo.

• Fixed an issue where the character colors would flicker between stages in Arcade or Surivival, when using the flat colors art style.
• Fixed an issue where the music would stutter when Billy is the next opponent in Arcade or Survival modes.

• Fixed a bug where players could input actions while the game is paused.
• If the window is not focused at launch, a message will display telling the player to click the window to begin. You should also be able to alt-tab to the window to clear this message.

Patch 0.810: User Interface:

• You can now change one input during your input phase, if you have not locked in both a movement and a combat action. If you messed up and pressed a wrong button or direction, simply press your different button/direction to overwrite your choice. There is a short lockout window to prevent accidentally changing your choice.
• You can now buffer both your movement and combat actions in the previous turn, if you select your next inputs within a short window of the end of the previous turn.

• The volume level of Big Billy's theme should now be more consistent throughout.

The demo version of Mega Knockdown has been released! DEMO FEATURES:

• Arcade, Survival, and Training Modes are available to play as Shotokan Artist Paul or Mahogany Marv.
• All of the game's interactive tutorials (20 in total) are playable.
• Versus mode has all characters unlocked until June 20. This mode supports local or Remote Play online multiplayer.
• 2 selectable art styles. Press F1 or F2 in character select to change between the green screen sprites, and the default abstract silhouettes.

• Updated Big Billy's portrait in character select.
• Updated Lewis' portrait in character select.
• Big Billy now has a unique music track.
• Arcade win screen changed slightly.
• Fixed "netplay" tooltip not showing up in main menu.
• Fixed an error in the Character Select UI.

• In the unlikely even that a disruptive error takes place, the "reset" key ('v' by default) should now be more effective at resolving the error.

Patch 0.808: New special move for Billy, several graphical/UI improvements and bug fixes. Gameplay: Big Billy now has a stomp move called Shiko Slam.

• Shiko Slam is a slow, armored low attack that is plus on block, knocks down on hit and deals a decent amount of chip.
• It typically has the same effective range as a sweep, though it can catch late-moving attacks (such as Slippery Slope) from further out.
• Strategically it can be useful for applying pressure in mid range against a defensive opponent, or on the opponents wakeup.

• Most character portraits replaced with updated art
• New animated backgrounds for the character select screen, and the Paul Zone character select screen.
• Walls of text removed from the character summaries in the character select screen. Character summaries now have a statistics screen in single player, and are just short blurbs in multiplayer.

• Move list information added to the Controls popup in-game, and to the pause menu in-game. You can now join the Discord server from inside the game using a clickable invite link.

• Big Billy Buster now has unique sound effects.
• Adjusted timing of the "Low" status indicator
• New graphical effect for Paulcano.

• Fixed bug where characters might briefly turn invisible on wakeup.
• Fixed bug where characters would not be carried along with Billy during his command grab. As part of this fix, characters will now wait until the opponents blockstun is over before executing a throw. Their tick throw game is definitely on point now.
• Fixed bug where sometimes the hitboxes would incorrectly move around at the end of a late-moving attack.
• Fixed the justification of the [Attack] and [Move] text fields in game. This should fix moves with long names overlapping with other text on screen.
• Fixed multiple instances of text overlapping other text when certain popups were open.

• By default, "Attack B" is now on the top face button when using a gamepad.
• The bottom face button is now an additional block button.

Balance Changes:

• Lewis' Fist of Euphoria (back+A) can now be punished on block if he is not able to swing forward. (This can happen if, while point blank, you walk forward into the Bravery Step and block. Or if Lewis is cornered).
• Fist of Euphoria's chip damage has been reduced slightly.
• Lewis HP decreased slightly.
• Marv's Blazing Ent is no longer punishable point blank.
• Paul, Nick & Marv HP increased slightly.

• Fixed the appearance of certain special effects while using the Flat Color artstyle. (Trail effects and Marv summoning Jayne will display silhouettes, not translucent Jermas.)
• Frame rate capped at 60. Default resolution is set to 1080p.

As of this update, the game is now in Closed Beta. Patch notes will now be posted to both Steam and Discord. Some prerelease keys to the beta test are still available via Discord. Change Log

• Replaced the Arcade and Tutorial menu icons with higher resolution images.
• The mouse cursor will now hide when a gamepad button is pressed, until keyboard or mouse is used again.
• Adjusted the code that locks out main menu navigation when the game window is out of focus. It should be more consistent now.
• 2 minor achievements added for making use of the 'Change Artstyle' and 'Lock Keyboard' features.