Been too quiet here so I'll make a little noise. Started playing again a few days ago and there's just a couple minor things I've seen. The big one is the top 10 rankings. I got a guy up to the championship and started defending against all comers. For several defenses it was really good because different challengers were floating up to the top, but now it's stableized and it's the same guys all the time, no changes, no new faces for me to defend against. I understand this happens to a point in boxing politics - a guy can lose and still get a title shot pretty easily if he's got name recognition, but we gotta find a way to shake it up a bit because it'll get old pretty soon. He's only like 25 and fighting the same fighters for the next 8 years doesn't sound like a good time to me.



Another thing isn't really a bug but something I saw. If I click with the mouse and hold it down, I cannot move the mouse even if I realize I clicked on the wrong button. I now must finish clicking it and whatever I started is going to be finished. Is there a way to make the mouse movable if you messed up, or to hit a key to cancel the action?



There hasn't been a whole lot of fresh young talent out there. It could just be the game I started, but it doesn't seem to be generating very many 16-18 year olds that are looking for a future and need a talented manager such as myself to bring them there.

The scoring needs just a little more refinement. As a general rule it tends to go according to the number of punches landed, with a smaller emphasis on punches thrown. It seems to disregard how damaging the punches were, however. If each guy lands 8 punches but one does 150 damage to the other guy's 80, the round is most often scored 10-10 even though one man took a severe beating. So that needs to figure in a little bit, although I'm a little scared that the delicate balance may be disrupted, because overall the scoring is pretty accurate over the duration of the fight.

Thanks for the suggestions, once again

I'm currently still in process of relocating so can't access internet daily but I appreciate your posts - hopefully I'll be able to make a new UBM update next month (because this month probably will be completely busy with the move).

Okay okay we can wait lol. Here's my thought process on fixing the scoring. We have too many 10-8 rounds in which there are no knockdowns, and too many 10-10 rounds, although they do even out. My thought is that if one guy dishes out 100 damage or more (doesn't happen too often) and his opponent less than 50 (or a 50+ difference, like 124-62), he gets the round 10-8 as complete and utter domination. If this happens two rounds out of three, the ref should stop it and declare a TKO to save the loser further punishment. If one guy dishes out 25 or more damage in the round than his opponent, he automatically gets the round 10-9. Less than 25 damage difference starts looking more at the factors we have now. Who threw more punches? Who landed more punches even if they weren't damaging? If it's in all ways equal then they can get 10-10. If there was no action at all (like 5 punches thrown or less from each guy), they can get graded down for being boring, 9-9.



But we should have just a little bit of a randomizer in there to keep the judging "human", since judges in real life don't always score the way we like. But it can't be a whole lot or we'll go on strike because of corruption.



Knockdowns of course always take precedence, so that should stay pretty much the same. A knockdown means 10-8 round. However I have read that if a boxer suffers a flash knockdown but isn't actually hurt (happens to my guys here and there) and dominates the rest of the round, it could actually be scored 9-8, although he still gets the 8 for being knocked down.



We've gotta sometime get a way for throwing in the towel. There have been times when my guys administered beatings that made me feel sorry for my opponents, like in real life it would ruin their career (might be a neat feature). We should be able to hit a button to throw in the towel, and the opposition would need to have a carefully weighed formula do decide if he's getting hurt too much and stop the fight. A neat thing too would be for guys to be able to "quit on their stool" and refuse to go out for the next round. The catch is that your own fighter could do that too if he's in too much pain. But again that would have to be carefully done, only in extreme situations where a lot of damage has been dealt either way. The guy's tenacity could also figure in, if he's more likely to want to quit or go through pain for the possible victory - but maybe at some skills cost because it took so much out of him. Okay I'm rambling.

I'm making a good update, with a completely redesigned right-panel in the fight screen with more info... including total damage done, etc and a button to Throw the Towel

Unfortunately my connection still is problematic so don't know when I'll be able to upload a beta! damn ISP...

I love the bouncing emoticon, imagine it here because I'm too lazy to find it and link to it. :D

Ok so I got a confirmation that my ISP will connect me on 7th january... I guess that will be the day of new UBM beta... maybe I'll be able to upload it sooner from some wifi - free internet point but I doubt it

I'm glad to let you know that I finally uploaded the beta

Download URLs:



http://www.didone.com/games/UBMTrial.exe

http://www.didone.com/games/ubmdemo.zip



let me know what you think - personally I believe the new stats rules, but of course I'm not really impartial...

Edited so no one gets piracy ideas.

Wow the patch was awesome



Throwing in the towel button is the perfect start to getting to shout more instructions during the match.



Throw more punches!

Run Away!

Go Crazy!

Don't throw so many punches!





And I'd like an excitement rating for how exciting the match was. A fight with little punches and a lot of clinching would get a low excitement rating and would result in less sponsorship offers and less title shots. A fight with many punches and many landed punches, knockdowns and cuts would get a high excitement rating would result in a lot of sponsor offers and would allow your fighter to fight higher above his rank than he normally would.



So excitement would create a risk v reward choice of do I have my fighters be exciting or play it safe and win the fight?

I'm not going to give you quite as positive reaction mwuahaha. First I REALLY like the new look during the fights, I like the percentages and the full stats, and the towel button. Can your opponent throw in the towel?



I've gone through a few fights so I don't have a full feel for it yet, but... you know how I am about having good fighters, so I expect to win. However in all the playing I've done I have never seen such one-sided slaughters. My opponents might as well not even show up. I've seen only one 10-9 round, every other one has been 10-8, and there have been a lot of knockdowns. I suppose since they're overmatched this might be a bit realistic, but it's a bit much.



After a couple more fights I think I've figured it out a bit... my guy wears down the speed on the other guy so fast that he winds up literally with a negative number... my last fight (ended in the 10th round) the opponent was down to -9. My fighter practically couldn't miss, the hit percentage was up to inhuman numbers, like close to 80% each round.



So I intentionally fought a guy who had somewhat better speed... it helped but not enough. 9 rounds, 10-8 every one except a 10-7 for two knockdowns, stopped in the 10th. I think speed is factoring in a bit too much. I know slower fighters get hit more, but not by this much.



I did finally see a 9-9 round...but I also saw a 10-10... my guy was knocked down (but not hurt) and won the rest of the round, interesting and cool but he should have lost 10-9.



I haven't paid as much attention now, but at first the fans cheering was kind of odd, they'd start and stop at weird times. I am, however, on my laptop which is my slowest computer, but not that slow (Turion with 1.2 gigs of RAM).



Haven't fought any of my champions yet to see how it goes with pretty good competiton. Seemed like they were prevented from fighting for an awful long time, they finally are eligible but I've gotta quit.

I just got to sim a title fight - a bit more competative in the ring, but 10 rounds were 10-8, one 10-9 and one 10-10.



I just noticed that I haven't had a single KO by 10 count, they always get back enough vitality to get up. Granted they weren't frequent anyway, but it's dropped even more - but my fighters are all in the top ranks too so it's less likely to get the 10 count.



I have the feeling that my 50+ damage idea is too small - may need to be more like 100 more than the opponent to be a 10-8 round.



Fortunately for you I'm too busy at work to play and come up with more gripes.

The vitality is indeed regenerating too much... I knocked down a guy... it regenerated to about 21 in the four seconds he was down. He got up and it was back to 80+!



I did get to do another couple title fights and it was better than the ones with overmatched opponents, so fixing the scoring will be the big deal. Still getting almost exclusively 10-8 rounds.



I did get an interesting TKO though... he fell down and the ref immediately stopped it... that does happen sometimes in real life so I like that touch.



Yup, just saw it again... got up with vitality of 12 and suddenly it was 59. This explains why I haven't seen any one-punch KOs where the guy just couldn't get up and keep fighting lol.



Finally got my first 10 count KO... looked kinda weird though. The vitality started regenerating then it suddenly dropped back to 1 and stayed there until the count finished.



I just noticed little flickers in the Charisma bar of the main screen where you're looking at all your fighters. It'll be solid red then suddenly a little fleck of silver in just a portion of it.

Hello, finally I'm back online with a stable connection

About your comments, indeed maybe a good thing would be that you send me one of your savegame with your invincible fighters so I can check how the new game mechanics behave with such powerful boxers

The vitality regeneration works a bit differently now: before, if a boxer was beaten down to 1, he would go down and get up with a very small percentage of his maximum vitality. The result was that once you brought down a boxer, you could easily win by TKO (because bringing down the small amount of vitality was quick).

So I thought to randomly (based on some boxers stats) add 2 behaviours:

1- the boxer regenerate vitality but also sometime can get up with up to half of his total vitality

2- the boxer sometime tries to get up, but then gives up and vitality goes to 1 and so you can also have 10 count KOs



2 seems to work fine for me, point 1 maybe need to be implemented differently, maybe I can just accelerate more the regeneration while he is down instead than adding completely the value, if seems a bit odd :p

I'll try to get it to you tonight.

Nevermind, I realized I had it on my flash drive. This is the file I had before the update, it's probably better because some of the boxers are lower ranked and you can see the beatdowns.



http://www.kengoding.com/slot0.zip

The only prob I see with the energy regenerating as it is, is that sometimes they take too much of a beating. Because they just won't get knocked out, they go down over and over again.

Well after 3 KO the fight ends with TKO

But ok, next update will make a normal 10 count KO happen more often - the problem with it is that I must plan it carefully because it means end of the fight, so must happen more frequently but not excessively, otherwise could ruin the fun (I think).

Probably should be based on the knocked down boxer stats (stamina, etc) and the opponent power (if he delivers a punch more powerful than the other can stand, would cause a KO).

Sounds good. That and the scoring and I think I'll be a happy boy. You seeing what I mean with all the 10-8 rounds? Sure they won the rounds, but...

I actually use a percentage system rather than 25-50 points. For example if total damage of boxer1 is > than boxer2 by 20% I assign a 10-8. Probably I need to increase the value of the difference. Time for more finetuning I guess...