Hello everyone! It's time again to bring all of the beta branch goodies over to the main branch.
As always, I'd love to hear your feedback, either over on the Steam forums, on Reddit (where I'm u/fyian), or directly at my email address at [email protected]. The beta branch is specifically for testing incomplete or unpolished features, but the game is still in Early Access so anything and everything on the main branch is still subject to change based on your feedback.
New Models
Ugly Joe, the trainer, and the referee have been updated with new models! Dashing David's model was updated in a previous patch and his name was changed to Gene Priest. At this point, all of the existing models have been updated, which means it's time to bring in some new boxers!
Speed Bag
There is now a speed bag in the gym! Currently it's optimized for triplet bounce hits. Give it a go and see what rate of hits per minute you can sustain.
In-World Round Timers
There are now visible timers in the gym and arena that keep track of the time remaining in the current break or round.
Auto-Calibrator Improvements and Arm Whip Mass Reduction
In previous versions, creating a "whipping" motion with your arm would generate an insanely high speed punch that would do massive damage, making all of your other punches pointless. This update include an update to the auto-calibrator that detects these arm whips and brings them in-line with your other punches without unfairly penalizing you for legitimate swings.
If you have turned off auto-calibration, the game will try to adjust for arm whip punches by reducing your punch mass appropriately. If you haven't tried out the auto-calibrator in awhile, please give it another chance. It has received many updates and does a great job of handling some of the inaccuracies from trying to read what your body is doing in the virtual world.
New Punch Animations and Better Lunging Behavior
The punch animations have been updated to reduce the frequency of opponents leaning out of the path of your swings. Lunge punches now behave better if the opponent tries to step too close to you.
Combat and AI Tweaks
The AI's distance keeping and aggression algorithms have received major tweaks, as have their blocking capabilities. Your fist now fits into openings in the opponents guard better than it used to. The damage system has been tweaked in many different ways.
And more!
There have been a ton of performance and visual polish changes as well. You can get more specific details by checking out the change logs that have been posted for the beta branch over the last few months.
Here's what's new since the last beta:
- New referee model!
- You can now set yourself to turn around backwards in match.
- The AI's jabs have had their speed reduced slightly.
- Timer visuals have been tweaked.
- Some tweaks to damage modifier values.
- Increased chance of bleeding by 50%.
- Attempted to address an issue where the AI jumping between animations would cause cause an unreasonably large amount of velocity to be added to your punch force.
Note: Some users have reported various performance issues recently that seem to be fixed turning off antialiasing in the in-game Settings menu. This issue may be caused by the recent supersampling preset changes in SteamVR, but I'm still investigating the possible cause.