Hi all,

Good news! Thanks to all of you that have sent me your save files, I've managed to track down and fix the issue many of you were having with world titles not being defendable after winning them.

As a further plus, you won't need to restart your saves or continue with an undefendable title - if you've encountered this problem, I've added code to vacate the title so that you can win it again and go from there. Sorry for taking so long, the problem itself was simple but I had trouble tracking it down.

Hi all,

I managed to find some time to take a look at World Boxing Manager again, and I've updated a few things based on suggestions in the forums (yes, I do check in from time to time!)

I've restructured events so that you can now book multiple fighters on the same card. This was a frequently requested feature, so hopefully you like it! Note that income from networks booked for that event only counts once, so there's still a reason NOT to book everyone on the same card.

Thanks to a suggestion from the discussion forums, I've tweaked sparring gains so that using instructions during sparring matches results in additional gains for certain attributes. For instance, using "Use the rear hook more!" will result in gains for Rear Hook. This does, however, depend on the fighter's style, so using tactics like "Wait for an Opening!" or "Stick and Move!" during sparring won't help a Slugger.

The bad news is that some of the issues that have been bothering you, like world titles not being defendable, etc, still haven't been solved. I'm not able to reproduce the problems on my end, so I'm still poring over the codebase to see where the issue might be happening. Hopefully I'll be able to track it down at some point.

Thanks for playing!

Hi all,

Sorry for the relative lack of updates post-release. Nevertheless, I've carved out some time and fixed a couple of issues:

• Thanks to a suggestion from a Godot developer, I managed to fix the loading speed issue. Loading games, starting new games, and loading custom databases should now all take a matter of seconds rather than minutes.
  
  
• Fixed an issue in which payout for an opponent counteroffer was fixed at 100 rather than scaling depending on the reputation of the fighters involved.

There's a known issue concerning the defense of multiple titles, but I haven't been able to reproduce it on my end - everything appears to be working fine. I'll keep looking into it, but I thought I'd get this update out since the loading time issue is a fairly prominent one.

Thanks for playing!

Hey all,

As is often the case, there were a few bugs that flew under the radar when I released the Godot version:

• Display issue in which the game would appear off-center is fixed.
  
• Added the ability to import an edited fighter into your gym.
  
• Fixed the subsequent issue in which weight data was not appearing for said fighter.
  
• Edit Data screen had an issue where the last few fighters weren't able to be edited because selecting them didn't bring up their information. This is now fixed.
  
• Organization screen "Detailed Information" button wasn't working for player fighters. This is also fixed.
  
• A few of you have complained the the new scaled experience system is too harsh, so I've buffed the gains a little bit and increased the effect of equipment levels. To reiterate, higher stats take longer to improve than lower ones now. HOWEVER, training camp gains are unaffected.
  
  One thing I haven't "fixed" is the issue in which some fights weren't showing up on fighter records. I've been at it all day and I can't for the life of me reproduce this issue. I'll keep testing and see if it comes up for me.
  
  Thanks for playing!
  
  
  

Hi all,

About two months ago I stated my intention to provide a Godot-based version of World Boxing Manager for people on Mac, Linux, and mobile who weren't able to play the game. I'm happy to announce that I've managed to do it! Thanks to all of you for the continued support!

Most of the actual in-game changes are, quite frankly, simple quality of life and balancing changes. This was never meant to be a complete overhaul with entirely new features - I would probably have released an entirely new game with that kind of effort. My first priority was to simply get the game working as it was on a new engine, and I've been able to accomplish it. So without further ado, here are the changes:

• Now can be played on Mac and Linux, with an Android version soon to follow. iOS will take a bit longer due to the fact that a) I need to find a device to test on besides the simulator, and b) Apple will still need to approve it.
  
• Resolution is no longer a problem - thanks to the geniuses behind Godot, scaling is handled natively ie. you can just resize the window. Fullscreen is now also an option.

• Players can now cycle between emails, fighters, and students using buttons rather than having to select from a drop-down list.
  
• Matchmaking screen now filters out empty dates if Undercard or Co-Main events are chosen.
  
• Players can now view opponents via the Organizations screen, allowing you to check out potential opponents as you browse the rankings.
  
• Players can also view opponent information from the Inbox screen, allowing you to scout opponents who offer matches.
  
• Matchmaking, Hire Staff, and Marketing screens now show a preview of how likely they are to accept an offer
  
• Sparring screen now contains a record of sparring matches between selected fighters.
  
• Calendar screen no longer has a calendar, which was kind of redundant - event details can now be shown directly from list of upcoming events
  
• Help popups change depending on what screen the player is currently on, hopefully preventing confusion
  
• Non-player matches during events in which the user takes part now can be simulated a lot faster. Thanks to Godot, code is a lot easier to decouple, meaning that I can now take the fast version of the match engine that doesn't process text or anything and slot it into player events.
  
• Gym colors are now selected via a color-chooser, allowing for a greater range of colors (I can't take full credit for this - thanks again to Godot!)

• Swarmers have been buffed so that every attack they use from the pocket has a greater success rate and does more damage to Boxers
  
• Body attack success rate has been buffed
  
• Rankings have been reworked so that default rankings make more sense ie. higher reputation fighters near the top, and Unknown/lousy fighters near the bottom.
  
• Previously, a non-player fighter would reject a match offer if he had fought the player fighter too recently. This is still in the game, but the player fighter's record is looked at instead. This circumvents the problem before of a non-player fighter not fighting frequently enough to allow for rematches. Only the player fighter needs to fight again before a rematch can occur.
  
• Fights in one world organization now affect rankings in the other two by smaller amounts
  
• Experience required to level up is now scaled. That is, it takes longer to level up from 15 to 16 than from 5 to 6. Mitigating this is the fact that Equipment upgrade level now has a greater effect.
  
• Following from the previous point, Sparring gains are now influenced by Gym upgrade level, so both sets of upgrades have more of a point.
  
• Speaking of sparring, trait gain chances are now influenced by the reputation of the highest-ranked trainer at your gym. Thus, there is now a point to upgrading trainers.
  
• Trainer and network stats are now influenced by their reputation a lot more, so crappier reputation trainers/networks have crapper stats.

In the interest of full disclosure, there have been a few negative changes, sadly:

• Starting a new game and loading a game now takes a lot longer than before. Whereas it was almost instantaneous before, it now takes a solid minute or so to load. For more technical-minded people out there, this is because classes and data structures were handled natively in save files in C++, but Nodes (Godot's version of classes and data structures) are not. Thus it becomes necessary to read in the save data, create a Node, and load the data in. Done over thousands of fighters, it ends up adding a lot of time.
  
• Because of the way Godot handles data vs native C++, your old saves won't carry over to the new version.
  
• Detailed data for non-player fighters can no longer be viewed. Somewhat related to the issue above, the problem was that save files were becoming huge really fast. So I decided to store detailed match data only for player fighters instead.

There are probably a few things I have forgotten to mention because I'm just writing this from memory, but by and large if you liked the original game, you should hopefully still like the new one. If not, I've left the original so you can still play it. Saves, exported fighters, and modded databases for the new version are in the same folders under a new "Godot" sub-folder, so your old data hasn't been nuked. As far as I know the Godot version is feature-complete and stable, but I'm always open for suggestions.

Thanks again for playing!

Hey all,

First off, thank you everyone, for your patience and support thus far. It never ceases to amaze me how much some of you love this game, and it means everything to me. I know I haven't been very active on this game or its forums recently. For those who have been wondering why, it's because I've been hard at work on a second (sadly, not boxing related) game. It was my intention to check in and update World Boxing Manager from time to time, but I found it more difficult than expected to switch gears between games, so I figured I might as well finish my second game before going back to take a look at World Boxing Manager. With that said, after six months of full-time development, Building Block Heroes is released! Here if you're curious:

Building Block Heroes on Steam

I've got to focus on supporting Building Block Heroes for a bit, but in around a month or so I'm going to go back and take a look at some changes I can make to World Boxing Manager. I haven't been posting in the forums, but I have been checking in every now and then and I've decided that I want to port the entire game over to the Godot Engine.

After nearly a year of being played and updated, I've noticed a lot of limitations to the current "engine" that the game runs on. Specifically, problems with resolution, UI flexibility, and the fact that the game is literally impossible to port to anything other than Windows (believe me, I tried). A lot of people have been asking for a mobile version and an OSX version, and it breaks my heart that I can't do it for them. Now that I'm familiar with an actual game engine, porting the game over will make it easier to update the game in the future, as well as make it possible to run on other platforms.

I can't promise 100% that I can get it working in Godot - the match engine makes copious use of pointers and other C++ goodness, which may not translate to Godot's supported languages very well. However, I can promise that I'll give it my all, and the work/updates I've produced in the past year of my gamedev journey should be proof of that. If all goes well, I should have the ported version out in a few months. Best of all, if I can get it working in Godot I will release the overhaul as a free update! Wish me luck!

Aggroblakh

Hi all,

It's been a while, but I managed to scrape together some time to finally release another update!

Tweaks:

• Can now permanently change weight classes via a new button in the Fighter Information screen
  The same penalties for one-off fights at different weight classes apply, only this time they apply to permanent stats rather than temporary stats. These penalties, however, do NOT apply if your fighter has fought at the target weight class several times recently. Thus, by fighting matches with temporary disadvantages you can prevent permanent disadvantages.

Bugfixes:

• Champions are no longer subject to matchmaking failures due to low rank or poor marketability
  If your own fighter is putting his title on the line, marketability and rank are no longer taken into account when matchmaking.
  
  
• Changing weight classes no longer receives a penalty even to temporary stats if the fighter has fought several times at the target weight class
  Same as above - if your fighter has fought several times at the target weight class, he no longer suffers penalties even for one-off matches at a different weight class.

Hi all,

I managed to implement a few suggestions and fix a few bugs that you've brought up over the past few weeks!

Bugfixes:

• Network Counteroffers
  Fixed a bug in which accepting a network counter-offer after the event in question would create a blank upcoming match. Counteroffers are now invalidated after the event. For those of you who have already run into this problem, I added functionality to clean up any empty events you have scheduled. They'll be cleaned up the next time you hit the Next Day button.
  
  
• Multi-weight Rankings
  Fixed an issue in which fighters who fought at different weight classes were not appearing in rankings lists. If your fighter has fought at a certain weight at least three times in the past two years, he'll appear on the rankigns for that weight class.

Tweaks:

• Increased Odds of Discovering Traits in Sparring
  Self-explanatory
  
  
• Traits Discovered in Sparring More Likely to Correspond to Style
  Prior to this update, traits found were completely random. Now they are weighted in favour of style-specific stats (though it's no guarantee that a newly-found trait will be, just more likely).
  
  
• Added Sparring Gains Based on Style
  You will see increased gains from weaker fighters when sparring against better fighters. Here, reputation doesn't apply - sparring gains are based on the average of each fighter's stats. This is because it's technically possible to cherry-pick your way to All-Time Great status while having a statistically weak fighter.

Hope this helps!

Hi all,

The long awaited modding functionality has been implemented! Change stats, add traits, change fighter names and appearances, the works!

Updates:

• Custom Database
  You'll notice there is now a third screen accessible from the main menu, which allows you to select a database to modify. This has been pre-populated with the default database. After modifying and saving a database, you can then start a new game with it.
  
  The screen works by allowing you to update each fighter's attributes. You then save changes on each fighter. You can also add new fighters and remove existing fighters. New fighters are added to the bottom of the rankings. I found allowing the rankings to be modified directly caused all kinds of issues, so if you want to make custom fighters at the top it's best just to modify the existing fighters.
  
  Once you're done, you can save the entire database into a separate file and use it when starting a new game.
  
  
• Title fights
  Have tweaked the matchmaking logic for title fights due to complaints about reputation getting in the way. I've added an override to the reputation checking for title fights - if your fighter is in the top 5, reputation no longer plays a part in setting up championship matches.

As usual, feel free to let me know what you think!