v0.2 — Tale of the Tape

The first patch since the demo went live. Mostly small things, one big thing, and a fight pacing change that I should have caught before launch.

Tale of the tape

Every fight now opens with a stat card. Age, height, weight, style — both fighters, side by side. Compact version stays visible during the fight; the full breakdown shows right before the bell.

This was the most-requested thing from the first wave of demo feedback. People wanted to actually know who was fighting before they pressed start. Reasonable.

A calmer post-fight screen

The result used to take over the entire screen the second the fight ended. Big banner, modal, the works. It was the wrong call. v0.2 keeps the result as a thin banner above the play-by-play log, and the rest of the screen stays where it was — scrollable round-by-round log, scorecard, “Show Stats” toggle for per-fighter breakdowns. Click Next when you’re done reading. Don’t click Next if you’re not.

The old flow assumed you wanted out. You don’t always.

Fight pacing

The bigger fix. v0.1 ended every championship-distance fight in round 3, sometimes earlier. The damage numbers were tuned for prelim-length fights and applied uniformly to championship distance, which meant Boxing 12×3, Kickboxing 12×3, and MMA 5×5 were all knockout sprints by accident. Not a feature.

v0.2 lowers per-strike damage and adds a small recovery curve between rounds, so fighters with cardio actually benefit from having cardio. Championship fights now go the distance about as often as they should. About — this is still preliminary. The proper damage model rework lands in v0.3.

Filed for v0.3

Cardio and stamina as proper systems instead of stat names that don’t do anything. The damage rework, again, but actually finished. A bigger post-fight recap that earns its own screen instead of pretending to.

If you’ve played the demo and have notes, the Discord is the fastest way to send them. Bug reports too. Especially bug reports.

— Jeff