Knockouts and scoring

[Jorkell]

Am i missing something?
I haven't played much yet but the game is confusing me more than a bit.

First of all, knockouts: i've had matches with an enourmous count of blows traded. But i've yet to see a single knockout. I'm not complaining about the opponent, i've seen both Ugly Joe and the guy from Glasgow with visible damage on them, so maybe i just never landed that finishing blow. But i got PLENTY of punches in my face, with blurring and everything, and i haven't gone down either. What gives? How do you knockout and get knocked out in this game?

The scoring: all my matches seem to end the same. 10-9. Every round seems to get the same score, ten-nine for me. Is that normal?

[Ian (Sealost)]

If I was smart, I'd write up a guide about this that I could have people reference. But I'm not smart, so I'll continue on here.

You can score knockdowns in two ways - either by knocking their lights out with a hard, well-placed hit, or by dizzying them with a series of less-hard or less-well placed but still hard hits. Dizzied opponents get wide-eyed and have trouble focusing their gaze on you, and they'll recover after a few seconds if you don't follow-up with more hard punches. This dizzy system works the same way for the player. When you get the blurry double vision, that means you're dizzy and at risk of dropping if you continue to take hits.

The trick is that you're not chipping away at a health bar like in a traditional fighting game, but are trying to land powerful blow to bring your opponent down. Technically your very first punch in a match could be a knockout punch if you land a hard enough hit to the right spot.

The closest equivalent to a health bar is what I'm calling the "trauma" system. The more damage you do to an opponent, the more they'll be affected by your future punches. The damage increase is extremely small, but it adds up over time and makes knockdowns more common in later rounds than earlier ones.

Once you knock them down, the chance of them getting back up or not is determined by how hard the blow was that knocked them down.

One thing to note is that the game is more on the simulation side of things, and is really meant to go to the scorecards for three-round bouts, but I'm aiming for an average of about one knockdown per round between you and your opponent - let's say 4 or 5 total in a three-round bout, with knockdowns being more common in the third round than the first.

Another thing to note is that when I say "hard" punch, I mean hard relative to your punching strength. The game automatically adjusts your punch force to try to make your hardest punches equal to the hardest punch that makes sense for game balance. Really just punch at a force you find comfortable (don't over-do it) and the game will adjust to you. Just make sure the faster swings you throw are the ones you're trying to make count and aim them at weak points for the best results.

Weak points include the sides of the chin, under the chin, and the temples. The beta branch has a punching dummy with the weak points marked for training. If you want to practice that, you can go ahead and opt in to that, but it will make its way to the main branch soon.


The scoring system is the same as real boxing (which also happens to be vague, confusing, and often a source of major controversy in real life). Basically each round, a winner is chosen and given 1 point. Both boxers are also given a point for each time they knocked down their opponent, and generally the boxer who scored more knockdowns in a round is also chosen as the winner. Then, points are added to both boxers's scores so that the winner ends up with 10 points total. Three judges score the match independently, and their scores for each round are totaled up to see who they decided has won the match. Whoever is decided the winner by the majority of the judges wins the match.

Alternatively, you could think of it as both boxers starting at 10 points and losing a point each time they're knocked down, with the round loser losing an additional point, and then the scores being adjusted back up so that the winner has 10 if needed. The takeaway is that the winner will always have 10 points (unless there's a penalty, which isn't a thing in TotF).

If you aren't scoring any knockdowns, the only point that will be awarded will be the one for winning the round, and then 9 points will be added to both boxers scores to adjust the winner to 10 points, resulting in a 10-9 score. TotF has a bit of an issue right now where its much easier for the player to be scored the winner by the judges than the AI if the AI didn't manage to score any knockdowns. It's a combination of AI accuracy being fairly bad, their punch output being somewhat low, and the player not having a body for them to swing for, but I'm working on improving their score without also making them knockdown powerhouses in the process.

If you were to score one knockdown, you'd win 10-8 (one point for the knockdown and one for winning the round). If you score two knockdowns it would be 10-7. If you score three knockdowns in a single round, the ref stops the match and awards you a win by TKO (technical knockout).

[Jorkell]

Thanks a lot for the reply, really. Read it earlier but i ended up being able to reply only know.


I appreciate the tips on knocking out.
About the punch strenght: i test that a lot, it's honestly amazing, i am still figuring out wether or not i want auto adjust on. When playing i like the fact that i get tired, and sometimes i'm afraid that just enabling auto adjust will enable me to fight normally even if i'm actually punching weaker.

The trauma system is the thing i felt the most, and i think it's brilliant, yet subtle enough. I started seeing visual trauma on the opponent only when a lot of punches were traded.

Thanks for clarifying on the dizzying too: to be honest, that's how i expected it would work it's just that...I haven't experienced it yet. I just need to play more and i am trying hard to figure out how to land the kind of punches that score me 3k on the punching bag in an actual fight. I just need to play more, and i'm probably gonna go do that just after i finish this post.

It's just i really had moments where i thought "There is NO WAY that flurry of hits did not knock ME down" but maybe i need to fiddle with the character sliders a bit. I barely looked at them but i'm always wary when it comes to fine tuning because i tend to think "Developer knows best", but after all, that's what they're there for.

The scoring question comes from a deep ignorance about real life boxing scoring, so your reply explains a lot. Reeeeaally curious about how those AI improvements will come out, i can understand the toughness of working with a player that has no actual body, wish you the best luck with your work because, honestly, there's just no other boxing game that offers this kind of experience.

Thanks again, and happy new year, hope to see this game flourish

[Ian (Sealost)]

Originally posted by Aqualung:

i am still figuring out wether or not i want auto adjust on. When playing i like the fact that i get tired, and sometimes i'm afraid that just enabling auto adjust will enable me to fight normally even if i'm actually punching weaker.

I think this a big reason longer-term players might want to turn it off. If you want to get weaker as you tire out, you'll probably want to play a calibration match while you're fresh to set a good default multiplier and then turn the auto-adjustment off.

Originally posted by Aqualung:

Thanks for clarifying on the dizzying too: to be honest, that's how i expected it would work it's just that...I haven't experienced it yet. I just need to play more and i am trying hard to figure out how to land the kind of punches that score me 3k on the punching bag in an actual fight.

Just to note, the numbers from the heavy bag are raw force numbers before they get adjusted by the calibration system. You can use it to see what kinds of hits are harder than others and practice your form, but you don't need to hit a certain force level to play the game.

(Also, it's worth noting that I'm not simply taking your hits from the heavy bag and scaling them straight up or down with no regard to how you achieved that number. Form still matters, even after the calibration scaling is accounted for.)

Originally posted by Aqualung:

It's just i really had moments where i thought "There is NO WAY that flurry of hits did not knock ME down" but maybe i need to fiddle with the character sliders a bit. I barely looked at them but i'm always wary when it comes to fine tuning because i tend to think "Developer knows best", but after all, that's what they're there for.

This is probably improved a bit with the latest beta update. I have the opponents hitting a little more consistently. Quality is more important than quantity, though, so if the opponent didn't get a strong hit to the right spot, then you'll probably fair pretty well. It'll certainly help their score, though!

The customization sliders are really meant for challenging yourself once you've mastered the base game. You may think you're knocking down opponents too easily, so you up their chin, or you may want to try out a longer bout. Everyone's going to be different, so you can really tailor the game to you.