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I'm also not aware of any good instructional videos specific to TotF, but check out this YouTube channel for a series of videos that I think are a good example of how to best approach the game:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHqP-N57qAD1URqUkTFy4Bw
These are from an older version of the game, but it should be similar enough to be useful.
This is interesting to highlight. If someone just wanted to win and that's all they cared about, I have some tips that could help them do so pretty easily, but doing so would completely trivialize the game and make it a bit meaningless to play. What I usually focus on when I give people advice is to encourage them to maintain good boxing form (and there's a wealth of YouTube videos covering that) while pointing out what's not like real boxing and so where they're going to need to suspend disbelief a bit. Essentially, that advice just boils down to swinging comfortably instead of as hard as you can and aiming for the weak points marked on the dummy with the proper types of swings (basically you're going to need to get close and throw hooks to do the real big damage).
Really, I see TotF as a game about real-world self-improvement (whether that's boxing skill or just general fitness) where you get out what you put in. I think of it more like shadowboxing with a visible opponent to swing at that swings back at you. You don't really try to "win" at shadowboxing - it's just an activity you partake in.
That's not to say I think winning and losing in TotF is meaningless or unimportant. It's just that I think for TotF, it's less important that you've won and more important how you've won. I think hitting these snags like you're mentioning and then finding ways to overcome them that you can be proud of are really what makes TotF memorable for players in the end. I find that the people that quickly figure out some of the ways to easily get through the game are often the ones most disappointed by it, whereas the ones that get frustrated but keep trying and eventually prevail are the ones who are most satisfied.
At the same time, I try not to make people feel like they have to play the game the way I specifically intended them to. As long as someone is enjoying playing however it is they're playing then as far as I'm concerned they're playing correctly.
There are a few things to watch out for with the Quest's tracking. First, make sure you're not suffering from the battery contact problem (and I'm happy to go into more detail about that if you haven't heard of it). Second, yes, if your controller sits too long in a spot where the on-headset cameras don't have a good view of it anymore, it might take a noticeable amount of time for the tracking to be reacquired, and you might finish throwing a fast punch before the Quest figures out where your hand is. Third, fast arcing punches (i.e., hooks) cause the tracking to drift outward, as if your arms were longer than they really are. The faster the punch, the more outward drift you'll notice, with ~12m/s punches being noticeable but not too bad and ~20m/s punches basically guaranteeing you'll swing past the back of the opponent's head unless you account for it. Just keep in mind that good form boxing hooks should probably be closer to 12m/s than 20m/s (at a certain point you're exchanging power to gain that speed, but it's hard to TotF to know the difference).
This is just how boxing scoring works. Instead of 10-9, think of it as 1-0. You get 1 point for winning the round. You get 1 point for each time you knock the opponent down (which gets canceled out for each time they knock you down). Whoever has more knockdowns automatically wins the round, or if there's a tie then in TotF whoever did more damage wins. Power punch just means "not a jab", but doesn't suggest how harmful those punches actually were. You'll want to check the "Details" tab after a match for a breakdown of why you won or lost any given round. You'll see a damage or knockdown stat highlighted for each round, and that's what was used to determine the round winner.
Real boxing can have an additional point granted if the round winner really dominated, but that situation is uncommon, generally controversial, and is not something I've put into TotF.
Sometimes when you hit the opponent, you'll see sweat fly off of them from where your hit landed. Your punches can open up cuts on the opponent sometimes, but it's just for looks and doesn't have any effect. If you land a hit on a bleeding area, you'll see blood fly off instead of sweat. A lot of players tell me they love the blood, but I do almost wish I hadn't added it, because I do frequently see that people are confused about what effect it might have.
This is completely separate from the colored damage splashes, though, which were actually added very late in development. I was hesitant to add them because I didn't want to "arcade-ify" the game, but some players were asking for more explicit communication of how much any given hit was hurting the opponent, and they were a compromise instead of having floating damage numbers.
If you get hit in the head in any meaningful way, your screen flashes bright white. If you get hit in the body, you see a red vignette on the lower half of your view. I have noticed, though, that the red vignette is harder to see if you're using the glasses spacer included with the Quest. The volume of the "thunk" sound also signifies how hard you were hit. If you didn't notice any screen effects and didn't hear a very loud thunk sound, then you probably weren't hit hard enough for it to matter.
The spider is about 6'8" tall. You're scaled to 5'10" in TotF, so he's just shy of a full foot taller than you. The whole shtick of that fight is that he outranges you, and you have to get in close. In real boxing, the goal would be to stay in close where it's awkward for him to swing at you, but since the AI in TotF can't really run from you then you're also responsible for backing out when appropriate, too. Try to step in as he swings and get a hook in to the bottom of his jaw. If you made a good connection, try to work him down a bit, but back off before he recovers. Check out the Spider video from the YouTube channel I linked above for a good looking attempt to fight him.
Thanks for coming here to share your experiences. Even if you don't see me make any changes directly, it always helps to hear what player are enjoying or not enjoying about the game, so I can make better design decisions in the future.
The fact that you say you are landing overhead blows but not regular shots means you (and I promise I don't mean to sound mean) are not throwing/placing your shots properly. There tends to be 3 guards that the AI defaults to depending on what you are doing: Both hands in front, Hands on the the sides of the head(ish), and Hand covering their body. There are little variations to these, but these are the main guards they use.
Both hands in front: They do this when you are targeting their face (ie. jabs, straights). This leaves them open to a hook to the side of their head or any body shot.
Hands on the sides of their head: This is to block your hooks if you keep throwing them. This leaves them open to straight punches to their face or a body shot.
Hand covering their body: So you can guess why they do this right? This leaves their head exposed, so attack it.
So with this information, you can now formulate plans in-fight to land hits. Are they covering up their head? Jab to the body. Feel it out. If they still cover their head, throw another jab or a straight to the body, maybe even jab their guard then throw a hook to their liver. Now they'll drop their guard to cover their body up, which should give you an easy 1-2 to their face.
The only cheatsy thing the AI does is lean back out of your shot range (which you would never do in a fight). If they do that, just back off and reset.
Next I guess I could address the damage indicators and how to get KOs. The damage indicator shows how much damage you've inflicted to the specific part of the body. I don't know the nuts and bolts behind the dev's code, but I do know that when I see that damage go red, they are hurting bad. That means it's a good idea to make an attempt to hit that part again. They may cover it up quick, so you have to throw quick somewhere else to change their guard up so that part is open. Getting KOs is about throwing combos that are landing cleanly. It feels like after getting a good hit in, you basically have a few seconds to try and land another good hit there, so get them to move their guard during your combo and land another big shot and you'll probably KO. Combos are the key. If you're just throwing a punch here and there, you'll likely not ever KO the person in the match, but you can definitely win on points. All in all, use the damage indicators more as a "he is weak here, aim for here soon". You'll usually see the AI look fazed a bit as well which is an even bigger indicator to throw some combos.
As for the blood, I'm not sure if I've ever noticed it doing anything to the enemy but I'm sure it probably means that they are weaker where they bleed.
When talking about the score, in real life boxing scorecards are usually this close unless one boxer is just completely dominating the other boxer. A KO will drop usually drop their round score to an 8, but otherwise you'll most likely have 9's and 10's across the board.
The Spider should really just be a challenge to you. There's no real point in having multiple fighters that are all the same with different skins. I also believe each one is supposed to have a gimmick anyhow, just like how the Japanese boxer is a southpaw. The Spider is meant to be taller than you, and have longer arms than you. I don't notice any outboxing from him, but in real life he'd be boxing on the outside because of his height/reach advantage. What you should do with him is jab your way inside and fight there. You definitely can reach his head, but if you don't like that then just aim for the body. You can KO with a clean liver shot.
I also have tracking issues (Rift) that lead to good punches going to waste or my glove flying away and giving them a free hit. It is incredibly frustrating, but that's just the limitations of this hardware unfortunately. You just gotta suck it up and throw another punch.
As you can see, a lot of these tips are just straight up teaching you how to box properly and better. That's because this is a boxing simulator. You will be boxing, you will be tired, you will get hit, you will lose. That's why we all love this game so much; it's the best boxing experience you can possibly get in VR. There are many tips and they all are great tips. You just have to be able to implement them in game. Any video made will really just be the same info spewed on the forums for improving. If you are watching boxing videos and trying to accurately maintain proper form, all that's left is the flow of boxing which you can't pick up in a tutorial video, you just have to do it.
If you truly want to improve, I would suggest downloading OBS and recording yourself playing the game. When you get hit, see why you got hit and figure out what to do next time. When you miss your shot, see why you miss your shot and figure what to do next time. For now, follow my tips provided and you should be on the path to success.
Also, you can change your punch power in the settings. If you are getting too frustrated, just change them real high and blow through the enemies to have some fun. Then start to lower it until it gets to a good point where you're not just getting KOs left and right. Good luck and don't stop.
I saw some of those videos, and while they were slightly helpful, they seemed to be more about his fitness and progress than just basic how-to's.
"If someone just wanted to win and that's all they cared about"--I certainly agree that that is not a good way to approach it. That's why I don't feel good about these hammer shots; they feel like cheating and "not real boxing." I love it for the work-out--that's one reason I don't mind too much that every round I tell myself, "now punch slowly so the multiplier adjusts down" but end up swinging away anyway, because that's a better work-out. But at the same time, it is a game and is presented as a game and I would guess that it is used as a game rather than practice for boxing by the vast majority of players (I know from this message board that some boxers do use it for practice, but that must be a minority). Part of the motivation for keeping at it is the competition element and the fun of playing, which gets blunted by frustrating losses--not just losses which are a part of playing, but frustrating losses. I don't mind losing; what I hate is having no idea why I'm losing or what to do to improve. The best games are when you lose, you feel that you screwed up, have a good idea what you did, and what to do next time. Here, I'm just baffled.
And no question--I should improve my form and need to watch more videos on that and practice that. Definitely true. Nevertheless, I practice on the dummy and have been working steadily, and have never once gotten a red hit in a fight. "finding ways to overcome them"--yes, I just need some help on that. I've never gotten worse as I've played a game more.
I read about the the battery contact problem, but I thought that was for the flying glove, which doesn't happen much to me. What happens to me is that the glove doesn't appear at all. Would the battery contact improve that? "if your controller sits too long in a spot where the on-headset cameras don't have a good view of it anymore"--I'll try to pay attention next time, but I don't think it's off camera for more than a second or so. btw, it's fantastic to have no cords for this game. It's really meant for the quest.
As for scoring, I'm just totally ignorant here, and must be misunderstanding how it works from the ground up. I am getting these facts from the details tab. I thought that power punches landed meant that it did damage, more than light blue--what does "landed" mean then?
For the sequel, I wonder if there could be some setting that wouldn't be super-easy, or arcady, but would have more KO's. For those of us who only know about boxing from movies, winning on points is anti-climactic. I know it's much more realistic, and you can make a case that it makes KO's that much more meaningful, but it would be nice to have that option without giving them glass jaws. I don't know if that makes sense--I just don't want to nerf it, but I would enjoy seeing them go down more, and maybe being in more danger myself would give the stakes more of an edge than just, "I may end up with fewer points than my opponent."
"Your punches can open up cuts on the opponent sometimes, but it's just for looks and doesn't have any effect"--wow, ok, that really surprises me. I thought those were indications of weakened areas where concentrated blows would do extra damage--is that wrong? that is what the graphics strongly suggest to me. I know there's no damage bar/hit points, but the body and head accumulate damage differentially, right? So I figured the different weak spots did as well, since the graphics register it. I do think that's pretty misleading, even though I like the graphics. It's nice to see some effect to all the work you're doing. btw, it would also be nice to see your opponent a bit winded in his corner during the break. he's just a machine while I'm gasping!
"your screen flashes bright white"--hmmm, I don't recall this happening. My screen turns black and white. maybe I'm missing it in the heat of the battle? I do see that red, but in the moment, it's not clear that that is me. And the sounds mean nothing to me, even after playing for a while. This again would be something that a video would clear up quickly and easily, but writing simply cannot.
ok, I guess Spider is just supposed to be like that. As I said in a comment above, my arms are particularly short, so it's really hard, but I guess that's genetics, man! Maybe a more accurate nickname--Goliath or Jolly Green Giant--would be more indicative.
I understand you can't make any significant changes in the present game. But I think a video would be really helpful. Maybe it's just me. Still love the game, love how much I'm sweating (I even got my son to do it), and can't wait for the sequel! And thanks for being so attentive and helpful to the players--it really builds player loyalty.
I understand the guard-punch structure--pretty standard rock-paper-scissors idea. The problem is that I can't enact the strategies I understand would work. And I definitely cannot land an uppercut for the ear-guard.
I find it surprising that you talk about jabs so much. What I have seen Ian say many times is that jabs do almost nothing (except maybe to the solar plexus, or if you side step). The key is to hit the weak spots from the sides to twist the head, so you need to hit at an angle. Jabs might open them up, but they're not damage-doers, are they?
"when I see that damage go red"--yeah, that's the problem--I don't see that happen. I practice with the dummy, but my punches never go above yellow. And they're getting fazed is not very obvious to me--again, a video would clear that up easily. But I am learning about the importance of combos. "You can KO with a clean liver shot"--never been able to land one of those either. Just don't see how to do it. Practice doesn't help if you don't know what to do. If I could just see it, I would see how to do it, and then could work on it. But right now, if it's not an armless torso, I just don't know how to get at it.
"There's no real point in having multiple fighters that are all the same with different skins"--yeah, of course, it's just _such_ a steep increase that I didn't know what to do. Maybe it's a short guy thing.
" that's just the limitations of this hardware unfortunately. You just gotta suck it up and throw another punch"--yeah, I think you're right about that. Pretty sweet we can do what we can.
"There are many tips and they all are great tips. You just have to be able to implement them in game. Any video made will really just be the same info spewed on the forums for improving"--I don't want to sound like a broken record, so I'll just say this one last time, because this makes the point well. you say a video would just be the same info, and I just have to be able to implement it--but it's the implementing that I can't do. I understand these points intellectually, but without _seeing_ someone do it, I don't know how to do it myself. These are physical activities, and no verbal description will ever communicate it well. Boxing videos would help a lot, but it's still not seeing it in the game. I don't see why, with such an enthusiastic player base, no one has just done a 15 minute video. it would be a huge help. Anyway, thanks for your response!
Just by watching the videos that Ian referenced and although it is a personal progression, listening to his comments may help with certain problems.
Not seeing any red hits on the training dummy suggests to me your punch angle might be off when connecting to the dummy. If you cannot reliably hit the sweet spots on the dummy you won't get many red hits on a moving target in game.
If you feel your arms are too short try the manual glove calibration and play with placement of your virtual hands.
I hold my controllers in a special way and I had to readjust my controller placement in game to compensate for a different angle and shorter reach.
I use a real punching bag to setup my distance properly, but you could use a wall. Don't punch but simply touch the wall to set up your real arm distance and see how it feels in game.
I'm not a boxer but I've tried to learn proper boxing form to play this game.
This game is more about self improvement out side of the game than it is about punching and beating the AI.
I work on cardio, endurance and strength to improve at this game and I originally used this game for my weight loss motivation.
Trial and error is your best option at the moment.
The talking parts are about fitness and progress, but I was more intending for you to watch the non-talking parts to get a visual reference for how he's fighting. The big problem, though, is he's playing a version of the game from before the colored splashes were added.
It's perfectly fine for you to play this way, but in this case you'll likely want to turn off the automatic adjustment so that it doesn't screw things up when you switch between high intensity and low intensity. In this case, you'll probably want to set your manual multipliers based on your comfortable punches - your high intensity punches will get capped, but with the automatic adjust off your normal punches won't get nerfed. This may just be the problem completely on it's own, as having too low of a multiplier for the amount of effort you're putting into your swings really makes the game miserable to play.
The easy, but less reliable, way to do this is to play through a match with the sparring partner while only throwing your comfortable-level punches. You'll need to make sure to get a few crosses and hooks in, and you'll also want to make sure you don't win the match early by TKO/KO. Afterwards, go turn the auto adjust off and the sliders will already be set to the right numbers.
For more control, you can calculate the appropriate multipliers manually by using the heavy bag. Look at the impact velocity of your fastest crosses (thrown at a comfortable level of effort) and divide 10 by that number to get your multiplier. For example, if your top-end comfortable cross is about 7.5m/s, you get 10 / 7.5 = ~1.3. You could also round up to 1.4 instead. Then throw some hooks and do the same thing but use 14 instead of 10 to calculate your hook multiplier (e.g., 14 / 12 = ~1.2).
I'm not trying to excuse myself here, as this is definitely a failure on my part as the game's game designer, but it's really as simple as "do more damage than your opponent", which boils down to "land good hits without being hit by good hits". You're being hit by good hits if your screen flashes bright white or if you get the red vignette on the screen from a body shot. You're landing good hits if you're seeing yellow or red splashes. You and the opponent also grunt when you take a big hit and the audience tends to cheer when you or the opponent land a bit hit, as well.
Basically, you can think of it as needing to land one yellow shot for every time you get hit with a white flash or red vignette. If your opponent is landing more white flashes on your than you are yellow splashes on them, they're probably ahead in terms of damage that round.
Check out this video at 8:57 (ignore the rest of it) for a combo from the opponent that shows the red vignette from a body hit followed immediately by a white flash from a head hit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBO7ygAw560&t=537
Without wearing down the opponent first, you will only see red splashes from shots that really nail the side of the chin or the liver. You won't be able to get a one-hit knockdown without a red splash, but if you're seeing a lot of yellow splashes then you're doing just fine.
The battery contact issue can cause the controller to fly off or it can cause the controller to freeze in place. It usually happens at the end of the punch, though, as it's caused by the battery continuing to move forward while you're pulling your controller back. If it's freezing at the beginning of your punch, it's more likely that the headset cameras lost sight of the controller, and a full second is plenty enough time for that to happen.
The details tab only highlights one of two stats: "Total Damage" or "Knockdown Count". Those are the only two stats that matter at all for scoring. That tab does also list "Damaging Punches" and also shows the value your multiplier adjusted to each round, but those are just shown to help diagnose potential issues. "Damaging Punches" in this case are punches that landed hard enough to count towards your scoring at all, but that can still be a blue-ish splash punch that didn't really do much for your total damage. If you're landing a ton of "Damaging Punches" compared to the opponent but have way less "Total Damage", then you need to work on throwing more controlled and accurate punches at their weak areas, even if it means throwing fewer punches per round.
"Power Punches" is a stat shown on a different tab and just means punches that aren't jabs.
The sequel is going to be so different from TotF1 that I can't really make a meaningful comparison between the two. The plan is for TotF2 to be a significant step closer to realism, which will have the downside of requiring people to play "correctly" in order to make progress, but the upside of having fewer confusing "is this real life rules or in-game rules?" scenarios. I also plan to have better training and a much gentler AI difficulty ramp-up. KOs in general should work much better in TotF2, but the primary expected outcome is still meant to be be going to the scorecards.
"I may end up with fewer points than my opponent" is really meant to be high stakes. You're putting in 15+ minutes of hard physical effort, and you want to be the one coming out on top. Keeping track of how hard you need to push yourself each round to overcome any deficits while not overdoing it and tiring yourself out to lose the later rounds is meant to be a huge part of the game.
That's wrong, and it's my bad. It's one of those things that people were asking for visually, but that I just don't have a mechanic to tie to it. The long-term damage isn't tracked per weak point - just by "head" or "body".
I went with The Spider to signify his long limbs.
I don't recommend trying this until you have a really good handle on the game. Uppercuts are a bit of a trap in TotF1 because the AI doesn't really put themselves in situations where you'd normally throw an uppercut in real life. There are also some hit detection issues that make them hard to land without hitting the opponent's chest, and some damage calculation caveats if you're actually throwing them with good form.
You're not going to be relying on jabs for damage, but they're still very important. They're fast, long range, and can put a bit of a pause on the opponent while they block before they're able to take a swing. Use them to keep the opponent out as he tries to get in, to distract the opponent while you step in and follow up with other swings, and to try to pull the opponent's guard to the front of the head or their body to open up the side of their head.
Want to land a liver-shot KO? Watch Naoya Inoue.
I get fairly good hits on the dummy (I think--the colors seem to be different there) but then not in the ring. And if I'm not getting the right angle, that again is something I need to see rather than read about, and trial and error can miss the right way and cement bad habits.
I tried the manual glove calibration and it seemed really weird and off, so I turned it back off. The default feels pretty natural, just short reach, like I am.
I don't see the choice between self-improvement and beating the AI as an either/or. Gamifying work-outs (and other beneficial activities) is the big thing in motivation now. Playing a game masks the fact that it's a work-out, so the better the game, the more likely I am to keep at it. The more frustrating, the less likely. The two should mutually reinforce each other.
"it's really as simple as "do more damage than your opponent", which boils down to "land good hits without being hit by good hits"--I don't want to be argumentative, and arguing with the game's creator about the game seems pretty silly, but I don't agree with that description. Reading the many, many pages of this message board, and just in this conversation alone, I've learned new facts about what it means to "land good hits," and it's not simple at all. There's the coloring system (in particular, it's not self-evident that light blue hits do no real damage); there's the division between body and head damage; there's the (to me surprising) fact that damage doesn't pool up on specific weak points, but indiscriminately for the head as a whole (which, as we said, the graphics seem to contradict); there's the fact that the weak spots need to be hit from an angle and not from head-on. And the "more damage" is pretty complex too since you don't use a hit point system, the default mode for video games, but rather some kind of general wearing down + spikes of damage for KO (which I still don't fully grasp, to tell the truth). I'll stop there. None of this is meant as a criticism, but the system is not self-evident or simple. It might seem that way to you since these are the decisions you made, but they don't just immediately announce themselves to the player. All of this could be easily communicated in a video (I know, getting repetitive).
Thanks for the video--I have seen the red vignette and I guess the white was there, I just didn't notice it. The problem with the red is that it feels more like a distraction than information to me, and it doesn't immediately say "this is your damage" to me. But I don't see what could do that better except the whole screen flashing red, which might be too much. This is probably my fault. I'll try to register it better now.
Does the audience cheer when the AI lands a good hit on the player? Because I'm never sure who their cheering for. If it's just for me, that would be a big help in letting me know when I've landed a good hit
"Without wearing down the opponent first, you will only see red splashes from shots that really nail the side of the chin or the liver. You won't be able to get a one-hit knockdown without a red splash, but if you're seeing a lot of yellow splashes then you're doing just fine."--this too is news to me. The red hits tend to come from cumulative damage from yellows rather than spectacular single hits? That makes me feel a lot better about not getting a lot of reds. I was assuming that yellows were ok, but reds were really where you want to be.
I think you're right about the headset just losing the controller. Frustrating, but just part of this gen of hardware. I'll still take it over having cords. I'll try to keep my hands in view more. They should be there anyway, but as I get tired, I drop them more. Should come with more conditioning.
""Damaging Punches" in this case are punches that landed hard enough to count towards your scoring at all, but that can still be a blue-ish splash punch that didn't really do much for your total damage."--so blue hits help with the score, even if not with damage/ko? do they count less than yellow/red for scoring? that's useful information. I had thought they did nothing at all.
"Keeping track of how hard you need to push yourself each round to overcome any deficits while not overdoing it and tiring yourself out to lose the later rounds is meant to be a huge part of the game"--I think this is part of my not being a boxing aficionado, only knowing it from movies where anything less than a KO is, "what's the point?" I just need to readjust my expectations. But a problem here is that it's pretty hard to have any sense of how well I'm doing and how much damage I've inflicted. Do I just need to keep track mentally of the hits landed? Here is where graphics could be a huge help, showing how much damage I've inflicted on the opponent, and maybe a little face at the bottom of the screen showing how much I've taken, like in the original Doom (old-school gamer, here).
thanks for the advice on jabs--I'll try to do that.
"Uppercuts are a bit of a trap in TotF1"--that's also helpful, thanks. Another message on this board had a number of people saying that uppercuts were a breeze if you weren't completely blowing them, so I watched some videos, worked on my form, and still cannot land them at all.
Here's something I always wonder about when playing games like this: why can't a simplified version of this fight system get ported into other games? Ian has designed a fantastic system for hand-to-hand combat. Take that, simplify it by, I don't know, 50-60% or so, and build a super-hero or action-movie game around it. I'd buy that game in a heartbeat! It seems like we always face a choice between great dynamics/system or great story/characters. Why can't games with good story/characters license really good fighting systems like this?
I'm talking out of my ass here bc I know as little about coding as I do about boxing, but would it be that hard? again, a simplified version, but it would still be far better than any VR fighting I have played.
I agree with everything you said. I didn't mean for that to come off so direct or dismissive. By "it's really as simple as 'do more damage than your opponent'" I meant to just give the easiest and most straightforward explanation of how the scoring works. From there, the natural line of questioning should go in line with what you're mentioning - "how" do you do more damage? By landing good hits. What is a "good" hit? <- This is the part where I rely too heavily on real life and external resources, and there are a few "game-y" things like the auto-adjust that make this more complicated than it should be.
Having limited resources, a lot of what I've chosen to do or put into the game has been based on closely following user feedback during the game's development and seeing what common pain points are. A video that goes through all of the game's mechanics might be helpful, but it's not particularly simple to make, especially not if I want it to look even somewhat professional.
I often have conversations just like the one you and I are having, so I understand that having more information available in-game would help many players, but while that factors into my decision making for what I'm doing on my end of things, it's not the sole deciding factor.
The audience cheers with any big hit - from you or the opponent - and there's a bit of a rate limit on the cheer, so they don't always cheer for every single big hit. It's there to be sort of an audio "reward" when you land a big hit, and wasn't meant to be a way you were supposed to rely on to determine if you landed one. I went ahead and mentioned it anyway as just something else you could look out for when in doubt.
Red hits come primarily from nailing the side of the chin or the liver. You can wear the opponent down enough to start being able to get red hits in other areas, but if you want reds, the easiest way to go about it is to work on hitting the side of the chin.
Instead of "blue-ish", I should have said "blue-ish yellow" or cyan, but it works like this: There's a cut-off for how hard a hit needs to be to be a "damaging" hit, and only "damaging" hits actually do any long-term damage or count for scoring. Only the amount of damage above the cut-off contributes to the total damage or to accumulated long-term damage. This means that a hit can technically be a damaging hit, but basically still accomplish nothing if it only lands for 1 point over the cut-off. Hits are solid blue at the cut-off or below, and yellow starts to mix in as you go beyond it. A pure yellow hit is somewhere around what it takes to get a decently stunning hit and red starts to mix in from there. The end result is blue -> cyan -> yellow -> orange -> red. Anything below a cyan didn't count for much.
Another way to look at it: high damage hits are OP. They're not meant to be easy to get, but once you really get the hang of the game I promise you'll start thinking they come WAY too easily.
Something I've noticed from hearing from players for the last few years is that, even ignoring people with real-world boxing experience, it seems that the less exposure people have to video games, the more likely it is that they'll enjoy TotF. Hardcore gamers often request that the game to display more explicit information and want to know more about the inner workings of the game's mechanics and relate them to other games.
In real life boxing, you generally don't have explicitly clear information about the current state of your opponent, the current scoring, or what exact effect your hits are having. Opponents don't make huge reactions and stumble around when whenever they're hit. If they do, it's likely the ref is about to call the fight because the opponent can't defend themself any longer. While you can reasonably know certain hits connected well or that others whiffed and didn't do much, often you can't be sure exactly what effect that punch you landed had on your opponent. While you can know if you're definitely ahead in a round because you're dominating your opponent, in closer fights there's really no way to be absolutely sure how the judges will score (although often your coach will help you keep track of that). But that doesn't mean it's all just hopeless chaos where you flail around and hope you did the right thing until the opponent falls over. You learn what is effective and you drill it so that your natural instinct in a fight becomes doing what you know is effective. You don't know if any given hit did what you wanted, but you can be sure that if you land a dozen of those hits, at least a few of them probably counted for something. And sometimes you do notice the opponent reacted to a hit, and you follow up to try to take advantage. It's this "sweet science" (a boxing term that basically means "art"
For perspective, you already have significantly more information about the mechanics of TotF1 than the vast majority of its players do, but you seem more frustrated by the game than the average player does. Please don't think I'm telling you that you're playing wrong or thinking wrong - your frustration is a failure on my part, not yours. But it might be beneficial to take a step back, try to shake off any preconceptions you have about video games or boxing or what to expect from TotF and then come in with a fresh approach.
They can be very effective, but they're just really hard to pull off, especially if you're trying to use good real-world form. I'd say about 50% of that is due to the opponent just not moving into positions where you'd want to throw an uppercut in real life and 50% due to the difficulty of getting your glove to not collide with the opponent's body (and 50% of that is how TotF handles the chest collision and the other 50% is that as far as the game sees it, your hand is trying to drive itself into the opponent's chest).
If by self-improvement, we specifically mean real-world self-improvement at boxing or at least things that help you be better at boxing (which is what I mean when I say it), then there are at least some either/or elements at play because TotF1 is not a perfect recreation of real-world boxing. TotF1 works best when you take real-world concepts from outside the game and bring them into the game. Just because you find something effective in TotF1 does not mean you can go the other way and take it outside the game for real-world self-improvement, though. If it works in the real world, it should work in TotF1, but if it works in TotF1 it might not work in the real world. It's a distinction that may not apply to you, but I think it's worth making clear regardless. The more you treat TotF1 like a game, the less you're probably going to get out of it in terms of what people tend to find satisfying about TotF1 because the "game-y" elements are the weakest part of TotF1 and they don't help you with the self-improvement aspect.
My goal with TotF2 is going to be to try to make this work both ways, so that if you're doing something effective in TotF2, it's also something you would be doing in real boxing.
I think maybe you're going TotF too much credit here!
It's not so much about having a system ready to go, but more about having a good idea and understanding the concepts behind how the game is supposed to work and producing the right tool for the job. It would be really easy for anybody to grab a couple of Unity plugins and throw together a simplified version of TotF's fight system over a weekend. The challenge is figuring out how to actually build a satisfying game around it.
I cheated and just copied boxing.