[Jim Trunzo]

"STATE OF THE GAME" ADDRESS: The Latest on the Evolution of Our Boxing/Fight Management Simulation

As many of you know, Title Bout Championship Boxing has undergone many evolutions since it's debut as Truco Championship Boxing. It has, in prior iterations, gone under the name Title Bout: Game of Professional Boxing, TKO Pro Boxing, APBA Pro Boxing, Title Bout for Windows, and most recently, Title Fight 2001. Now, in partnership with .400 Software Studios, "Title Bout Championship Boxing" aims to correct all previous mistakes, turn all weaknesses into strengths and add an entirely new concept to the simulation by creating a 100% interactive side to the product.

With work proceeding at a feverish pace in order to have the newest rendition of the boxing simulation ready for Christmas delivery, we are re-examining every part of the basic design. In the process, we have become aware of any number of programming errors and we have -- admittedly -- uncovered some design flaws that should have been obvious but for some reason had been overlooked until now.

Here's some of what we've found and have re-worked to improve both the accuracy and/or the playability of the boxing simulation:

SCORING: _Currently the simulation produces too many 10-8 rounds and too many 10-10 rounds. After purchasing some "insider" information and conducting our own research, we found that our scoring system exceeded the actual number of 10-8, 10-10 and even 10-7 rounds by ten to fifteen percent. The 10-8 round problem (and ultimate solution) should have been obvious. Fighters are currently rewarded with anywhere from 6 to 10 points for scoring a knockdown. The end-of-the-round scoring routine also deducts 1 point from the loser for each knockdown suffered during the round. By giving points and subtracting for the knockdown, we were, in effect, penalizing the downed fighter twice. In many cases, the "double whammy" resulted in 10-8 or 10-7 rounds. The 10-10 rounds occurred because the current scoring module was too lenient when scoring rounds in which the points scored by each fighter were within "x" points of each other. The "fix" to both problems were relatively simple. However, rather than stop with just readjusting the range of numbers for close rounds and eliminating the "double dipping" when a knockdown was scored, we have also rated almost 200 judges for their predilection to award 10-10 rounds and 10-8 rounds. Some judges, we've discovered, never scored a 10-10 round in over 300 rounds scored in a given year, for example.

FIGHT SCHEDULER: The current scheduler works fine as is and allows the user to handle many useful scenarios. Once again, though, we wanted to address the requests of numerous users and add more flexibility and ease-of-use to the Scheduler. We have done so by allowing the user to have the scheduler randomly schedule matches. You will now be able to select a fighter and have the computer randomly schedule him against "x" number of other fighters or simply schedule "x" number of fights in a given division. Options for including randomly schedule bouts in a fighter's record/history will also be available.
COMMENTARY: The "thorn" in the program's side has been the inability to find a happy medium between the actual fight and the color commentary. The latter wouldn't be an issue if it had ever worked the way it was intended. Conditional statements were to dictate how often and when certain comments were displayed in order to avoid redundancy and ambiguity. However, for some reason attempts to implement the conditions failed more often than they worked. All the commentary -- every single line -- has been pulled, put into an interactive database by .400 Software Studio's programmer Andreas Raht, and will be reworked before the release of Title Bout Championship Boxing.

NEW CATEGORIES: With the advent of the "manager" as an entity, numerous new categories will be appearing in the game. Fighter's will have additional personality categories added and the manager himself will be rated in numerous areas. Other existing categories will take on even more significance (like Intelligence) and the ability to "draw" fans will become paramount, in many cases becoming more important that talent when it comes to the promotional and financial aspects of the new modules addressing those issues. Roy Jones, for example, may well be the most talented fighter boxing today but he's never been a top draw. Arturo Gatti, on the other hand, has lost 5 of his last 10 fights and is line for several more million dollar pay-days and has been called "the best television fighter of all time."

MORE ON MANAGING: The Management/Financial module is coming into even better focus as the design nears completion. You will, as a manager, have "X" dollars as your starting bankroll and no fighters in your stable. You can recruit any fighter that is not already signed to a contract. However, there is no guarantee that the fighter will sign with you. You will create a contract to submit to the fighter with whom you are negotiating, deciding upon length of contract, signing bonus, "loss" clause, monthly allowance, your percentage of the fighter's purse, etc. The more you offer the fighter, the more your base chance of signing him increases; the tougher you negotiate and the less you offer, the smaller your chance to sign him. Of course, the higher the fighter's "Signing Rating" (Overall Rating plus Draw Rating), the more he'll expect and the tougher he'll be to sign. As your Manager Rating improves (based upon the success of the fighters in your stable), the higher your base percentage becomes and the more your recognition and reputation grow.
After you sign a fighter or stable of fighters, you'll have to find a promoter with whom to work in order to arrange matches for them. Then, you'll have to earn your money by training and promoting and keeping your charges under control.

RANKINGS: A completely new formula for calculating "Performance Points" has been devised. Not only will the points earned or lost be more realistic, it will dramaticly affect the ranking system. A crucial change will be that only a fighter's last 10 fights will be used to determine his ranking. Before, fighters with a lot of fights could gain an insurmmountable number of points. Too often, a fighter with a record of 30-10-3 would rank higher than a fighter 20-2. That will no longer occur.