Title Bout to Fight Night Conversion Project

[G-Force]

I have been working over the past month or so on creating a system to convert Title Bout fighter ratings to the Fight Night Champion video game, which is easily the best graphical representation of the sport ever done, though the game is 10 years old.


There has been lots of testing and re-testing, but I am feeling like I am close to something that works, at least as best as possible within the confines of the game.


One-off fights are good, and seeing things go as I want in one-fight scenarios is great and has led to lots of progress. Now the hard part begins.

I have between 20-25 fighters per weight class set up to evaluate (for now). I have most of their base ratings developed, now comes the tweaking. To tweak them, I need more head to head matchups.

So here's the plan: I'm going to put together fighter "pods" of 6 in a weight class at a time.

1. Run 100 sims in Title Bout. Results that occur at least 20% of the time will be considered an "acceptable" result to occur in Fight Night.
2. Each fighter in the pod will fight each other fighter in the pod once in Fight Night.
3. Both fighters will get points for a result in line with the Title Bout simulations. The top result is "Ideal" and gets 10 accuracy points. The next acceptable result is worth 9 points if it happened within 5 times of the ideal result in the Title Bout sims, 7 points if it happened more than 5 times fewer than the ideal. The next acceptable result is worth 5 points if it happened within 10 times of the Ideal result, 3 points if it happened more than 10 times fewer than the ideal. A result in Fight Night that occurred less than 20% of the time in Title Bout gets both fighters 0 points. Ideal results also get bonus points as follows: If a KO is the same round as the average stoppage round in Title Bout, it's 3 bonus points. If it's within 1 round, it's 1 bonus point. An ideal decision that matches the type of decision in Title Bout (usually unanimous) also gets 1 bonus point.
4. After all pod fights are over, a fighter will have a score I'll call a "Confidence" score - as in the confidence I have this fighter is rated correctly. This is the percentage of the 50 "Ideal" points that could have been attained that a fighter got. A score of 70% is passing and will be good enough for me to put a first version out there (obviously to be tweaked over time). A score of 100% of course is full confidence the fighter is rated appropriately.
   
5. If less than 3 fighters in a pod pass, the whole pod will be restarted and adjustments made as needed. After all, if more than half the fighters in the pod need to be adjusted, I should probably be running everyone through against everyone else again. But if, say, 4 fighters pass and 2 fail, those 2 will just be entered into a different pod to undergo the process again.
   
   The hope is that doing these pods gives me a better idea of how the fighters are really built instead of just getting the "right" result in one fight against one opponent. And, the more of these pods I do, the more I'll see "hey, my formulas seem to be missing the mark mostly on aggressiveness or whatever" which will make fixes quicker and easier the more tests I run.
   
   More info than you probably needed, but I'm loving working on this and am very hopeful of the end result.
   
   So, the first pod of guys I'm working on...6 heavyweights!
   
   Mike Tyson, Riddick Bowe, George Foreman, Lennox Lewis, Max Schmeling and Joe Frazier.
   
   GH
   

[Tomato Can]

Very excited about this my friend. I have been following your progress on some of the other gaming sites. I have been playing this original version of TBCB since it's inception. I still play it and have a real time ten year long Universe going from 1880 to now in 1970. If I can do anything to help you along this journey please give me a hollar.

Blessings!

[Waltercito]

That sounds like a great idea. I played FNC back in the days, it was a good game.

[G-Force]

Thanks guys. So my first batch of heavyweights went well...all 6 got above the 70% confidence threshold, with all topping 80% except George Foreman. So I'll run Foreman through against more guys once I have other pods done.



The first middleweight pod went 4 of 6. Stanley Ketchel and Gennadiy Golovkin need more work and Harry Greb passed with just a 72, so he'll be watched the more guys I do and will certainly get adjusted with more reps. Hagler, Monzon and Nunn are above 85%.


Going to cycle through other weight classes and then start Pod 2 in each class and so on and so forth. Ketchel and Golovkin will be re-entered into the second pod of middleweights.

GH

[Tomato Can]

Excellent Work my friend!!

[G-Force]

Possibly the most excited I've been about a project development! Forgive the ramble ahead



As mentioned on here, I've been working on a method to convert Title Bout fighter ratings into fighters for Fight Night Champion! Been at this for about two months now. And I've been really pleased overall.


But without a doubt, this is harder than any other roster work I've done, and I've done rosters for games, mostly baseball, for more than 20 years. Because there really aren't stats to go by like there are in other sports. I can create baseball formulas that make any player perform like their real life counterpart. Boxing is different! Especially in a visual version, you need a fighter to act like the fighter, or it's a waste.


My plan was always to use my formulas to set the framework of the fighter, the base "ratings" with the proper results of who beats who, etc., in version 1, then address style in V2.


But I decided to start poking around more on style stuff, particularly focused on punch output. If you have a guy who throws 65 punches a round in real life and I turn him out throwing 35, the fight result being right doesn't matter because it won't FEEL right.


And so I started working with CompuBox numbers. I created a dummy "Joe Average" fighter to run guys against, and started playing with their aggressiveness and punch frequency ratings a bit to try and get them representing themselves in better fashion.


And, in very early returns, this looks REALLY good


I'm a bit sick of watching Meldrick Taylor and Wilfred Benitez at this point but they're my test subjects. There's not a LOT of punch stats available on them, but there's enough to work with. Before 1985 there are really on data compiled for big fights, and not all. So I'll have to work a little harder on those guys. But I digress.


Below is a chart for Taylor and Benitez. On the left are data from three fights for Taylor and two for Benitez (the only two they had for him, but his two best known, vs Leonard and vs Duran). You can see the averages of that data next to the left columns. On the right are the results of three three-round sims in Fight Night Champion.



Fighter stats can vary greatly from fight to fight. For example, Timothy Bradley's three chosen fights, his punches per round range from 43 to 62 to 89!


So I set my allowance at 20% to be acceptable, meaning punches thrown, jabs thrown, power punches thrown, punch landed % and punches landed against % need to fall within 20% in the sim of their real-life range. I'll settle for 4 of 5 if I have to, but ideally I obviously want 5 of 5.


Attached is chart of results for Benitez and Taylor! Both guys came in within range for ALL 5 categories!


I've now decided to flip the script and focus on style FIRST, then work the other ratings around that. My formulas generate a range for the key ratings anyway, so adjusting within those ranges will be fairly easy (famous last words). But having fighters perform as they really do/did is essential to get right, and I now have a far greater belief I can do that accurately!


I'll post a full Benitez/Taylor fight on my YouTube channel, probably tomorrow, so people can finally see a full result of this project rather than a still photos or 30-second clips.

GH

[G-Force]

Newly posted on the Legends Sports Universe YouTube channel, the first posted test fight as part of my Title Bout to Fight Night Champion conversion project: Wilfred Benitez vs Meldrick Taylor.


The video is about a half hour. I intended to announce the fight and talk about the project a little bit during that, but I ended up predominantly talking about the project as this is the first video I did about the project.

I'll be posting more fights going forward. But this gives a pretty good overview of the project, what I'm trying to achieve with it and where it's heading, while also allowing you a first glimpse at the actual result - or at least a hint of what the final result will look like!

Let's get ready to rumble!

https://youtu.be/NEWtWK6iffY

[G-Force]

EA Sports stopped supporting the server for the boxer share part of Fight Night Champion a couple of months ago, so this project regrettably died.

I am involved in rating fighters for the upcoming ESports Boxing Club game, but that game doesn't even have a release date yet so I won't go putting stuff on the board here until at least that point.

Hope all is well!

GH

[Cap]

Well, at least you had fun building your universe.

I don't expect to see a new boxing game worth buying for a long time. I think the expense of producing a good sim, even one like Title Bout, can't be compensated by projected revenue. The big guys just aren't interested in niche sports, if they were, OOTP would've held on to Title Bout and upgraded the heck out of it rather than sell it to some nebbish.

Cap

[rudel.dietrich]

Boxing manager for IOS is a good manager sim and perhaps the best boxing game currently out. It is sort of what I hoped TBCB would turn into.
TBCB has a better boxing engine. Boxing manager is better than everything else and your matches actually have context without you having to do all the work yourself.
And it keeps getting updates.

And there is talk of a PC version Kickstarter being launched at some point.

https://theboxingmanagergame.com/

[Cap]

Good for younger crowd who play games on small screen. The fact it doesn't use real fighters would get boring after a while.

Title Bout could use a few tweaks like a "Fighter Suspended" option and an option to schedule future bouts. The whole building up gyms and 'buying equipment' ideas have no appeal for me.

Cap

[Tomato Can]

Originally Posted by Cap

Good for younger crowd who play games on small screen. The fact it doesn't use real fighters would get boring after a while.

Title Bout could use a few tweaks like a "Fighter Suspended" option and an option to schedule future bouts. The whole building up gyms and 'buying equipment' ideas have no appeal for me.

Cap

Totally agree, Cap. I kind of enjoy Fictional fighters but definitely do not want to have to purchase better Boxing Gloves to improve my fighter's skill level. hehehehehehehehe