Graphics

[Cap]

I'm pretty sure the beta team brought this subject up with Paul. I know it's been mentioned numerous times on this forum.

Cap

[Cap]

Originally Posted by Mark42661

I've always been in favor of a simple overhead view of the ring with little sprites representing the fighters and their ring location at any given moment. They don't have to be black or white or brown... they could just be red and blue, representing the corner they're fighting out of. That way we don't even have to worry about accurate skin colors and all of that.

In a way... and this is just my opinion... the new version fight graphics are almost a step back from 2.5. In 2.5 the fighters were at least somewhat generic looking. Now there is so much detail in the face (particulary of the white fighter) that it looks like a specific person. Hope that makes sense.

That reminds me. I was going to suggest to Paul that the bars in the Fight Screen be Red on the left and Blue on the right to represent the red and blue corners.

But I'm sure Aurelio could blur their features more. And if he just went to the B/W graphics as I suggested, you wouldn't need to worry about variations in skin tone.

Cap

[pisdpaul]

Originally Posted by Cap

That reminds me. I was going to suggest to Paul that the bars in the Fight Screen be Red on the left and Blue on the right to represent the red and blue corners.

But I'm sure Aurelio could blur their features more. And if he just went to the B/W graphics as I suggested, you wouldn't need to worry about variations in skin tone.

Cap

The "in fight" graphics have been dicussed at length, the short answer is I am aware of it and I am looking at different ways to improve them. The ring (and fighters) you see are rendered 3D models. The 3D ring does indeed have red and blue corners in the correct positions, you just can;t see them with the current camera pos.

[Work The Count]

Originally Posted by Infinity

Man, that brings back memories! Now I need to see if I can find an emulator that has that game....lol

I found an Emulator and the game!!

If the Devs will allow it, I will post it so that you guys can play a few matches in it to see what I am talking about.

If they don't want me to, I wont out of respect.. but.. I think it would be a good tool to use for helping develop TBCB further if they see it.

[Rob Morris]

Originally Posted by Mark42661

I've always been in favor of a simple overhead view of the ring with little sprites representing the fighters and their ring location at any given moment. They don't have to be black or white or brown... they could just be red and blue, representing the corner they're fighting out of. That way we don't even have to worry about accurate skin colors and all of that.

In a way... and this is just my opinion... the new version fight graphics are almost a step back from 2.5. In 2.5 the fighters were at least somewhat generic looking. Now there is so much detail in the face (particulary of the white fighter) that it looks like a specific person. Hope that makes sense.

Hi Mark, personally I think new graphics improve the game generally but its all down to personal taste, one man's meat is another man's poison and all that. I do agree with you on the detail of the white fighter though, a bit Klitschko-esque maybe?

[Cap]

Originally Posted by Work The Count

I found an Emulator and the game!!

If the Devs will allow it, I will post it so that you guys can play a few matches in it to see what I am talking about.

If they don't want me to, I wont out of respect.. but.. I think it would be a good tool to use for helping develop TBCB further if they see it.

Good luck with that.

Cap

[Work The Count]

Originally Posted by Cap

Good luck with that.

Cap

Well, my take is, if they feel threatened by a 23 year old game, then what does that say...

[Lee]

Originally Posted by Work The Count

Well, my take is, if they feel threatened by a 23 year old game, then what does that say...

If it is now freeware/abandonware I don't think it would be an issue to provide a link.

[Cap]

Seems to me that having colourful animations that dart about the screen is going to diminish the commentary. If the programmers wanted that they'd just copy Fight Night or whatever the arcade game is called.

What "animation" we have now for a text-based sim is almost perfect. Just needs to be converted to B/W to allow for two shades of grey so Aurelio doesn't have to create a hundred or more versions in colour.

Either that, or get rid of the fighters depicted all together, enlarge the commentary window and have the venue pic take up the remaining space.

Cap

[Lee]

I like the current animations, with the caveats that I want to see the following added.
1-See the fighters move into the ropes, corner, etc
2-Accurate skin colors

Apart from that I am happy with them, tighten up the punch/knockdown sequence a bit and maybe add a couple more animations.

[Work The Count]

Originally Posted by Cap

Seems to me that having colourful animations that dart about the screen is going to diminish the commentary. If the programmers wanted that they'd just copy Fight Night or whatever the arcade game is called.

What "animation" we have now for a text-based sim is almost perfect. Just needs to be converted to B/W to allow for two shades of grey so Aurelio doesn't have to create a hundred or more versions in colour.

Either that, or get rid of the fighters depicted all together, enlarge the commentary window and have the venue pic take up the remaining space.

Cap

Nah, the animations add to the experience, not diminsh it. The game back then was a direct representation of the board game, and the animations just played out what the cards said to do. So you didnt need lots of commentary. The animations werent a random arcade game, rather just a representation of who had "control", whether the "action card" determined whether or not the boxer in control landed, missed, clinched, had ring movemement, fouled, etc. based on their fighter card stats from the board game. I much prefered that because text commentary gets redundant. The animations gave you the feel and excitement of playing the board game. It was a literal translation of the board game onto a PC and captured it beautifully. It wasnt able to track stats and results like the TBCB of now, but for what it was supposed to do it was a 10 out of 10.

Im at work now, but Ill post the link to that game for everyone to take a look at when I get gome tonight. Its a great blast from the past!! And because it is literally the Avalon Hill board game made for the PC, it is still a viable game to play all these years later!

[Cap]

We'll have to agree to disagree.

Adding the full animation would make Lee's commentary redundant and you'd have EA Sports Fight Night, or whatever it's called. I don't think Paul and Aurelio are prepared to go that route or see sales suffer because people are suddenly expecting more of an arcade game. I believe the majority here are still looking forward to a career-based pro boxing simulation, which the card-and-dice game never was.


Cap

[Work The Count]

Originally Posted by Cap

We'll have to agree to disagree.

Adding the full animation would make Lee's commentary redundant and you'd have EA Sports Fight Night, or whatever it's called. I don't think Paul and Aurelio are prepared to go that route or see sales suffer because people are suddenly expecting more of an arcade game. I believe the majority here are still looking forward to a career-based pro boxing simulation, which the card-and-dice game never was.


Cap

Im either very bad at explaining what Im getting at, or you are missing my original point. Ill try to explain things in a different way when I get home.

[Cap]

Speaking of graphics, I only just noticed Paul's tribute to MMA in the locker room. Ha Ha!

We are not amused......

Cap

[Work The Count]

Ok, Im gonna try to explain this a little different. I guess its easy to explain in person, but hard to do with the written word.

Title Bout on the Commodore 64 was an exact replica of the Title Bout board game made by the Trunzo Brothers in the late 70's. The computer game came out in 1985 as a way to play the board game without physically turning over the "Action Cards" the board game supplied or having to manually check the charts included with the board game throughout play. Action cards were numbered 1-80 and determined several things such as which fighter gained control (CF: Control Factor), and what that fighter did once they had control (Punch Landed, Punch value (2,3,4, or 5 point punch or knockdown), Missed punch, Clinch, Ring Movement, Foul, etc.

The looked like this:

And the cards for each fighter that you would reference those numbers with looked like this:


Now when I say that Title Bout on the Commodore 64 had animated graphics, I don't mean they had animated graphics like you might see in Fight Night by EA Sports. What the graphics did was very simple: It simply showed you the result of what the "action card" from the board game determined was happening upon that flip of the "action card". So if that particular card determined that, Gerrie Coetzee gained control, he would start closing in on his opponent graphically on the computer screen. When he starts moving towards his opponent on the screen, that is the games way of telling you that Coetzee currently has control based on the # check from the "action card". Then the next "action card" (in the board game being represented) drawn by the computer would determine what Gerrie Coetzee would do with his control. Lets say the computer flips over the next "Action Card", and the number on it is 42. According to the chart on Gerrie Coetzee's boxer card, a 42 is a missed punch. So the computer graphic would then simply show a missed punch by Coetzee.

So all the graphics were doing was showing you the results of the "action cards" being flipped over by the computer board game in graphical form. It wasn't like you picked 2 boxers and some random animated boxing graphics took place for fits and giggles and then you had a winner at the end.

Title Bout on the Commodore 64 just played the board game. Nothing more, and nothing less. You could add fighters and edit existing fighters included with the game. But you couldn't save stats, records, do ranking systems, have trainers/cornermen, change venues, etc. It was simply the board game.

Now fast forward to 2013 with TBCB. Even 23 years later, the nuts and bolts of the game is STILL doing the exact same thing the Commodore 64 game does during the bout because it is still based on the old board game. It still is drawing "action cards" in the background and determining the outcomes based on the ratings on each boxers card. That hasn't changed. The difference is that now, with TBCB, you CAN save records, track stats, award belts, etc. which is phenomenal. However, with the graphics as they are now, they aren't doing nearly as good of a job relaying the outcome of the flipped "action cards" to the player because the fighters are just still picture frames not moving around the ring. Its not always easy to tell who has control (based on the control factors), exactly when a fighter is on the ropes, exactly when they are off the ropes, etc. I also think the drama of a knockdown has been taken away because you go from seeing a picture of 2 upright fighters, and then all the sudden you see a picture of a fighter down on the canvas, and THEN you read about it. Its kind of anti-climatic.

The commentary on the Commodore 64 game wasn't very deep, nor was it necessary. The graphics were showing you the result of the drawn "action cards" in perfect order. So you still felt like you were playing the board game. When you are playing the board game, you check #'s, refer to charts, and track everything yourself. There isn't commentary obviously, because you are playing a board game. You don't need it. You just need to figure out results according to the rules of the board game as you go along and act accordingly. The graphics were simply showing the results of that for you.

TBCB Is doing the exact same thing, it just doesn't do as good of a job of it as the Commodore 64 game did.

So if they could mix the board game feel of the old games graphical representations with the new features of TBCB, it would be out of this world excellent!

I hope that makes better sense.

[Work The Count]

So without further ado, here are the links you need to play "Title Bout" from the Commodore 64:

First, you need to download the Commodore 64 emulator from:
CCS64 - A Commodore 64 Emulator - By Per Håkan Sundell

Then, download the game from:
[CSDb] - Computer TitleBout +D by Laxity (2013)

Create a folder on your desktop and then unzip these files into that folder and enjoy!! if you have any questions or need any help, just ask.

[Thunder]

Originally Posted by Work The Count

Now fast forward to 2013 with TBCB. Even 23 years later, the nuts and bolts of the game is STILL doing the exact same thing the Commodore 64 game does during the bout because it is still based on the old board game. It still is drawing "action cards" in the background and determining the outcomes based on the ratings on each boxers card. That hasn't changed.

I would disagree with you on that, but I really want to say thanks for this.
That was very cool of you to take the time to post. I had great fun with a couple bouts already including Mel Turnbow KO4 Domingo D'Elia! It had to be the great corner decisions!

The cheezy graphics are great fun and what a reminder how clunky a DOS interface was.

One question: Do you know if there is a way to see the fighter ratings? I found how you can modify them, but it doesn't tell you the starting point on that screen.

Thanks again for this.

[pisdpaul]

Originally Posted by Cap

<snip...>
Just needs to be converted to B/W to allow for two shades of grey so Aurelio doesn't have to create a hundred or more versions in colour.
<snip...>

Hmm.... that would make a good cookie....

[pisdpaul]

Originally Posted by Lee

<snip...>
1-See the fighters move into the ropes, corner, etc
<snip...>

ooh... that would make a good cookie too...

[pisdpaul]

Originally Posted by Cap

Speaking of graphics, I only just noticed Paul's tribute to MMA in the locker room. Ha Ha!

We are not amused......

Cap

hahahaa, I don't think that was intentional. I for one did not notice the link... It was meant to represent a generic competition name! However I kinda like the nod to MMA...