Friday, February 27, 2004

Following the initial success of Title Bout Championship Boxing, OOTP has released a playable demo version of their outstanding boxing simulation. The demo version is a complete copy of the game with certain limitations:

• Save/Load functions have been disabled
• Import/Export functions have been disabled
• Only 10 bouts can be scheduled in the auto scheduler at one time
• Each fighter can be used in only five bouts

Additionally the demo version (or Trial Version) of Title Bout will run only ten days or thirty start-ups and play for only twenty hours maximum. Please note that because the trial version is a full version, anyone deciding to purchase the game – which can be done at any time by simply clicking on “Purchase” – will not have to download it again! All limitations will be removed automatically, once the boxing simulation has been bought.

Get ready to rumble, and download the demo now!

The patch to version 1.2 brought a lof of added features, changes and bug fixes. However, the latest version of Title Bout Championship Boxing is already 1.3. You'll find the version number in the lower center of the game's main screen. The step from 1.2 to 1.3 brought no new features except for the new button on the Game Options/Databases screen, which sets all active fighters to “Retired” and “Prime”. This also tries to adjust the fighters affected, using the inverted aging formula, useful for some gamers but not guaranteed to be accurate.

Other changes made in the 1.3 patch are mostly structural and/or organizational:

• The commentary database files are no longer in the database folders, but in the new “Commentary” folder.
• The template files are now moved to subfolders of the template folder. This has been done to enable multi-language support. We will be releasing a version which supports English, German and Spanish in the near future.
• Some fighter ratings have been edited or added to the fighters.dat. They will be published as single fighter files very soon. We recommend that those of you who have done any editing of your own, added fighters, etc. wait for the tbdx files that will be showing up in the next few days, rather than downloading this patch.

These changes have been made in the 1.2 patch:

• Added function to import TF2001 fighter data and history to the Game Options
• Added db.ini file to the databases
• Added "Years Offset" to Game Options
• Added more parameters to the rankings code, so that the rankings of the major organizations will be diverse
• The WBA, WBO, WBC, and IBF won't rank fighters who are champions in one of the rival organizations
• Added field "Currently used Career Stage" to fighter records for the Career Stages (now you can choose an individual career stage which shall be used as the default for each retired fighter. This will not be the case for active fighters, because you cannot adjust the career stage of active fighters)
• Added value "Get from Fighter record" to "Career Stage" drop-down in auto scheduler. There will be no need to select a specific career stage for the fighters in the auto scheduler. In the future this field will default to this new setting. The value which will be used will be the current career stage for active fighters, and the career stage chosen in the new field "Currently used Career Stage" for retired fighters.
• Added ring card girl pictures to those pictures displayed between the rounds. They will be used randomly.
• Replaced "generic" names of Referees, Announcers, Trainer and Cutman with "real" names. Instead of "Referee", the game will now use "Jay Referson" and so on.
• Fighter biography will be copied now when you copy a fighter record
• The unofficial scorer will take away a point for a foul now
• After adding a group from within the fighter record screen, the drop-downs will be re-loaded, and you can now add a new fighter to an empty group.
• Added function to export single fighter records and to import one of more fighter records
• Added function to export fighter data into XML files
• Added function to export fighter data into XML files and to open them automatically using the web browser for example to print them
• When the fighter database is exported to HTML files, a single file will be created for each fighter
• Added "Sticky Date" to all date fields
• Added filter for "Career Year" and "Fighter Group" to title/ranking screen
• Increased the chance that accidental head butts occur and that bouts are stopped due to them
• Added "Red Arrows" and links where they make any sense, to open record screens
• Changed wording of verdicts for Unanimous, Split and Majority Decisions to add suspense
• Made some changes to the commentary database
• Added score cards to the bout log HTML files
• Added a setting to determine whether the game asks for a date at startup
• Made changes to the setup program to fix a bug in the folder selection dialog
• The setup will no longer change settings in the config.ini file
• Debug info will no longer be written to output files except when using the parameter “debugmode”
• Added punches landed/missed/thrown totals to Post Fight Screen
• Added CSV Export
• Random announcers, referees, judges, trainer, cut men and venues in Create Fight Screen and in Auto Scheduler
• Random fight date in Auto Scheduler
• Added "Highest Performance Points Total" to the Top10 lists
• Implemented data from cubedrum's corrected fighter database
• Implemented revised scoring system
• Added more info to the pre-fight analysis HTML output
• Minor changes to the HTML output
• Fighter Biography and Venue History files are now in extra folders, not in the database folder
• Fixed: in the HTML output of the bouts the fighter's default condition has been printed instead of the actually used condition.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the fighter condition status "Fatigued!" from being displayed sometimes.
• Fixed a bug in the venues site rating edit control
• Fixed some ranges of the venues ratings Site Index, Price Index, Seating Capacity
• Fixed a bug in the "Import fighter from file" function which caused crashes sometimes
• Fixed a bug that caused the program to display "Missing Commentary Class" error messages after updating the commentary database files
• Fixed the "negative punch count" bug
• Fixed some spelling errors and minor bugs

In essence, Patch 1.3 (which contains the Trial Version) is basically unnecessary for those of you who have already downloaded Patch 1.2. However, if you have not downloaded 1.2, then the 1.3 patch is the latest and greatest and should be the one used! Download it here.

J.R. Morgan’s CornerWork website (www.cornerwork.com), dedicated to Title Bout Championship Boxing, is a work of art and the most comprehensive support site on the Internet. Morgan’s outstanding site is both professional in appearance and in content.
The site includes dozens of useful features, among them polls, fighter ratings, forums, useful downloads, articles, etc. If you haven’t visited Corner Work and own Title Bout, you have to get there soon – because, to paraphrase Dr. Evil from the Austin Power’s movie – Corner Work completes us!

That’s right! Ninety-seven new or revised fighter files are now available for your perusal. Add one or add them all via Title Bout Championship Boxing’s data exchange utility (tbdx files). Among the additions and changes, you’ll find the official Lennox Lewis retired ratings, revised George Chuvalo and Riddick Bowe ratings, and literally dozens of revision on current fighters. New fighters added include: heavyweight Luan Krasniqi, who recently defeated Sinan Simal San by MDec; hot welterweight Ishe Smith; and new strawweight WBC title holder, Eagle Akakura.

To import them, visit http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/tb/fighterdb/ and open the folder "2004_02_27". Download either single files or the file _all.zip, which contains all 97 files. In the future, we will add the new or revised fighters to the fighters.dat of the next patch or release version, and to a sub-folder in this web space named using the current date, and also to the folder "All_Fighters". If you're looking for the latest version of a certain fighter, you should browse that folder.


To import these files, do the following:

• Click on a file name in the browser and choose "Save"
• Save it to your harddisk, for example to the desktop. You may delete it after importing it into Title Bout Championship Boxing
• Start Title Bout Championship Boxing and open the Fighter Records screen
• Click on "Import File". The MS Windows File Open dialog will pop up
• Open the folder where you saved the downloaded file(s). Click on the file. To select multiple files, use the mouse together with the Shift or the Ctrl keys.
• Click on Open and the files will be loaded!

If you’re a boxing fan (and a movie fan), you’ll not want to miss the outstanding article on Australian fighters by boxing expert Shane McLeod; and our take on the latest boxing film, "Against the Ropes", complete with some stills from the film.
Open the article pages here.