2551 replies to this topic

[yesrushdt]

Thanks for posting K11.  Great day for new PG related media between this and the Sawgrass/Muirfield fly bys Perfect Parallel just uploaded.

[Kablammo11]

Saw them, but thanks for posting the links here (one would think somebody at PP could have had a similar idea...) Frankly, these videos look a bit like I was totally over-dramatizing and over-reacting when I stated here that shorelines needed special care in my "riparian situation" subplot. Sorry for being such a water-lilied fusspot, everybody... apparently, untreated hard straight lines are okay. Who knew?

[SouthStPaul]

K11,

I for one really appreciate your riparian efforts.  I think they absolutely enhance the realism and provide an additional level of biodiversity. 

Not sure of the nomenclature but perhaps PP could use a full time riparianist to augment their efforts.

SSP

[Kablammo11]

Thank you, SSP - I'm convinced that the in-house talent and skill of PP vastly surpasses anything I could ever come up with. We may just have different preferences or priorities. I just wish that when they - finally! - post videos depicting their work for promotional purposes, that they should select better examples with a higher level of detail and a more aesthetic professional and creative touch... They did have some very nice riparian work of Boston TPC, but instead went for a tired couple of the hopelessly overexposed "usual suspects"... 

 

But onwards now! This morning, I decided that my new waste areas deserved to stay. I proceeded to equip the front nine at Willows Heath with them. They are very helpful to fill the void between tee zones and fairways, I found out. Here they are busy adding a little something to the emptiness between first fairway and green and second tee zone and fairway:

 

 

Here on 3, they proudly demonstrate how apt they are a turning one particular side of a fairway into a no-go area:

 

 

And as I proceeded, I got bolder and started covering ever-larger chunks of landscape with my new waste areas. Now there a big 'un protecting the 4th green from players who dare going for the green in 2:

 

 

But sometimes they merely serve a cosmetic purpose, as here on the 229yds par 3 6th. Not in play at all from the tees, but still providing an extra bit of drama...

 

 

...while nevertheless doing their bit in the fight against low scores on the 7th: A 220 yds waste gully all the way up to the distant green, just to make slicers feel a tad queasy.

 

 

It's just one more element that needed adding, I'd say. Here on the 9th, left of image, it's almost unnoticeable. Yet it if weren't there, something would be somehow missing.

 

 

The back nine will be "wasted" by me tomorrow.

[Davefevs]

Love the second pic....looks like it's been there for ever, and the reason the course meanders in the direction it does.

[shimonko]

It just looks amazing! I'd just about buy prints of these for the wall.

 

I feel your waste bunkers are too wasted for bunkers though—they look great as natural, ungrassed areas on the course, but they've lost their sandy bunker nature, looking more earthy. D'ya know wat I mean? They're not invoking 'bunkerphobia'.

[Kablammo11]

I think I understand what you mean, shimonko. The term "bunker" is misleading for this particular element, I agree. That's why I started calling them "waste areas". I bestowed on them them the terrain physics attribute of "Earth", btw. I still feel they do have a slight, inherent fear factor and I would definitely not advise anyone to knock his golf ball into any one of them. But apart from affecting game play they also have an environmetal and visual role to play. And "looking amazing" (tyvm) is a quality in itself. 

 

Second day of earthworks on the Heath plot. I am pleased to report that as per now the "wasting" of the golf course has been completed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next item on my Willow Heath bucket list: Audio loops. No idea how long this'll take, gotta go and learn importing audio. You'll be hearing from me as I progress...

[IanD]

Awesome mate...

[highfade]

Looks great K11. 

 

Is it easier to do these areas as bunkers with CF or to just paint the the texture on outside the CF shapes?

[Kablammo11]

Easier to use the CF meshes, imo: You get to make a customized lip (the dark green ribbon, deep rough, in my case) which you can draw precisely (you can't do precision work with terrain brushes), you can lower the meshes into the ground from a raised lip to give an impression of terrain depression, plus the texture and shader of CF meshes are way more detailled than terrain textures and normal maps and look much better.

Not saying you can't get a similar effect without CF. Up to you.

[Keith]

Scrambled together a landscape in Unity today while trying to practice some tips K11 threw my way.  Figured this was as good a place to post these as any.  Very much a WIP..lots of planting and detail work still needed.  Don't think I'll attempt a mountain course in CF..their authenticity is tough for me to pull off in Unity so far.

 

 

[IanD]

Encouraging to see...! The direction you're heading is fine, and in time I'm sure you'll find ways to improve upon those areas needed.

[Kablammo11]

Mountains are a problem because

1. The terrain textures are projected onto them along a vertical line, so that the steeper the slope becomes, the more washed out the textures look. 
2. Real mountains are huge things compared to other features in a landscape. If your terrain measures 1500 by 1500 meters, that would leave you about enough room for one mountain covering your entire terrain. 

 

So I would recommend that if mountains you want, you make them considerably larger by a factor of 5 or 6 to what I see in your images, but also less steep. You only need to sculpt the visible half a mountain btw, if you place it near enough to the terrain border and locate its summit just inside it. Looking good!

[Kablammo11]

Passage of time: 40 days after the previous post.

 

There are good reasons why things have been quiet around the Course Forge - the entire Parallel Universe has shifted towards the Perfect Golf game these last few weeks and I - as well as many others - have been busy test-piloting the alpha builds. The game is coming along nicely. But slowly. A needs a lot more work.

But now that I was able to play (and enjoy) my own design in Perfect Golf, I slowly developed a sense of how the two components, the course designer and the game, came together. I learned how - and if at all - designs and intentions implemented in CF translated into the reality of the game. In short, I could now enter into a dialogue between game experience and course design.

 

For instance, the game gives us tour pro club lengths, meaning that right now we can play courses a bit like Mssrs Rory McIlroy and Nicky Fowler do, smack a long drive down the tiger line and being left with a 7 iron to reach a par 5 in two. Of course, that is at easy playing difficulty with all the helpers on, but still... that's not right! I like to whack it 330 and 340 y same as the next guy, but not on every hole and not without breaking a sweat. And yes, Mike has already posted that eventually players will be given the option to input their own shot distances.

Anyway, here on the 3rd hole, for example, my entire dogleg strategy, to lay up short and be safe or to cut off the corner and not be safe, was defeated by the club length offered by the game:

 

 

I placed the 150y distance marker to show the spot where an average driver usually would land in Perfect Golf. Add to that 15y of bounce and roll and this drive holds no terror. Time to build Willow Heath Mark 3 and to include a few countermeasures, protecting the hole against the Rorys and Nickys of tomorrow - accentuate doglegs, fortify the corners at drive distance and create fairway bottlenecks.

 

 

Now if you want to go long, you'll have to work a bit more. I also made the greens a little less bumpy and more receptive, since my own putting revealed a bit too many steep slopes and unfair pins. And finally, I removed a few trees, because trees are bad for performance and because less trees open space up a bit more:

 

 

On the par 5 4th I moved the entire green some 50 meters further back. It used to be where the line of the pine tree in the foreground bisects the fairway behind. Now it should force Rory and Nicky to at least reach for a long iron to reach - for normal people like me it would be a 3-shot hole.

 

 

Oh, and to those slightly familiar with the place who are missing a distant, geographic backdrop in the last image, yes: I deleted Mount Tara. It was a poor pun to begin with and it looked utterly dreadful and out of place in dynamic game weather, where the rest of the pano gets lost from view and the extra hill sticks out like a sore, swollen thumb.

It never stops.... 

Have a nice weekend!

[TigerTiger]

WOW!! I've just spent the last hour or so going through this thread and there is some amazing work!

I'm currently working on this.... Kudos if you guys can guess which course and possibly which hole

 

[pingzing]

just want to say thanks to everyone for posting your course projects here, seems to be a bit more action here and good to see some more members posting their  efforts,

awesome work k11, great eye for detail, thanks for the many  beautiful pictures you posted for us

so thank you guys for showing us what your up to, i am off to finish my next course in the other game  while i am waiting patiently for this one to evolve 

 

exciting and very interesting

 

 

[scottpussehl]

Awesome stuff guys!

[Kablammo11]

If you look further up on this page at previous pictures of Willow Heath, you surely must have thought to yourself: "This deep blue sky with playful, white wisps of clouds is annoying me a lot, looking so stupidly happy!" But you would not have said such a thing openly, because that would have been a bit rude.

Well, fret not: I, too, have suffered this insolent sunniness for too long and now constructed a new, overcast and dramatic sky for Willow Heath Mark III. 

Those among you who crave inanely tropic sky domes can always go to dynamic weather in the game and ask for it in the settings. All those who want to show the designer a bit of respect and go for original artwork, THIS is what you'll get!

 

[Richard]

Beautiful K11, absolutely beautiful. I'm very glad to see that there is some rain approaching, those willow trees really need it.

[Mike Jones]

 

Those among you who crave inanely tropic sky domes can always go to dynamic weather in the game and ask for it in the settings. All those who want to show the designer a bit of respect and go for original artwork, THIS is what you'll get!

 

 

Oh I dunno K11, the 'in game' dynamic time of day lighting and mist doesn't look so bad 

 

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