2551 replies to this topic

[Kablammo11]

Yes, that last image was my first encounter with art trouvé. It's is pleasing, intriguing and inspiring, I find, without me deserving any credit for any of this.

But now for some "art forcé": Latest and last video in the Black Swan series - watch and learn:

 

[NoPutt]

Totally Awesome K, love the Dogument, does he/she have a name?

Did I mention, I hope you get some Pot Bunkers, Pot Bunkers, Pot Bunkers.

[Kablammo11]

Thank you, NoPutt.

Why yes, the dog does have a name and this dogument is a virtual memorial for a real pet. 'nuff said.

[mcthommo]

K11,

this is looking very nice, shame you cant be bothered using pot bunkers

Can I be pedantic for a moment and suggest that this to me looks more like a clifftop course, a la Pebble Beach, Spyglass rather than a true links such as Royal St Georges, Hoylake or Muirfield- whatever it is, me likey vewy, vewy much.

p.s. just shot my best score so far 68 at WH and loving the subtleties of it very much

[Kablammo11]

mcthommo, you are not being pedantic, there indeed are strong clifftop features at the Swan. My design concept was "St. Andrews meets Torrey Pines". The layout itself, with multiple fairways and double greens, as well as the nature of the holes, is pure links golf. At least that's what I was going for. Still, fair point.

Let's just say that Mike, my course design Sith Lord, using a dangerously soft voice, wondered out aloud if I may perhaps turn my attention to something that was both  "Coastal" and "Rugged". No obligation, of course only if wanted... And since I knew better than to aggravate the man who can switch off my CF by remote control with one swift online removal of access privileges, I suddenly wanted to do that very badly. 

 

Thank you for playing Willow Heath. Myself, I sometimes feel I made it a tad too fair and easy - I smoothed out a lot of its former rough edges which, in hindsight, might have offered a bit of a tougher challenge. The Black Swan ought to turn out a bit fiercer - I still do not believe in making fictional courses ridiculously hard to play, though. 

[mcthommo]

K11- thank you for your response as not all individuals would have the intellect, gumption or manners to have taken my comments not as criticism as they most certainly were not but as observations  from someone who in the real world has played just about every single links course in Scotland and a number in England and Ireland and who just loves links golf.  In a previous life, I was a member (in every sense, no doubt!!) of the GBC community (Maggie- where are you, girl?!) and lost the will to live with the amount of stated "links" course that simply were not, designed by people who by and large don't either know or understand what constitutes a true links course compared to other similar types i.e. coastal or clifftop. 

That is not to say that I don't like a good clifftop/coastal course- one of my favourite ever courses that I had the pleasure of playing in real life was the simply amazing Kauri Cliffs in New Zealand- shot 78 gross on a flat calm sunny day and had to work my buns off to get that. Black Swan is looking to me to be in that high category and I for one am looking forward to getting my gnarled old hands on it sometime.

I would also like to state that Willow Heath is so far the best feeling and looking course currently available for the fact that the fairness/hardness call it what you will is bob on- good shots are rewarded, bad shots punished and more importantly, to get the best out of the round you have to think about how to play the hole rather than just take out the driver , smash it on every hole as they are either too long or no thinking needed about hole strategy.

Keep up the good work and we as a community are the better for having the likes of you along with the Dark Lord of the Sith himself, Darth Jones, keeping the project driving forwards

[Mike Jones]

Just watched the first video course walkthrough, very nice but it's missing some animated sheep waking the course, maybe goats would be more appropriate as sheep wouldn't handle the cliffs too well. 

 

On a more serious note re the double greens - even on the double greens such as St Andrews they tend not to place the flags too close to each other as it's dangerous IRL and slows down play and it can get a bit confusing especially as we don't have different coloured flags for front and back 9s. Perhaps separating the flags a little on those double greens would be better and will result in less virtual lawsuits!

[Kablammo11]

Fair point. I will redistribute the flagsticks easy-medium-difficult in order to make sure that each flag population can't ever be too close to their neighbours yet all together still occupy the entirety of the double greens. This in return will probably result in easy pins being in difficult locations and vice-versa, and the entire pin difficulty system could end up being a bit off - also I can't promise that close encounters can be avoided completely.

Virtual damage compensation verdicts from virtual complainants shall of course be honored by me, as I am willing to pay out lots of virtual bags full of virtual money to them.

 

Now then, those pot bunkers...hm? Not feeling any disturbance in the Force 'bout these, your Darkness...

[Kablammo11]

Just started relocating the pins. Here's the ideas:

 

 

Yellows are easy, blues are medium, reds are difficult. 1st green on the left, approaches coming in from 10 to 11 o'clock - 16th on the right, approaches from 2 to 3 o'clock. No matter which pin difficulty is selected, their positioning should keep them apart. Mostly.

And no, I'm not subserviently hurrying to lick the boot of my taskmaster, I'm just glad for every opportunity to bump this thread up the list. Someone has to keep CF alive in this Forum.

[Joe Habiger]

Why is there an option for all those pins placements? That's redicules...

 

The way your greens are more then 1 will be straight on a slope and that's not smart.

 

I'm not trying to start an argument but here we are playing a nice tournament, the tournament organizer selects easy pins for like a Thursday round. I have played many of practice rounds but since you have 6 pins for each difficulty how the heck am I suppose to know where the pin will be? 

 

Players in real life don't have to deal with this and neither should we and i'm speaking from a players point of view. Mike this needs to be changed asap..

[Kablammo11]

3 pins per difficulty, to be precise. This is a double green. 3 pins of 3 different difficulties per green.

I did check about slopes and placed each pin singlehandedly on mostly level ground. I don't just sprinkle flag sticks wherever I feel like and don't bother to make sure if they make any sense.

 

You are right, Joe: What if there is an online tournament and the computer is being told to select, say, medium pin locations - but each and every player gets one of the 3 available pins by random? This would fly in the face of fair competition and destroy the fundamental precept of a level playing field - players would in fact play different courses in the same tournament. Correct: That must not happen!

 

I agree that this state of affair ought to be settled asap. If in doubt, let the real life game serve as a guiding light - PG is very scrupulously modelled to mirror real life in every respect. So, how many potential pin locations are there usually on an averaged sized green at an average golf course? I don't know. Anybody?

[mcthommo]

www.usga.org/turf/articles/video/hole_locations.html

Don't know how to post as a linkety

[RobC]

I am Admin at The CGXTour for TW08 we replicate both Euro and US touurs playing the same courses they do each week. We had the same problem about setting pins so we came up with the idea of an A and B course both identical although for Majors and the like we have faster greens for the weekend sometimes, anyway each course then has just 2 pin settings Easy and Difficult, we could then gaurantee all players play the same pins in each of the 4 rounds.

Cheers RobC

[Joe Habiger]

Oh Ok I thought it was just a single green, course seems euro and folks have awfully large greens over there so I wasn't sure..lol, I still think in fairness to tours something has to be done because even 3 pins per difficulty is overboard. I still have no idea why 3 and not just one per difficulty..lol, again I am coming from a players perspective when playing tours. And from a designer perspective I want 1 pin per difficulty. I want the players to have fun and not have to overly think there way around the courses. You want challenge but if people are thinking to much and not having fun why even play this course again. If they have fun they will keep playing the course.

[Kablammo11]

I am Admin at The CGXTour for TW08 we replicate both Euro and US touurs playing the same courses they do each week. We had the same problem about setting pins so we came up with the idea of an A and B course both identical although for Majors and the like we have faster greens for the weekend sometimes, anyway each course then has just 2 pin settings Easy and Difficult, we could then gaurantee all players play the same pins in each of the 4 rounds.

Cheers RobC

 

 

Rob, your proposal is constructive, I'm not sniping at it or at you, but it sounds like a work-around that should not be required in the first place. 

 

Each pin set in CF, no matter which difficulty, is being assigned a name tag with a number, see image above. Would it really be asking too much of the game to randomly make a selection first (or let the tournament director specifically choose the ones he wants to) and then to store that specific pin information (together with all the other configs and weather settings) so that all players are guaranteed to play on identical pins? And even to offer practice rounds with the exact same pins for those who want to test-play them?

I'd even do you one better: Let players, if so inclined, somehow set their own flagsticks, store them as a script if they want, and share them with others if they wish. Usually it's the playing captain or a greenskeeper deciding on pin locations, not the course designer. This would require some sort of green preview of interactive green browser, and it sounds like a terrible lot of work. But it would be neat. 

 

Or, in the least, change the functionality so that the designer is asked to set Thu, Fri, Sat and Sun pins in CF - he would then not place them according to difficulty, as now, but to weekday and competition parameters - and he would only have to plant 4 of them on every green. Which would be more realistic, since usually pin locations are expected to collectively include all kinds, from easy to difficult, from left to right and from front to back within a single round. Also, this would ensure that all the players get to shoot at identical flags and are able to go on practise rounds.

(Yep, that is an official suggestion and feature request, overlords...)

 

(mcthommo, to post a link just click on the little chainlink icon in the top of the reply window and copy-paste the URL into the pop-dialogue)

 

 

Oh Ok I thought it was just a single green, course seems euro and folks have awfully large greens over there so I wasn't sure..lol, I still think in fairness to tours something has to be done because even 3 pins per difficulty is overboard. I still have no idea why 3 and not just one per difficulty..lol, again I am coming from a players perspective when playing tours. And from a designer perspective I want 1 pin per difficulty. I want the players to have fun and not have to overly think there way around the courses. You want challenge but if people are thinking to much and not having fun why even play this course again. If they have fun they will keep playing the course. 

 

 

Joe, even though slightly off-topic, this is a debate well worth having and I'd say it's one that is necessary to have right now. PG Admins, feel free to chime in, this really IS important.

I particularly do not agree with your opinion highlighted in blue above, but would not presume to know for sure "what players want". I do believe in mature and independent people deciding freely for themselves how much they want to think about something... Those who feel like performing some mental course management are as welcome as those who don't. With the former scoring a bit lower than the latter, perhaps.

[yesrushdt]

I particularly do not agree with your opinion highlighted in blue above, but would not presume to know for sure "what players want". I do believe in mature and independent people deciding freely for themselves how much they want to think about something... Those who feel like performing some mental course management are as welcome as those who don't. With the former scorer a bit lower than the latter, perhaps.

 

My feelings exactly.

[BladeUK]

Give each set of pins an A, B or C rating. So rather than setting 'Easy' pins you could select "Easy A" set of pins, or "Easy B" pins or even "Easy C" pins so everyone would play off the exact same pins.

 

Dave.

[Mike Jones]

We will have a 'custom' pin setting at some point which will allow a specific pin to be selected. We currently tend to have 3 pins on each green, easy - medium - difficult but we will be adding more in future once we have a tool in CF to make it easier to plant 'fair' pins. 3 is generally not enough because for example most golf tournaments have 4 rounds and therefore 4 different pin positions.

[highfade]

I would like the the designer to plant 2 or 3 sets of four pins representing day 1 to 4. So you can either select pin 1 to 4 for your 4 day tournament and at another time use pin 5 to 8.

[Joe Habiger]

I guess I just don't get it but I am an american, we generally don't build our greens to have 50 tiers on them so we don't need a bunch of pin locations. A slight side slope is just as hard as a hard breaking putt going down three tiers.