2551 replies to this topic

[Joe Habiger]

 

 

That's the landing area of the 1st green, a 475y par4 hole uphill.

1st hole, Very long par 4 and uphill to boot. OUCH, great way to make the player feel at home on his opening hole.................

[Kablammo11]

Well spotted, Joe. I usually design my 1st holes to be confidence builders or at least to not be overly cruel. This time around, I have decided to show all of you computer golfers some tough love. Well, not really love... but tough, yes! The 1st hole will set the mood:

Narrow fairways (the bottleneck between the fairway bunkers is 14y narrow - you better keep your drive a bit short to find the much more generous safe area. There always will be a bail-out space for percentage players, but obsessive long hitters will be punished.

Small greens (I have sinned in this regard in the past, now I must redeem myself), the sort where you better aim for the middle of it or you're in trouble, and where even finding the middle will be a challenge 

And overall length, this being the day and age of pro golfers smacking their drives 300+ yards. That means that Oasis Lodge will have 6 par 4's of 460y or more and 2 par 5's of 630y plus.

 

So here's what's it's going to be like. Never mind the colours, they're still all wrong. The new lighting controls in U5 have been designed by sadistic misanthropes who don't want anybody to understand what they mean - and that means that I have changing light issues that make it impossible to do some decent color matching atm...

 

 

 

Ain't going to be a pick-nick!

[Keith]

Looking really sweet so far K11.  Love the flow of the hole above.  Bit of a Doral vibe.

[Davefevs]

Looking good K11....agree with Doral comment, although those colours have a hint of one of the floodlit courses in Dubai. Good to be back on these forums, say hi to Tara!!

[Kablammo11]

Doral? Oh dear... Would you sheeple please stop being starstruck by those undeservedly over-exposed and not very imaginative PGA horrors? They are not held in such wrong esteem because they are any good, but because they forked out the most to be broadcast on the telly every year.

In matters of taste and judgment, kindly grow yourselves a backbone. Make it a strong one. (Here's a basic rule of thumb to start: If the masses like/love it, it's rubbish. Goes for movies, music, tv shows, interior design, garden design, fashion and architecture as well: Dare being eclectic!)

 

Yep, colours suck and the lighting in U5 has a mind of itself and varies between brightest day and late evening without me being able to do anything about it. It's an absolute nightmare to try and match colours.

[mcthommo]

gotta agree with you K11 on the whole- those  TPC of Sameville, Bores Bay, Yawnsville, all look exactly the bleedin' same- par 4 of 500 yards or more with greens the size of Wales, oooh, look, lots of water where it is not naturally possible for water to be there- yes, folks, it time for the 6th major of the year, the Narcolepsy Classic being played at the 8,750 yard par 70 TPC of Labotomy, sponsored by Met Life....Well, Jim, it's nice to see that the course is looking lovely and neon green at this time of the year

Give me a break... what about some nice old fashioned links courses (POT BUNKERS, Dang Nabit!) or heathland courses that there are hundreds of fine examples which are not set in the NA continent exclusively (of which there are some very nice ones to be fair)

Rant over- I hate Mondays.. shasshum, frasshum, rasshum, Rik Rasterdly

[Kablammo11]

[Kablammo11]

Deena, this is all there is at this stage - but there you go.

 

 

Everything might yet change, this first draft is concerned about nesting the layout into the ladscape: Lowest points around the central waterhole, highest around the edge, bowl shaped.

And about creating what I hope will be a good flow, a rhythmical and/or interesting sequence of challenges, hole per hole.

 

If you enlarge the picture, you will notice some fine grid lines: The slightly stronger ones are for 50y squares, the slightly weaker ones for 25y squares. If you want to play mind golf with this, the starting hole leads from the center to the north-west and the front nine loop ends with the 210y par 3 leading back towards the 1st tee. The back nine start on the other side of the water hole (there will be a bridge), leading east, then spiralling first right for 4 holes and back left for the next 3 until the 18th, 485y, with a second shot over water to the home green.

I have already changed the positions of the tee zones on the first two holes I built, something I like to do a lot while designing, to get a better idea about tee shot sceneries. Same goes for bunkers and dirt pits, which I like to add not in the preliminary stage but during building, once I get a real 3D feel for the hole and a measuring tape to boot in CF.

 

I completely share your obsession with geographic space. Me, too, on real life courses, always desperately needed to exactly know where I was and what is where. 

[Kablammo11]

So... The tee of the 18th at Oasis Lodge is in the far back, where the single palm tree stands on the hill top (I use palms to signal tees to myself). From there, it will be some 490y to the green in the front.

 

 

The fairway is running downhill - even if you manage to avoid the steep slope into the water down the right or the huuuuge sand hazard down the left, you will still end up on an uneven lie. If you hit the fairway, you can have a go at the green - if you don't, perhaps better lay up to the bail-out area at the bottom of the slope. Still 120y from there. The green offers no possibility to play it safe. You're either on it or in trouble. The slim ribbon of fairway surrounding it is treacherous... sloping down towards the drink.

If you are setting up a shot from 180 or so yards, there will be no room whatsoever - your final shot after a long round needs to be true and pure. After a long round, having been harassed by narrow fairways and puny greens, one last effort is required. It better be sublime.

[NoPutt]

Still looks like Doral.....J/K  K11, That type of treachery is not to be found

on this continent. I'd go for the green in two if I thought there was any chance

of Tara climbing that palm when I landed safe.

[Kablammo11]

Tara is very offended by your lewd up-skirt imaginings, Neal. She's a good girl, she is, a classy person altogether. Because you were talking so naughty, she now has started strangling kittens as well, which eats into my supplies. 

 

Now then, the 10th hole, seen from the back. A mere 440y uphill, with the usual bottleneck/dogleg predicament in driving distance from the back tees. In the background, the 320y 8th with a small peninsula green and the first bit of the fairway of the 9th, 570y par 5.

 

 

The 10th from behind the green.

In the distant background, from left to right: 18th green, 9th green, 1st hole, 8th hole (below bythe water), 2nd hole, 3rd tees

 

 

And even though the milk of human kindness does run through my veins, oh yes, the next one among you suggesting that this is like Doral will not only expose himself as a blithering buffoon by doing so but will also be punished with permanent demotion to my infamous "enemy for life" black list. 

[NoPutt]

Sorry Tara, that palm reminded me of a stripper pole and 

I let my imagination get the best of me as I would never

insinuate that you were anything but a good, classy, 

girl. Even so, those are some nice Coconuts.

 

Superb layout, love the curves and undulations,

the Course and Tara. 

[Kablammo11]

Well now, some long-time regular visitors of this thread may recall the agonising doubts I endured regarding the riparian situation back at Willow Heath (posts 568 to 589, pages 22/23 in this thread).

And today, the same spectre comes to haunt me once more - and behold his evil doing: Land sloping down into water without any regards for a shore where it transits from one into the other:

 

 

But this old challenge demands a new solution. Here at Oasis Lodge, nature is fake and artificial. This is my most infantile design, no doubt, where man rules supreme over nature, where his preposterous will forces matter into weird shapes, ornamental bunkers and unnatural slopes. So this shoreline has to be as artificially manicured and unrealistic as everything else. So I went and created a new shape and tested it out on a quiet patch a bit further away...

 

 

It's a CF bunker with a very steep fringe, reaching down very low. Here, this is the view of the same object below ground:

 

 

So, the plan was basically to create a huge bunker all around the water plane and use it's steep fringe to create a sharp and crisp shoreline. So I added this element to my design, it's the green line just near the water's edge (the purple line is a cutout shape to economize on polygons)...

 

 

...and with no little trepidation proceeded to calculate the mesh.

 

 

Well, it was a moderate success. Upon closer inspection...

 

 

...everything happened as planned, except that the original terrain peeked through a little bit. Using the CF button to lower the terrain did not result in lowering it (which was strange). Anyway, I ended up with a grey strip of original terrain spoiling my party. I could think of two ways of dealing with this. The first was to apply a texture to the terrain and paint over the grey bits:

 

 

I think this is what I'm going to go with for now. The second way is more radical: Manually lower the terrain below the calculated meshes until it stops interfering. The result is much more closer to what I want:

 

 

... so I will go for that in the end. Because I will lower the terrain only at the very end, now is too soon. There's one more thing I could but did not try: Raise the CF meshes higher (they are currently 15cm above the Unity terrain: If I raised them to 0.8 m or so this would work right away)

 

 

We can still argue about blend widths, colours and textures at this stage. This was just a test run, for me to find out if this process might be of use at all. Methinks it does.

Also, once we get pot bunkers with triplanar texture projection, this little trick might lead to a little bit easier and better-looking results. 

[NoPutt]

Sweet CF magic K11, I see the first applied texture in your

grey strip created the problem you were trying to avoid and

doesn't interact with the water, but your final attempt is spot on

and looks very man-made with no water interaction really needed.

Great Trick !!

[Richard]

K11, I've lost track on where CF is regarding 'pot bunkers'. Here is the U.S. we tend to call them 'sinkholes'.

 

 

Here's the link to the story, if anyone's interested.

 

http://www.foxnews.c...tcmp=latestnews

[Kablammo11]

[NoPutt]

Holy Sagebrush, that's magnificent K. 

Love the S.O.S. hole, dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot

[IanK]

K11, I've lost track on where CF is regarding 'pot bunkers'. Here is the U.S. we tend to call them 'sinkholes'.
 

 
Here's the link to the story, if anyone's interested.
 
http://www.foxnews.c...tcmp=latestnews

A course with imitation grass and sand! Are you sure it's not one of those 'pavement' paintings? ;-)