MikeJ's 3DGolfdesign

More B&W fun

2009-06-19T14:06:00.003+02:00

Here's another view from Pilgrim Trails - this time from the 2nd tee. I like colour as much as the next guy but there is something so cool about a B&W photo.

Pilgrim in black and white

2009-06-17T13:39:00.002+02:00

Lindsay Addie sent me a pic of my course that he had snapped and done some ps work on. I added a little more shadow depth, a new sky and lightsource and here is the result.

Pretty cool!

It's a wrap

2009-06-05T14:28:00.003+02:00

Pilgrim Trails is done, it's completed, it's no longer a 'work in progress', it is finished, realised, 'put to bed' and concluded!

I could post a bunch more pics but I'll save that for tomorrow.

I've had a lot of fun designing and creating this course and while it's fun to build re-creations of courses or work on vizualization projects, there is really nothing like designing your own course from start to finish. Did I mention it was finished?

The course gave me a chance, to revamp my graphics and technique set and also to experiment with my own ideas on golf course architecture. The course is wide open in many places with the ideal lines from the tee varying, depending on conditions and from which tees and pins you are playing on any given day.
One of the key features of the course is the ability to recover from a bad shot with an amazing recovery shot (skills and talent permitting!). I think golf is much more exciting when you are given the opportunity to do this although you may find yourself in a few areas where you just have to take your medicine and get the ball back in play if you screw up. Thats golf, but until you know the course, you'll never be quite sure where the 'no go' areas are, as they're less obvious than on many courses.

As you can see from the previous pics of the course, it has a rustic, natural look and feel to it so you won't be inundated with signs, bins ball washers etc as you play your way through the natural landscape. Courses, in real life, do have to make themselves pay and so you will see a few holiday cottages nestling amongst the trees here and there as you play your way around.
Oh what I wouldn't give to live in a cottage such as the ones near to the 7th green so I could wander down to the green on a long summers evening, wedge in hand, and chip and putt until the sun went down.

Pilgrim Trails is due to be played as part of the Online World Golf Tour http://www.apcd-courses.com/
next week. The tournament will give me a chance to test the course under competitive conditions as a hundred people battle their way around it. May the best golfer win!

The course will receive a general public release on the Monday following the tournament.

Some green area pics

2009-05-15T19:06:00.006+02:00

Here are a few pictures of the green areas showing some of the planting and texture blending to try and create an ultra realistic effect.

Pilgrim Trails is about to go 'beta' with only minor tweaks and fixes left to do along with the addition of some 'hole planner' style previews. Many thanks to the testers so far who have provided great feedback on everything from textures, to green slopes, pin positions, tee locations, and design improvement thoughts. Great job so far guys!

Pilgrim clubhouse view

2009-05-03T12:09:00.003+02:00

The course is currently in alpha testing and Rob miller is making some 3d houses to fit into the course while I take notes from the testers.

Here's a view of the clubhouse as you're playing the par 5, 9th hole.

Pilgrim update

2009-04-22T01:16:00.002+02:00

As you may have gathered, I haven't been able to work on the course file for a few weeks due to Pat Auge making some very nice 3d stuff for me in his spare time. There is now a lovely clubhouse and even a halfway house for weary travellers to sit down, comtemplate their misfortunes and then set out on their quest for redemption on the back 9!

I've also been working on a couple of real life projects which have been keeping me busy too. One of the viz projects I'm working on has lush, sub tropical surroundings with palm trees and dense undergrowth all over the place. It's hard to imagine a golf site more different from the likes of the Pilgrim course but that's one of the great things about golf in that it has endless variety and that continues through into my work too.

Anyway, I'll soon be set to resume progress on Pilgrim and as before I'll keep this blog updated with work in progress news, pictures and information.

Early clubhouse pic

2009-03-26T21:37:00.003+01:00

Pat sent me an early pic of the clubhouse today. Still lots to do but we've been working on the textures together and I think it's looking great so far.

Here's the pic:

I'll update the blog when there are more pics of the CH and various other objects around the course.

Building construction underway

2009-03-19T19:14:00.003+01:00

Pat now has the Pilgrim Trails file and is busy making some cool 3d buildings for it. When I get the course file back I'll post a few pics of them along with more of the course as it continues to be fine tuned.

Bunker edges and shaping

2009-03-12T00:02:00.006+01:00

Here's a close up picture of the bunker edges and styling on the hole 9 green complex. It highlights some of the texturing and virtual 'shaping'.

Although people generally refer to the apcd as C.A.D. (computer aided design) software. There's nothing 'aided' about the design at all! To me, that acronym conjures up a picture of the computer doing some advanced technological maneuvers in order to create a good looking and realistic rendering of a bunker or some such aspect of the course. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on which way you look at it, that's simply not the case.

It would be akin to giving credit to the digging machine manned my a real life 'shaper' as helping to design a bunker on a real course. To the shaper on a real course, the mechanical digger is just a tool. To an artist, the pencil and brush are his tools, the computer is my tool which I used to create something from my imagination. Like any other tool, it takes practice - lots and lots of practice to get the hang of it. It helps to be a student of golf course architecture too!

More Pilgrim Trails

2009-03-10T14:34:00.006+01:00

Here are a few more images as fine tuning continues:

Below is the green complex of the testing par4, 10th hole. The fairway is split into two with the tighter and more risk laden left route offering a much straighter line into the green.

If you take the safer route down the right side from the tee, you will have to deal with a bad angle of approach and a very tricky shot to get close to the flag.

The 11th tee area, note the bunker next to the tee which wraps around from the back of the previous hole's green. It's a chilling reminder that no less than 7 bunkers lie in wait on this hole should your long game desert you. It's a par 5 though, so there is always the opportunity for an eagle to get your score back on track.

Below is the green which sits close to a pond, seen here separating the 'B' nine from the 'C' nine. You can see a green and bunkers from the other nine hole loop across the pond.

The 12 hole is one of the more difficult greens to master. It's inspired by the 14th Green at Augusta national and pitches and rolls this way and that.

Legend has it that after a soul destroying 4 putt, a frustrated golfer scaled the rock outcrop that you can see here and jumped to his doom.
On completing their round his playing partners complained that the delay had done nothing for their games over the closing few holes.

The green at the short par 3, 14th hole is surrounded by trouble.

The 17th hole is a par 3 with an unusually long green. Depending on which tee and pin position

you are playing to, the hole can require anything from a short iron to a wood.

Course pics

2009-03-08T23:10:00.012+01:00

As promised, here are some work in progress pics of Pilgrim Trails. I think even if I released it right now it would probably be the best looking course I'd created and the good news is, it will only get better! Playability and fun are the major factors now being worked on in testing. Moving lots of pins tweaking green slopes etc. This is the most fun part for the designer too as he gets to see his hard work come to fruition.

You can view larger version of the pics below by clicking on them.

Shoot me now because If I live to be 110, I don't think I'll be able to improve on this pic.
Hole one is a medium/long par 4 up a slight gradient. The front of the green is open, allowing you to run the ball up onto it even if you have missed the fairway. The front right positions are the trickiest as this bunker lies in wait if you slip up.

If you hit into position 'A' from the tee on hole 5, this is the view you'll have. This green is devilishly difficult and is probably the trickiest on the course.

This is a close up of the green, as you can see the front fall off is severe and you cannot afford to be short. There is a higher tier off to the right where some of the more difficult pins are set. Shouldn't be too hard to get close as all you have to do is pick the correct club in the swirling wind, carry over the canyon of a bunker to the elevated green, and then spin the ball to a stop before you topple off the back into another bunker - no sweat. Thankfully, some pin positions are easier! This green is loosely modelled on the 2nd hole at Wentworth (Burma Road course) I know first hand the amount of trouble you can get into on that little hole.

Below is the view from the tee at the stroke 1 hole, number 6. This tough par 4 slides around the corner to the right and your tee shot must do the same. The a golf club entry road lies to the left so don't double cross yourself or you'll be out of bounds. The good news is that it's a nice big wide fairway to aim at. It's hard to miss it....honest.

Below is a view from a mid tee on the par 3, 7th hole. It's only a short iron from here so perhaps a chance to make up lost ground with a birdie is on the cards. The big waste bunker looks more fearsome than it actually is.

A closer look of the green, with the worn pathway leading through the trees towards the next tee.

I have a bunch more pics of the back 9, that I'll post tomorrow - stay tuned

Phase 1 approaching alpha testing

2009-03-08T15:38:00.004+01:00

I've been quite busy this last few days getting the course ready for alpha testing . At this stage, the first phase of 18 holes will be playable, planted and most of the major textures and seam blends mapped. Bunkers are now fully mapped with a minimum of 6 multiples, log tees are placed, mapped and shadowed. There are 4 tee options on each hole to add a bit of variety to the play and so far in private testing, the different hole lengths have proved successful in bringing different opportunities and hazards into play on each hole.

The course has had the 'first pass' of planting done but it needs refining with tree clone removal, and improved grass and bushes etc. All 18 pins are planted at their correct difficulty settings although testing and tweaking of these will be ongoing throughout the whole test process.
I dropped a 'work in progress' panorama as a course backdrop for the time being. I like it because it offers glimpses of the distant terrain beyond the course limits which really makes the course 'fit' and is exactly the look I was hoping for. Daniel has kindly offered to make me a full panorama for the course when the time comes and although I'm pleased with this one for the time being, maybe Dan will be able to come up with something even better or tweak this one for a better fit.

Things that will need to be done between alpha and beta testing include the majority of the 3d structures such as clubhouse, housing, shelters, bridge, and some smaller stuff like drinking wells. Pat Auge has stepped in to create these, and there is no-one better. Also, there needs to be some fine tuning of the textures, course sounds. plantings, the addition of things like worn spots, the 'de-tiling' of fairways and rough areas,

So far so good, the course is proving a blast to play with some friends who have had access the playable file, although some lame accusations about my 'local' knowledge giving me an unfair advantage have surfaced as I seem to keep winning the matches haha :)

I'll go into game and post a few screenshots later today.

On golf paintings...

2009-03-05T01:06:00.002+01:00

Just while I wait for my course file to save, I thought I'd post a few notes about some of my favourite golf artists.

I own a book called Hallowed Ground which contains wonderful paintings of golf courses from around the world. They're done by Linda Hartough of whom I'm a big fan.

http://www.hartough.com/

Unless you're on your way to your second million you might want to skip buying her originals, they often go for several hundred thousand dollars but she has some prints for sale and you could always buy the book which contains many of them. The composition of her paintings and her flair for capturing the essence of a golf hole are unsurpassed. Check her site out.

Graeme Baxter is another amazing painter with a keen eye for detail. I was lucky enough to meet him several years ago at the British Open and he was kind enough to discuss some of the techniques he uses to create his works of art.

http://www.baxterprints.com/

Michael Miller takes a different approach to his paintings preferred by many people. Although I do like his paintings I prefer the detail and technique of the above painters.
When I look at a golf painting I want to feel like I could jump in and play the hole and although Mr Millers paintings are wonderful in their own right, somehow I never get that feeling when I look at them. Still, he produces some wonderful work and his book is very, very good with some superb paintings and very informative text by Geoff Shackelford

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Golf-Design-Michael-Miller/dp/1886947309

Birds, insects and bugs!

2009-03-04T05:54:00.005+01:00

A while back I posted on the forums at both Links corner and at apcd-courses to see if I could find a sound expert to help me with a 'global' sound that would play throughout the course. I lack the know how and software to manipulate the .wav files the way I wanted them.

Chad and Grooch stepped up and mixed me a few wav files to try. I don't want the birds and insects to drive people mad so the idea is that they will be muted but still give the impression of being outside surrounded by nature in all it's glory. I know some people have their ambient sounds turned off due to some of them being overly repetitive and downright annoying.

First impression on listening to these wav files is that they sound great and it's just a matter of trying to decide which one is best. I will of course be adding various stand alone sounds as well throughout the course.

Talking about being surrounded by nature - I did discover a very annoying 'bug' which took me the best part of a day to isolate and fix. When looking in one particular direction on one particular hole I was experiencing a crash to desktop - NOT GOOD!

I retraced my steps to try and find out which backup was the last one without the problem and then I had to go through each subsequent file step by step taking note of all the alterations I'd made. I finally traced the crash down to one of two problems, a seam blend on a large complicated bunker and a few path mappings around the clubhouse area where some of the paths join and intermix. I redid the seam on the bunker and simplified some of the path joins and the crash went away... SPLAT - another bug bites the dust!

It just shows the value of backup files though. It always amazes me when I hear people sometimes don't bother backing up their files and simply just save their hard work to the same file name over and over. It's only a matter of time before you either lose all their work with a corrupt file or they develop a bug in the course that they can't trace or fix. Always use multiple backups and always save your file to a different name each time. I've used this system for many years and it works well and makes it much easier to trace problems as they may arise.

The first 18 holes on the resort is now in what I would call 'pre-alpha' stage. The course itself is fully playable and for the most part textured and planted. The bunkers are being constructed with 4 texture path mappings per bunker and 6 multiples. The more complicated ones have more than that so it's quite time consuming to map them all. I would estimate that 80% of the bunkers are now fully mapped and all but one or two fairways have the basic mappings and seam blends in place. I'll be using more blends in the fairways and rough to break up any tiling and add some irregularity to the overall look. Old Sandwich on which the course 'look' is based, is very much sand based and fairly dry in areas. Therefore the mown grass tends to have a weathered look to it which looks very natural. I'm attempting to recreate that look and so far, so good, I'm enjoying the way the course is coming along.

As the complex will have 4 loops of nine when fully constructed you can see some of the various holes from other loops as you play the course. On the outskirts of loop 'B', you will be able to see many holes from loop 'C' and so I've been designing and constructing these too. Here's a pic from the scenic downhill par 3, 8th hole from loop 'C' This won't be full 'playable' until I release the future stages of the complex which will include the other 9 hole loops and the practice facility.

Rendering times are still good with the longest render time being approx 6 second from the 10th tee. Most of the other holes are rendering in 2 - 4 seconds - pretty good considering the amount of detail on the course

Rocks, fringes, fairways......

2009-02-28T02:06:00.006+01:00

Here's a pic from hole 12. There is a large area of exposed rock in the background on this picture as you can see. It's not in play, as it's 100 yards from the green, but it does make an interesting backdrop to the hole.

Just a quick note on texture properties. The only textures that will be changed from default properties are the fringe and the green runoff areas. These will play as normal when you hit from them but the ball will roll more freely through these areas, much as it would in real life as I have instructed the greenskeeper to keep this turf mown short to allow for more variety of recovery shots. :) Bring on the 'Texas Wedge'!

Fairways will vary in width from one hole to the next. I find courses where the fairways are constantly cut to 25-30yds width, extremely boring. Some holes just lend themselves to wider fairways so that there can be more options to play into the green from various angles.
Some of these extra wide fairways have internal bunkering to you can't just blast away, you have to think out your strategy before you hit. That's not to say that you will have bunkers down the centre of all the fairways! I think there are currently two or three holes with internal fairway bunkering.
Some holes will have much narrower fairways but these holes are generally shorter ones where accuracy is at a premium. Variety is everything.

The native grass areas you see on some of the pictures, don't often encroach too close to play. Even on the holes with generous fairways, you will have 10 to 15 yards of semi rough before you hit the 'deep stuff'. No-one enjoys constantly hacking the ball out of deep grass simply to get it back into play, so with these generous short rough areas, you will have the chance to play a spectacular recovery shot after an errant drive.
There are a couple of small lakes on the back 9 but again these are not right on the edge of play. I've made several courses in the past, where many of the holes were 'all or nothing' types over water etc. While it's ok to have this type of hole from time to time, I've found that you CAN overdo it!
Much of the fun in golf is skillfully recovering from a mistake. Holes that don't allow you to do that, can sap the enjoyment from a course.

Of golf and golf games

2009-02-25T14:38:00.007+01:00

I was googling around earlier trying to find some reviews of the TW 08 game. I recently bought the game for the PC picking it up in a supermarket 'bargain bucket' for 9 Euros. As you may know from reading my earlier blogs, my habit of starting in the middle of things and working back towards the start often causes me to buy a game and then go searching for reviews of it - backwards I know! Is there a cure?

More about the reviews in a moment, but first, initial impressions on loading up the game for the first time. I spent about an hour creating my character which is like a game in itself, and you know what? -it's not easy to make something that doesn't look like its just come out of the 'orc factory' in Lord of the Rings!
The shapes and sizes you can make of all your composite bodyparts has to been seen to be believed. Anyway, after a bit of fiddling, I finally had something vaguely humanoid to play with and headed out to the course.

I was disappointed.

This game seems to have got gradually worse since it first went '3d' back in 2002 . I haven't really played around with it enough to do it justice so in the interests of fair play, I will give it another go later and report back. I have however played various incarnations of EA's game, 2002, 2003, 2004,2006, and now 2008 so the TW games are not new to me. Anyway back to those reviews I found.
It's interesting that the one that caught my eye was referring to the TW series not as a golf simulator but as a simulation of watching the golf on TV.
This guy had hit the nail on the head right there, and that's why more than any other reason I think, the large majority of Links players never really moved on to the TW series. It's not a case of misplaced loyalty, it's simply that you really don't feel like you're playing golf in TW. Instead your controlling a TV telecast with yourself as the star.

I'm sure this approach was taken because this is the main target market, people who have seen Tiger Woods on TV and want to pretend to be him. It is NOT, however, a golf sim.
In the many comments posted below the review, a LOT of people bemoaned the fact that Links isn't made anymore and called it 'a true golf sim' It's missed by many although they may not know that Links is still being constantly upgraded by enthusiasts.

EA makes the TW golf games pretty much each and every year - they have obviously paid Tiger a small fortune(or perhaps a large one even!) to use his name and likeness. Their marketing budget is huge and they have a large stable of sports games to support and develop. One of their marketing slogans is "if it's in the game, it's in the game!" More accurately it should be "if it's on TV, it's in the game!" They have to sell massive quantities of the game and so cross platforming onto the xbox360, ps3, Wii, is essential for them. I think they have been using their marketing prowess and the huge draw of the Tiger Woods name as a crutch to continue to supply a mediocre product.

It's a very complicated and confusing economic climate we live in but one thing we know is that the games industry is huge, rivalling the big blockbuster Hollywood movies in budget and scope. Like all industry, it's driven by one thing - money.

Good, small development studios are often gobbled up by large publishers such as EA and Microsoft so that their latest creation can be marketed as the next big thing. I remember developer 'bungie' being bought by Microsoft and the planned initial PC release of their now famous game 'Halo' being sidelined as Microsoft wanted it to be one of their main Xbox launch titles. It was a big hit and indeed my son is a big fan of Halo3!

Microsoft have the resources to throw into projects to create fantastic products and I'm a great admirer of some of the things they have achieved over the years in the games simulation industry. I'm thinking of how they continued to develop the Links series after Access (the original Links creators) joined them and I've been a big fan of the Microsoft flight simulator series too.

Unfortunately they seem just as efficient at killing franchises as supporting them. Links was 'killed' back in 2004, not because it wasn't a great game or wasn't making money but rather Microsoft thought they could make more money by putting their resources elsewhere. They have recently done the same to MSflight simulator and although fs9 and fsx, the last two incarnations, have been massively impressive, they must simply not have be making enough money to keep the 'bean counters' happy. It's a crying shame.

Smaller studios which stay independent, have smaller budgets for sure, but sometimes they make up for that handicap with passion for what they are creating. Access survived for many years on their own and continually improved the Links series year upon year with more courses, better graphics, Arnold Palmer!

Every now and again someone comes into the market with a new golf game. I'd like to think I know a good golf game when I see it, having chosen this glorious game of golf and all it's facets as my lifelong pursuit. From time to time I've been approached by games companies who have sought me out as a consultant for their upcoming games. I obviously sign NDA's and cannot discuss any of their work in detail but I can say I've often been frustrated by what I feel is their lack of understanding and unwillingness to listen, in getting to the core of why people play golf, are interested in golf, and more importantly for them, why people would choose to play a golf game rather than some other type of game.

Real golf is one of the very few sports where you can have just as much fun playing by oneself than you can when playing with others. Of course it's fun to play a relaxing round with friends too but standing on a practice range, whacking a bucket full of balls into the wide blue yonder can be hugely entertaining too! It's a sport played by people from all walks of life and from widely varied social backgrounds. Everyone loves the feeling you get with golf, of being part of your environment and close to nature.

I'll tell you a story and this is completely true - the very first golf course I ever played on at 12 years old was one I designed myself! I'm telling you, a big triangular green field, a golf ball, and a golf club, that's all that was needed.
I dug makeshift holes on all 3 corners of the field with my 8 iron and played it from hole to hole, 6 times around to make all 18 holes in total.
It wasn't easy with out of bounds on the left on all the front 9 holes and then when I reversed the direction of play, there was out of bounds on the right coming back! A tough test indeed.
Maybe that's where I got my creative golf streak from.

I upgraded the course soon after by using old tin cans as hole liners. Although I'm sure they weren't 'regulation' size they did stop the sides of the holes crumbling. Golf is hard enough without having your hole cave in while you are chipping towards it! Many a Grand Slam was won and lost on that course and although I've played many hundreds of courses since, I still remember every 'nook and cranny' of that field.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that golf doesn't have to be 'flashy' to be fun. We don't need 50 different camera views, swirling around our head or to view the world from upside down and inside out. What is important I think, as much as any other aspect of the simulation, is that you can actually feel like you 'are there', standing on the bright green grass, feeling the cool breeze on your skin and squinting into the distance to see where your next challenge lies. That's the feeling I try to create on my virtual courses, with the graphics, sounds and overall realism.

That's what golf game developers need to be concentrating on as much as possible.

No amount of flashy gameplay 'features' will replace the feeling of playing real golf if you look like you're stuck in some sort of nightmare cartoon world!

Tiger Woods 2008..........

Pilgrim Trails

2009-02-24T00:40:00.006+01:00

Every course needs a name - welcome to 'Pilgrim Trails' !

If you have followed my blog so far, you'll know that my golf retreat is located in Massachusetts in the north east US. Nearby Plymouth, is famous for the pilgrim settlers and so it seemed like a natural choice. The 'trails' part of the name is a 'nod of the head' to Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, designers of Old Sandwich which was the inspiration for my design. One of their other famous designs is Bandon Trails.

I've spent the day doing some texture mapping as well as fiddling with some of the playability. I took the chance to grab a few screenshots from the front 9 while playtesting.

Without further ado - here they are.

Greens!

2009-02-20T22:37:00.008+01:00

Breaking news!! This course will have a green on each and every hole!!!

All kidding aside though, the greens are often what makes or breaks a course. How many times have we played a course that had much merit from tee to green only to be sorely disappointed when we finally got to the putting surfaces? Greens that are either too flat and boring or don't have enough relatively flat areas for pin placements can ruin an otherwise good looking course.

Green complexes that are well thought out can actually start to test the player long before he ever reaches them. A narrow, angled green makes the approach position critical, especially if you're using a less lofted club, this in turn, tests the players skill from the tee as he tries to put the ball in the best possible spot to attack the green. On a testing course, this ideal 'target zone' from tee might be tricky to find, being protected by slopes or hazards and the like.

Invariably a strategic design would place some sort of hazard near to this ideal playing area, thus forcing the brave player to execute his shot well and the not so brave to find himself with a much harder approach angle.

Angled greens are easy to spot on a hole planner, but it's possible to use the same strategy in a much more subtle way. Instead of angling the green you might create green slopes that a golfer has to overcome. Below is a simple illustration that shows that although the green in itself isn't narrow, the effect of positioning the slopes along the front sides has a similar effect and creates a less obvious obstacle to the flag.

As you can see, there's a lot more to green slopes than just the effect it has on putting. I've always thought that the areas of the green that are 'pinable' that is to say, are suitable for the placing of the hole, should have different challenges and obstacles which require a different strategy in order to hit onto that particular section of the green. Perhaps an obvious example might be a long two tiered green with a bunker protecting the front. If the hole was placed on the bottom tier, close to the bunker, a high flying, soft landing shot might be required, if however, the hole sits on the top tier, a lower shot that pitches on the front portion and runs up to the top section might be the best option.

There are virtually limitless possibilities for creating interesting and varied green complexes and on each and every course, no two should be alike.

On my new course, I'll be trying to break up each green into 4 or 5 different sections, sometimes these won't be obvious at first glance as the separations might be much more subtle than a simple tier (although you may find these too) These areas will be fairly flat so as not to cause problematic situations such as 2 foot putts with 3 feet of break!
The pins will be 'clumped' in batches in these areas as Links requires that all 18 pins be planted in order for it to correctly use the pin settings from within the simulation.
There is no good green in the world that has the scope for 18 completely different and fair pin locations, hence the 'clumping'.

Here's the kicker though - if you hit onto the wrong section or miss the green and have to come across one or more different sections, trust me, you will have your hands full, trying make an up and down. In my experience, the best and most interesting courses I know of, have quite slopey greens in this fashion. To name a few - Augusta, St Andrews, Cypress Point, Pine Valley etc.

I'll leave you with a tip which was passed on to me by a good tour caddy in a practice round for one of the events I played in as a professional. I was faced with a putt on a fast green, across such a tricky slope. My instincts were to play to the top of the slope and then let the ball trickle down to the hole and perhaps even go in! I tried this multiple times as it was a practice round, and each time the ball got to the crest with virtually no momentum, but once it was over, it gathered speed and I simply could not stop the ball anywhere near the hole.

My caddy pointed out to me that if I played the shot in a completely different direction, the slope was less severe and I would in fact be able to stop the ball much closer to the hole. I know this sounds obvious, but seriously, up until that point it had never occurred to me to do that.

After a few more practice attempts in the new direction, I found I was able to stop the ball within 5 or 6 feet of the hole leaving me a fairly easy, slightly uphill putt for my two putt. I used this technique many times after that day and it saved me endless shots and a whole lot of wasted hot air, complaining about 'unfair' pin positions!

14 alternate tees

2009-02-17T00:22:00.007+01:00

As promised, here are a couple of pics of the par 3, 14th hole which plays over a deep, overgrown valley. The first pic shows a view from one of the mid tees and the bottom pic shows what the tiger tee view might look like should I decide to add it. With 5 tee positions available we can go silly with the different lengths, angles and challenges.

This hole looks really tough from the tiger tee but there is an area to the right of the green which will help kick the ball onto the putting surface if you 'leak' one slightly. The pics are, as always, a work in progress.

Mid tee example:

Tiger tee example:

'Fun factor' variety and custom tees

2009-02-16T18:26:00.005+01:00

When designing a course either for virtual golf or the real thing, it's often easy to overlook the fact that people play the game to have fun, more than any other reason. If a course is dull to play, no amount of additional 'stuff' that goes along with it, will count for much.

Defining what is 'fun' can be tricky to say the least, as people's ideas of what constitutes fun, varies as wildly as the different types of bad shot you can hit in golf - that is to say A LOT!
Obviously, it's going to be almost impossible to please everybody, so what do you do?
Well firstly, if you're playing Links because it makes you feel like you're playing real golf, you will expect the course to mimic a design that you might go out and play for real.
Some of the golf courses produced with apcd, remind me of those calenders of the worlds most difficult holes with fictional holes laid out across the grand canyon or halfway up the side of Everest! This type of course isn't going to appeal to the purist so that type of course is out.

I've developed a reputation for creating difficult courses but they have proved over the years to be quite popular. Some of it is no doubt the artistic effort I put into my courses, but for people to have fun, it has to go beyond that.
Personally, I get the most fun from courses that are a challenge to 'beat' which is almost certainly why I tend to make my courses that way. On the other hand it's no fun to play one difficult hole after another until they all blend into one seemingly never ending nightmare! There has to be light at the end of the tunnel so to speak. In designing this course I've tried to interject a few easier holes in there that for expert players they might consider them a 'must' birdie. Indeed the last two holes of the front nine are a short par 4 and a very reachable (in two) par 5. No matter how badly the round may be going, there will always be a chance to claw some ground back and launch into the back nine with renewed hope!

The Links 1.07 patch has made it possible to select not only the usual custom pins, but also for the first time, custom tees. This is a fantastic new feature and one that I hope will be used often. Setting custom tees before your round will bring new and different challenges into play on each hole as well as perhaps bringing the difficulty level to one you are most comfortable with, without compromising the nature of the course. That is to say, you might choose mainly back tees with a few medium tees thrown in to add some variety and to spice things up a little.

In the accompanying readme file for the course, I will be detailing my suggestions for some of the custom tees and indeed depending on the feedback from beta testing, I may be adding longer tees on some holes to really challenge the expert who is on top of his game.

I have decided that my tees markers will not be colour coded ie: there will be no black, yellow, blue, red tees etc. There will be no visible distinction between the different sets of tees at all.
The reason for this being, as we do not have to worry about people playing from the 'wrong' tees (!), we can select custom tees and simply be happy in our mind that these are the 'tees of the day' and not have to feel like we are playing from some set of yellow, blue or otherwise 'less manly' tees.

I'll post a picture later from one of the alternative tees on the par 3, 14th hole.

Blueberries!

2009-02-14T16:43:00.005+01:00

If you had the time to browse around the website at Old Sandwich I posted a few days ago :

http://www.osgolfclub.com/Club/Scripts/public/public.asp

You may have seen photos of the distinctive blueberry bushes that bloom around autumn time (fall for my friends in the US!) Contrary to what you might expect, blueberry bushes actually have bright red flowers giving them a spectacular aspect at this time of year.

You will find these bushes running throughout my course giving it a very distinctive look. I've stopped short of making all the bushes appear in full bloom as that could be a little overwhelming but if you can imagine, late summer/early autumn, when the bushes are just beginning to turn, you will get an idea of the look I'm going for.

Here's an apcd pic of some of the blueberry bushes as they nestle close to one of the greens

3D

2009-02-11T12:03:00.004+01:00

One of the aspects of some Links courses that adds to the realism and immersion factor, is seeing various man made objects dotted around the course. These may be benches, bridges, houses, ball washers, fences etc. Now I've never believed in cluttering up a course with a myriad of objects which detract from it's natural beauty, but it's a fact that many of these objects do appear on real courses and so having at least a few on any Links course certainly adds to it's overall appeal.

Once again I turned to my friend Pat Auge who created the fantastic 3D for my Las Joyas course. At some point virtually everybody who has made 3D objects for Links courses has turned to him for advice - he is a virtual encyclopedia of all things 3D related to Links!

We talked about what I wanted and sent various pictures back and forth trying to decide what style of houses would sit on the outskirts of the course and also pictures of other objects such as drinking fountains, fences and of courses the clubhouse. I mentioned in an earlier blog that speed of screen redraws is an important factor - I didn't want anything slowing the rendering down too much, so the 3D would have to be optimized with this goal in mind. The idea being that the quality of the textures is what really makes a good building or clubhouse stand out, rather than the minute details that only the most curious will ever see.

The houses that are sprinkled around the course will certainly not detract from it's natural feel. For the most part they will be semi-hidden behind strands of trees and enhance, rather than detract, from the experience of playing the course. Perhaps in real life, it's a dream for an architect to work on a course that doesn't have any real estate attached to it, however this situation is not very common. Trying to integrate the buildings into the resort so they are well placed and relatively inconspicuous, is part of the land planning process.

At first the idea was to build a lot of the 3D early in the process but it was decided that it would be much easier to integrate the buildings in the way we planned, if the course layout and planting was at an advanced stage before the major construction work started.

Recent work by Andrew Jones from apcd-courses.com, has enabled the importation of 3D objects from programs such as 3ds Max. At this point though the texture implementation is limited and so it's currently best used for objects that don't require complicated textures in order to look good.
The imported objects have no 'self shadowing' and they always show as 'full bright' with shadowing having to be built into the textures which given their current limitations, is not easy. When we have unravelled the mystery of how to get the best out of the texturing, I'm sure we will find a place for them on the course. The big advantage of these imported objects is that no matter how many of them you need on the course, they only have to be built once, and you can share them with other designers for use on their courses too.

On this current project we will probably use the 3D import for smaller objects such as stakes and rope pathway guides with the rest of the 3D being built from the terrain but this is still unclear and we may yet use the imported objects on a much wider scale.

One thing I wanted for this course was vertically orientated log tee markers. They have this kind of tee marker at places such as 'Pine Valley' and I've always thought they looked great. I wanted mine to be a little different and more substantial so they could be seen from a little further away so adding to the ambiance of the course. It's surprising how little things such as this add to the overall experience in Links.

I searched for a few royalty free photos of tree bark and log ends on the Internet and then made them into a couple of nice high res textures to use on my 'log tees'. Below is a closeup of one, mapped and ready to go.

This was my first attempt at creating 3D tees and I'm pleased with how they turned out. Although there is nothing to the build, the accurate placement and alignment of the textures and ground shadow is very time consuming. I'm doing it in sections and when I get bored with it, I just more onto another aspect of the course.

If there is one thing I wish for in apcd, it's the automation of mundane tasks like this. Some sort of macro feature for repetitive tasks, where texture and mapping would be able to be 'one clicked' onto an object or texture area would save countless hours in the construction of a course.

Hole 2 - par 5

2009-02-10T13:36:00.007+01:00

Just before I start this blog I'd like to send my best wishes to all my friends down in Australia at this time of crisis with the bush fires still raging. I hope you are all safe and that the fires are extinguished soon. My heart goes out to all those effected by this continuing tragedy.

From the outset I knew I wanted one of the tee shots on the course to be from a high tee shooting downhill with long views across the course. Looking at my routing plan, hole 2 seemed to be the ideal choice. This sort of a view is what I call a 'welcome to the course' shot giving tantalizing glimpses of the holes to come. As such it's better to have the hole early in the round rather than later. The first hole at Crystal Downs is a perfect example. What a fantastic opening tee shot view.

Below is a fantastic painting of the hole by Richard Chorley. You can buy prints of it at Oldsportgallery.com

My prospective hole was going to be a strong '3 shotter' with the downhill tee shot making way for a flatter 2nd and culminating in an approach to an elevated green. Lots of variety and different challenges right there with just the elevation changes throughout the hole.

The really tricky challenge on this hole though was going to be the second shot - on too many 3 shot par 5's (ie green out of range in two shots) the second shot is a 'nothing' shot with little to challenge or interest the player apart from advancing the ball as far as possible to make ready for the green approach.

I wanted this second shot to offer a great challenge and some excitement in the pursuit of a birdie. The tee shot would not be unduly difficult with a reasonable wide fairway to shoot for, but once negotiated, a large bunker would stand in your path to the green, tempting you to go for the carry which would leave an easy pitch to a green well guarded at the front by two deep bunkers.

It will take two long and accurate shots to clear the trouble in two, so laying up may be the wiser option. However this is not as easy at it first seems, because the further you attempt to move the ball down the fairway, the narrower it gets, so you will have to choose once again between the safer option of laying back further into the wider area of fairway or advancing the ball as far down as you can to a tapering fairway while leaving it short of the large bunker. PHEW!

As you can see, you won't be going to sleep on this hole.

Below is an early pic of the hole showing the view of the approach to the elevated green from a layup point.

Routing the course

2009-02-09T01:18:00.008+01:00

You can't have a new course without new holes can you, and it's all very well having all this 'grand plan' stuff, but if the holes are no good, no-one will bother playing it.

So where do we begin?

I always begin literally on the drawing board with a pencil and paper. Over the years I've doodled enough holes to fit on 100 golf courses, but the trick is picking the one that best fits the land you are working on. Now I mentioned earlier that in apcd you always start with a dead flat plot, however, it doesn't have to stay that way for long.
You can import a DEM file or 'rough' up the terrain using some other method. The terrain builder feature is useful for stuff like this and you can transform your pancake like plot into a myriad of hills, valleys, lumps and bumps.

I'm used to dealing with very highly detailed terrain imported in from AutoCad which can make one hell of a mess with the underlying terrain mesh, so this time, for the sake of my sanity (more on that later!), I thought I'd use the terrain builder method to build my plot and after fiddling around with it for a while, I had a nice series of rolling hills to get me started.
At this point, a real course designer would be looking at a topo map of the terrain and making site visits to check for natural features that he could incorporate into his hole designs to make them interesting and unique. He would make what is called a course 'routing' plan which would be a rough plan of the path the holes will take over the terrain. He may come up with several routing's and clubhouse locations and then over time, will narrow them down until finally picking what he feels is the best one.
Routing the course to make the best use of the terrain is one, if not the most important aspects of real life design.

In apcd we have it much easier and we also have a vast army of 'virtual' bulldozer drivers at our beck and call, ready to spring into action and mould the terrain as we wish at any time. Unlike a real course designer, we don't have to worry about earth moving costs, cut and fill ratios, environmental issues and the like.

Armed with a vast array of pre-planned hole ideas, it's now a matter of looking around the plot to see where you may be able to drop them into the landscape without having to alter the underlying terrain significantly. Sometimes the way the land tumbles and rolls will suggest a hole design idea that you hadn't previously though of. This is part of the pleasure of the creative process but in this particular regard, real designers have it much easier, as real terrain is generally much more interesting than a bare apcd plot.

So I have my plot of land and I have my preliminary routing plan (in this case a clubhouse location close to the top of a gentle hill and two loops of 9 holes with each loop returning close to the clubhouse). The first hole I started to flesh out in more detail was in fact the par 3, 3rd which I showed a picture of yesterday. I wanted a short hole on which I could experiment while getting to grips with the building, texturing and planting techniques that would be used later, throughout the course.
Next, I started on hole number 2, a strong '3 shot' par 5. As you can see, I seem to be going backwards and maybe there's something in that. I often start reading books in the middle and if I like what I read, I'll gradually work my way back to the start before continuing on to the finish. I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day with me at this point and come up with the reason why I tend to do things this way. If any psychology experts are reading, please leave a note - I'm all ears haha!!

Come to think of it, I'm doing it again by just writing this blog, the course is halfway complete and here I am at the start again............ very odd indeed!

Work in progress

2009-02-08T03:22:00.006+01:00

No time for a fully fledged blog today so I thought I'd post a picture instead.

This is a work in progress picture of the par 3, 3rd hole as seen in apcd, hence no sky or tree shadows. Using some of the techniques I mentioned yesterday, this green slopes from front to back where a generous short grass chipping area awaits if you do happen to overshoot your mark.

When the pin is tucked behind the bunker on the right, you'll need to hit a high flying fade to get the ball really close. The hole plays to around the 200 yard mark from the championship tees.

The red flowering bushes that you see in the picture are the bluberry bushes that run throughout the course.

Hopefully more blog and pics tomorrow.

Course difficulty and strategy

2009-02-07T02:11:00.011+01:00

So far I've been painting fairly broad strokes in regard to the resort/complex, but now it's time to get down to some details.

I wanted the course to be, first and foremost, fun to play.
Now to some people, fun is shooting -18 or some such score but I would call them gameplayers rather than people looking for a golf simulation. A fun course needs to be challenging for the most part so there is a sense of achievement if you can shoot under par.
I play pro click most of the time, dabbling with champ click and other swing types now and again. Now I'm not a great Links player by any stretch of the imagination, in fact I'm probably about average when it comes to standard of play. If I play well on a normal course I can shoot down to about -5 or -6 but at other times just breaking par is a struggle.
I wanted to build a course that from the very back tees and playing to the 'difficult' pin positions, would play 4 to 5 shots harder than that. I've never believed that easy courses are much fun to play, the brain goes to sleep and there's little to keep the player interested. On the other hand I didn't want the course to be so difficult that it felt like a constant battle to keep the score 'respectable'. This is a tightrope that designers have to walk both in real design and in Links.

For those of you who are familiar with some of my previous designs, you may have found out (to the detriment of your average score stat), that from time to time I may have overstepped the mark in trying to make my courses challenging. I've heard stories that some people are still wandering around Burn's Old Links in a daze trying to find their way off! Well I didn't want my newest creation to be so hard that it could be considered 'unfair' so there would have to be lots of playtesting and tweaking until the course played as intended.

You can make a course testing and interesting in a few different ways. You can make it 'penal' which basically means that the hazards are laid out before you and you simply have to thread the ball between and over them. Alternatively you can go for a more strategic approach where you pretty much always have a safe option off the tee to get the ball in play but you will find that by skirting close to a hazard or other obstacle you will find your approach shot a much more pleasant proposition. I prefer strategic design rather than penal but there can be a place for both.

The vast majority of players in Links play with their club distanced maxed out. This means that almost every player has the ability to crush the ball 275-285 through the air with their driver and flight iron shots so high that they cause problems for low flying aircraft! Unfortunately this has the effect that on a shorter course, no amount of strategy will make much difference as players can stop the ball so quickly with their iron approach shots, that from the tee, hitting almost anywhere on the fairway will do.

So as a designer, how can I combat this 'problem' without falling into the abyss of trickery that quickly becomes a 'pure fantasy' creation, a course that could never be built on God's green earth? Well, if we're subtle about it, we can ramp up the difficulty and strategy without being unreasonable. Most greens on real courses are generally higher at the rear than at the front, this helps to make the green more visible and makes it easier for the average golfer to stop the ball more quickly. This is the first 'rule' we can throw out when designing a course for Links.
Having a green that slopes away from the line of approach even by just a small amount, makes it much more difficult for a player to just fly the ball over obstacles and stop it quickly next to the flag.
Now the player is going to have to look for another method to get the ball close. He may have to search for a better angle from the tee so he no longer has to fly over a guarding hazard, he may pay more attention to the areas on the fairway that may give him a level or uphill lie so he can flight his iron shot a little bit higher. He may have to look at curving his approach shot by either fading or drawing the ball into a flag that has been 'tucked' away.
So you see, straight away we have much more strategic play without having to resort to outlandish and unrealistic schemes.

At this point I want to talk briefly about the Links 1.7 patch, if you don't have it yet, go and get it - you won't be able to play my course at all without it. You can find it at Apcd-Courses.com and LinksCorner.org Look for the forum sections about the Links patch 1.07 or Links mod etc.

With the introduction of this patch, you now have the option to choose custom tees and so you can manually setup a selection of longer and shorter tees for your round. As a designer, this enables the very back tees to be extended slightly without spoiling the overall course. On many well know tournament venues, the course length from the very, very back tees is of titanic proportions. They rarely play every hole from the longest tees though. Augusta National G.C. springs to mind, the home of the Masters tournament.

In the next blog I'll talk more of how we can bring strategy to the fore in apcd designs.

Big Plans

2009-02-05T14:35:00.005+01:00

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to create something unique for Links that had never been attempted before on such a scale. My initial thoughts were to create a complete golf resort with 36 holes (4 loops of 9) a driving range and practice putting green. This would be all encompassed with a completely believable golf complex with entry roads, maintenance pathways, in fact everything you might find on a real complex. The sense of immersion in your environment would be unsurpassed.

It's a concept I'd had a few years ago but I'd never really fleshed it out and followed through on it. I thought, wouldn't it be great to load up the practice range at the resort before playing a tournament round for example. I don't just mean moving the ball in 'practice' mode but actually being able to stand on the practice tee and play to a variety of different greens with real flags and a chance of holing out. I know practice courses/ranges etc have been done before but not as an all inclusive part of a full fledged golf resort.

While making my 'big' plans' I had to think about more practical considerations too, such as course loading times and file sizes as the 36 holes and practice facility would all be on the same big plot. Also it's not possible to create more than 18 playable holes to be loaded and played in links at any one time so the first 18 holes would have to sit on one course file and the second 18 holes on another and the practice facility on yet another. You see where this is going?

That's not all though! - I wanted people to be able to choose which loops of 9 they would like to play, for example, the north and east loops, or the west and north loops etc etc. That's quite a few permutations! I struggled with this concept for a few days and then came to a realisation - so what? So what if there are loads of different files? These days bandwidth is cheap and fast Internet connections are common, so what does it matter about file size and download amounts? For people on slower connections there's never been a shortage of people willing to burn courses to CD and then send them off to the more 'Internet challenged' people.

So lets recap, you'll be able to practice on an immersive, full fledged and realised practice facility - any time you want to. Then you will be able to pick and choose which 2 out of any of the 4 nines you want to play for your 18 hole round and then load it up and play. Lets not forget that one of the very greatest courses in the world isn't in fact 'a' course but two mixed together. I'm talking here about the wold famous composite course at Royal Melbourne.

Choice is always good.

Ok, more practicalities, ie: what about rendering times? Well I've often been complimented for making courses that although highly detailed also have very quick rendering times. No one likes to wait 'ages' between shots while the screen redraws, so screen loading times would have to be a prime consideration when creating the resort. Anything that is unnecessarily detrimental to the rendering times gets ditched in favour of a faster option. This doesn't mean any lack of detail as you will see but rather optimizing every facet of the course so it's as streamlined as possible, graphically. With the tests I have done I'm 100% positive that rendering times will not be a problem. It's also great to look over from one course and see holes from a distance loop in view. Once again - it all adds to feeling of actually 'being there'.

Just a reminder that these are my thoughts from back in December 2008 when I started creating the resort. This is not just idle chatter as construction of the first 18 holes is already well underway with 16 of the first 18 holes being playable and the first loop of 9 mostly planted.
The plan for release is a complete 18 holes first followed by the practice facility followed by the two extra loops of 9 when time allows at a later date.

If you're enjoying reading my blog please leave a comment, I'll try and answer any questions you may have too.

Real course re-creations and my own designs

2009-02-04T13:33:00.005+01:00

Yesterday I talked a little bit about the various swing methods in Links but also a little bit about how playing the game might make people feel. If you'd like people to be spending their precious leisure time playing your course rather than someone elses (and let's face it - who doesn't!), what do we need to do in order to make it as attractive a proposition as possible?

Well it's no secret that a real course re-creation is generally a more popular choice, especially if that course holds a tournament or even a major in real life. Who doesn't want to walk in the footsteps of the greats? Links gives you the opportunity to do just that.
The courses with a great enough stature to hold a major championship are some of the finest golfing grounds ever created. Their design and architecture are of the highest standard and you can be sure that if the course is an accurate re-creation, that it will surely be fun and challenging to play.

This is one of the reasons I agreed to be a part of the Augusta team which re-created the famous master's course for all Linksters to play. I, as much as anyone else wanted to tread those hallowed grounds around Amen Corner which in real life I may never get a chance to do.
Although I'm best known for my own designs and creations in the Links community, in fact, creating and re-creating real courses is something I do virtually every day. My 'day' job of making vizualizations for real architects and developers has kept me busy for the past few years and some of those courses and 'virtual photos' I've done, probably rank amongst my best work. It is, however a very different ballgame to work towards someone elses vision rather than your own, even if their skills as a golf architect far oustrip your own as is invariably the case. Working with some of these highly skilled fellows (sometimes even on site with them)is a privelage I enjoy enormously.

While often working from their very detailed drawn and CAD plans to make sure the accuracy is there right down to the last inch - I'm sometimes asked to 'fill in the blanks' to create the desired final result they are looking for. This does give me a little leeway to shape the bunkers, move grassing lines etc and on more than one occasion I've been told by the architects involved, the actual shapers on the real construction site have been handed my visualization pics and asked to 'make it like that!'

More than ever though, I feel the need to try out my new found knowledge on my own designs rather than simply copy what has been done in the past. While it's no doubt fantastic to have some of the best courses in the world now available to play in Links - I wanted to carve out a little area of my own - a place that I wanted to design, own and play. After all, one of the great joys of golf is that no matter how much you may like one particular golf course you will never tire of finding a new gem to play.

So this new course will be my own design. Over the last few blogs you will know what style I want it to be, it's general location and a few initial thoughts on how it should play. Now all I need is a plan for my new golfing retreat!

The skinny

2009-02-03T10:57:00.009+01:00

Ok, so course style, location and bunker technique have been decided - but what about the course itself?

How will it play - will it be long. short, penal, strategic? Well in my view designing a course for links (as far as playability is concerned) is really not that much different to designing a real course. Of course not everyone can carry the ball 280 yards like they can in links but there are options to turn down the distance settings in certain play modes to emulate your real life game and although I'm quite sure not many do that, the option is there nonetheless.

While were on the subject of Links and how it plays let me offer you my thoughts on that. As a professional golfer with some playing success (Sunderland of Scotland Masters champion with a 72 hole score of -17, British Club Professionals Champion and European PGA cup team member) I feel reasonably well qualified to give informed opinions on how realistic the various methods of play are and also offer some suggestions where things could have been better simulated.

Let me first go through the swing methods one by one.

Click - This has been the tried and tested formula for links over the years, click at the top of the gauge for required power and then click again at the bottom or 6 'o' clock, to determine the direction of the ball flight. This is by far the most popular method of play with 'pro' level click being the most used.

Good things about this method are that it simulates both the length of swing and indeed the quality of strike with the first click to determine power/shot length, ie: click too early before the 12 'o' clock and your ball will finish short of your intended target. It also simulates ball curve with draws, fades, hooks and slices possible if you miss the 6 'o' clock 'snap'. There is no possibility for a straight push or pull shot unless some other factor is involved ie: wind or slope. This therefore is it's limitation although it's a fun way to play.
Champ and elite click, are two of the most difficult modes of play from all the methods available as the directional penalties for missing the 'snap' can be severe.

Real Time swing - This was the much heralded real time vertical mouse swing used for the first time in a links game although other versions of the mouse swing had been used for many years previously in other golf sims. I have very mixed feelings about this swing method but ultimately cannot recommend it for realistic play due to it's one main drawback. Even at the very highest levels of champ and elite, it's far too easy to hit the ball straight, time after time with little variation. The only real challenge of this swing type is the length and timing of the swing to dictate the distance the ball travels.

Now I'm aware that not everyone will find it too easy to move the mouse back and forth in straight line, which is in effect what you must do to hit straight shot, but compared to the other methods of play, it's much too easy. I gave up on this method a short time after the game was released for this reason.
One of the main challenges of real golf is hitting the ball straight - the RTS mouse swing method simulates the directional aspect of play very poorly and in my opinion is one of the reasons why it was never taken up by the majority as the most popular method of play. It was a great opportunity lost by the dev team and indeed there have been no more version of links since that point. Who knows - it may have been a contributing factor. If you want to see a great mouse swing in practice, check out PGA Golf 2000 by Sierra Sports. Sure the graphics may be dated and the ball physics and other options may not compare to Links but it does have an awesome mouse swing. You can still find the game on ebay.

Powerstroke - This was the first method of mouse swing that was used in Links and is probably the most realistic way of playing the game. It simulates distance control through length and speed of the horizontal only mouse swing. It also simulates not only directional control, by simulating the swing path and contact area of the clubface via the direction and accuracy of the mouse swing, but also the club face angle at the moment of impact via a mouse click as the clubhead travels through the impact area. This means that straight pushes and pulls and indeed, all manner of bad shots can be played - just like real golf!
This method of play is quite tricky to get to grips with and most don't persevere and stick with the easier pro click method instead.
Drawbacks are that it doesn't have a real time swing option along with the golfer animation and has no vertical mouse swing option either. If a form of this swing had been made to work in real time and much tweaking and testing had been done to get the difficulty levels to compare with the click methods of play - this could have been a winner. I'd recommend this mode of play for someone who wants the most realistic simulation of golf in links.

What method do I use? pro click, champ click and champ powerstroke depending on my mood and what kind of experience I'm looking for. I'll get onto some of the other aspects of realism in Links in a later blog.

So why am I going into such detail about these different methods of play and how they affect realism and the golf simulation? Well, what's the point of creating a realistic course if it can't be played like a real course?
Thankfully, even though certain methods of play have their drawbacks, Links has enough going for it with it's ball and terrain physics and also the choice of all these methods of virtual swing, that it is possible to get a really good simulation of golf on the home computer.

As any good real life professional sportsman will tell you, at some point after many thousands of hours of practice, the sporting movement (be it a kick or a throw or a swing) becomes almost automatic and an unthinking motion. The thought processes you have when playing real sports and how pressure affects your body has a huge impact on your performance at this level and in these ways, although it's much easier to learn the actions of a click or a swing on your mouse, Links brings the feeling of playing real golf.
I've made my fair share of double bogeys down the last hole in Links purely because the self inflicted pressure of beating my best score or beating my opponent caused my body or my brain to seize up.

So at this point, lets get back to the course and what kind of experience people will want to have while playing it. To get to the core of this we have to try and understand why people play golf and simulated golf in the first place?

Maybe it's because it makes them feel things. I'll repeat that - because it makes them feel things. This is important. The great majority of things people do with their leisure time are done so they can feel a certain way.
Sports and games often intensify your normal feelings and I think that this is why sporting pastimes are so popular. I remember a quote I heard a while back which said something like 'You may know someone for many years but you will never truly know them until you have played 18 holes of golf with them. At that point their character is laid bare for all to see'
It's true you run through more emotions on a golf course than you might run through in weeks of normal living and learning to cope and revel in that is one of the big attractions of the sport.

When you're a raw beginner you surely do feel a lot of frustration and disapointment with your ineptitude for the game, but all it takes is one good shot to give you satisfaction and more importantly, hope for the future!
It's important to understand how the game makes people feel if you're going to design a golf course that people will first of all enjoy playing and secondly will want to play again and again and again. For people to enjoy playing your course they have to feel challenged, stimulated, they need a little bit of success here and there and they have to enjoy their surroundings.

So the course has to be long enough and difficult enough to provide the challenge for as many different levels of play as possible, it also need to have variety to keep the player interested and his brain stimulated.
One trick I like to use is that some holes and shots will look fairly straightforward but in reality are much more difficult than they look at first glance. This can take the form of elevation changes making clubing difficult and fairway and green slopes taking a ball away from the hole. Conversly you can face a shot that looks like your worst nightmare but in reality it's much easier to pull off than it looks. This might take the shape of a spectacular obstacle like a big bunker, ravine or perhaps just bushes and deep grass directly in the line of play. To carry over such an obstacle might in reality be an easy task but it does add to the feeling of enjoyment and satisfaction when the hazard is cleared.

This is a pic from the first hole showing how an angled fairway and a diagonal bunker which can be easily carried, can make the tee shot look much harder than it actually is.

Finding a style

2009-02-02T20:57:00.002+01:00

It's early December 2008 and my course exists only in my head - onwards!

In the real design world, the terrain on which the course sits and it's vegetation is unique. Not so in the virtual world where everyone's prospective masterpiece starts of the same - flat and very, very green!

So my first task was look for a course location and style which inspired me. I've long been a fan of golf designers, Coore and Crenshaw who have over the years designed some classic and unusual courses. They have recently been criticised, unfairly in my mind, for making their courses look too similar to each other. I think that's a ridiculous comment when you consider the varied terrain they have build their courses on. Few people could mistake their Nebraska course 'Sand Hills' for anywhere else.

Of course they have their own style which they take from course to course but I've yet to hear anyone complain after playing one of their courses!

I was taken with one of their more recent courses named 'Old Sandwich' which is in Massachusetts on the east coast of the United States. I loved it's rolling terrain, pine trees and whispy grasses which are punctuated with wild bluberry bushes which can be seen throughout the course.

http://www.osgolfclub.com/Club/Scripts/public/public.asp

It really does look like a wonderful course.

This looked exactly like the kind of course I'd like to design and so I set about the task of creating textures, making planting sets for the grasses and vegetation and practicing various techniques that I would need in order to create my course. That one sentence seems innocuous enough but I can assure you, many weeks of photoshop creation and experiments ensued and are still ongoing although I have a good set of 'work in progress' stuff to be going on with. I was, at that time, using an old version of one of my early 2003 creations 'Shadowlands' to experiment on and thus dug this practice bunker right in the middle of the first fairway!

I showed this pic around to a few friends and after a very positive response, decided that I was ready to begin work on my course in earnest.

Inspiration

2009-02-02T16:17:00.000+01:00

After a lot of success and aclaim in making virtual courses for first Links 2001 and then later, Links 2003, I found myself being contacted by various real golf design companies and developers who wanted me to provide photorealistic pictures and 'flyby's' of their planned new courses, renovations and redesigns.

Since getting my start with Kevin Atkinson at Phelps/Atkinson golf design, I've been fortunate enough to have been able to work with some of the biggest names in the golf design business including Greg Norman's course design company, Fazio design, Robert Trent Jones II, David Kidd golf design, Tim Liddy design and many more.
I can't tell you how much I've learned both about the finer points of golf design and also about the more down to earth aspects such as budgeting, construction and environmental issues that real designers must deal with on each design.

It's been a few years since I put that knowledge to good use on any of my own personal designs but that's about to change. I'm in the process of designing and building a brand new course for Links which I hope will be the best I've ever created. So why now?

Although the last of the Links series of golf games/sims produced for the PC was way back in 2003, constant patches and updates have been produced by Mark Hulka (one of the original 'Links' programmers)and the team at apcd-courses.com led my Mick Prendergast and Andrew Jones. Their passion for the game of golf and links in particular has ensured that even by todays standards, the visuals and gameplay are still second to none. There have also been recent significant additions which now allow the use of much higher resolution textures to be used in the making of courses in the 'apcd' (the cad based tool used for creating courses for Links).

Several designers notably Rob Miller, have used these new opportunities to take the game to new heights of visual fidelity. Rob's renditions of great courses such as Pinehurst no.2, Shinnecock and Bethpage Black (co designed with Domonic Bois) have raised the bar on what is possible. Over the last few years I've developed a good friendship with Rob and after doing much playing and testing on his courses and giving my input on where I felt things could be improved even further, I came to the decision to put my knowledge and skills into creating a brand new course of my own. Several close friends offered encouragement and so my mind was made up!

I lost no time and immediately set about researching the kind of course I would create, it's geographical location and it's style. I've made my name in virtual course creation and visualization by striving to create courses that are fun to play, look natural but more than that - courses that look 'REAL' I also wanted to create a course that would appeal to all standards of player be they an absolute expert or a comparative novice.

I'd like this blog to give an insight into the process of creating a brand new course from scratch and with hindsight I would have started to write it before any work had begun. As it's turned out' I'm already well into the design process but over the next few weeks I'll be blogging about what has been done so far, what is being done now and what is still to be done in the future. I hope that following this blog will be worth your time!

First blog!

2009-02-02T14:54:00.000+01:00

Well this blogging thing is all new to me but I thought I'd give it a shot. A quick hello to all my old friends from 'links corner' and 'apcd-courses.com' I hope this blog will provide a little bit of insight into the process of making a virtual course - in this case specifically for Microsoft Links.

I hope you enjoy the ride!