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Bunker Development

Aug 08 2012 10:25 AM | Guest in Golf Dev Blog

We've been working hard since we posted the first video clips of our new course graphics a while back. We had a lot of positive feedback from the golf community from our initial video showcase but did we decide to leave it at that?

HELL NO!

After creating yet more course building tools, new shaders and new techniques, we decided to put them to work in making much more realistic sand bunkers. Here's a pic showing the 'before' and 'after' of our recent update and I think you'll agree things look a whole lot better now.

So how would you like to be able to draw out your bunker shape and then with one mouse click, drop in a perfect dirt lip every time? You asked for it... so we built it!

25 Comments

Daz

Aug 08 2012 07:21 PM

MJ, After using the automated 'bunker lip creator' to define the lip, will it still be possible to tweak the bunker lips manually or is it a case of the finished article is defined by the tool? Whichever, this is a great addition to the course designing catalogue.

Guest

Aug 09 2012 06:33 AM

Hey Daz, we'll have both regular and advanced modes. In the advanced mode you can go in and tweak things to your hearts content but with the regular mode we're trying to make sure that even people with no technical expertise can jump in and start being creative.

Stephen Sullivan

Aug 09 2012 07:48 AM

Mike Will 3D stuff like clubhouses etc be built in the program or will they be built in something else and imported?

Guest

Aug 09 2012 12:26 PM

Hi Stephen, Joe will be making a blog soon about buildings and 3d objects in general so I'll leave that one for him to answer once his blog is live.

Acrilix

Aug 10 2012 10:52 AM

Great to see an option for people that don't have the technical abilities of the hardened designers. This will undoubtedly lead to more quality designs being released! As to the game, I hope sliders are implemented for settings, rather than, or as well as, difficulty levels. It would be great to have a stimp slider to set the green speeds!! Each pin could also be assigned a max stimp speed by the designer to ensure that they are playable in the game. The game engine could even calculate the slope angle of the pin area to assign this itself.

Stephen Sullivan

Aug 10 2012 06:08 PM

Any chance there will be a tool in the designer to show the slope of the green. That has always been a bugbear of mine with APCD when planting pins on the greens.

Daniel

Aug 11 2012 10:36 AM

As you know MJ I like making skies and panoramas,will the skies be a seperate file to panoramas or will the panoramas have the sky attached to it.Also what format will the panoramas and skies be if seperate like in the APCD. I would like to thank you guys for what you are doing, made an old man very very happy.

Daniel

Aug 11 2012 04:06 PM

Woops just relised this is about bunkers sorry.

Guest

Aug 12 2012 01:42 PM

No problem Daniel, we're planning on people having the option of using photo skies or dynamic skies. We're still doing a lot of work and research in this area and one of our team (Chris) is actually an expert in creating real time dynamic weather systems so it's something we're planning to add as we progress.

Daniel

Aug 12 2012 02:11 PM

Thank you Mike that sounds very interesting.I am like a big kid waiting for santa lol.

Chris Perry

Aug 17 2012 05:17 AM

Hi Mike, I just stumbled upon this site from your Facebook page and I'm curious as to how well (or if its even possible) this design engine will work with importing mesh information from CRZ files, particularly corrupted ones that won't even open in the APCD anymore. I'm still burned by the loss of the one file that was 95% elevated when it kicked the bucket so if this platform could rescue it from the ashes there might be hope for me actually finishing a course in this lifetime. ;-)

pat auge

Aug 30 2012 05:09 AM

Where's the buildings MJ all I see is a golf course!!! HAHAHA!!! Looks stunning brother we need to talk soon i'll catch up with you in the normal fashion.

Guest

Aug 30 2012 06:27 AM

Hey Chris, long time no see!! Well if it's a valid .crz file from Links and not completely trashed it might be possible to extract the elevation info from it. If you send it over to me I'll have a look and see what can be done with it.

Guest

Aug 30 2012 06:30 AM

We've been thinking about having some sort of automated system that simply won't allow pins to be placed on areas with too much grade. This would be the best possible solution.