88 replies to this topic

[axe360]

Thanks Daz..

[Acrilix]

I wouldn't think you will need to know everything about Unity to be able to build courses.

 

I agree, but I think you'll need to know a fair bit about Unity to build the better courses.

[shimonko]

The decision to make CourseForge a set of add-on components to Unity and not a standalone app is one of the best things about it. Having all the other Unity features, scripting ability and other third-party add-ons available is seriously powerful.

[Dazmaniac]

I'm not saying you're wrong about this, Daz, but I don't think you're right either. You would not be able to achieve a finished golf course design without Unity features - you may run the CourseForge alongside Unity all the time, but a lot of the functionality is strictly Unity. When you say you can adjust the elevation within the CourseForge, that is not wrong, but the Course Forge will have nothing to do with that.

I shall need visuals to illustrate my point, so click to enlarge this:

 

Unityforge.jpg

 

1: Cloudy sky and panoramas. Skyboxes provided by Unity, though the Course Forge may come with an additional selection of skies and panoramas. Selecting and applying them is done with Unity.

Wind: Wind zones created in and performed by Unity. Wind strength and oscillation most likely determined by the PG game.

(future weather systems and atmospheric effects probably controlled by the PG game)

 

2: Greens, Fringe, Fairway, Tee Box, Rough etc. Exclusive domain of the Course Forge: Drawing the shape, selecting the texture etc. No Unity required, except to provide the terrain below.

 

3. Trees (and bushes and rocks). Selected and applied in Unity. The CourseForge (hopefully) will come with loads and loads of new tree and bush models, but the method of adding them to the design is 100% Unity. Same goes for long grass.

 

4. Sand Hazards, bunkers. Customized CF tool, no Unity involvment

 

5. Water. 100% Unity. Snag: The free version of Unity only allows for simple water, which is basically flat and blueish goop; no reflections, no highlights from the sun. Only the Pro version provides water that actually looks like water, as it does in our image.

Waterfalls? Particle effects provided by Unity.

 

6. Car paths. Unclear atm if the CF will come with its own car path tool (presumably it will), or if we will have to get one separately. There are several of them in the Unity asset store atm.

 

7. Bulkheads. Most likely a tool provided by the CourseForge. The same tool used for bulkheads might also allow us to plant fences.

 

8. Bridge, Constructions, Buildings etc. Big choice of ready-to-use models promised to us. These may come to us with the CourseForge package, yet selecting and placing them on the terrain is a Unity function. Constructing them with 3rd party software is also independent of the CourseForge.

 

Some of the confusion surrounding this issue can be described by seeing the Mike Jones video about constructing a golf hole. For instance, the terrain tools which he uses to raise or smooth the terrain: These are basic Unity tools that have nothing to do at all with the CourseForge. Planting the trees in that Video: Unity. Real-time shadows on the ground: Unity Pro. 

There should not be a Unity vs CF rivalry, though. To design a golf course, you will need both. Just one without the other, either way, would not be able to get the job done. I predict that in order to work with the CourseForge we will have to double-click the Unity 3D icon on our desktop, not the CourseForge icon.

 

When MJ did his Course Forge video of creating the Par 3 hole, he added trees whilst within the Course Forge designer (he didn't have to close it down and go in to Unity on its own to add trees), yet you are saying trees are selected and applied in Unity.

 

Effectively everything is going to be done in Unity, its just that the Course Forge asset tool will help you do some of the work. Course Forge is like any other Unity asset tool that is available. You need to fire up Unity to be able to then open up Course Forge. Course Forge will not run on its own.

 

Your last paragraph sums it up perfectly. One without the other doesn't work. All I was trying to do was explain this to Axe as he seemed to be getting himself tied in knots, lol, but at the same time saying that the majority of the construction of the course can be done within the Course Forge itself, as it makes use of many Unity features without actually having to exit Course Forge and use Unity on its own (planting, elevations, applying textures etc.).

 

[shimonko]

It's just the one environment--the video has simply cropped out the standard Unity toolbars and panels (or just captured the viewport). You can see the mouse pointer disappearing off the right of the screen to the terrain panel when Mike goes to change tree type, or the display menu being pulled down from the top of the video.

[Kablammo11]

All I was trying to do was explain this to Axe as he seemed to be getting himself tied in knots, lol, but at the same time saying that the majority of the construction of the course can be done within the Course Forge itself, as it makes use of many Unity features without actually having to exit Course Forge and use Unity on its own (planting, elevations, applying textures etc.).

 

 

Let's not go into semantics, then. If Unity 3D were a shopping mall, the CourseForge would be the golf outlet inside that mall. You can't buy your groceries from the golf shop, though. But I understand what you meant and I'm sorry for being too literal on you. As shinmonko puts it correctly, it's all in the same environment. The Unity environment. 

 

olazaboll, I'm sorry: There goes another thread veering way off-topic. I must take part of the blame for this.

[olazaboll]

As its titled "Unity comprehensive thread" I would say you all are very much inside the thread ... since what we all try to here is to understand Unity .... it helps me anyway ....

[Jimbo63]

Trees etc are indeed in Unity, but will we have to purchase better packs of them from the asset store? Same with water, you get the basic version free, but how good is it, and will we have to buy a better pack. I will certainly not be buying the Pro version of Unity (I believe it is $1500), so will some of these additional assets come with CourseForge? Apologies if these questions have been answered elsewhere in the forums.

[axe360]

Jimbo, I was hoping that PP would do something like EA Sports did... Let us have access to the Stock courses libraries of courses PP makes, for trees and bushes, textures, cart paths then we the community can make the structures and of course our  own custom textures... That way we wouldn't have to spend 1500 bucks to make the good courses..  EA made it so we couldn't make Trees and bushes... But they gave them to us with the Stock libs.

Just a thought;.

[Acrilix]

There was talk that maybe reflective water could be built into Perfect Golf itself. I doubt it would be made priority for the early builds though. Let's hope it does make it in eventually, because the basic water in Unity looks VERY basic.

If not, the more YO-HO-HO among us can always find Unity Pro out there in naughty land!   

[Dazmaniac]

Jimbo, I was hoping that PP would do something like EA Sports did... Let us have access to the Stock courses libraries of courses PP makes, for trees and bushes, textures, cart paths then we the community can make the structures and of course our  own custom textures... That way we wouldn't have to spend 1500 bucks to make the good courses..  EA made it so we couldn't make Trees and bushes... But they gave them to us with the Stock libs.

Just a thought;.

 

What's to say they won't?

 

Until they are ready to release something to us all and make available some sort of release notes, we can only speculate what we might and might not get, lol.

 

[axe360]

What's to say they won't?

 

Until they are ready to release something to us all and make available some sort of release notes, we can only speculate what we might and might not get, lol.

 

 

Nothing Daz, absolutely nothing.. Didn't you read what I said?

Isn't that what were all doing? Speculating, or is all YOUR information straight from PP...

[Jimbo63]

Textures do not seem to be a problem, it is plants/structures/water that I am wondering about.

[axe360]

.

[Kablammo11]

Trees etc are indeed in Unity, but will we have to purchase better packs of them from the asset store? Same with water, you get the basic version free, but how good is it, and will we have to buy a better pack. I will certainly not be buying the Pro version of Unity (I believe it is $1500), so will some of these additional assets come with CourseForge? Apologies if these questions have been answered elsewhere in the forums.

 

Reliable answers to your questions have been avoided or deflected so far, Jimbo. And I share your concern that vegetation and water are very big worries about the CF right now. These are tricky questions and its possible that the guys at PP do not have a good answer to them. Yet.

For instance with the water issue. It's not just a matter of PP adding better water to the CourseForge - provided they owned it themselves, btw, and did not illegally pass on somebody else's work without negotiating a license with the author. I don't even know if the free version of Unity could work with "advanced" water - would it just not be displayed and rendered or would the function be completely blocked and not be available for the game? MJ mentioned a few months ago that they (PP) would try and reach an arrangement with Unity 3D about this and see if something can be done about it...

Same with tree packs. PP may not own the 100's of tree, bush, grass types they show us in their screen caps, but have bought them from the asset store. They could not include them for us to use just like that wihtout breaking a few laws. As for the Unity Tree Creation tool that would allow us to create our own trees, well, I sort of gave up on that long ago on account of it being, well, not good at all.

There are tree editor tools in 3rd party apps (Bryce) and standalone tree apps to produce models yourself, but all of these are in the Windows universe, while us Mac users, as usual, get skullf….ed in this regard. 

 

Which leaves me to conclude that the capabilities required to create courses as yummy and beautiful as seen in the Screen Caps posted by the Devs will be out of our reach - or only attainable at considerable extra costs. I so hope I'm wrong about this. I fear that I'm not.

[axe360]

Very good point k11, I didn't think about the licensing agreement between the Unity Assets  and PP.  

[Dazmaniac]

Reliable answers to your questions have been avoided or deflected so far, Jimbo.

 

He only posted his question 24 hours ago, lol.

 

Don't remember seeing a SLA that questions had to be answered within an allotted timeframe. You make out as though Jimbo's question has been purposely neglected.

 

You for one should know that PP are not frequent posters on here, lol.

 

[Andrew]

I predict you will be right. CF is a unity plugin that you load inside unity. Why is it not a separate app? Well basically we would live to do that....take unity strip out everything that is not needed add our tools and package it as an executable. But that would require a unity source code license a very expensive proposition.

Some of what we built into CF simplifies tasks you could do in unity. Much of it adds to the functionality. At some point in the future you will probably be able to build the whole course in CF. but right now our development has focused on creating the tools unity does not have so people can build courses that work with our game

On the subject of pro and the need for shadows and water we are looking to provide our own plugins to provide that functionality down the road so no one will ever need pro

[Kablammo11]

Thanks for these explanations, Andrew. As for you, Daz..

 

He only posted his question 24 hours ago, lol.

Don't remember seeing a SLA that questions had to be answered within an allotted timeframe. You make out as though Jimbo's question has been purposely neglected.

 

I have asked the water and tree questions several times over in other CF threads without an answer or - at best - receiving a very general and quite vague reply. I was glad that somebody other than me had indentified these areas as worthy of further elucidation.

"Down the road" it is, then! Clearly, that's something to hang your hat on (>mild sarcasm, but without any inbuilt reproach). Can't wait for the Q&A session broadcast...

[Keith]

For all you Unity weekend warriors..the new shanty town structures are quite good.  I have been goofing around with them myself for a couple of days.  Some of the different types of walls/fences could come in handy when CF is released.  Plus there is more vegetation which you can never have enough of.  If interested just search "shanty town" at the link.  These are all free of charge.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/