20 replies to this topic

[worrybirdie]

What happened to this simple program? Three years later its all about learning Unity by negotiating numerous tutorials. Tried to do this for another game construction program (oh my god, the lingering memories!), and after many many hours ended up quitting out of a combination of boredom and frustration.

https://www.youtube....h?v=hmqEKRHzM-c

[Unique]

Learning the basics of Unity is an  essential step to using unity. Once you learn that you will be able to build a golf course, using course forge, simply and easily. 

 

Peter

[Dazmaniac]

Learning Unity was always part of the design process. Course Forge just simplified the laying out of the holes and applying mesh textures and adding the tees and pins that allow the course to be playable.

[IanK]

I really started from scratch, having no real previous knowledge of golf course construction apart from playing around with the tools in TGC.
Although I enjoyed TGC I didn't consider the time spent on creating a course worthwhile, as the actual game is too simplistic for my taste.
When I first tried CF I was a little baffled, but you quickly learn how to use the tools in Unity and CF and it does become very, very addictive and enjoyable. Consequently, I've just released my first serious attempt at building a fictitious course (Downland Golf Course), which, those few that have tried it seem to like.
Creating a basic course with CF is fairly easy but it's the little details that make all the difference. It is very tempting to keep returning to your course to add a bit here or there or tidy up things that you might have missed.
I'm having a lot of enjoyment with CF, so stick with it.

[Kablammo11]

It won't be everybody's cup of tea. Handling CF and Unity is not at all an unattainable feat - nor does it require more than basic computer skills. But you will need to work for your product - and work isn't always fun. A mindset with a certain shyness vis-a-vis impromptu trouble or any fear from doing the hard yards and walking the extra 100 miles will soon be found out by the players in the community. I have rage-quit this whole, messy and stupidly complex imposition a couple hundred times already - but I always came back the next day.

The video is not lying - you can absolutely create a hole as quickly as it is shown there (if you are Mike Jones and have clocked up a bit of mileage, that is). Also, neither CF nor Unity have fundamentally changed since the video was made - they both still look the same and still are doing the same. But the real fun starts after the video finishes: Tweak, adjust, improve, if necessary completely rearrange your creation. Unity/CF let you put "All that is you" into your golf course - there is no limit - that it their main thrill and a designers curse at the same time. "Who am I? Is this me?" 

You will find out.

[Mike Jones]

CF is basically simple but it's just a tool and the deeper you dig the more complex and awesome things you can do with it.

 

Anyone can paint a picture using paint and a brush but painting something really good takes some time. 

[SReesor]

Total Unity newbie (been playing around in it for over a month now).

Forgive me it this has been asked already, but does CF impart a frame-rate hit? All the meshes and objects (fairways, rough, greens, first cut, bunkers, tees, pins etc.) what wiggle room should I allow for?

If a course I am working on is already running around 70 fps in play mode...do I have too much detail? I am writing this from work, so I can't recall exactly what my detail load is. By the way, it's probably the 10th terrain I have been playing around on...each one a little better than the previous.

Never having worked with anything like Unity before I find this quite a steep learning curve. Not saying I am not enjoying it, but it does try the patience.

[IanK]

This is a hole from my recently published course which is in the beta testing phase. It's a fictitious track called Downland Golf Course, this being the par 3 13th hole. I started CF with virtually no course design experience apart from a quick go on the Greg Norman TGC design suite, but I'm quite happy with the way this course is turning out. It really is a lot of fun to use.

 

[Kablammo11]

 

Forgive me it this has been asked already, but does CF impart a frame-rate hit? All the meshes and objects (fairways, rough, greens, first cut, bunkers, tees, pins etc.) what wiggle room should I allow for?

If a course I am working on is already running around 70 fps in play mode...do I have too much detail?

 

CF meshes are 3D objects, which use tris and verts, about as much as the terrain below them does - on top of it. Additional tris and verts are added by using fringes. They also have shaders, layers of multiple textures for surface effects, which are a bit more expensive than the regular terrain textures. So: yes CF does affect the frame rate.

 

It's impossible to say if your play mode FPS is relevant or not. Usually, the process of building a course for the game changes quite a lot of things, some stuff gets compressed etc, so that you should not place too much importance on your Unity FPS value. The only stat that matters in play mode is the tri-count. We were told to keep it below 3 mio (including everything CF), for the game to run smoothly on older PC's. We are free to exceed this value, though, if we don't care too much about older PC's...

Set your terrain "Pixel Error" Value to 3 (the top setting in the terrain setting, that will help with your tri count). In case you did not know, the terrain resolution of the height map needs to be at 2049 x 2049... Personally, I like to start out very tri-conscious and build as light as possible, and once the plot stands and all the meshes are calculated, I then splurge out on all sorts f goodies that I can "finance" from my remaining tri budget: More trees and grass, objects etc...

 

And post images of your stuff, one of around 15 course designers out here will be happy to visually inspect your work and offer advise about any number of potential issues...

[SReesor]

Thanks K11, appreciate the quick response.

I have a question regarding your latest build. The water falls and misting I take are particle effects, do they significantly impact your remaining 'budget'? Is that part of the reason you developed those uber low poly count trees for that build?

[Kablammo11]

The uber low poly trees are the consequence of my basic frugality - why waste tris and verts on a tree that is 100 yds away and looks as good as a full-blown model? Go to Crystal Pines and watch the top view attentively. Or go into F5 view mode and have a closer look at all the trees at the far end of the plot. If Mike's magnificent pine forest turns out to be, in fact, a Potemkin village, then that's good enough for me. The illusion outweighs the facts... Designing is cheating and trickery, wherever you can get away with it. Aaah, the stunts I've pulled...

 

There are tons of places where you can and should economise on tris. Every cylindric object, for instance, like the base of a ball washer, needs at least 24 verts for it's roundness to appear round viewed from close-by. I build my cylincers with 6 or 8 verts. That's another 2K tris saved overall. My massive stone wall units at the Sisters, for channelling the water? Between 32 and 96 tris each. My bridges? 24 tris for the flat parts, 124 tris for the propping up bits. Uber low poly. Peanuts, but every little helps. And so on...

 

The trees are however not low poly to gain more wiggle room for particle effects. These are an entirely different affair and they seem to exist a bit outside the laws of tris and verts (though they are transparent planes mixed together and animated, so they do have tris and verts as well). I have been dangerously near the edge of what I know I'm talking about during this entire response, so I must not pretend that I am an expert or even a knowledgable aficionado. I am not. Take comfort in this, you do not need a degree in rocket science to use CF - just the good old fashioned "trial and error" method. 

[worrybirdie]

Thanks for all the useful responses. Glad to hear that what was on the video is essentially still true. I guess what threw me off was the daunting prospect of having to use Unity for most of the design process (which evidently isn't true). I know enough about Unity to know that it is designed for "professionals", meaning it is less intuitive and more time consuming than the course designers I have worked with in the past (JN, TW, Front Page Sports). Guess I'll just have to wait until CF comes out to find out just how far you have to get into Unity to create a great course, and how much is in CF (which looks very similar to the other programs I've used).

I'm willing to work for it in the designer (I spent way to many hours trying to get the bunkers right on my version of Bethpage Black for FPS!), I just don't want to have to learn a whole new programming interface before I can start. It will be interesting to see the least you have to do in Unity before you can get into CF.

[J.H.Buchanan]

To oversimplify and incorrectly comment on something in an abstract way I would say that Unity is something like Microsoft Word and Course Forge is something like inserting a picture into a document. So you need to know enough about Microsoft Word in order to create a document and then you must know how to put a pic into the document and then how to resize the pic and add maybe color to it or make it lighter or crop it but even though Word also allows one to make labels and do a database that relates to the labels and enables you to print envelopes you don't have to know all of this stuff about Unity only the stuff that pertains to Course Forge but then this analogy you may know about already .... probably.  

My only reflection is how long ago and yeah it was years that I saw a video on Course Forge and I was swept off my feet and in love from that moment but still I can't fondle it yet - it seems to be getting a lot closer but still its just a dream so far but I am encouraged overall but it has been longer than expected. 

 

And then Kablammo11 comments and he is a computer genius sounds like some one talking about quantum physics and nanometers in length of  a whatever .... I have to get out my dictionary when he posts most anything but I guess ya just get into Unity and you become one with its terminology kind of like when my mom taught me how to make ice and then later on sweet tea.  

[worrybirdie]

I liked Kablammo's comment about "walking the extra 100 miles"! I thought the expression was "Going that extra mile". Sorry K11, that's discouraging.   I'm hoping it's just a little frustration being translated into hyperbole (or so I pray).

[M Rose]

Unity was intimidating for me when I started with it, but once I got just a few basic directions, I was off and running. It's really just about making sure things are set up properly before you start; that's a lot of the work - knowing what boxes to tick, ones to untick, lighting and shading settings and all that.

Don't give up.

[Acrilix]

Unity was intimidating for me when I started with it, but once I got just a few basic directions, I was off and running. It's really just about making sure things are set up properly before you start; that's a lot of the work - knowing what boxes to tick, ones to untick, lighting and shading settings and all that.

Don't give up.

 

Hopefully these things will be 'stickied' in the CF forum soon so those of us without CF and trying to learn Unity can do so with the knowledge that they are doing it right.   

[Stephen Sullivan]

I'm not even bothering with Unity until CF is out. I need things fresh in my mind these days 

[IanK]

Mike has made some excellent videos to help when you start with CF.

[J.H.Buchanan]

What happened to this simple program? Three years later its all about learning Unity by negotiating numerous tutorials. Tried to do this for another game construction program (oh my god, the lingering memories!), and after many many hours ended up quitting out of a combination of boredom and frustration.

https://www.youtube....h?v=hmqEKRHzM-c

It was posted 3 years ago I saw it near that time and I was so glad to see it in action then I learned it would be available with the game Perfect Golf which then came out 2 years after this was posted and now its a year after the Early Access release and still no Course Forge which is what I like most about a golf game is being able to design courses but still (3 years later) I don't have my hands on Course Forge but things are moving along so thats nice  - part of me wishes I never saw the video 

[Stoney]

Not sure if this has been spoken of before, but why are there no pot bunkers in any courses on perfect golf.

I know they arent any links courses out yet (i think) but all the bunkers just have no depth to them, is there any reason for this?