50 replies to this topic

[Acrilix]

One of the biggest problems when playing courses on Links 2003 is choosing playable pins. With a random pin option in the game, and a large choice of green speeds, it has become an increasingly difficult problem. You can get well into a round, only to find a pin that is unplayable using the conditions you have chosen. To eliminate this problem, many recent courses in Links have been created with very flat greens by the designers, to accommodate the faster speeds. This has led to courses that are just too dull to play on the slower conditions! No courses can be created to satisfy all conditions that are now available, for all pin placements.

Is there any way that the game engine could auto-detect the playable pins for the chosen speed, or if not, a way the designers could flag pins with a slope rating, to stop them being selected when conditions would make them unplayable?

I can see playable pins being a big problem, especially with the large numbers of casual, or inexperienced designers the Course Forge is likely to entice into designing (unless the Course Forge has already been set up to restrict pin placement, which could also restrict the design possibilities too, IMO).

It can sometimes be many rounds before you encounter these unplayable pins, and then they can be complete round wreckers!

Some form of pin recognition would save many hours of frustration, AND make tournaments far easier to set up for Tour Organisers.

[Stephen Sullivan]

Some way to better see the slopes would certainly be invaluable. I find it very difficult in APCD, and I am sure many designers don't take the time to set pins properly for this very reason.

[TimBoch]

Before I realease a course, I actually play rounds using all the pins.  I do this for 2 reasons, first to check the pins and see if they are playable at Fc/Fc, second, it allows me enough hole information to run the handicap spreadsheet and get a good idea of the holes handicaps.  I also play with AI golfers, in order to see if they have issues that a human might not. Granted, some pins are in tough positions, but never on slopes where the ball wont stop, or too close to the collars/ fringe. 

Just my testing process. 

[Mav78]

Surely there could be an option where you just shade the areas of the green you want to use as random? I always remember a tough pin at Bountiful on MS2001, back left I think it was; you could be there for hours watching it come back to your feet.

[M Rose]

I hope there is no requirement to place 18 pins on every green in order for random to work properly. I have a very hard time getting 18 usable positions on my greens.... obviously I like to have a lot of slope on mine.

[highfade]

I agree, bad pins are definitely round wreckers. The question is should the pin placing be part of the course designer or part of the game?

Too many great courses were ruined by bad pins. I remember the France National or something had all the pins stuck in a perfect line across the green.

[Kablammo11]

Staring at the existing CF pictures endlessly for many hours, as they do hold useful information, I found one about pin placements, aptly named "Plant your Pins", that reveals some answers

http://www.perfectparallel.com/NewSite/gallery/image/40-plant-your-pins/

There will be three pin categories: it seems: Easy, Medium, Difficult - and a certain amount of pins for each category - at least one, in all likelyhood more. So the least amount of pins you will need to plant is 3. I speculate that when you want to play a course, you will be able to select one of the three pin categories in advance - and the game will pick a random pin out of the available locations. Would be nice of course if you could get full randomness as well, easy and difficult pins in the same round.

It would even be nicer if you, as a, say, country club admin preparing a tourney for your members, had a tool that allowed you to select each pin individually. But let's not get carried away so soon. I'm happy if the Forge lets me plant any pin at all and I promise not to be a cruel meanie when I plant them.

[Davefevs]

Staring at the existing CF pictures endlessly for many hours, as they do hold useful information, I found one about pin placements, aptly named "Plant your Pins", that reveals some answers
http://www.perfectparallel.com/NewSite/gallery/image/40-plant-your-pins/
There will be three pin categories: it seems: Easy, Medium, Difficult - and a certain amount of pins for each category - at least one, in all likelyhood more. So the least amount of pins you will need to plant is 3. I speculate that when you want to play a course, you will be able to select one of the three pin categories in advance - and the game will pick a random pin out of the available locations. Would be nice of course if you could get full randomness as well, easy and difficult pins in the same round.
It would even be nicer if you, as a, say, country club admin preparing a tourney for your members, had a tool that allowed you to select each pin individually. But let's not get carried away so soon. I'm happy if the Forge lets me plant any pin at all and I promise not to be a cruel meanie when I plant them.

If you do plant a cruel pin, just make sure you set it to hard!

[Acrilix]

@ Kablammo11 - Links 2003/APCD also has those categories, but the minimum you need to plant on a course for it to be playable is 1 pin on each hole. For easy/medium/hard pins to work properly on Links 2003 you need to plant 18 - six in each category, in the correct order, and with random pins you get a mixture of difficulties when playing.

People setting up Tours on Links 2003 can select individual pins for every round, and I imagine this will be the same in PG. As both Andrew, and Mike Jones come from a Links background, I would imagine a lot of the best Links features to be similar in PG/CF.

[Kablammo11]

@Davefevs: I will do that - and all my deceptively cruel pins will go into "medium"

   

@Acrilix: Details of that "6 pins per difficulty"-idea still elude me, but the longer I read up here, the more I'm inclined to believe that PG & CF will be a Links2003 in a modern skin. I'm very alright with that, I have many fond memories of Links and in my book it certainly must be considered to be the crown jewel of the PC golf genre.  

 

[Maineah]

The course manager for my local course lays out 3 easy 3 medium and 3 hard pins (only a 9 hole course) -

It would be nice to set whatever you want for each hole, not a global setting for all-

[axe360]

I hope it is left up to the designer as in TW's PC. So if the designer sets any pins that are unplayable in the toughest settings IE: very dry conditions, then the course will get a poor rating and won't be played much..

IN TW's PC 08 for example, I can set Easy pins and Difficult pins, so I set the Difficult pins so that they are playable in the fastest conditions (very dry), that way, all pins are playable...

Believe me, if I make any pins unplayable in the toughest conditions, I hear about it and the expert players Won't play it...

 

Not saying that this will be the best way for this game but it works out pretty good with the old game..

 

Peace

[Acrilix]

@axe360 - In Links you can assign any pin as easy, medium, or hard, or any pin can be selected by its number, for each hole. (the harder pins tend to be located on steeper slopes) The problem comes when people want a completely random mixture. The random pins option in Links simply chooses any 18 pins, and this means that if you are playing on the fastest settings you can end up with bad pins. Also, unless the designers have planted exactly 18 pins in order, (6 easy then 6 medium then 6 hard), the game will give you the wrong pins when using the easy/medium/hard pin choice option!!   

Many courses on Links are also accurately recreated real courses, designed to be played on slower settings because that's how they are, and these can also lead to problems for players trying to use the faster settings. Links 2003 was also modded around 7 years ago (by Andrew of PP and Mark Hulka, I believe) to include much more realistic PGA type green speeds, but this has now left many of the older courses unplayable at the faster speeds, and the new ones too boring on the slower speeds. This is because the range of speeds now available is just too great.

However, If a designer could assign a min/max speed setting for the course, or for individual pins, there would be no problem. Alternatively, as I said in my original post, if the game itself could detect these unplayable pins there would also be no problems. I don't believe designers should be held accountable for a bad pin simply because the player is trying to use it outside the range for which it was designed.

It really hangs on whether a similar speed range is going to be available in Perfect Golf. Designing a 'one course fits all' will be too limiting IMO.

[axe360]

@Acrillix_ I don't know about you sentence that say's "However, if a designer could assign a min/max speed setting for the course, or for indivdual pins, there would be no problem.

I think the settings need to be set up by the players that set up the game they are going to play..

Again, the designer needs to make sure that the toughest pin he sets while building the green, has to be playable on the fastest green speeds..

 

True, if you set up a game with the toughest pins and you set the slowest green speeds, then that tough pin will be easy and the easy pins will be rediculously easy.

It sounds like the Random setting doesn't work in Links2003 and I don't know if it would work here either..

If you want to play random pins, then how could there be a "bad pin" during the game?

 

Not trying to argue, I may not understand exactly what you mean, I hope I did...

 

Peace

[Dazmaniac]

By selecting Random pins when playing a round in Links 2003, you are basically letting the game pick 1 pin per green from all the pins available on each green.

 

You can tell the game to select from all Easy, All Medium or all Hard or you can tell the game to Randomize and will pick a mixture.

 

The problem with these random choices is that you are totally reliant on the designer having all pins on every green playable. Unfortunately some pins that are set by designers are totally unrealistic and often found on the sides of really steep slopes, the kind of placements you would never see on a real course. It's always been  pet peeve of mine in that some designers will spend literally months creating their course and then what seems like a few hours placing pins due to the fact that some are placed in totally unplayable spots.

 

Thankfully tour admins can manually select preferred pins for each green as they see fit when setting up events, but it takes a few hours as you need to look at all pins on all 18 greens and make notes of which are playable at certain settings.

[Acrilix]

@axe360 - I would imagine the confusion is caused because the fastest available speed on Links (1.07) is probably much faster than the fastest speed on Tiger Woods (and the slowest on Links, much slower than TW). Believe me, if you make every pin on every green playable at this speed you are going to ruin the enjoyment for a lot of people.  Many players never use, or want to use this extreme speed, which was only really added to simulate Augusta speed greens, and is totally unsuitable for the majority of the world's golf courses.

@Dazmaniac - I have seen pins on slopes on real courses that would never be playable at Firm(CH) Fast(CH)

[TheLighterDark]

Surely there could be an option where you just shade the areas of the green you want to use as random? I always remember a tough pin at Bountiful on MS2001, back left I think it was; you could be there for hours watching it come back to your feet.

I have to say that I agree with this idea the most. It's the simplest solution for the problem(s). 

Here's a [rough] guideline I drew up of what it could be like. Excuse the fact that the borders are outside of the green. Red = Easy. Yellow = Medium. Blue = Hard. Slashed lines = No pins. 

[Davefevs]

...and to take it a stage further, the ability to plot multiple blue, red, yellow areas. In your example you might actually want the part of the red area nearest the bunker to be blue (hard) instead of red to give a view of the difficulty coming over that bunker and getting it to stop quickly.

Painting areas seems a really simple way of allowing random pins.

[JoeF]

The USGA has a rule of thumb for setting pins on a slope. Their recommendation is that a putt hit from 10 feet directly above the cup must stop no more than 6 feet past the hole.

 

Theoretically, would it not be possible for a routine to be programmed into the Course Forge that would determine the maximum slope allowable at a given green speed (for a putt hit with the minimum force possible) to meet this criteria. I could then envision something like a shaded circle around the mouse pointer that turns from red to yellow to green as you move your mouse about the green while placing your pins to show you the spots that meet this criteria. You may have to make a pass for each of the different green speeds but it would certainly speed up the process of finding fair pin positions.

 

Since it's a computer game it's all math under the hood and should be doable.

[Acrilix]

The USGA has a rule of thumb for setting pins on a slope. Their recommendation is that a putt hit from 10 feet directly above the cup must stop no more than 6 feet past the hole.

 

Theoretically, would it not be possible for a routine to be programmed into the Course Forge that would determine the maximum slope allowable at a given green speed (for a putt hit with the minimum force possible) to meet this criteria. I could then envision something like a shaded circle around the mouse pointer that turns from red to yellow to green as you move your mouse about the green while placing your pins to show you the spots that meet this criteria. You may have to make a pass for each of the different green speeds but it would certainly speed up the process of finding fair pin positions.

 

Since it's a computer game it's all math under the hood and should be doable.

Taking it a step further, I imagined the game engine could do the calculations, and not allow you to select pins that were unsuitable for the conditions you had selected (grey them out, maybe), and would only select from the playable ones when selecting the random pins. This would allow designers to add pins that would still give players on slower settings the challenge they require, but it would avoid the unplayable pin problem on the fast settings too.