Here is a list of the functionality and improvements that have made it into this release.
New Real Course Release - Kissing Tree in Texas
We have released a new official FREE real course in Texas called Kissing Tree. Built as a fun to play resort course it offers a number of risk and reward holes as is great fun to play.
Recorded Rounds, Compete Against Friends and Save Shots
Under the solo game type you will now see 4 tabs: Local Recorded rounds, Friends Recorded Rounds, Saved Shots and Create New Game.
Recorded Rounds. Players can now select to record their round either locally to their hard drive or to both hard drive and the PG cloud making them available to their Steam friends. The friend rounds tab contains the 20 most recent rounds recorded by friends.
Saved Shots. Players can now save shots to their local hard drive for replaying later
You can lock a recorded round which means that when playing against that round, you must play at the same level and from the same tees . If the round is not locked you can force the game to use the same tees as the recorded round by selecting ‘match tees’ in the pre round screen.
To save time on loading, Solo Play saved rounds and recorded rounds are only updated on game start.
Physics improvements
As Perfect Golf is now compatible with a much larger selection of Launch monitors this seemed like an ideal time to cross reference our numbers for ball flight and reaction on landing with direct comparisons to real shots in a much wider selection of scenarios. This meant that we could for the first time, gather and compare shot data from a myriad of short shots and bunker shots which had not been possible before. It also meant that using a large number of real golfers hitting real shots in full size simulators, we could really start to fine tune the ball flight and ball reaction on landing on a much wider range of shots.
After comparing the data we made some changes to the physics calculations which brought PerfectGolf even closer reality meaning that a player’s creativity could be rewarded while at the same time reducing the number of ‘go to’ shot’s that people had become reliant upon in almost all scenarios (such as the very high spinning pitch).
Further to this, another goal was to blur the lines between the different shot types in the ‘scoring zone’ ie a part ‘Full shot’ swing, the pitch, lob shot and chip. Rather than having one basic shot that would fit the bill for a certain distance and lie, now the player has the opportunity to create realistic bump and run shots from off the green due to our improved fairway physics or they can play a 3/4 Lob wedge and spin it out close to the hole. Another option is to pitch it and have the ball grab and release or lob the ball up high from short ranges without having the unrealistic ability to constantly stop the ball on a dime. We have Increased the amount of power that can be accessed when chipping which helps when playing those bump and runs around the green.
Bunker shots have also received some physics love and now the ball behaves more realistically on shots where the ball is caught slightly fat or thin on levels above Amateur.
We have separated out Fairway firmness from Green Firmness allowing for a greater variety of game play settings and shot results so for example you can now play with normal fairways and soft greens if you choose to.
Green Surface Options
We have added two new settings to the putting options when creating a game. Previously in all golf games and even in PerfectGolf, the greens have always been, well...Perfect! This is quite obviously not the case IRL and even the greens on the PGA tour have small imperfections which can cause the ball to move slightly offline (or even back online as the case may be!) Using robot putting devices the ball can miss the hole between 1 and 2 times on even a perfectly hit straight 10 foot putt and so again in our search for golf sim perfection we have added this as an option to the game. You now have 3 green settings to choose from:
Perfect - defaults to this green type which is the same as before and is billiard table smooth
Realistic - behaves very similar to a PGA tour green
Bumpy - Slightly less manicured courses or courses where the weather often stops the green surfaces from being as smooth ie. Links courses.
Enhanced Cup Physics
The ball/cup physics has been improved so that the ‘vacuum’ cup bug of the past few builds which enabled players to ram the ball into the hole at high speeds when putting has been eliminated. You will now have be more accurate with your line and your pace too as many of the putts that would previously been ‘sucked’ into the hole will now lip out if offline or jump out if struck too firmly.
At first this change will make putting seem more difficult but once you realign yourself to the new pace requirements, things will become much easier. Overhitting putts which used to work well will now likely result in a lot of lipouts or the ball jumping over the hole. A little bit of practice will help here until you get a feel for the new physics.
Three new Putting mode cameras have been added, designed to make it easier to play real time swing modes where putter movement is now more visible. These can be selected in the settings menu and you can also toggle through them using the camera toggle key or ‘Dpad left’ function on the controller when on the green.
Swing Method Balancing
In conjunction with the enhanced cup physics which have made putting a little more difficult we have adjusted and balanced the skill / swing types:
3 Click: We have tweaked a few of the difficulty settings for various swing types. 3C has had the long game balanced by reducing the spin axis (sidespin) penalty for missed ‘snaps’. This will enable the pro and tour pro players to miss the ‘snap’ slightly on purpose to help control the curve of the ball. Larger missed ‘snaps’ will also have less of an effect.
Motion swing and RTS-M: The effect of offline swing paths on putts has been reduced and also the tempo factor has been removed from putting on tour pro difficulty levels. The timing of full and part shots has been altered so that time spent in the ‘overswing’ area is now counted when calculating the tempo of the swing which makes over swung shots less difficult to time correctly.
The amount of the overswing penalty has been halved making it a more practical risk and reward
All swing types: Fine tuning of fat and thin shots for flop shots and bunker shots. Motion swing and RTS - M tempo, controller swing path and 3C snap penalties have all been tweaked for fat and thin shots.
Improved Wind
Improved Wind effects on the ball in lower wind speeds and added the ability to change the wind in the game set up screen. It will default to your preferred setting in Weather Settings but you can now change it on a round by round basis.
Restored the fluctuating wind meter on Pro and Tour Pro. We felt that it’s possible IRL to feel the wind changing as you plan your shot and it was unfair to hide this detailed information from the player at any level.
We will be revisiting Wind again in a future release
All new AI player Implementation and skills settings
We have rewritten the AI code so that the golfers play much more like a human player, are faster and a greater variety of different skill levels can be achieved.
The computer player skill level for a listed shot type affects how likely he is to be able to pick a good shot from all the choices available to him.
The Accuracy affects his ability to hit the snap on a particular shot he has chosen
The State of Mind affects whether his is always trying to hit the longest shot with a club he can and whether he sticks to the aim points planted on the course by the designer. Aggressive players will overswing more.
The Skill level of the golfer (In Player Difficulty) will affect how much the missed snap affects the trajectory of the ball
New ‘in game’ Controller menu X Key
We have an all new in game controller menu which can be accessed with the Blue X button. This brings up a menu of several items that were previously difficult to access due to combinations of buttons on the controller. Items such as the original settings menu, scorecard, leaderboard, spot pin, tend pin, move tee, drop and the practice options were all added to this menu
Bug Fixes
Bug fixes to several modes of play including matchplay bug where players still in hole could be ignored
Added 3 person points alt shot to list of mops for that time when you have 6 players
Fixed pin tending on Alt Shot
Fixed plugged lies on Alt Shot following the player instead of the shot resulting in people seeing plugged lies in the green or outside the bunker
Fixes to hazard golf.
Improvements to the Simulator Console App
Improvements to the tournament API to allow for scoring events like hazard golf and stableford to be played using the api
Pressing the left Stick (RH) while in drop mode will allow you to position the drop within the defined drop area
Many more minor bug fixes
Known Issues with this Release
Sometimes the end game routing can take up to 45 seconds to complete expecially when using a controller. This affects some poeple and not others.
Occasionally when playing against a recorded round some shots will be lost and you will see a post shot screen at which point they will be moved to their second shot without the first shot being played
Occasionally a computer player will encounter a situation he is unable to find a shot to play. We have a timer that will reset him to have another attempt which runs after 60 seconds which cures 99% of these problems but there were a couple of occasions where beta testers had to resume in order to get him to hit out of hundreds of rounds played with the AI
