14 replies to this topic

[alannala]

Just played Willow Heath. Most people know how good Mike Jones is but K11 has delivered a fantastic course with Willow Heath, I really enjoyed it. Thanks. I can't wait to have a go with Course Forge once that is released.

[Kablammo11]

Thank you very much, alannala. 

[Brucey Mc]

Loved playing it too K11. Thought the pin position on the top of the ridge on 18 was a little iffy but that may be deliberate. Will know better next time to not out my ball that side of the pin again!

[Kablammo11]

There are four pins for each difficulty, 12 in total. I think you mean the one on top of the mound, probably, center left. As a rule I tried to give you fair pins and actually fear a lot of them are too easy. I placed them months before I could actually play some putts, so I was a bit defensive with them. On balance, I think that one occasional mean pin (not intentional), should be okay. Once you learn where it is and how the contours are, you will probably adjust your approach accordingly.

[Richard]

There are four pins for each difficulty, 12 in total. I think you mean the one on top of the mound, probably, center left. As a rule I tried to give you fair pins and actually fear a lot of them are too easy. I placed them months before I could actually play some putts, so I was a bit defensive with them. On balance, I think that one occasional mean pin (not intentional), should be okay. Once you learn where it is and how the contours are, you will probably adjust your approach accordingly.

 

K-11, in the game settings, there are only 3 available settings for the 'pins' (Easy, Medium and Difficult). I see nothing related to either mix or match or choosing Easy 1 vs. Easy 2, etc. Based on that why offer more than 1 pin for each level? Is there a way to access the other pins that I'm not aware of, or in the case of WH, is it that you built this course without the benefit of a working game, early on?

 

Links offered the ability to pick pins for each hole, I believe you could have up to 16 for each hole. That would be a nice new feature. But unless I missed it during testing, I don't believe that PG has that functionality yet. Am I correct?

[Kablammo11]

The way I understand it, the game randomly picks one of 4 available flag positions from the easy, medium and difficult categories. You only get to select one of the 3 difficulty levels, but my experience (and play-testing) shows that the game does pick different flags. I would appreciate a confirmation if that were indeed the case.

 

As per now you can't pick the exact pin for each hole - all I can try is to give a bit more variation in pin placements.

Also, you forgot your silly emoticons. Well done!

[Richard]

The way I understand it, the game randomly picks one of 4 available flag positions from the easy, medium and difficult categories. You only get to select one of the 3 difficulty levels, but my experience (and play-testing) shows that the game does pick different flags. I would appreciate a confirmation if that were indeed the case.

 

As per now you can't pick the exact pin for each hole - all I can try is to give a bit more variation in pin placements.

Also, you forgot your silly emoticons. Well done!

 

Thanks for the hole selection information. I too would appreciate confirmation of the random selection.

 

K-11, after all this time surely you know better than to 'feed the tiger'.

[Kablammo11]

Not feeding... baiting. Boy, you are so predictable!

[Richard]

Not feeding... baiting. Boy, you are so predictable!

 

Ya, I know, but you love me anyway!!

[sirputterman]

the only issue I have with having so many choices of pins is if your  running a club and a tournament and if the game randomly selects the pins some players are going to get different pin locations then others. We ran into that with CGX. with only two choices either  easy or difficult settings. The time of day, the wind, even the rough settings could mean if you had 4 pin locations the variables on what pins each player got was pretty staggering. To make it fair for everyone playing our tournaments is to use only 2 pins per green. One easy and one difficult. This took away that randomness of selection so everyone was playing on a even level because they were playing the same pins. 

Yes wind direction was not a variable that we could control so in breezy or  gusty players could get different wind directions but at least we had  all players  shooting at the same pins.

[axe360]

I'll just bring my thoughts up to PG.. Drive on!

[Kablammo11]

the only issue I have with having so many choices of pins is if your  running a club and a tournament and if the game randomly selects the pins some players are going to get different pin locations then others. 

 

Goes without saying that you are absolutely right, military named member. In tournament mode all the players simply must be playing the same pins. I honestly have no idea how to achieve that, but the pins are all numbered through (easy1 to easy4, medium1 to medium4 etc), so I naively assume that some sort of small command like "pins=difficult2" can be randomly inserted into the tournament creation routine to make sure of fair conditions. 

[axe360]

the only issue I have with having so many choices of pins is if your  running a club and a tournament and if the game randomly selects the pins some players are going to get different pin locations then others. We ran into that with CGX. with only two choices either  easy or difficult settings. The time of day, the wind, even the rough settings could mean if you had 4 pin locations the variables on what pins each player got was pretty staggering. To make it fair for everyone playing our tournaments is to use only 2 pins per green. One easy and one difficult. This took away that randomness of selection so everyone was playing on a even level because they were playing the same pins. 

Yes wind direction was not a variable that we could control so in breezy or  gusty players could get different wind directions but at least we had  all players  shooting at the same pins.

 

Glenn thanks for bringing that up, I should have known that seeings how I have tested so many of CGX courses and I modeled my pin settings after CGX's..  I am on a mission now to see how PG set up there pins and what they will do to make sure the same pins can be played by all players of a particular game...

[sirputterman]

I'm not sure how it can be done in PP  but in TW us  designers only made the courses  with two pin locations, again one easy and one difficult. The game had no choice but to select the appropriate pins.

[Greensboronclion]

Eventually I hope it has the same pin placement ability as we had in Links. We all know in that game if you selected difficult for example not every player would have the same pins during an event and I would always custom all 18 holes to ensure each player played the same pins. The advantage of that is that you not only made it fair for all it gave you the ability to make a hole as hard or easy as you pleased. I am still cursed at over there for some of my placements but I always preferred tough conditions vs easy and let's shoot 51 today. I hope we will get that ability down the line and look forward to doing it here.