What Is the Future of Golf Games? (Roundtable)

[HB_Alan]

I hope so, yes! We're still building them. Two key differences will be we are importing high detail topo data for the fairways, greens and traps; and second, yes we are building some custom 3D assets like clubhouses and other course furniture. So overall, they will be more authentic than what you will see from the normal designer tools.

[scagwi]

Re: What Is the Future of Golf Games? (Roundtable)

I hope so, yes! We're still building them. Two key differences will be we are importing high detail topo data for the fairways, greens and traps; and second, yes we are building some custom 3D assets like clubhouses and other course furniture. So overall, they will be more authentic than what you will see from the normal designer tools.

Awesome to hear!
Different trees/foliage that's specific to unique courses?
Perhaps that's a "see if you need it as you go" sort of thing?

[Matt10]

Re: What Is the Future of Golf Games? (Roundtable)

Hey Alan - anything you can speak to regarding swing or gameplay mechanics? Will there be any changes to the green texture, etc? Us no grid guys (true sim tour on tgctours btw) love seeing a "clean" green, but more textures to determine slope, etc, are always welcome. I personally would just love a caddie book that I can include in the courses played, etc. I'm a glutton punishment though lol

Thanks again for openly discussing what you can with us!

[scagwi]

Re: What Is the Future of Golf Games? (Roundtable)

Hey Alan - anything you can speak to regarding swing or gameplay mechanics? Will there be any changes to the green texture, etc? Us no grid guys (true sim tour on tgctours btw) love seeing a "clean" green, but more textures to determine slope, etc, are always welcome. I personally would just love a caddie book that I can include in the courses played, etc. I'm a glutton punishment though lol

Thanks again for openly discussing what you can with us!

I'm not currently a TGC player but I have to really echo this comment about the greens/textures in general.

Some fresh variety there would be most welcome.

Please take no offense Alan, but often times I see shots of the greens in particular and I think of Mario Golf. That's a tad hyperbolic, so pardon me on that, it's all I could think of.

They just appear far too uniform and perfect looking in my humble opinion.

[kehlis]

Re: What Is the Future of Golf Games? (Roundtable)

Bummer.

It would be pretty cool if they could access a data source from the tour each week and have "play vs the pros" and tie it into a career mode in the game.

It's actually pretty easy to do. They share the handicap of the fictional golfer so I just went down the list with the golf rankings to rename them for my offline society. Was actually a pretty rewarding experience.

[JayhawkerStL]

Re: What Is the Future of Golf Games? (Roundtable)

Hi Alfie,
Nothing's been decided yet. Definitely appreciate the comments. We still have more content to announce for TGC 2019 which will be all part of the launch game, I don't think anyone will be disappointed.
Cheers.

No offense to Alfie, but I'm totally okay paying for courses as DLC. It's what we did with Links, and no one had an issue. I don't care if there is a single licensed player at all, but love well made licensed courses, and I know those do not come cheap.

Personally, relying on user made courses actually turns me off. I don't just want lots of content. I want something more realistic than random guys trying to recreate a course.

[scagwi]

Re: What Is the Future of Golf Games? (Roundtable)

turns me off. I don't just want lots of content. I want something more realistic than random guys trying to recreate a course.

+1 on that!

I want lots of RCR's and DLC is just fine with me.

[mickythumbs]

Golf  games  are missing out not having an ultimate team event in their games , EA do it well in Madden , road to the show do it superbly well in their baseball game , an ultimate team in a new Tiger woods game or just an EA Sprts PGA tour game  would be a hole in one ......... lol 

[OnlookerDelay]

Re: What Is the Future of Golf Games? (Roundtable)

Hi John, I don't have a definite date. We ported all our custom code over to Unity 2018 first, and rolled it out to the team. Next up was SpeedTree integration and they have them now working well in the backgrounds, next step is obviously the foreground work. Once ready, though, we'll put out some new screens or vids, probably as part of the Dev Talk vid series which we're doing every week (which OS kindly published, thanks guys!).

Thanks for the reply Alan. I'm cautiously optimistic about SpeedTrees and how they're going to impact The Golf Club 2019. As I've stated before, I wasn't that impressed with the SpeedTree implementation in Jack Nicklaus Perfect Golf, overall, although some types of trees did come out better looking in that game than before. OTOH, JNPG was a bit hamstrung in that it was striving to be compatibile with DirectX 9, which TGC has thankfully left behind. I'm anxious to see what you guys can do with SpeedTrees in a DirectX 12 environment.

Oh, can we safely assume that TGC 2019 will require Windows 10 on the PC?

[Alfie]

Re: What Is the Future of Golf Games? (Roundtable)

Hi Alfie,
Nothing's been decided yet. Definitely appreciate the comments. We still have more content to announce for TGC 2019 which will be all part of the launch game, I don't think anyone will be disappointed.
Cheers.

Great to hear that Alan. Best of luck to HB Studios for TGC 2019.

[Alfie]

Re: What Is the Future of Golf Games? (Roundtable)

No offense to Alfie, but I'm totally okay paying for courses as DLC. It's what we did with Links, and no one had an issue. I don't care if there is a single licensed player at all, but love well made licensed courses, and I know those do not come cheap.

Personally, relying on user made courses actually turns me off. I don't just want lots of content. I want something more realistic than random guys trying to recreate a course.

I think I should've been clearer. IMO the tricky part is how much content should be in the game OOB and at what point it becomes ok for developer to charge for the DLC/content. What if a game had barely 4-6 courses OOB and you had to pay for the rest? I wouldn't be ok with it at all.

When said I didn't want to pay for additional courses, my expectation was that the game would've around 20 or so mainstream courses such as Whistling straits, Pebble Beach, St Andrews, Banff, Augusta, Banff Springs, TPC Sawgrass, La Quinta, Harbour Town etc. along with a bunch of random or made up country clubs to add more variety and for the initial part of the career mode where you start off playing on the no-name courses.

[scagwi]

Re: What Is the Future of Golf Games? (Roundtable)

When said I didn't want to pay for additional courses, my expectation was that the game would've around 20 or so mainstream courses

20!?

I think that's awfully high of an expectation, especially for a smaller studio release.
They don't have EA's budget to work with and I'd imagine a licensed course list of that size is a hefty sum.

TW14 (standard, non-dlc extras) had around 20 if I recall, but again, that's with EA resources.

I'd personally think something like 5-10 is more of a fair expectation.

[Alfie]

Re: What Is the Future of Golf Games? (Roundtable)

20!?

I think that's awfully high of an expectation, especially for a smaller studio release. They don't have EA's budget to work with and I'd imagine a licensed course list of that size is a hefty sum.

I'd personally think something like 5-ish is more of a fair expectation.

I'm assuming it's a full priced $60 game and I would prefer they focus on the courses instead of player licenses. If you don't have to pay for player licenses they should be able to squeeze in more courses.

But you may be right I may have unrealistic expectations as I've mostly played the PGA tour titles (Tiger Woods and RM) and they always had the courses in there so the realistic number in case of TGC 2019 may be slightly less.

[JayhawkerStL]

Re: What Is the Future of Golf Games? (Roundtable)

I wouldn't surprise me if the courses are more expensive that the players.

[HB_Alan]

Hi guys, I asked Shaun (Producer here) to answer some of the questions you guys posed last night. His response:
"We have implemented  new swing feedback that breaks down each swing into three sections. There is more information available to the user after each shot to help them improve on areas they maybe be trying to get to grip with. We have also made several physics changes opening up the ball flights for each shot for the most authentic experience we have ever delivered. We have made some FOV changes for each camera which seem to have helped many people who have been playing the game improve their ability on the green. With that said, we haven’t looked at changes for additional green textures or maps. "

Re: the courses, they take months of effort to make each one when you're pain-stakingly going through topo data and recreating real-world objects. So yes, scagwi is on the right track in setting expectations. The good news is, though, once they're done, it's not like you have to re-do them from the beginning again for any future versions of the game on the same platforms. There's still work that will have to be done and further improvements but the effort will be less. So then you start building up a library of courses over time where you can re-use existing ones with some touch-ups and revisions in the future, and spend most of the future effort  building new ones.