Greetings once again golfers!
It's a little off-schedule (but in a good way!) as the next update is imminent, but I thought I'd share with you what else will be arriving in the upcoming 1.17 update.
If you missed the last post, check it out here to see what I've been working on previously, including new camera modes, new game modes and updated control layouts coming to 1.17. Since then I've been wrangling further control changes as well as refining the Career mode which was added in 1.16.
Control Updates
With the controls I've tightened up compatibility with the Steam Deck, particularly when using an external controller. Previously, while it was possible to play single player or online multiplayer with the Deck docked and an external controller, playing hot-seat where multiple players shared a controller was unfortunately awry.
The problem lay in the fact that the Deck itself is also a controller, so the game would attempt to fall back to the Deck for any player other than player one - which is inconvenient to say the least! This has now been fixed and it is possible to use any external controller with the Steam Deck to play in hot-seat mode, as well as play with multiple external controllers at once. On top of this I've also fixed the controller type detection on the Steam Deck so that it correctly displays PS controller icons should you be using a PS3, PS4 or PS5 controller, in line with the desktop version of the game.
Along side this I've also updated the PS5 controller support on the desktop version to support the haptic triggers - a variety of effects are now enabled in game, so if you have a DualSense controller, give it a try! 😁
Career Updates
Since 1.16 was released many of you have offered welcome feedback on the new Career mode via the discussions and Steam Chat and I've been working to act on it.
Most notably the in-game scoreboard, when playing a Career round, now shows all of the other league players, along with their current score. Not only does this offer much more interactive feedback as you play the round, it actually revealed a few, uh, wrinkles in the CPU score generation, which have since been ironed out. It's now also possible to rename the players in the league, including your own profile name, by clicking on the player's name in the league browser. Thanks to everyone who suggested this, it has been well received so far by the brave beta testers 😁
Along with the ironing of wrinkles I took the opportunity to rebalance the Career slightly. CPU players now alter their behaviour based on your selected clubset, so that entry level players have less resistance when starting out, and more advanced players can increase the challenge as they level up their clubs. The barrier for unlocking the next league has also been lowered to placing in the top 5 of the previous league. You'll still need to place top 3 to gain access to those cosmetics though!
Yourjaguarlover should get an honourable mention as he tirelessly played, reset and replayed the Career multiple times to make sure it's a great experience. I'm pretty sure by now he must mutter about it in his sleep...
Oh, and resetting your Career no longer removes any unlocked items from your inventory - these are now persistent between resets!
Quality Improvements
As always there are a variety of improvements which can be made here and there, just to sand off the rough edges. I've updated the Workshop tools for users on Linux/SteamOS - particularly for users with no or custom DEs, where the native dialogue boxes wouldn't work correctly. There's probably still room for improvement here, so if Linux is your thing and you have any feedback do let me know!
On the Steam Deck I've managed to find a colour emoji font with both a compatible format for rendering as well a publishable license - the upshot being Deck users now have colour emojis! 😁
Also on the Steam Deck it seems that Valve have corrected the bug introduced by the May SteamOS update which was causing the game to crash when launching the Career. However if this is still not fixed for you, please check out this work-around for details on how to get the game up and running.
And, on the desktop, if you bought the soundtrack on Steam (thank you!) the game will automatically play that version of the music, as it's higher quality and has extended mixes, during game instead of the default music.
That's it for this update - it's not an exhaustive list (I haven't even begun to cover all the new achievements!) - however the full change list will be published once the update is released. As always thank you to everyone who plays the game, supports the development effort, and those of you who play on Super Video Sundays! (do join in if you haven't already 😁)
For now though, Happy Golfing! 🏌️♀️⛳