Greetings golfers, it's another month and another progress update!
What's New
Update 1.12 is all about player profiles, including avatar customisation, stats and progress tracking. To that end I've done a lot of under-the-hood work to facilitate much more customisable player profiles, and to enable a richer experience for players. Instead of the current system of creating four avatars, it is now possible to create up to 64 individual player profiles, comprised of an avatar with user definable names, assigned headwear and chosen ball. Avatar clothing is now more customisable too, with an increased colour palette, and individual colour selections, instead of light/dark pairs of colours.
With the new format it has been necessary to rework a significant amount of the game's menu, so whilst doing so I've taken the opportunity to add some more useful information when creating the player roster.
You'll notice now that there is increased detail regarding your current progress, with stats indicating which golf clubs have been unlocked, and a new multi-day streak feature. This feature rewards the player with XP for playing the game on consecutive days, with increasing XP bonuses given up to a seven day streak. Streaks are also logged in the leaderboards - so you'll also be able to see just how much stamina other players have 😁
Progress will also be resettable from this menu, meaning you'll be able to reset any progress you've made, returning your XP and Level to zero! Any unlocks such as balls and golf clubs will also become locked again - so use this option carefully.
Also the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the player roster now has 8 slots - with this update you'll now be able to have up to 8 local players. Online games are still limited to 16 players total, but it will now be possible to hold small tournaments on a single computer when playing hot seat.
On the lobby menu, I've added more stats relevant to the currently selected course - when choosing what to play you'll be able to see the names of the top 5 players scrolling across the bottom of the menu, if they are available.
Aside from the new customisation options, a few user-reported bugs have reared their heads, so these will be fixed in the next update. Specifically these are the billiards games not being able to launch, and two achievements, 'Full House' and 'Skin of Your Teeth', not being awarded in certain edge cases.
I've also worked to rebalance putting slightly. When putting assist is enabled the power distance icon was broken by the last update after the putter was modified to rescale dynamically with distance. The power flag does a good job indicating stroke distance, however, although some players complained it made putting too easy. To kill two birds with one stone I've made the power flag only available when putting assist is enabled, replacing the old power indicator, and making it slightly more difficult to judge range for an increase in challenge when putting assist is disabled.
Based on user feedback I've added a stroke indicator to the mini-putt view, which appears in the top left when putting, to aid in aiming. However, as this makes it very easy to get a hole in one on the putting course, it's also only available when putting assist is activated. As before, activating the putting assist reduces the amount of XP awarded from putting, to make more challenging plays more valuable by disabling the putting assist.
Finally, other smaller improvements include adding the 'vertex snap' mode to the 3D clouds introduced in the previous update, and it is now possible to skip the ball flight animation when taking a shot - useful when playing with CPU opponents, or a lot of other players, to speed up the game.
Public Beta
Because user feedback is invaluable to development, this update now has a public beta available. Anyone who wishes to try the work-in-progress features, or test if bugs have been fixed may now do so. The beta is opt-in and can be selected from Steam by right clicking Super Video Golf in the library, going to properties, and selecting the 'Betas' tab.
Note, this is an unfinished update! There will be new bugs, and not every feature is complete. For example the new avatar customisation menu is far from fully functional. There are also new stats and achievements available, although there may be cases where they don't trigger properly.
The beta will also attempt to load and convert any existing avatar profiles to the new format. However these are maintained separately, so if you decide to return to the last release (1.11) your old profiles will be restored. Any new profiles you create will not appear in 1.11.
Please do leave any feedback in the discussions forums!
That wraps up this progress update - there is still a significant amount of work to do, particularly on the customisation menu, which means that the update's release is still a few weeks away but hopefully it will be worth the wait! As always thank you to everyone reaching out to discuss the game and offer feedback. Until the next time, happy golfing! ⛳🏌️♀️