It's been a few weeks since our last update so we though we would post an update on our development progress As many of you will know we were also down in Augusta Georgia providing our virtual course graphics and display systems to both ESPN and Sky Sports.
The Unity 5 Upgrade
Unity 5 has been released recently and it had so many great new features that we decided it was worth the time to convert PerfectGolf to U5 and take advantage of many of the improvements. Here is a list of some of the things we are currently working on. Not all of them are releated to the Unity 5 upgrade but we never stop developing and improving so we have taken this time to also address some of the feeback we have recieved from the community.
- Improved Lighting and upgrading our Time of Day lighting system. The whole lighting and shader system in U5 is much more immersive and flexible so we have completed a revision of all the settings and data related to the Lighting, shaders and materials inside the game {Still In Progress}
- Upgrade to Speed Tree Vegetation. We made the decision to move to the highly regarded SpeedTree vegetation system which has now been integrated with Unity for the first time. This means each of our courses need to be replanted with SpeedTree assets which not only look great and react the light in a more realistic way but the wind effects and collision systems are much better, enabling us to have realistic ball/tree folliage collisions for the first time. {Still in Progress}
- Integrated the wind into the trees more realistically so now the higher the wind, the more the trees will move. The cloud movement is also tied into the speed and direction of the wind {Complete}
- Upgrade to our Ball and ground Physics. Physics are to us one of the most important elements of a golf game and we have been woprking towards an even more robust system for many months. We have integrated a full skid/slip and roll system into our physics engine and this means that spin rate, vertical velocity and softness all determine whether a ball will skid on impact or whether friction with the surface will scrub all the spin off the ball and it will be rolling on impact with the ground. This leads to the ability to hit a much larger variety of shots with more realistic results. {Complete}
- Move to more simplified firmness setting with Soft Normal and Hard. {Normal Complete}
- New Pitch and Lob shot type options remove the need to continually adjust the loft of the shots manually and help to replicate the fine control that the pros display in this part of the game. In conjunction with the new ball and ground physics this allows us to replicate many of the shots you see on the PGA tour week in and week out such as the low pitch shot that grabs and spins itself out near the hole. {Complete}
- All new putting physics incorporating skid on leaving the putter which again adds to the reality of the putts. We also have fixed the high speed launch issue and have adjust the putting distance control to be more user controlled rather than having the distance to the hole 'preset' on the swingmeter. This will make judgement of diatnce much more difficult and to compensate we have reduced the direction penalty for missing the snap on putts. {Complete}
- Added in a handicapping setting into scoring so now you can play net matches against opponents with a defined handicap {Complete for current incarnation - Improvements in future releases}
- Added in stat tracking so at the end of each round you can see all the players stats and then have your stats for all your players synced with the cloud. You will also be able to see other players stats if they allow their stats to be shared {Complete for current incarnation improvements in future releases}
- Restoring offline mode. We have fully restored the offline mode in the game {Complete}
- Passworded games and passworded chat. We have already built in the ability to protect online games with passwords as well as chat channels. {Complete}
- Bug fixes. A multitude of other bugs reported by the community have been squashed including the now infamous OSX Greed Grid bug
Once all this is complete and the existing courses have all been upgraded to U5 we will push a new release to everyone and begin working on the final items before the full game release. We are looking to add the following:
- Full set of animations. We have actually begun working on this already but it will take some time before they are completed. They will be added to an update when they are ready for testing.
- Additional Courses. Our goal is to get at least 4 more courses out to you prior to release which will make the release version come with 10 courses
- CourseForge updates to include bug fixes, new features, advanced and simple modes. These will be pushes to our testers as we move towards the full public release. Thanks again for your continued support!!