Many thanks for all your patience while we worked on this upgrade. We hope we can now resume the more regular update schedule.
Courses
I am sure most of you will be disappointed with the fact that there are no new courses. We have had to pretty much redo all the courses we had due to the changes in U5. We have made a commitment to get new courses out to you and we are going to get pushing on this now. Our goal is to have two more courses to you by the end of next week, one real course and one fictional
Lighting
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. Much more dynamic and vibrant should please the folks who complained that it was lacking in contrast
The new trees (more on that later) also take this lighting more effectively adding to the immersion factor.
Upgrade to Speedtree
We have rebuilt our tree library to use SpeedTree which was made available in Unity for the first time in Version 5. What does this mean, well there are a number of new features in addition to the better lighting
Tree passthrough collisions with a random sound and effect on the ball in flight. The ball will be slowed down a random amount and deflected a random amount each time it hits the branches or leaves
The tree movement is now tied in to the wind speed so now the higher the wind, the more the trees will move.
Upgrade to Physics
We have done an Integration of complete skid/slip and roll system into our physics engine bouncing. 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.
We have also significantly improved the putting experience. Gone is the flag on the putting meter and instead we have a full putting meter where the player must determine the strength of putt as well as direction. A full 12 o clock swing will go approximately 70 odd feet and around 30 at the 9 o'clcok. It is scaled slightly exponentially. Below the swing meter is an indicator that says whether you are putting inside or outside 6ft. When inside the swingmeter will move at half pace to make setting short distances much easier and remove the machine gun 3 click effect
We have also fixed the bug that caused the ball to shoot on launching a putt. the ball will accelerate more quickly downhill and slow down quicker uphill and also take more break. Everyone will have to learn how to putt all over a gain.
This will make judgement of distance much more difficult and to compensate we have reduced the direction penalty for missing the snap on putts. There is a new camera for putting you can enable in the game settings UI which is lower to the ground and avoids the issue of the player covering the hole. In addition when near the green you can hit F4 to view the putt from the far side of the hole. Hit F4 again to return to the main camera.
The new bounce physics will also mean people will have to relearn the short game.
Improved the hole cup physics. Balls will lip out more realisticly now and the ball if hit too hard will hit the back of the cup and bounce upwards a little. Balls rolling on green will now bounce off the pin if it is in.
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. As a result we have adjusted the shot center to be for small adjustments only in loft. With Lob shots the snap penalty has been changed from a directional penalty to more of a Fat Thin penalty. Snap too early and the ball will not go as far, snap too late and the ball will go too far and lower
Game Play and Stats
Added in a handicapping setting into scoring so now you can play net matches against opponents with a defined handicap. Right now this is on an honor system but eventually it will be integrated into the actual scoring of the player. This will happen once we get the Perfect Golf Club website and API up and running.
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. The stats can be viewed during the round by viewing the scorecard and clicking the View Stats button in the top left.
Added a horizontal swing meter, for those who like to swing left to right or right to left. You can choose between the two horizontal motion swings by changing your players handedness in the player menu
Restoring offline mode. We have mostly restored the offline mode in the game. This means we have restored our own networking code for offline play. You can now play without being connected to the internet or when steam is off and set to offline mode.
Online games set up in the lobby can now be protected with a password as can any private chat channels you set up. To add a password just type a passowrd into the password line when setting up an online game. All players attempting to join that game will be asked to provide the password.
Menu Changes
Players Menu:
- Added a handedness which affects the directionality of the horiontal motion swing
- Added a handicap value that is used in calculating a players strokes in a new game
Settings Menu - Graphics:
- Sun Shafts replaced by God Rays and Lens Flare options. Lens Flare will work in all modes, God Rays only work when dynamic Sky is on. If you want lens flares make sure this is set before switching to non dynamic sky
- Turn Sky Scattering effect on or off - When on the skies will be more blue with less haze, when off the sky will have a more blue white haze to it
- Adaptive Lighting. This feature adds an effect to the camera a little like the pupil of the eye which allows it to show more light when in a dark area and less light when brightly lit
- Replaced Tree Billboad Slider with new LOD slider for Trees, Higher Values is Higher Tree Quality
Weather Settings Menu:
- Removed Dust and replaced with Variable which has variable cloudiness on a clear day
- Changed Storm mode so there is a 50 50 chance of a storm rolling through every 20 mins so not stormy all the time
- Changed Rain Mode so more of a showers mode.
- Added Active Weather Slider - This is future functionality and will toggle whether rain causes the ground to soften during game play - For now this button does nothing.