59 games and 5 tournaments later ... some thoughts

[Deano]

Jake,

I'm a big fan of the potential of this game (am addiceted to GL Golf, as you know. but I believe it needs some tweaks in some spots and there are major issues in others.

Here are some observations after 59 games and 5 tournaments ...

1. The new hitting system: The two bars needs getting used to, particularly when trying to hit a soft, short chip. Putting is ok (the hole could be bigger or more forgiving) thanks to the color bars showing distance, but there's no similar feature for full shots and you have no way to accurately anticipate how to hit a short chip. In real golf, you get to take practice swings to get a sense of how hard to hit a ball. You can't do that and must react way too quickly, particularly on very short chips.

2. No option to put from just off the green: This is critical, particularly because some of the cups are really, really close to the edge of the green.

3. Elevated greens need tweaking: Many of them are punative, rather than challenging. (Hole 6 on Nova Desert with Pin Position D is so close to the edge that anything close to the pin on any side simply off the green. I gave up after 45 shots on one attempt at the hole, chipping to all spots and trying all sorts of putting combinations. Part of that was a controlled experiment to see if any combination might work.) The ONLY way you can putt the ball is to hit it deep into the green away from the cup and the edge, and then you must make a very long putt, which doesn't happen because of hole location.

4. Some pins look like they are on the green, but the game senses they are OFF the green and it requires you to chip what should be an extremely short putt. In one case, even when the ball went in, the game still put a club in my hand and I had to take a swing, hitting the ball OUT of the cup.

5. Hung up in the Pro Tour Membership Tournament, after finishing 11, 18, 19, 18, and 15 in the previous tournaments. This one involves Hole 6 on Nova Desert, as mentioned above in #3. After 30+ strokes on one attempt, and 45 on another and 27 on another, I tried to concede the tournament and start over, but the game keeps taking me back to restart Round 3, setting me up on Nova Desert, where the loop of failure looms at Hole 6.

5. My Achievements: There is no way my average score is 74.0 (2.0) as mentioned by the game. Some of the later tournaments, included some pretty bad scores (mostly involving elevated greens) and my average score should be much, much higher.

As I said, I'm a big fan of the potential of this game.

The graphics are cool (though there are too many trees and the fairways are too narrow, and I love the ambient sounds. Too bad you can't build in the smell of newly mown grass. That would be perfect, but then I might start sneezing.

Overall, very good job Jake, but since I can't get past Hole 6 in Round 3 of the Pro Tour Membership tournament, I'll have to wait awhile to start playing again...

Deano...

[Jake]

Thanks for the feedback Deano!

1. GL Golf actually had a hole that was way to big, this hole is to scale and definitely makes the game much more challenging. Now -10 may be a great score compared to -20 in GL Golf. The power bar gets easier to control as the accuracy and recovery stats are increased, I'm going to write a manual to explain all of this stuff over the next few weeks. As for distance on short chips the vertical bar shows the clubs carry distance along with how far it is to the hole, so if you choose the power right around where the text is that shows how far away the hole is it should put you pretty close to the hole.

2. Noted, the next version will allow the putter in more cases. The rough/fairway don't always roll consistent so it's very hard to judge distance from fringe putts, thats why the putter was removed. I'm also thinking about adding half wedge shots for anything close to the hole but off the green

3. I'll look into this pin placement, if you find any more unfair ones definitely let me know. I tested them all but after tweaking the game physics some may have become unfair.

4. Same as #2, I'll make sure you can putt more often.

5. Odd, I never verified the math but I'll start keeping track of this manually to see what's up

As a 1.0 release are definitely things will be improved, just like GL Golf I can't wait to see this game a year from now with all the improvements we have planned. Keep an eye out for an update so you can complete that tournament

[Deano]

Jake,

I can't wait to see how the game develops, too. You do wonderful work, my friend, and this game is really good.

I said in my post I was going to wait awhile, but I'm too much of a junkie to wait. Did a quicktime screen capture of one of my attempts at Hole 6, and stopped it after something like 43 shots. Of course, it was more a demo to show how hard it was to land anywhere near the hold and not have it roll back down the hill.

With all this, I've developed two strategies for these edge holes.

1. Chip just past the cup and hope it rolls back and into the cup on the way down the hill. That has actually worked twice, but both times were accidents, so it's not much of a strategy.

2. Chip deep into the green where you're fairly sure the ball will stop and not roll, and then hit a firm putt at the hole and hope it was aimed right and takes some of the break out of it. You know if you miss, it'll go down the hill, but this seems to have worked better than the other strategy. When I do this I end up with maybe a 9 or 10, if I'm lucky.

I will be glad to see the putter available in more instances off the green. In some cases, it's not a clear division between what's the fringe and what's the green. In one recent instance (I forget which hole), my putt went just past the cup and looked like a tap-in, but my player had to play with an iron. Too bad, I could have used the iron to blade the ball into the cup.

Overall, I do pretty well with all the courses except Nova Desert, and there I do well on most of the holes except 6 and one or two other raised greens.

The game is a wonderful test of your ability to manage a golf course.

I'm not a long-hitter in real life but I'm pretty good at managing my tendencies and the course and have shot in the low 90s and high 80s when I've played regularly.

Thanks for a wonderful job and from past experience, I know you will build this into a classic, must-have golf game.

[Jake]

Thanks for the strategy on hole 6, hopefully if someone else is having trouble they will be able to use this while waiting for the first patch.

Nova Desert is definitely a challenge and rewards accuracy and course management. Quite the opposite of Nova Links, which requires distance from the green tees and backspin to stick the greens. In the last game GL Golf each course played very similar, Nova Golf really allows for different styles of play.

Good luck on the last tournaments!

[snvboy]

definitely agree about the putter. Why not just make it available for every shot? In the real world I've putted out of bunkers (when they don't fluff 'em for a few weeks and the setup like concrete). And in Nova Golf I could see it as being useful to get from under a tree back into the fairway.

I am definitely enjoying the (very frustrating) challenge of the Desert course. Which I think you should take as a big compliment, because that's what I look for when I tee it up on every hole at the real course.

Most of the time.

Now, what's the key shortcut to get the beverage cart over here?

[Jake]

I would, but due to the physics of the game not being 100% accurate the putter sometimes doesn't perform as expected off the green. I figured it would cause more frustration than benefit letting golfers use it every shot.