next »

[Sean A.]

So I have been thinking about this for a bit and have come up with an idea for a golf game that randomly generates courses for you. I would like the main focus of the game to be competitive multiplayer, probably just over LAN for now to keep it simple. I have looked into the procedural part and have come up with a method using metaballs for rendering fairways and greens, generating maybe three balls for a green to get a nice rounded look and then a few more for the fairways. I've also been looking into LAN possibilities using Flash (the tool I am most comfortable in). If anyone has any tips or ideas please let me know.

Latest progress pictures:


One of my main inspirations is Mario Golf for the Gameboy Color:

I am hoping to have a similar top-down view of the hole for planning shots and then a third person type deal for actually hitting the shots.

[KaBoom300]

Sounds legit! Randomly generated worlds are always awesome. It fascinates me that they can be so well done (Mine craft) so I'm looking forward to this! As for LAN, Adobe Air supports the creation of socket servers, which you probably know but I'd say that is your best bet. I've never really looked into their use, but from what I understand, it shouldn't be too difficult to get one working.

[whilefun]

Sounds like a great idea!

[VDZ]

You might want to have the random generation be seed-based (with the seed being random, but visible to the player), sort of like how Lotus III did it (if you haven't played it, it allowed you to set track parameters and it generated a track from that. You also got a code consisting of 8 letters (defining the track) plus 2 numbers (defining the difficulty), which you could later re-enter if you wanted to play the same track again).

It would allow players to replay the exact same course again (to improve scores, etc) even though it was randomly generated.

[Sean A.]

Yeah I will for sure do seed based so people can save and share their favourite courses. Also it makes it easier for syncing multiplayer because to get each player on the same course you can just send one number instead of all of the details. I would love to have the player be able to alter parameters but I think I'll try and include both entirely randomly generated and partially generated.

Yeah I've been looking into the air socket server and it looks like it'll suit what I need. I've made a networked game in the past so that shouldn't be too crazy a goal to achieve in a month.

I've been thinking about game modes and I think I kind of want this to go in a party game direction with a huge number of rulesets to play with, here are some I've been thinking about:

• Standard Golf (Player with the lowest score wins)
• Time Attack (Players are awarded scores based on the order that they get the ball in the hole, 1st in the hole gets 1, 2nd gets 2 etc.)
• Endless mode (Players are knocked out if they shoot over par on a hole, the game goes until there is a one winner)

If you have any other ideas let me know!

[whilefun]

• Time Attack (Players are awarded scores based on the order that they get the ball in the hole, 1st in the hole gets 1, 2nd gets 2 etc.)

If you have any other ideas let me know!

For time attack, would there be a competitive aspect that threw away the turn based nature of golf? I think it'd be way more chaotic and fun if the players could interfere with each other in this mode. So I could shoot my ball at you or at your ball to be distracting. It would also allow players to be destructive if they are losing, which could make losing fun, and winning a bit more challenging! 

[Sean A.]

Oh yeah if that was unclear the whole multiplayer game wont be turn based. As soon as your ball has stopped rolling you can hit it again no waiting for other people so the Time Attack game mode would be pretty frantic because it doesn't matter how many times you hit it as long as it goes in. I would love to add some PvP interference but I'm quite sure how that would work in the context of a golf game. I was thinking about powerups or items maybe?

[VDZ]

Oh yeah if that was unclear the whole multiplayer game wont be turn based. As soon as your ball has stopped rolling you can hit it again no waiting for other people so the Time Attack game mode would be pretty frantic because it doesn't matter how many times you hit it as long as it goes in. I would love to add some PvP interference but I'm quite sure how that would work in the context of a golf game. I was thinking about powerups or items maybe?

How about being able to hit your opponent's ball instead of your own? (With naturally some switching delay or similar to also make it disadvantageous to the player doing it, so they'd have to be careful with it.)

[Sean A.]

That's interesting. Maybe that could be an item, I feel like if you could do that all the time it would get too hectic and frustrating, I had a couple ideas for powerups too (names subject to change):

Defensive (affects other players)

• Gust of Wind (Changes the wind to a direction of your choosing for a short period of time, used for blowing opponents off course)
• Brick Wall (Stops all balls in their tracks, used to full effect when multiple opponents balls are in the air to end their shot)
• Interruption (Choose an opponent and take their next shot for them)
• Club Lock (Choose an opponent and force them to take their next shot with the club of your choice)

Offensive (affects yourself)

• Steroids (Increases your next shots power)
• Magnet (Your next shot will gravitate towards the hole)
• Wings (Your next shot will not be affected by the wind)

[whilefun]

Defensive (affects other players)

• Gust of Wind (Changes the wind to a direction of your choosing for a short period of time, used for blowing opponents off course)
• Brick Wall (Stops all balls in their tracks, used to full effect when multiple opponents balls are in the air to end their shot)
• Interruption (Choose an opponent and take their next shot for them)
• Club Lock (Choose an opponent and force them to take their next shot with the club of your choice)

Offensive (affects yourself)

• Steroids (Increases your next shots power)
• Magnet (Your next shot will gravitate towards the hole)
• Wings (Your next shot will not be affected by the wind)

These sound like good fun! I love the club lock idea especially. "Take your fairway shot with your putter, sucker!  "

[Sean A.]

Yeah or forcing them to put with a driver would have pretty funny results. I need to think of a way to distribute the powerups though. Should it be like landing your ball in a certain area or given out to players who are losing or for making nice shots. Lots of different options.

[whilefun]

Yeah or forcing them to put with a driver would have pretty funny results. I need to think of a way to distribute the powerups though. Should it be like landing your ball in a certain area or given out to players who are losing or for making nice shots. Lots of different options.

Oooh, cool idea. Mario-kart-esque power up zones so you have to sacrifice moving toward the pin, but get rewarded with a random power up so you might gain that sacrificed bit back and more. Fun!

[Sean A.]

Alright I've started coding, threw together a quick program that generates random "skeletons" for holes (the direction and length of it) it accepts two parameters at the moment, a par (for theoretically unlimited par holes) and a curviness parameter that affects the maximum angle for each section of the hole (ie. straightforward or dog legs). It's a start!


Example of a Par 5 hole

[microrignal]

Sounds neat. For the interacting with other players aspect, an interesting option, I think, would be that the players have to move manually to their ball (or somebody else's) after each shot. For online multiplayer, you might want to check out Player.IO.

(Also, hello tigSource forums! I barely interacted here, a fair while ago)

[eigenbom]

That's interesting. Maybe that could be an item, I feel like if you could do that all the time it would get too hectic and frustrating, I had a couple ideas for powerups too (names subject to change):

Defensive (affects other players)

• Gust of Wind (Changes the wind to a direction of your choosing for a short period of time, used for blowing opponents off course)
• Brick Wall (Stops all balls in their tracks, used to full effect when multiple opponents balls are in the air to end their shot)
• Interruption (Choose an opponent and take their next shot for them)
• Club Lock (Choose an opponent and force them to take their next shot with the club of your choice)

Offensive (affects yourself)

• Steroids (Increases your next shots power)
• Magnet (Your next shot will gravitate towards the hole)
• Wings (Your next shot will not be affected by the wind)

wizard golf!

[Sean A.]

Sounds neat. For the interacting with other players aspect, an interesting option, I think, would be that the players have to move manually to their ball (or somebody else's) after each shot. For online multiplayer, you might want to check out Player.IO.

(Also, hello tigSource forums! I barely interacted here, a fair while ago)

I remember a golf game on this forums that was a 3D greyscale first person golf game where you had a cart to drive and find your ball. I really enjoyed that aspect but I think for a game like this I wanna focused on fast paced frantic multiplayer and moving between shots manually could slow the pace of the game down and pull the core of the game away from the golf itself which isn't really what I want.

I have also looked at various online options including Player.IO but that requires an account and I'm not sure I want to have the multiplayer tied to a service and I really wanna push the party aspect of it with LAN and split screen because these type of games are best played with friends and backstabbing.

As for wizards, I haven't decided on a visual style or theme yet so it is still up in the air...

[einstein]

I definitely will be following this.

As with the greyscale golf game, I will never forget that game. Golf? (http://www.hockeyquestionmark.com/golf/) was so strange!

[Sean A.]

Yes that's the one! Very weird but fun. Anyway here is an update picture of my menu progress:


The little orange things animate to the left when you mouse over. Also this project is unnamed so far so if you have any ideas let me know.

[Inanimate]

I love that menu. Really slick!

I like wizards as a theme, too.

[Sean A.]

Thanks although I have kind of narrowed down the style I am going for and wizards don't really fit that but I was also thinking of having some player choice as to which power-up they wanted to get when they land in the power-up spots and those could be represented by different hats and a wizard hat could be one.

Anyway I've been slugging away at the hole generator and thing are always more complicated than they seem but it's moving. Here's a screenshot of my progress today:

Doesn't quite look right yet but almost

I also wanted to talk a bit about some of my ideas for this. One of my main plans for this game is customizability. The thing that has always bothered me in certain games (I guess this stems from by creative, PC-based background) is a lack of settings options. I'm gonna use Mario Party as an example because the party style is similar to this game. When you start a game in Mario Party, you are given a few options, whether you want bonus stars and the last 5 turn bonus, how many turns (out of 4 presets) and that's about it.

One thing that I've learned from making games is that if you end up using a number more than once, make it a variable. This simplifies things organizationally and it allows game-wide changes with a single value. Now I'm sure in Mario Party, somewhere in the code the amount of turns is stored as a numeric variable. So when you choose turns why only give you 4 presets? Why not a slider or a number entry field. Why can't you change the coin value for blue and red squares (ie blue = +1, red = -10)? Why can't you change every minigame to be a battle minigame? Why can't you change the number of starts that appear on the board? I could come up with over a hundred different things people might want to change. The existing settings in the game are a bit superficial, they don't fundamentally change the way the game is played.

I think that if you provide a deeper level of customization you can increase replay value exponentially. So for this game one of my goals is to have a huge level of customization for your games. Now to keep the barrier of entry low there will be a few settings presets for each game mode to try out. Then when you get a sense of the game you can look under the hood and tweak every little thing. You want to play a marathon of 36 Par 3 Holes only? Sure. Play one huge Par 60 Hole? Easy. Play a regular course except for the 15 bunkers on each hole and low gravity. Play a course where the fairways and rough are reversed. Force everyone to play with only their putter the entire round. There are so many things you could do with this so I will try to leave most of the games rules open-ended.

The final piece to this puzzle is to be able to export, share and import preset files. If you created a fun gametype you can share it with anyone and everyone. Imagine the extra-replayablility Mario Party would have if you could download someone's crazy game type for it and just try out ridiculous stuff.

Anyway that's it for today, one other feature I would love to implement would be heightmaps. Not for 3D terrain but just for ball physics so greens could have hills and your putts can curve and bend. I did a quick search to see how I could influence an objects movement based on a height map and didn't really find much. If anyone can point me in the right direction that would be great.