How 'serious' is this mod supposed to be ?
- Thread starter JaFO
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Duffers is definately not a golf sim like "Tiger Woods" or "Links". However, it's also not a wacky golf game like "Swingerz". We want the multiplayer to feel like golfing with your friends at your local public course.
Ahh, that comment about it not being a golfing sim like "Links" has really made me sad. I enjoy Links a lot and me and a few mates play it twice a week with beers and sidebets.
You are off to a GREAT start guys. Neat website. Great "golfy" theme and coloring (this actually motivates me to attempt to make a website for my upcomming gametype
It's awesome to see people starting to think outside the unreal square (oh not another shoot the gun at the other player square). My mod is also a little bit different, it's like FootBall played with Cars and a big Ball
Duffers Golf is very rough but shows huge potential!
Is there any reason you went with your own physics code? I know Karma isn't that great but your current physics code needs a ton of work. The way the ball tries to jump out of the cup and roll off to freedom after you have finished the hole is kinda scarey. The ball's initial impacts are also quite jerky and doesn't seem at all very realistic.
I'm not sure what your development process is like (or your UScript code prowess/experience) but I'll say this anyways..
I got my gametype completed and then did network testing. The whole thing was broken and I had to recode about 80% of it from scratch. I'd highly reccomend you be testing with network play as you go, just to save you a lot of time and headaches
Seeing as the game is currently pretty rough (but working which is excellent) I would suggest you thrash out the code you have currently. I know from my limited experience it's really bad when you endup with around a hundred code routines that you have to polish
While I'm spamming I'll ask about mapping. I also make UT maps and I'd be pretty keen on making a course for you guys. I'm currently pretty busy with my mod but the first version of it should be released within a week (I have 2 more maps to make yet).
Anyway, great stuff and I really look forward to following this mod through it's lifecycle
You are off to a GREAT start guys. Neat website. Great "golfy" theme and coloring (this actually motivates me to attempt to make a website for my upcomming gametype
It's awesome to see people starting to think outside the unreal square (oh not another shoot the gun at the other player square). My mod is also a little bit different, it's like FootBall played with Cars and a big Ball
Duffers Golf is very rough but shows huge potential!
Is there any reason you went with your own physics code? I know Karma isn't that great but your current physics code needs a ton of work. The way the ball tries to jump out of the cup and roll off to freedom after you have finished the hole is kinda scarey. The ball's initial impacts are also quite jerky and doesn't seem at all very realistic.
I'm not sure what your development process is like (or your UScript code prowess/experience) but I'll say this anyways..
I got my gametype completed and then did network testing. The whole thing was broken and I had to recode about 80% of it from scratch. I'd highly reccomend you be testing with network play as you go, just to save you a lot of time and headaches
Seeing as the game is currently pretty rough (but working which is excellent) I would suggest you thrash out the code you have currently. I know from my limited experience it's really bad when you endup with around a hundred code routines that you have to polish
While I'm spamming I'll ask about mapping. I also make UT maps and I'd be pretty keen on making a course for you guys. I'm currently pretty busy with my mod but the first version of it should be released within a week (I have 2 more maps to make yet).
Anyway, great stuff and I really look forward to following this mod through it's lifecycle
Links is an excellent game, but we'll leave that much realism to the teams with the time and resources to get it perfect.Wannabeemapper said:
Coding out own physics in UScript was the only way we could get it work. When we started on the mod last year, we really didn't think the physics would be the barrier it turned into. We've really made Duffers 3+ times. There's been a lot of trial and error to get things working right. We're on our 3rd version of the map (and thus it's a little sparse), but it a much smaller file and framerates are way up. We've also tried several approaches at the physics. To answer your question, we tried Karma but we couldn't keep the ball from falling through the ground. The ball is just too small and too fast for Karma's collision. At high framerates and slow speed, it worked really well, but it wasn't reliable. Other mods have run into the same problem.Wannabeemapper said:
We avoided doing our physics in UScript. It's not really what UScript is meant for. Hopefully we can make our physics native if we ever get our hands on the header files, but we're not to that point yet. Yes, the physics is a little buggy. The "bunny-hopping" is our top priority right now. It occurs far less than it used to, and will be eliminated in our MSU entry. The transition between flying/bouncing and rolling has also been smoothed out.
Actually, we had multiplayer working great in UT2003. It broke when we ported to 2004, but we're working on it. We develop and test in a client-server environment. Replication has given us headaches, but rest assured, we have played multiplayer rounds.Wannabeemapper said:I got my gametype completed and then did network testing. The whole thing was broken and I had to recode about 80% of it from scratch. I'd highly reccomend you be testing with network play as you go, just to save you a lot of time and headaches
I'll let Mix answer mapping questions. I can tell you that almost the entire map is static meshes. Down the road we will write up a tutorial on how to make your own course. For now you can always open up the map in UEd and poke around.Wannabeemapper said:
Thanks for playing, and thanks for your feedback!Wannabeemapper said:Anyway, great stuff and I really look forward to following this mod through it's lifecycle
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A bit on the maps:
As spielberg said, we're in our 3rd+ revision of just about everything in the game, and that includes the maps. We started out using terrain, but we weren't happy with the lack of detail in edges and deformations like bunkers. We then played around with using static meshes just for the main part of the holes (tee, fairways, greens, bunkers) surrounded by terrain and decorations. this worked ok, but the course was too "tight", and the aim marker would jump on top of objects that were close to the hole. It was also very slow, as there could be a LOT of geometry in view at certain angles. We then decided to break each hole out to it's own 'area' and comprise the entire course out of static meshes. I broke each hole up into sections (fringe, rough, fairway) so the entire hole wouldn't be drawn if you are only looking at a portion, and the resultant meshes are fairly low on polys, but still look pretty good.
The process is isn't finalized, and I'm still experimenting with the look. I'm currently trying to see how many trees I can pack in before framerate becomes a big issue. I have a low-range machine, so it's a fairly decent testbed for worst-case.
If any mappers have any insight into techniques they think I should explore, or would like to have a go at sprucing up the course, I'm all for it.
Just for future reference, the current 9-hole limit is just an arbitrary one, and 18-hole courses are planned. I will be putting out a formal request for course designers soon.
As spielberg said, we're in our 3rd+ revision of just about everything in the game, and that includes the maps. We started out using terrain, but we weren't happy with the lack of detail in edges and deformations like bunkers. We then played around with using static meshes just for the main part of the holes (tee, fairways, greens, bunkers) surrounded by terrain and decorations. this worked ok, but the course was too "tight", and the aim marker would jump on top of objects that were close to the hole. It was also very slow, as there could be a LOT of geometry in view at certain angles. We then decided to break each hole out to it's own 'area' and comprise the entire course out of static meshes. I broke each hole up into sections (fringe, rough, fairway) so the entire hole wouldn't be drawn if you are only looking at a portion, and the resultant meshes are fairly low on polys, but still look pretty good.
The process is isn't finalized, and I'm still experimenting with the look. I'm currently trying to see how many trees I can pack in before framerate becomes a big issue. I have a low-range machine, so it's a fairly decent testbed for worst-case.
If any mappers have any insight into techniques they think I should explore, or would like to have a go at sprucing up the course, I'm all for it.
Just for future reference, the current 9-hole limit is just an arbitrary one, and 18-hole courses are planned. I will be putting out a formal request for course designers soon.
Ahh. Ok I haven't tried small karma objects yet, as I said.. my mod has a huge ball
I hadn't realized the mod had been in development for such a long time
Ok I'll take a look at the map sometime soon. I'm kind of new at 3dsmax but I've made a mesh map in max to see if I could
I hadn't realized the mod had been in development for such a long time
Ok I'll take a look at the map sometime soon. I'm kind of new at 3dsmax but I've made a mesh map in max to see if I could
The actual modeling process is relatively simple, but tedious. I make a outline of the hole in Illustrator (any vector drawing program will work) and then import those paths into Max. I make a large plane (somewhat bigger than the hole) and give it a decent resolution, usually about 80x80. I tessellate the faces around where the actual hole to give me more polys in that area for smoothness, etc. I then use "ShapeMerge" (under composite objects) to 'cut' the path into the plane. Then comes the fun part. Shapemerge isn't very clean, so I have to go through and touch-up the mesh. A LOT. I merge vertices, turn edges, and generally clean up until it looks decent. I then give the mesh a planar UV map and adjust the tiling. I can then play with the heights of the mesh, to give it a nice shape. Once that's done, I'll chop it up into pieces (fringe, rough, fairway). The other tedious part comes next, where I have to assign material IDs to certain parts of the mesh (borders, fairway, etc) and use UVUnwrap to straighten the borders so they wrap properly. All in all, it takes about 3-5 hours to make a single hole.
I would love to do courses but I don't have Max or comparable, and this is more modeling than mapping