Nine Bridges Course at Jeju Island

[Adelade]

Fun fact - I very accidentally discovered that the shape of the clubhouse area of this course depicts a to me rather lovely little ... snail? Did not see it until I had already "created" it. Wonder if they know in real life Come on, I cant be the only one seeing it!

JejuShape.jpg (232.74 KiB) Viewed 8210 times

Making huge progress (for being me anyway), besides finishing the painting of verts for main areas, I have mostly finished the panorama, mostly settled on first draft textures, made full green elevations for 17 holes (I first only planned on making them remotely playable for now, but ended up enjoying finalizing them already), I've planted PGA pins for 17 holes and full pins for 14 holes, finalized planted tees (with a caveat which I will bring up soon) and made temporary simple hole previews for 9 holes which turned out good enough that I may consider keeping them as final. I also later painted in some additional areas such as the creeks within the play area, also practice areas and general shape of some building areas. One last hole of green elevations until Im getting to taste my first test round.

[Duglis]

Looks great!!!!

[Jimbo]

I'm loving all those buildings!!!

[Adelade]

Sorry Jimbo, I am NOT making all of those! I dont know how much of them I will make, but I am not looking forward to any 3D work of the non-creative kind. I am still undecided about making the temporary grandstand buildings that are usually there for the CJ cup, I was first absolutely planning on making them but then not a lot of people seem to enjoy playing with crowds so I wonder if its just wasted effort. The real buildings within view of play areas I plan on making at least simple versions of, but Im not going through any trouble of creating any of the clubhouse area other than what can be seen while playing 18th. The clubhouse may mostly become a flat set piece since players arent going to see it from more than a narrow angle.

[pmgolf]

For 50 years now, when I go play golf I take in the wonderful beauty of the golf course. If there are houses or buildings around, I really don't focus on them and would prefer that they not be there. The same is true for me with digital recreations of a course. A clubhouse is fine, but I view houses and buildings as more of an eyesore. Give me a beautiful golf course, sprinkle in a few people (small galleries), and I'm good-to-go!

Pete

[Jimbo]

The reason that I keep mentioning the architecture is its contribution to the total package. A good example would be Lambton-the course that was just completed. It's located in the western part of the city of Toronto and by no means in a "rural" area (it practically backs onto St. George's ) and the urban environment is simply an integral part of the whole. (There are also some "hidden treasures" but that's another issue)
I've had the opportunity to visit Riviera in Los Angeles-the actual course in in a "bowl" behind the clubhouse-as you can see from the tee shot on the first hole-but what many people don't realize is that surrounding the upper area are lots of multi-million dollar mansions (inhabited by who-knows-who ) whose occupants can be seen watching the action from their backyards. Again-an "urban" course that deserves to be identified as such.
Like I said, it may not have an effect on the playability of a course but as long as you're APCD'ing it anyway you may as well go the whole nine yards-because someday somebody will come out include everything...better to have that person working on something new. This is especially true for Scottish courses that (and please don't take this as a criticism-it's just a fact) need all the help they can get...like the hotel at St. Andrews.
The alternative is to simply surround the course with trees which is a bit of a cop-out IMHO.
And those clubhouses are downright beautiful! (Banff is a little plain, but there's the "unofficial" clubhouse across the street )
Remember I'm not an APCD'er, just a nit-picker, so feel free to "flame away" , but I'd rather wait a little longer for the final release if it includes bells and whistles...it might be interesting to see how many of you feel the same way.
Just a thought...

Anyway, I'm off to resume my nit-picking...and I can hardly wait for the next BETA (and remember, I can only nit-pick REAL courses...but I'm always gentle.

[AJ Allen]

As a player, I can say that I really don't pay a lot of attention to the 3D work. I notice it of course, but I'm more concentrating on my tee shot or putt. And as a designer, I can say that the work involved in creating a 3D clubhouse can be huge... lots of work for something that a lot of people are barely going to notice. Or just give it a glance in passing and say "clubhouse looks nice, now let's sink this 20' putt".

With my current work in progress, I' going to make an effort with the clubhouse to at least get the visible parts looking as good as I can manage. But I'm not going to spend a lot of time doing windows, doors, roof overhangs etc around the back. Why put in all that extra work just for the occasional person that is in practice mode and decides to drop a ball around there? It's certainly not stuff that will ever be visible in an actual game.

So I have to say as a player, the 3D work doesn't enter into the equation as to how much I enjoy playing the course.

Cheers, AJ

[Adelade]

Jimbo my opinions about these kind of things may lean the opposite way compared to yours - like Pete and AJ point to, I think the actual golf stuff matters much more - but I can agree that buildings can be decently important to at least try to feature if its as you say, a sizeable part of a course's identity, and of course I dont mind in the least hearing any of your opinions about things, they're perfectly valid to have and its always fine to have respectful disagreements with eachother. I completely missed out on what you were trying to say about this part quoted and put in bold below, could you perhaps rephrase or elaborate please?

Like I said, it may not have an effect on the playability of a course but as long as you're APCD'ing it anyway you may as well go the whole nine yards-because someday somebody will come out include everything...better to have that person working on something new. This is especially true for Scottish courses that (and please don't take this as a criticism-it's just a fact) need all the help they can get...like the hotel at St. Andrews.

I didnt understand you point just after it about the Scottish/St Andrews either.

[GoesForIt]

Really want to use this for next year's C J Cup on the PLSA at lspn.net.

Sat photo makes it look real interesting.

NineBridges.JPG (51.83 KiB) Viewed 8077 times

[Adelade]

Starting to look like an actual course after the initial forest planting stage, even though there is tons more work to do (dont hold your breath).

Since last update I finished up the green elevations, pins and hole previews, built a nearby large hill from terrain (because I knew it would show up in the completely wrong place on some parts of the course if I put it on the panorama), did a bunch of minor texture edits and then started preparing the initial forest planting of trees. I made a few new objects from scratch and edited a bunch of old ones or ones shared by other people and added them to my planting set, drew out shapes for the forest planting, tinkered out some formulas and finally planted the 120 000 or so trees that will make up the main bulk of the planting. They will need a lot of editing here and there before fully complete though, I did some already but still much left. Still, fairly serviceable for the time being and it was great to see the result.

I started painting in the paths, only done first 11 holes thus far, and most my planting edits are only done on first 9 as well. I have also been trying to improve the panorama and wow it is driving me absolute insane! It simply refuses to look good no matter what I do it feels like The compression Links does to it creates these ugly dark pixels by the horizon that look really ugly when using certain skies and which seem so tricky to try get rid of, and it also turned an area I had worked on for an hour into nothing but a hideous soupy mess. I feel like Im waging full out war with it, and can only hope one day my endless edits will result in something I can be decently satisfied with.

But enough of that, the next steps of the process (apart from finishing up the main planting edits, the paths and the pano) are going to be some overall elevation edits, painting in a "first cut", shaping all the real bunker elevations along with the reveted faces etc, some minor stuff here and there, then finally seamblending and at last a beta release. Im going to save the 3D work, final tree planting adjustments, undergrowth planting and perhaps some misc stuff that dont have anything to do with gameplay for the full release, but I know once I release the beta I will be likely to turn my attention to other projects for a while.

Screenshot teaser time:

Dec 2020 Scr 3 jpeg.jpg (526.59 KiB) Viewed 7891 times