Tag: golf physics

Stroke Balancing

Stroke Balancing

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks!

I’ve finished adjusting the stroke mechanic to take advantage of the new club system. Had to do a bit of trial and error to get the proper values for the different clubs, based on their face head, their type, their maximum distance.

But now it all works! So each club should now feel different from the other club, and the AI will try and use the best one for each situation. (As it deems fit, of course!)

Began prototyping the new golf controls for the player too, should be done sometime this week. Then I’ll release 0.5 for your enjoyment!

In parallel, also began sketching out the necessary improvements for 0.6, which will come with an overhauling again of how you landscape the scenery, making a better distinction between holes and regular landscape, etc. You’ll receive better planning tools for plotting out a hole all at once and having the AI execute it, as opposed to the current system of sketching out zones and whatnot.

Together with that, a revamp of the terrain system, separating regular landscaping from water tools. As well as allowing for different kinds of grass, sand etc. Will need to separate the mesh by type, so that I can have better control over the mapping and overall behavior and whatnot.

That’s all for now, folks!

Dev Update #32: Rolling Physics Fix

Dev Update #32: Rolling Physics Fix

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks!

Today is a quick but important update!

After wrestling with Unity’s physics system for a while, I was finally able to land on the settings I wanted for the ball physics.

The current system works like this:

-If the ball is in the air, apply a constant drag of 0.3 to simulate air resistance. This will guarantee that the ball has a nice arc when travelling.

-If the ball is touching the land, starting a 0.3, increase the drag by a factor dependent on the tile type. (IE: increase drag faster if on sand/grass, increase drag slower if on fairway/green)

The results are roughly as seen below:

phystest

In the image you can see the end position of the ball on the 4 different terrain types. The aiming of the arc was around the 5th tile from the tee. So on the fairway, it rolled about 2 tiles more, whereas in the bunker it rolled a lot less. The values still need to be adjusted, but the important point is that the new system works!

Next will be bounce! This will also come in handy if we add different types of fairway/etc. Harder surfaces = more bounce, softer surfaces = less bounce! This will be done tomorrow!

So here’s a couple of gifs should the ball rolling differently! Enjoy!

fairway_shot

rough_shot

bunker_shot

grasshit

 

Dev Update #27: Improved Physics and Collision!

Dev Update #27: Improved Physics and Collision!

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks!

As part of this weekend’s plan, I’ve added a feature that will allow the ball to react differently depending on the surface it is on. For example:

-If the ball lands on the bunker, it’ll come to a sudden stop

-If the ball lands on the fairway, depending on the angle it may roll further

-If the ball lands on grass/rough, it’ll stop quicker than on the fairway

You can see the results of that in my playthrough of a demo hole:

Boss_Golf_Hole_playing

The first shot with the driver rolls decently on the fairway; my second shot stops very quickly on the bunker. (I didn’t need to use a sand wedge this time around, but that’s coming!)

I also tweaked the physics settings to take into account the reduced scale of the game. As a result, the ball has a longer/nicer flight time and reacts more like it should.

That’s it for today! As a bonus, here’s how I created this hole:

Boss_Golf_Hole_Building

And an overview of how it turned out:

theslopes

Quirk #4: Scale matters.

Quirk #4: Scale matters.

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hey folks!

If you’ve played the latest demo, you may have found that the ball moves quite unrealistically; that is, it’ll suddenly move a lot further after bouncing than it should, and something must surely be wrong!

Well, you are right!

When it comes to Unity, it has a standard definition of 1 grid unit = 1 meter. Which is great. However, for the sake of optimization (or prototyping), currently Boss Golf works with 1 grid unit = around 25 meters in real life (that is the approximate size of each tile!). So Unity’s physics systems won’t really like that so much, as it isn’t made with different scales in mind.

Therefore, at some point, it may be likely I’ll have to roll out my own physics implementation, that makes sense with the gameplay; or re-scale everything to match Unity’s 1 unit = 1 meter scale, which I really don’t want to do because the current terrain system works extremely well.

For now, however, I have tweaked the physics settings, plus the drag on the ball/terrain, and added a small tweak to dampen the angular velocity further, ensuring that the ball comes to a stop.

This little tweak will be used later to react to different kinds of terrain too, so it’s a two-for-one kind of deal.

I’ve updated the current demo with the new changes, and you can find it, and download information, HERE!

That’s all for today’s quirk! Have fun!