Tag: landscaping

Weekly Update #3: Divide and Conquer!

Weekly Update #3: Divide and Conquer!

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks!

This past’s week task was focused on expanding the gameplay systems in Boss Golf; mostly revolving around giving the players more things to do and to manage.

First things first: Decay!

Now the landscapers won’t be tasked solely with laying down decoration and tiles: they’re also responsible for maintaining them! The tiles you lay will decay after a set period of time, with special events making them decay faster. The landscapers will try and attend to it to ensure your resort is running in tip top shape. If it decays to 0, it’ll revert to plain grass.

newDecaySystem

Together with that, you can now set the priorities for each type of task for the landscapers! Want a guy solely focused on maintenance? You can do that. Want a guy that prefers doing the landscaping than decoration? You can do that too!

Next up, hole building overhaul!

Until now, the hole building in Boss Golf was very loosely constrained; you just placed things around and saw how they worked. It was nice in the sense that you had a lot of freedom, but not so nice in the sense that it was hard to get information about how you should be building the hole, the outcomes of it etc.

Not anymore, with the new hole building!

divideAndConquer

Now the new panel is pretty much all in one; you place the hole, tee, lay down the tiles, place decoration, all in one go. Then, when you’re happy with what the hole should be, you just accept it and the landscapers will get to work!

New also is the ability to set the “play space” for your hole. This is the area where you can landscape and place decoration and the hole components. This also tells you the estimated play path in the hole (as seen in the yellow line in the picture), which is completely dynamically changing as you shape your hole. It’s only a guideline, though, as golfers will still try and decide for themselves the best way to play it!

But it does act as a marker for out of bounds. Any ball that lands in the fenced-in area is fair game. If it lands outside, oops! Penalty!

After building the hole, you can summon a special NPC to give it an expected rating of play. (you’ll also get this rating adjusted as golfers play through it)

Later on there’ll be a better shot analyzer to give you information about potential shots on different spots in the hole.

This style of building will be expanded to the water hazards and other hazard types too, giving you more control about shaping them, and reading the statistics on them.

On the other side of things, I’ve also begun prototyping the system for building buildings in the game. It’ll be a pretty cool click and drag system with options for customizations, allowing you to build the building the way you want it built.

That’s all for now, folks! Stay tuned for the next weekly update!

0.55 update has been released!

0.55 update has been released!

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks!

The 0.55 update to Boss Golf is finally here! Bringing improvements to the hole building and the tile laying, as well as a handful of other small fixes. So let’s get to them!

To start off, the new Hole Editor.

so_many_tees

To the left, you have the Course panel. This is brought up by clicking on the Holes button in the top menu. From here, you’ll have access to all the holes currently on your course, as well as the ability to create new holes. After creating a hole, you can select it, and click on the Edit button, which will bring the Hole Editor as seen on the right.

In this panel, you are able to set the pin position, as well as add/remove Tee boxes for your hole, and place them wherever you wish on the course. There’s no limits. Well save for putting the pin/tee inside the course that is!

Once you’ve added at least one Tee, and place the Pin, the hole is ready to be opened and played!

And this brings us to the next update: The Tile Planner

tilePlannerBefore

It looks a lot like the old Tile panel. And it certainly is an iteration of it. Previously, you’d select a tile type, and drag it around the course, and it would generate the orders that would then be approved for the landscaper to build.

But this was too slow. Now, when you begin placing the tiles, it will create one single order object, and attach all the tiles you placed to it. And to help you with shaping things, you have a handy little yellow bulldozer button to the bottom left that allows you to erase the tiles you’ve placed if you messed up! (Mistakes happen!)

Then once you’re satisfied, you can simply click on the  Create button, and then the order will be created and approved, and the landscaper will get to work. Much more streamlined!

Then you’ll begin creating a brand new order from the start! (closing this panel will cancel the order you’ve created if you haven’t approved it)

Later on I’ll add a way to track the existing orders and modify them etc. And here you can see the landscaper hard at work:

tilePlannerResult

Also as you can see, I’ve improved the resolution of the terrain textures. Looking much nicer and less jagged. The tilemap is still only looking at the 4 main directions, so there’s still some bad corners in certain… corners. This will go away in a future update!

That’s all for now, folks! As an addendum, I’ll be demoing Boss Golf at BitSummit 6 this coming weekend! If you’re in the area, drop by to say hello and have a chat!

As such, I’ll be focusing on ironing out some issues so that the demo runs as smoothly as possible. If you find anything broken, don’t hesitate to contact!

Enjoy 0.55!

Path Builder Preview!

Path Builder Preview!

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Aw yeah!

Got the placement to stick, including the blending between different path types. Now tomorrow all that’s left will be saving and loading, which should be simple.

I’ve also taken the decision to leave the pathbuilding as instantaneous, instead of having the landscaper dude going around placing them. Makes more sense this way, since it’ll be something the player will be able to lay and relay quickly. Going to study more from now on what should be dealt by the landscaper/builders, and what should be instantaneous.

Anyway, check out how it’s looking like!

path_preview_awwyeah

So nice, specially being able to move it in 8 directions! Breaks away from the usual grid style of building things.

Get ready for 0.54!

New Paths Coming Soon!

New Paths Coming Soon!

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks!

Sorry for the silence recently. Sometimes life comes at you hard and you don’t have a lot of time to work on things!

I’ve been busy getting the new path-building system in. Right now, the preview display is in, and allows you to build paths in all 8 directions. As you can see below:

pathman

Right now, the preview is basically a line renderer with a very simple material, perfect for illustrating where your path is expected to go.

As you draw the path, you’ll see how much it’s expected to cost. Once you release the mouse button, the path will begin being built by the landscaper. You’ll be able to remove sections of the path at any time.

Later on you’ll also be able to choose the type of path you want to build, which will come with different materials, costs, and sizes! Should lead to some very interesting styles!

Now I’m working on implementing the procedural mesh for the path proper, which will take a bit of work but I think I can get it done this weekend. Being able to place the path in 8 directions will be pretty useful!

Stay tuned for more!

-Gus

Boss Golf updated to Alpha 0.53!

Boss Golf updated to Alpha 0.53!

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks!

After much wrestling with the physics system in Unity, Boss Golf alpha has been updated to version 0.53!

fivepointthreefeature

Features included in this version:

  • Improvement on the grass shader
  • Scaled the entire world for better physics/effects/everything. Now each ingame square is about 10 yards long. As a result, your holes will take over much more space in the game world. (Previously, they were about 25 yards long)
  • Day/Night color variation on the lighting
  • Physics adjustments
  • Improvements on the AI
  • New terrain shader (temporary!)

And as for bugs:

  • Landscaper will now update the terrain after placing it. It had stopped doing so thanks to the division of the meshes
  • Fixed the angles for the Wedge clubs
  • Several fixes related to the physics of the game
  • Improved handling of the chunks and terrain bits

And that’s about it. Adjusting the scale of the entire world took a lot longer than I expected, and brought about several unforeseen complications that were promptly fixed.

As a result of the changes, we’ve had to update the version of the save file, which means you’ll start off with a new golf course.

That’s all for now folks! Now I can focus on getting the paths improved, then the hole creator, then the water tool, and we’ll reach 0.6!

Landscaper at Work!

Landscaper at Work!

by Gus Martin ♥ 1 Comment

Hello folks!

As part of slowing down the pace of gameplay and integrating the management aspect of the game in Boss Golf, I’ve finalized the primary implementation of the AI for the landscaper as well as changed the system for laying down tiles to make him place them!

Until now, you’d plop down a tile, and it would immediately affect the environment. This would let you create a massive resort at a too quick a pace. There was no incentive for careful planning, and it wasn’t an action you could think twice before committing to.

All of that changes now with the Landscaper and its AI. The new implementation, which will be rolled out to the other building features in the game, delegates the act of changing the landscape to the AI, and works on a system of orders.

Players will now draw the areas like they did before; instead of immediately affecting the environment, an overlay is added and an order is created. The players can then view this order’s characteristics: price, time to finish, area etc. They can modify this overlay/order with the bulldozer tool, to trim things they ended up thinking twice over. (Editing of the height of the tiles is still free and can be performed at any time, instantly. Since this is a very vital part of finetuning your golf course, I thought it better to keep it that way)

Once they are happy, they can simply Approve the order, and the landscaper will get around to effecting it once he has the time to do so. Like in the animations below:

placing_zones
Player places zones for fairway and bunkers.
approving_orders
Doublechecking the orders, the player approves the work to be performed.
executing_them
The lonely landscaper hard at work. Having more of them will get things done faster! (At a cost!)

Pausing and Resuming has also been reworked to match the new gameplay style. Time now flows at a constant rate, and can be paused whenever you wish. You can’t make time pass by faster; later, however, you’ll be able to go on “holiday”, and the Resort will autosimulate and resolve the events of the day until you come back, or while you are managing another resort. The timescale for the day still needs some tweaking, but that is simple enough! (Also, really cool to pause the game as the AI takes an awesome shot, and just seeing the ball lying in the air, waiting for time to unfreeze!)

Oh! And you are also able to set the working hours for your resort. This will impact your running costs later, but right now it controls when the landscaper will be at work, as well as when the golfers are able to be spawned on your resort!

That’s all for today, folks! Next up is connecting the money (receiving from the AI and spending on building), and adding more management. Perhaps the goals would be a fun thing to have!

Stay tuned for more!