HB Studios Next-Gen golf game: The Golf Club

[J_Cauthen]

Monday's Daily in the PS4 Society and Tuesday's PC Society will be held at FIFAInspected's "The Valleys of Calhoun Square". It's a very nice mountain course with a reasonable challenge, IMO. I'm open to suggestions for sites for the 72 hole tournaments this week, but I'd like to have a different course on both platforms, to mix it up for those who are playing in both the PS4 and PC societies. The exception to that would be weeks in which the PGA Tour is playing at a course in which we have a quality RCR for TGC 2.

Also, if you feel compelled, please consider a donation to all the DSP Society's banks on the respective platforms. We need to get up to 14,000 VC to get to level 6, which will bring us up to a 30 event season.

[J_Cauthen]

My characteristics of bullsh*t made-up courses:

-- No variation in hole layout
-- Endless elevated tees to create inflated distance
-- Hourglass-shaped landing areas in fairways, surrounded by traps
-- Traps smack dab in the middle of a fairway landing zone
-- Greens with topo-map undulations
-- Pins on the peaks of slopes
-- Shoestring-narrow fairways
-- Any driveable par-4's
-- Par-3's less than 100 yards, with a few 500-plus par-4's to compensate
-- Courses with super-easy fairway layouts and diabolical, undulating greens. It's golf, not a putting contest.

Any other red flags you cats can add to this list?

This is a good list of indicators of courses to avoid with one exception, IMO... I don't mind maybe one driveable par 4, but then only when the wind is aiding and the penalty for missing the green is stiff. Even at that, I wouldn't want a driveable par 4 on every course.

[DivotMaker]

Monday's Daily in the PS4 Society and Tuesday's PC Society will be held at FIFAInspected's "The Valleys of Calhoun Square". It's a very nice mountain course with a reasonable challenge, IMO. I'm open to suggestions for sites for the 72 hole tournaments this week, but I'd like to have a different course on both platforms, to mix it up for those who are playing in both the PS4 and PC societies. The exception to that would be weeks in which the PGA Tour is playing at a course in which we have a quality RCR for TGC 2.

Also, if you feel compelled, please consider a donation to all the DSP Society's banks on the respective platforms. We need to get up to 14,000 VC to get to level 6, which will bring us up to a 30 event season.

WGC is the PGA TOUR event this week....there is a Firestone available for this. Have not played it though.

One suggestion for the rest of the season after the PGA Championship would be to go back to RCR's already completed such as TPC Sawgrass, Merion, etc and play those when we don't have an RCR for the 4 rounders.

How was your vacay?

[J_Cauthen]

I am also seeing WAY too many pins on slopes. It is a real b*tch when playing TST rounds.

I identified one more annoyance about Roundabout GC, but this one is not because of the design of the course; it's a product of a bug in either TGC 2, or Unity 5.4. I've played 6 of the 8 rounds I'll be playing on that course over the last few days, and I've now counted 8 instances where I had a phantom putt break to the left. Both the forward and the reverse views showed no break between the ball and the hole on the green grid. The putt then proceeded to break significantly to the left.

I usually run the ball past the hole a few feet when I miss and in each case when the phantom break occurred, the grid showed the break with the ball now beyond the hole from the identical angle from which I had assessed it earlier using the reverse angle view beyond the hole This type of thing is just exasperating, especially when it only happens on putts that break left!?

[DivotMaker]

I am also seeing WAY too many pins on slopes. It is a real b*tch when playing TST rounds.

I identified one more annoyance about Roundabout GC, but this one is not because of the design of the course; it's a product of a bug in either TGC 2, or Unity 5.4. I've played 6 of the 8 rounds I'll be playing on that course over the last few days, and I've now counted 8 instances where I had a phantom putt break to the left. Both the forward and the reverse views showed no break between the ball and the hole on the green grid. The putt then proceeded to break significantly to the left.

I usually run the ball past the hole a few feet when I miss and in each case when the phantom break occurred, the grid showed the break with the ball now beyond the hole from the identical angle from which I had assessed it earlier using the reverse angle view beyond the hole This type of thing is just exasperating, especially when it only happens on putts that break left!?

You can see the break ever so slightly on these on the PC version once you get the camera to ground level. I can tell to look for it as the grid itself seems to have a slight "hump" to it, but you are right, this needs to be fixed.

Not sure you can see this on consoles as I don't have either version to test.

[J_Cauthen]

WGC is the PGA TOUR event this week....there is a Firestone available for this. Have not played it though.

I played the front nine at it and it was faithful to the real course and played fairly, IMO. I'm not a huge fan of the Harvest theme in TGC 1 or 2, as I think the colors are overbaked to the point of looking cartoonish. This one didn't strike me as being that over the top with the overly rich, burnt orange tree foliage. I like this idea for the coming week unless someone has a strong objection to Firestone.

One suggestion for the rest of the season after the PGA Championship would be to go back to RCR's already completed such as TPC Sawgrass, Merion, etc and play those when we don't have an RCR for the 4 rounders.

Great idea and we have plenty of good quality RCR courses to work with! Oh how I wish we had a quality rendition of Quail Hollow Part of the problem is we really don't have a theme that suits Quail Hollow, IMO. I guess Boreal would come the closest, but it doesn't really have all the assets needed to faithfully portray its Piedmont locale.

How was your vacay?

It was fantastic... Sunset Beach, NC has become our home away from home and it was 6 to 8 degrees cooler there every day than it was back home... and that ocean breeze is unbeatable! I've seen better body surfing condtions, but there was only one day where there wasn't some quality body surfable waves at some point during the day. My wife had no objection to my bringing the XBox One, as she loves it for hosting the "You Don't Know Jack" suite of games that appeals to everyone in the family, but she rolled her eyes when she walked into our bedroom and saw me playing TGC 2 on the PS4 that I'd snuck in and connected to the 32" HDTV I felt so bad about it that I limited my play to only 36 holes a day on it

[J_Cauthen]

You can see the break ever so slightly on these on the PC version once you get the camera to ground level. I can tell to look for it as the grid itself seems to have a slight "hump" to it, but you are right, this needs to be fixed.

Not sure you can see this on consoles as I don't have either version to test.

There are times where I'm suspicious that the phantom break is there, but I'm not really sure why. This is more often the case on the PC version. I'm limited to 1080p with my HDTV on the PC version, but I'm using 4X-AA and 16X-AF on it and I am more confident in the reads I get on the PC versus the consoles. You're at least using 1440p, IIRC, aren't you? That would probably give it a better chance of depicting the slope, I would think?

So you're like looking for signs of a hump around the perimeter of what otherwise looks like a butte on the green?

[AcemanPR]

Driveable Par-4s are OK if there is a good element of risk to them. Take #15 at the Atlanta Country Club. Hit in the pond to the right one of those rounds. Speaking of which, frustration set in for me with that tournament. Was -6 at one point in the first round and finished that round at -2. Next round I shoot an 88 and played it immediately after the first round. Played round 3, was -5 at one point that round only to finish with a -1 that round. Shot an 87 the next round. Seems like some rounds you are destined to fail.

[DivotMaker]

You can see the break ever so slightly on these on the PC version once you get the camera to ground level. I can tell to look for it as the grid itself seems to have a slight "hump" to it, but you are right, this needs to be fixed.

Not sure you can see this on consoles as I don't have either version to test.

There are times where I'm suspicious that the phantom break is there, but I'm not really sure why. This is more often the case on the PC version. I'm limited to 1080p with my HDTV on the PC version, but I'm using 4X-AA and 16X-AF on it and I am more confident in the reads I get on the PC versus the consoles. You're at least using 1440p, IIRC, aren't you? That would probably give it a better chance of depicting the slope, I would think?

So you're like looking for signs of a hump around the perimeter of what otherwise looks like a butte on the green?

I'm running in 4K on the PC.....and yes, that does help, but you can still miss some.

[DivotMaker]

Driveable Par-4s are OK if there is a good element of risk to them. Take #15 at the Atlanta Country Club. Hit in the pond to the right one of those rounds. Speaking of which, frustration set in for me with that tournament. Was -6 at one point in the first round and finished that round at -2. Next round I shoot an 88 and played it immediately after the first round. Played round 3, was -5 at one point that round only to finish with a -1 that round. Shot an 87 the next round. Seems like some rounds you are destined to fail.

The new 12th hole at Sawgrass is a great example of risk/reward. There is one also at TPC Potomac at Avenel is another good one.

[Danimal]

Please don't take this as a complaint but why no PC daily today? It seems the 72 hole tourneys are lasting an extra day on the PC, is there a reason for this?

[J_Cauthen]

Please don't take this as a complaint but why no PC daily today? It seems the 72 hole tourneys are lasting an extra day on the PC, is there a reason for this?

I screwed up setting the dates for the PC 72 hole tournament before I left for vacation. I somehow got the same tournament right on the PS4, and was even comparing what I was setting on the PS4 to PC. I actually had the same dates (27 through 30th) set for each of them at one time, but had to go back in and change something else on the PC version. Somehow when I did that, it changed the tees to Red and backed the date range up by one day on each end.

It's not the first time I made this mistake unfortunately. You have to reprogram your mind to think of 4 AM EDT as the start of the next day instead of 12 AM. I've just got to get it in my head that 72 hole tournaments start at 4:00 AM Thursday and end at 3:59 AM EDT Monday. If I can discipline myself to do that going forth, this won't happen again.

I apologize to everyone for doing this... I feel like such a dufus for not double checking, but maybe now that I've been burned by it on two different platforms, it won't happen again.

[J_Cauthen]

I'm running in 4K on the PC.....and yes, that does help, but you can still miss some.

I'd forgotten about that... can you tell if the game actually has textures that are natively 4K capable or does it just interpolate textures for anything above 1080p?

[Danimal]

No need to apologize, I was just asking to see if it was some screwy PC thing.

[J_Cauthen]

No need to apologize, I was just asking to see if it was some screwy PC thing.

I wish it would put up a calendar, and let you color in the dates for which you want the event to run... that would be soooo much simpler. I'll suggest that to HBS, but I doubt it will get a lot of traction with the other problems they're wrestling with right now.

[J_Cauthen]

WGC is the PGA TOUR event this week....there is a Firestone available for this. Have not played it though.

I just played a full 18 holes at Firestone CC South (Harvest) and it's a winner, IMO. FriendBomber is known for quality courses, fictional and RCRs and this one passed my play test. The only thing I don't like about it is the overcooked (my subjective opinion) Harvest trees. I'd love to see this course in its full summer splendor, as we'll be seeing it during the WGC.

[Danimal]

That's pretty funny as I played Firestone over the weekend and thought it was the worst of the real courses out. I don't think they did a bad job, I just think Firestone is not an exciting track.

[DivotMaker]

theclv24 has released his latest course.....

http://www.hb-studios.com/forum/index.p ... #msg255757

[DivotMaker]

I'm running in 4K on the PC.....and yes, that does help, but you can still miss some.

I'd forgotten about that... can you tell if the game actually has textures that are natively 4K capable or does it just interpolate textures for anything above 1080p?

Hard to tell, but I am thinking the textures are not 4K....

[DivotMaker]

That's pretty funny as I played Firestone over the weekend and thought it was the worst of the real courses out. I don't think they did a bad job, I just think Firestone is not an exciting track.

It is not the most exciting track in the world.....

[J_Cauthen]

That's pretty funny as I played Firestone over the weekend and thought it was the worst of the real courses out. I don't think they did a bad job, I just think Firestone is not an exciting track.

It is not the most exciting track in the world.....

I agree with you and Dan on Firestone not being an exciting track. It feels pretty ordinary to me, but it does seem to be faithful to the commercially licensed versions I've played in other golf games. I have to ask, how strong is the sentiment to play what the pros are playing this weekend? I'm not married to the idea, but I think that usually there's a stronger hook to play a cyber tournament at a faithfully recreated course when a PGA event is being played there in real life.

One other thing to consider here, I found at that friendBOMBER had planned to publish a rustic theme version of Firestone CC South, and it might be coming before Thursday. I think it would look a little more "summery" than the Harvest theme, although it won't play any differently.

[Danimal]

I'm all for playing real courses, I don't necessarily need to play the course the pro's play this week. I would love if next season we did more real courses but again it depends on the build.

I played a "hot" course last night, some coastal course and while it looked great the fairways were all very small as in I would never see fairways that small on tour. So like everything with his game it depends on the build, especially on the greens. You can tell the guys who spend time working on greens and the ones who think this is great every ball not hit to the back of the green will roll off the front.

[pigpen81]

I played the 1st round of DSP's latest XOne tournament with players clubs yesterday and shot an 83. I think I hit 3 fairways. It was miserable. No matter what I did I couldn't hit a driver without a major slice. Even with perfect tempo.

I switched back to the first level for the final 3 rounds and finished -25 the rest of the way and hit almost all the fairways. I shot a 61 in the 2nd round. A 22 shot difference. To easy. I'm not sure what to do. I wish there was another level between the two but can't see playing "player clubs" unless there is some kind of a patch for it.

I don't have the time to invest in swing perfection and just want to pick up and enjoy a round (or 2-3 of golf so hopefully a patch will find a happy medium in the future?

Congrats to Vader on a super low score! Without my first round I may have taken a run at it.

Also, is there a website to look at TGC2 courses? The CLV site from TGC is not working any longer.

[DivotMaker]

That's pretty funny as I played Firestone over the weekend and thought it was the worst of the real courses out. I don't think they did a bad job, I just think Firestone is not an exciting track.

It is not the most exciting track in the world.....

I agree with you and Dan on Firestone not being an exciting track. It feels pretty ordinary to me, but it does seem to be faithful to the commercially licensed versions I've played in other golf games. I have to ask, how strong is the sentiment to play what the pros are playing this weekend? I'm not married to the idea, but I think that usually there's a stronger hook to play a cyber tournament at a faithfully recreated course when a PGA event is being played there in real life.

One other thing to consider here, I found at that friendBOMBER had planned to publish a rustic theme version of Firestone CC South, and it might be coming before Thursday. I think it would look a little more "summery" than the Harvest theme, although it won't play any differently.

I am game for some Firestone. It may not be "exciting" in one sense, I do love a challenging course.

TPC Sawgrass is also pretty challenging as well as Pebble Beach. Have not played Merion East yet. There is also Crooked Stick and Copperhead at Innisbrook to consider. Hell, I would love to take a shot at Augusta (Magnolia National).....

[J_Cauthen]

I am game for some Firestone. It may not be "exciting" in one sense, I do love a challenging course.

TPC Sawgrass is also pretty challenging as well as Pebble Beach. Have not played Merion East yet. There is also Crooked Stick and Copperhead at Innisbrook to consider. Hell, I would love to take a shot at Augusta (Magnolia National).....

How about if we do this... if friendBOMBER releases the Rustic theme version of Firestone before Thursday, we play there, if not, we'll do Sawgrass or Pebble Beach? You've really mapped out a good selection of courses for the coming month, for the Weeklies!