Kauri Cliffs v2 - Lost Course

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Adelade
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Re: Kauri Cliffs v2 - Lost Course

Post by Adelade »

I have now fully finished my intended edits (went a lot faster than I expected, especially the seamblending :kicking:) and have sent a Beta out to a couple of my regular Beta testers.

Is there anyone who normally plays Links with ambient sounds turned on, and normally use (not too crappy) speakers who would like to help beta test please? I would like to have at least 1 or 2 people who normally play with ambient sounds turned on give me feedback on the global sound I added, since my own capability of testing it currently is limited to either high bass headphones, crappy laptop speakers or else a speaker that I normally dont use and therefore would have no frame of reference on volume levels with. It can be tested in practice mode quickly without playing a full round.

Separately, I would like to invite anyone who wants, to help beta test in general, even if not normally using sounds.

Send me a private message or reply here and then keep an eye on your private messages.

I plan on having a 2 week beta window before uploading the final, although I might do it sooner if all beta testers get back to me early.

The 3D work turned out to already be all finished :smile: (though I decided to skip doing anything with fences 3D objects, partly due to lack of information about where they were intended to be, and partly because I wasnt sure how much it would affect rendering times on an already fairly big file anyway. For me it loads all smooth, but I dont know how slow, or close to being slow it is for lower-end systems).
Finished Courses - Main: Amedal (fictional), Nine Bridges (real)
Other: Austin, Sheshan, Kauri Cliffs, Le Golf Nat. Updates: Whirlpool, Royal Lytham, Royal St George's, Chicago, Chambers Bay, Munchen Nord E
Working on: 2 fictional courses + a couple things...
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Adelade
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Re: Kauri Cliffs v2 - Lost Course

Post by Adelade »

Is there please anyone who normally plays with ambient sounds on, who isnt listening through in-built laptop speakers, who could help test the global sound out quickly?

I have had 4 testers (all of whom Im very grateful for), but the sound part specifically remains a mystery. I believe none of the testers usually play with ambient sounds on, at least not on a more "normal" sound system. Together their feedback on the sound spread very widely between all kinds of different opinions, some liked it, some seemed like they didnt, some seemed to find it loud, some could barely hear it. I suspect that is because they mostly turned sounds on because I mentioned it, and therefore, hopefully, those that didnt like it might have had the total ambient volume higher than it is "intended" to be. So I am still as clueless as before the beta about whether the sound is "good" or not.

Course otherwise finished and just needs to have a readme, screenshots and the upload filled out. Testing the sound is really quick, just opening the course in practice mode anywhere on the course, as the one sound plays same everywhere.

:helpsmilie:
Finished Courses - Main: Amedal (fictional), Nine Bridges (real)
Other: Austin, Sheshan, Kauri Cliffs, Le Golf Nat. Updates: Whirlpool, Royal Lytham, Royal St George's, Chicago, Chambers Bay, Munchen Nord E
Working on: 2 fictional courses + a couple things...
pmgolf
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Location: near Richmond, VA

Re: Kauri Cliffs v2 - Lost Course

Post by pmgolf »

I just tested out Ambient sounds on the Kauri Cliffs version that you probably started with - the lost one, sound set on "predefined2", and no ambient sounds played. Is this Ambient sounds that you have added? What sound file? I don't usually play with them on, but I can test it. The sound comes out of my monitor/HDTV. Have I got the course file right?

Pete
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Adelade
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Re: Kauri Cliffs v2 - Lost Course

Post by Adelade »

No Im sending the link to the beta I completed a couple weeks ago in a private message right now, I made the sound. Thanks!
Finished Courses - Main: Amedal (fictional), Nine Bridges (real)
Other: Austin, Sheshan, Kauri Cliffs, Le Golf Nat. Updates: Whirlpool, Royal Lytham, Royal St George's, Chicago, Chambers Bay, Munchen Nord E
Working on: 2 fictional courses + a couple things...
pmgolf
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Location: near Richmond, VA

Re: Kauri Cliffs v2 - Lost Course

Post by pmgolf »

I think you've got the ambient noise right where you want it. There is a fairly constant sound, but if you listen closely you can hear the sound rising and settling, like when waves crash and then pull away, but it feels like it's in the background. I also hear bird sounds in the background, but they don't seem close - nothing obtrusive. I don't think you would want the sound any louder or softer. I'd give it two thumbs up! :smile:

Pete
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Lez Marwick
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Re: Kauri Cliffs v2 - Lost Course

Post by Lez Marwick »

Sound volumes can vary from PC to PC, but I just balance the course sounds with the normal game sounds and if they work together they should be fine whatever the individual's settings may be.
my APCD designs - Ackerton Cross, Anakena Beach, Battley Peak, Elsham Woods, Fairview GC, Margaret's Bay, Masson Moor GC, Mowsbury Golf Club, The Dustin Trophy, Upham Hall Golf Club, Yarlswood Golf Club, Zeitsbergen
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Adelade
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Kauri Cliffs HD Final - Course Completed

Post by Adelade »

I have just uploaded the final, will update this post when it is available. [Edit: Course available here: https://linkscorner.org/courses/course.php?crz=2685 ] In the meantime - Screenshots and pasting the Readme (not forcing anyone to read it all...)

Thank you Daniel for making this release possible!

This course file has quite a history and I will go over that in more detail below, but for now let me just say that Lindsay Addie gave me permission to complete and release this course, which was made - though not completed - long ago by him and Pay Auge. My goal was to complete the last known version by them into a polished enough final version, which mainly meant seamblending all of it, but also cleaning up various texture, mapping and mesh aspects that were still in experimental or beta stages, along with adding certain features such as hole previews, crowds, sounds and pins that are fair on all green settings. A bunch of other minor edits and fixes were made as well, but even though Lindsay Addie said I could edit it however I wished, I definitely wanted to keep it as true to the surmised original intent of the original designers as I could. A full list of changes by me can be viewed further below.

Kauri Cliffs is a real ocean course on the coast near the northern tip of the northern island of New Zealand. I expect all Linksters are quite familiar with it, and it plays pretty much the exact same as the Microsoft version, with mostly generous fairways and greens. The setting is perhaps the most amazing one for any real course made for Links, atop and among the tall ocean cliffs with all their splendid views, where the grandiose elevations make for the main gameplay challenge. The sometimes-canyon-like deep grass areas and a couple holes with highly threatening Out-Of-Bounds lines also challenge to make the round spicy. Needless to say, the wind will rarely be less than moderate or strong at the real-life location, so that is part of the true experience as well, but otherwise the course should respond well to a wide range of settings depending on taste - although I recommend realistic green speeds from at least Sc/Sc, F/F, M/Mc or faster.

-Screenshot intermission-

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A couple things to note before playing:
-There are no drop hazards on this course (except for the stream itself, which should not come into play anywhere), however, some holes have prominent areas of Out of Bounds (much like the Microsoft version), and a couple areas on holes 6, 15 and 16 were given Out of Bounds a little closer to the play area purely in order to protect the player from problematic lies among bushes with common hard bounces. Grasses and bushes in all deep grass areas apart from the OB areas seem to all play fair without hard bounces.
-Even if this is a 2021 release, the course plays like it did in real life in 2010. One of the par 3 holes has been somewhat modified since then in real life, but otherwise I don't think there are any significant changes. I personally will never have any desire to change that part.
-Don't pay too much attention to the instructive text on the hole previews, they seem to have been written (not by me) for handicap golfers and shorter tees than the Backs. Aside from the text, the hole previews are fully reliable, including shown distances.

The story of the development of this course is quite something. With me not having been around for most of it, and no one really having been able to tell me much about it beyond what I discovered on my own, I can only tell part of it, but I will here and now do so to the best of my knowledge.

I don't know exactly when or how it started, but what I do know is that Lindsay Addie and Pat Auge worked on this course between June 2009 and May 2010, it is possible they started it even earlier than that. Their goal was obviously to make a prettier HD version of Microsoft's Kauri Cliffs. Based on stories heard of Microsoft's courses having such horribly dense meshes, together with my observations of the mesh of this HD course, I do not believe they started with an unlocked version of the Microsoft course, but rather started a new course completely on their own. I can't detail for certain which parts were made by Lindsay Addie and which were made by Pat Auge, I just know that Pat Auge made at least most of the 3D work (Clubhouse, bridges, and residential houses), and I'm guessing that it is a fairly safe bet to assume Lindsay Addie made most of the course while Pat Auge made all of the 3D.

Around that same time in 2009-2010, Lindsay Addie posted some blog posts about the development of the course on his own crzbuilders blogspot "Driving the Green" for APCD designers. Sadly, around May or June 2010 development of the course came to a halt. Lindsay Addie's last blog post mentioned that he was about to get really busy with his career outside of Links and APCD, so likely that had a lot to do with it, but of course that is only speculation on my part.

Fast forward 10 years to 2020. I somewhat randomly stumbled upon that old blog site (which had been fully inactive since 2010) and those old blog posts, where I learned about the project once having been worked on. The pictures sadly didn't display anymore, and the mentioned dedicated website for the course project had been taken down completely, but I still got a feeling that it was a really good version, and thought it was such a shame that it seemed to never have come out. I thought the project was a very exciting idea, Kauri Cliffs is probably my favourite course made by Microsoft, partly because of the stunning setting but also because I think it might be one of - if not the - best-made course by them (of course that's not saying much at all in comparison to all the wonderful user-made courses that now exist, but still, loads better than most Microsoft courses if you ask me). The main thing I dislike about Microsoft's version really are the outdated textures, and in particular the Rough texture that I almost can't stand looking at. So, a HD user-made version of Kauri Cliffs was incredibly exciting to me, and I instantly began exploring possibilities of me getting to complete it.

I sent an email to Lindsay Addie's email address listed on the site, but it was no longer in use all these years later, and I had no luck in getting in contact with either him or Pat Auge elsewhere. In early 2021 Pat Auge made a return visit to Links Corner, and I got a chance to ask him about the course, but he only told me that he didn't have it anymore. A few months later, I actually managed to randomly find a different email address to Lindsay Addie, and this time it was one being in use. Sadly he didn't have any copy of the course file either, but he also wrote that if I could somehow find an unlocked copy of the course, he gave his permission for me to edit it however I wanted.

I was ready to give up on the course, since it seemed to be fully lost, but as a final measure I decided to post in public on Links Corner about the endeavour and ask whether anyone might have some copy of the file. I didn't actually believe there was a realistic chance of anyone have anything, but Daniel (of the Tigercats community) instantly provided me with an unlocked beta version from May 5th 2010, very clearly being the exact course Lindsay Addie and Pat Auge worked on back then (based on the splash screen). I was quite shocked to be honest, and I cannot thank Daniel enough for this! I am so happy that this course finally gets to see the light of day, the way it deserves. All in all, this course release would not have happened without either Lindsay Addie, Pat Auge, Daniel, or me. My contributions can be neatly summarized as seen above when I mentioned my goals, but the course is definitely mostly Lindsay Addie's and Pat Auge's. I hope that everyone in the Links community will enjoy it as much as I will.

Full list of changes by me, compared to the last known version by Lindsay Addie and Pat Auge (from May 5th 2010):
-Downsized many textures on buildings or other areas where high quality was wasted and only increased the file size and rendering times without benefit.
-Standardized many textures and mappings to be the same across the whole course, since the previous file had a lot of experimental textures and mappings. There were 5 different Rough textures for example, which normally is fine and wouldn't be something I would want to interfere with, however in this case they were spread per hole rather than being used together, so I replaced 4 of them with the one I thought looked best.
-Made a new mid version of the rough texture, in order to decrease tiling.
-Replaced many stock textures such as Asphalt and Concrete with equivalent-looking custom ones, in order to decrease risk of the red sky glitch.
-Replaced the Ocean texture with one that looked more similar in colour to the ocean on the panorama.
-Slight brightness edits to fringe, semirough and one deep rough texture (the one that looks most similar to the ordinary rough).
-Fixed various texture properties and texture display names.
-Fixed a broken cart path mapping or two.
-Changed several mappings of vertical or near-vertical rock and soil spots.
-Ladies tees planted, some of the Mid, Fwd and Jun tees moved. All according to a real scorecard from 2011 and in some cases adapted to available tee box areas. Back tees unchanged. Except I changed the colour of all tees according to those displayed on the 2011 scorecard.
-Hole handicaps added (according to 2011 scorecard).
-Hole boundary shapes edited to be more fitting.
-Added OB to clubhouse, just in case.
-Made OB line on holes 6, 15 and 16 more "harsh", purely in order to protect the player from frustrating lies among certain bush objects that seemed to give a lot of hard bounces (all other areas of 2D grasses and smaller bush objects on the course that are not OB seem to play perfectly fine without hard bounces).
-Fixed 4 steel trees that were in play, by replanting them without visual change.
-Deleted a corrupted tree object in the "forest" on hole 6.
-Decreased size of some tree objects behind the houses seen while playing 9th and 18th, to look more natural and closer to how it looks in real life, as far as I can tell.
-Moved a couple 2D grass objects to partially masquerade the stark contrast between a tree trunk and the ground.
-Grounded a couple slightly floating trees.
-Grounded various floating grasses and bushes on holes 7 and 17.
-Pins completely replanted, none are on a slope steeper than around 3.5%.
-One or two minor green spots had their elevations made a little bit smoother, where the green surface previously was unnaturally bumpy within just a couple horizontal feet.
-Wind direction and direction variance changed from the default settings, to what I felt might be most appropriate according to wind roses for the local area. However, doing this was tricky since wind roses showed 2 opposite directions as being most common, and APCD wind settings are unable to replicate that within one course version. The direction I settled for is a little bit of a compromise. In total from just a few pictures or videos at the course I have seen the wind blowing in all different directions anyways, so I don't think there is that much of a prevailing direction.
-Added a global sound. I made it a bit more prominent this time than I normally do when I add sounds, considering the setting, but I still tried to make it a background thing and not overbearing. Either way, how it sounds will depend a lot on individual systems and settings, so please remember that you can turn ambient sounds down or off during a round, if you find it too much.
-Rounded many previously sharp and somewhat unnatural elevations.
-Fixed a few spots where paths and bridges connected poorly with each other.
-Made the top cam appearance of the stream on holes 9 and 12 slightly more natural.
-Made the ledge of soil on holes 10 and 11 slightly more natural-looking in a few spots.
-Seamblends added across the whole course. Well ok, I skipped some unimportant parts, mostly ones that never will come into view enough for one to tell the difference while playing the course.
-Crowds added.
-(simple) Hole Previews added. The instructive text is not written by me, don't pay too much attention to it since it seems it was written mostly for handicap golfers and shorter tees. The distances displayed are accurate.
-Minor technical edit to a pool by the clubhouse.
-Minor edit to the bottom of the panorama to prevent a strange ocean look from a certain dynamic cam view on hole 16.
-Minor edit to Splash screen (to mention my edits).
-Name change (adding "Final")

I must address one more thing as well when it comes to my edits. The 3D fences that Lindsay Addie once mentioned were planned for the course are not featured in this release, because they were not yet started in the last known version from 2010, and I had no good way of knowing exactly where they were planned to be. As a contributing factor, with the course being a fairly big file, I was not sure how 3D-object fences would affect rendering times anyway. For me it loads all smooth, but I dont know how slow, or close to being slow it is for lower-end systems.

About the leftover 3D far off the plot, I checked with older satellite images, and there were no more houses back in 2010, so they must have been no more than, in fact, leftovers. (I still left them in, but they aren't within rendering distances in Links.)

Feedback (of my edits or potential lack thereof) is always welcome, though I might not want to make further edits to this course unless fixable technical problems are discovered.

-About APCD Resources found within this course-
In both my original messages to Lindsay Addie and Pat Auge I offered that, if I ended up completing the course, I could promise not to take any APCD resources within the course if necessary. I also offered that I could lock the course if it was necessary. Neither of them commented on it in their replies, which I can only interpret to mean that they are okay with other designers using resources from this course, so go ahead. Giving credit is always nice. The sand textures in particular are really nice if you ask me, I definitely might consider using those for some course sometime.

-Acknowledgements-
Thank you so much to:
-Lindsay Addie, who both designed most of the course and allowed me to complete it.
-Pat Auge, original co-designer.
-Daniel, whose saved copy of the course from 2010 entirely enabled this completion and release at all.
-Leo aka Gator, who helped me from the start in trying to get in contact with the original designers.
-Beta testers TexAgs (aka Jeff Shillings), Leo (aka gator), Ian Wells, Titus and pmgolf (aka Pete).
-Anyone who encouraged the endeavour on Links Corner, and Links Corner itself with its admins for hosting the forums and courses.
-Everyone and every tutorial that helped me learn APCD.
-Everyone who reads this and plays this course.
Thank you everyone. Please enjoy this great course by Lindsay Addie and Pat Auge.
Finished Courses - Main: Amedal (fictional), Nine Bridges (real)
Other: Austin, Sheshan, Kauri Cliffs, Le Golf Nat. Updates: Whirlpool, Royal Lytham, Royal St George's, Chicago, Chambers Bay, Munchen Nord E
Working on: 2 fictional courses + a couple things...
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Daniel
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Location: Lancashire
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Re: Kauri Cliffs v2 - Lost Course

Post by Daniel »

Thank you Adelade for mentioning me in your readme file, it was nothing really I would have done the same thing for anyone here on Linkscorner, you are all a great bunch of people who just love playing Links 2003 as I do. I have now downloaded the course and I intend that all the Tigercats Golf Team will play it in one of our Tours.
gator
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Joined: August 26th, 2019, 9:30 pm

Re: Kauri Cliffs v2 - Lost Course

Post by gator »

Happy to help in any way I could! Glad to see this original MS course get the HD update it deserved. Really thorough write up.

Leo
Ian Wells
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Joined: August 27th, 2019, 3:02 am

Re: Kauri Cliffs v2 - Lost Course

Post by Ian Wells »

Really thorough write up.
Leo
I should say so. I haven't said that many words to my good lady in the whole of 2021. :rofl:

Ian
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