Winged Foot West - issues - last chance I guess

[dorse72]

and I loaded this version onto my old Laptop with Links and it looks good, WITH no crashes during shadow file loading, no texture issues, so I might be onto something. going to plant hole 1 and 2 and see what happens, fingers crossed

[pmgolf]

Great news! It seems like every time I experience an APCD disaster, it turns out to be no big deal. Hope our luck continues!

Pete

[Danny D]

OK cool, won't that delete my textures and everything I need though?

Hi Eric...

If you do a new installation of APCD, and then open your existing course in it, all of your programming, including the textures and the seam blend programming is self-contained within the CRZ and should remain uninterrupted and function as normal (unless it's not being saved properly on your Vista system, which might be the error you keep getting when saving )

Remember to dedicate only one installation to the course you are building. NEVER open other courses in it, because it will mix the other courses textures in with your current course. Make a separate APCD installation for opening or testing other courses.

Good luck,

Dan

[braden1308]

[/quote]

Remember to dedicate only one installation to the course you are building. NEVER open other courses in it, because it will mix the other courses textures in with your current course. Make a separate APCD installation for opening or testing other courses.

Good luck,

Dan
[/quote]

Dan I don't believe that is true about dedicating one install per course. I have over the years worked on multiple courses with one install of the APCD. I just did it with Atlanta Athletic Club, both versions of East Lake and both versions Glen Abbey including the original design I updated from. I have never had textures do anything like you are saying. They have never mixed or done anything else. I am currently working on a 6th course with the same APCD without replacing my user.lib file, all textures from all courses are on my menu without any negative effects. Designers have been doing this since the APCD came out and up until I came back from my layoff did I ever hear of anything like this. Someone started that some time ago and everyone thought it was gospel when it actually isn't. I didn't say anything when I first saw posts about it because I thought it was silly. If it happens to designers it something new and something I have not come across.

Just my thoughts,
Glenn

[Danny D]

Dan I don't believe that is true about dedicating one install per course. I have over the years worked on multiple courses with one install of the APCD. I just did it with Atlanta Athletic Club, both versions of East Lake and both versions Glen Abbey including the original design I updated from. I have never had textures do anything like you are saying. They have never mixed or done anything else. I am currently working on a 6th course with the same APCD without replacing my user.lib file, all textures from all courses are on my menu without any negative effects. Designers have been doing this since the APCD came out and up until I came back from my layoff did I ever hear of anything like this. Someone started that some time ago and everyone thought it was gospel when it actually isn't. I didn't say anything when I first saw posts about it because I thought it was silly. If it happens to designers it something new and something I have not come across.

Just my thoughts,
Glenn

Hi Glenn. I understand what you are saying, and I don't say it's mandatory to do what I suggested. I believe that using my method is just a safe way of avoiding unnecessary crashes or corruptions. The less an APCD gets cluttered, the better it will perform, and you know how temperamental the APCD can be. With today's hard drive sizes, it just makes good sense to use separate APCD's for those reasons. With my own personal experience, I have had much less problems since I started experimenting with separate installs. I was a big advocate of that method to start with, and from the responses and replies I've seen from other designers, it looks like it has helped them also. Please don't misunderstand. I have never told anyone that it's the only way to do it. I have just told them that it is a safer way to avoid crashes, and offered it up as a suggestion that may help them.

Dan

[braden1308]

No problem Dan, since I started using the APCD 15 years ago I have probably only re-installed a handful of times. I read the posts and thought why are they doing this and said nothing but like I said I have never seen textures cross over from course to course. I have seen odd things happen over the years but when I was at APCD courses we just wrote them off as gremlins in the machine.

If you want to keep things uncluttered why wouldn't you make a folder for each course and when you are done just move the user.lib file to that folder.
That way when you restart the APCD it will generate a new user.lib file and if you need to go back to another course just change out the user.lib file.

Not knocking your way of designing, we all have our own ways. I just am of the mindset that you run it till the wheels fall off then you do your re-install. I have run the APCD on almost every operating system since Windows 98 and other than XP I feel it runs better now than it ever did. There are still issues but it's nothing unusual with this program. It was buggy when it came out and can never be fixed.

Like I said not knocking what you are doing, in my own way I feel it's a little too much but to each his own and whatever makes you comfortable with this software is what you should do.

Glenn

[Lez Marwick]

The user.lib is just what it says, a user library. It is perfectly ok to work on multiple courses of your own using one APCD because the user.lib will be consistent with all of them. The problem comes if you are loading other people's courses into your APCD, because their user library is embedded within their course and will merge with your own. If you load up someone's course to extract tga's or even just to have a look at how they constructed something and it uses custom textures then it will screw up your course if you then load yours in and later save it, without swapping out the user.lib first.
If, like me, you are working on updating other people's courses then it is imperative to keep the user.libs from getting corrupt and the easiest way to do this without having to remember to swap user.libs all the time is to use a separate APCD for each course being simultaneously worked on. Another reason for separate APCD's is if you are using lots of custom objects and you don't want them permanently stored in your object library because you are not going to need them for other courses.

[Danny D]

No problem Dan, since I started using the APCD 15 years ago I have probably only re-installed a handful of times. I read the posts and thought why are they doing this and said nothing but like I said I have never seen textures cross over from course to course. I have seen odd things happen over the years but when I was at APCD courses we just wrote them off as gremlins in the machine.

If you want to keep things uncluttered why wouldn't you make a folder for each course and when you are done just move the user.lib file to that folder.
That way when you restart the APCD it will generate a new user.lib file and if you need to go back to another course just change out the user.lib file.

Not knocking your way of designing, we all have our own ways. I just am of the mindset that you run it till the wheels fall off then you do your re-install. I have run the APCD on almost every operating system since Windows 98 and other than XP I feel it runs better now than it ever did. There are still issues but it's nothing unusual with this program. It was buggy when it came out and can never be fixed.

Like I said not knocking what you are doing, in my own way I feel it's a little too much but to each his own and whatever makes you comfortable with this software is what you should do.

Glenn

Multiple APCD's makes me feel much more comfortable. As Lez mentioned, a lot more gets mixed into your APCD with opening multiple courses in it, and the more data added, the more of a chance of a malfunction. I started using multiple installs shortly after you left from the hard drive crash. I used that method for over 2 years without mentioning it to others, because I wanted to give it a thorough test before telling others. I created my last 2 courses that way, and never had any hiccups at all. It went very smooth on both courses, and I was pleased with the results. That sold me on it being safe, so I started telling others what I was doing. Little by little others picked up on it too. You may be surprised how many of us do it now. It's quite common.

That's not the only thing I do with it. I have a separate APCD for my planting set too. When I complete a course and begin the planting, I move it over into my planting APCD. I just like to keep things neat and in order. I find it no trouble at all, and like Lez said, I don't want to rely on remembering when to juggle the USER.LIBs when I change courses. Right now I am using 3 copies. One for Coeur d'Alene, one called TEST APCD for opening other courses for whatever reason, and one for planting. I only get involved in creating one course at a time, but I do help out others on occasion, and I always use the Test copy. If anything goes haywire with any of those, I still have the option of re-creating a new USER.LIB



Dan

[Danny D]

If, like me, you are working on updating other people's courses then it is imperative to keep the user.libs from getting corrupt and the easiest way to do this without having to remember to swap user.libs all the time is to use a separate APCD for each course being simultaneously worked on.

Hi Lez... I saw you mention using multiple copies the other day. How long have you been doing that, and have you mentioned it in any of your tutorials? I don't recall seeing it.

Best wishes,

Dan

[Lez Marwick]

Hi Lez... I saw you mention using multiple copies the other day. How long have you been doing that, and have you mentioned it in any of your tutorials? I don't recall seeing it.

Best wishes,

Dan

I was doing it from my second course, Ackerton Cross because it was the easiest way to keep separate all the custom stuff I was creating and not fill up my object library with junk that I would never use again. It was even more necessary when I later started updating other people's courses. I only stopped doing it when I got lazier, and was recycling the same objects, sounds, textures etc. for each course, to speed up the work.

I've no idea if it's ever mentioned in the tutorials... it may well have been, as I was working on other people's courses at the time I made them, and it is a safe way for new users to avoid some of the pitfalls of APCD. I've no idea who first suggested it, but back when I first started on APCD there were thousands of posts from other designers on the forum and you were always 'standing on the shoulders of giants'! That resource sadly got lost when the forum was updated many years ago. I was very late to the Links game (2010, I think), but people like Mike Jones, Wayne Hewitt, John Aherne, Paul Seaman and many others were still around then to offer advice when I started. Back then you could normally solve most problems though by just searching the designer forum, because someone almost inevitably had had the same issue before you and the solution had already been covered!