Look What I've Been Up To

[Big Sexy JC]

Adelade,

No, I mean, entering your own scores if you want to play along the season yourself in Links? Is that not intended to be possible?

Sorry I misunderstood you. The app I'm building has no connection to Links 2003 whatsoever. It is 100% a simulation of a golf career or entire golf universe. In version 1 at least, there will not be any way to run your own career or manage a player or manage a team, etc. It's all about letting an imaginary golf world unfold before your eyes. I will say that over 2 decades of playing Links and especially the work I've done with anis over the last several years led to and built the foundation for this game.

Each tournament, but not each round? In real life, day 1 might be easy, but day 2 difficult, for example.

This has officially been added to the list for version 2. I've also added pin placements to the version 2 list. I'm too far along to implement either for version 1.


Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, this entire project went from me wanting a way to simulate golf seasons as a supplement to my Links 2003 replays and has turned into the the most in depth golf simulation ever created. I know that's a bold statement, but do a Google search for golf simulations for the purpose of career replays like OOTP is for baseball and Front Office Football is for football. It simply doesn't exist without spending 1000s of dollars on course files and season files. I know that because I've been searching for one for over a decade and haven't stumbled upon one yet. So what the hell, I'll just build it myself. The answer I'll find out I guess is whether there is a market for one and, if so, how big is that market? I didn't do the project to get rich. I did the project because it fulfilled a desire I had so if it makes me $10 it was more than I went into it expecting.

The thing that I'm most proud about though is that now that it's done and I've tested the hell out of it, I can say that it's really F'ing good. For what I'm going to charge on Steam and what I would pay for it, it should do well if there is any market at all for it.

[Guitarzan]

I'll definitely be looking for this on Steam. The last golf sims available, PGA 2K25 and EA Sports PGA Tour have been disappointments so I'm always looking for something new and as accurate that a golf sim can be. I own PGA2K23 and it's pretty and all, but it doesn't have enough to keep my interest (amazingly you can't create A.I. players and are stuck with playing against "ghosts") so nothing so far, if ever, will replace LInks.

[morvio100]

is all about the ball physics of ANY golf game/or simulation of any kind that is of importance... 1 ball physics 2 the amount of ways a player can create /or "shape any given type of shot eg the options/variance of any shot and lastly the fluidity of the imput mechanism ...lastly decent graphics .. not sure about all this Oniverse /career stuff... but im a fan of BigSexy's work and his creativity... so good luck to him

[Big Sexy JC]

Well it's official. I have a store page now. Putting the final touches on it. Actually have a shot engine built that I'm working on a graphics engine with Godot and a course designer for version 2. I'm essentially working towards a sequel to Links 2003 2025 style. Won't be as fancy as PGA2k25, but hope it's a slight step up to Links graphics. I'm a one man studio so no idea what the timeframe will be, but I'm shooting for a year.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3995 ... or/?beta=0

[Big Sexy JC]

Howdy Gents,

Bear2016 reached out to me on PM the other day asking about some Anis. That kind of forced me to stop what I was doing and check in. I haven't been to the site in over 4 months, which might be the longest stretch I've gone without visiting in a decade. I see there are a lot of posts I need to get caught up on, but I won't be able to catch up on everything now. I'll try to work my way back as I get a chance, but I wanted to give an update to the few of you who might be interested.

Back in late November I decided to take my full text based golf sim (titled Pro League Golf Simulator) and build out a graphics engine for it. I have worked on that project EVERY SINGLE DAY since then for 8-14 hours a day building it out piece by piece by piece. 4 months later I have a fully playable 3d golf game using Open GL 4.60 running in the Panda3d graphics engine. I just finished testing AI players tonight and they both completed rounds on my home course and shot -3 and -1 so it is playing extremely realistic golf with a full physics engine.

I've also got a course designer with some features that have yet to be seen in a golf game. For example, I have built an entire 3d suite of tools to allow the user to create all the necessary 3d objects (trees, fescue, rocks, bridges, walls, fences, buildings, textures, terrain, etc) to use on their course. This means designers will be able to generate and make all their creations available (if they wish) to the online community. I think this could be another stand alone tool that I could make available to the Links community in the future.

Another unique feature my designer has is a built in lidar import feature. It allows the user to drop laz files downloaded from Lidar explorer into a folder and the import process parses those laz files, then through the OSM API grabs all the greens, fairways, bunkers, water, tee boxes, etc. for a course and automatically lays down the terrain mesh on the course. You can also import laz files without a course if you just want to build a course on a piece of land somewhere in America that should have a course (in your opinion) and doesnt. Of course, you can create a generic flat plot and go to town as well.

You can also use OSM to download surrounding neighborhoods and buildings using the BLOSM Blender tool and import them into the game as 3d GLB files. If you are a designer, think about how much time it would save you to be able to drop 3d neighborhoods that are already configured to the plot of land you are building your course one. You can also use Google 3d Tiles to bring in exact clubhouses for the course you are working on (I'm always thinking of you Jimbo).

The games graphics are comparable to Links 2003. I was even able to reverse engineer the old Links anis and rewire them to a free maximo rig so that I could give a second life to the ghost of the Links Ani.

This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life. I don't know how to code. I'm just a guy with an idea and a dream of always wanting to create a video game and AI has made that possible in 2026. I have just enough tech skills to plow my way through it every day overcoming failure after failure after failure. I've been kicked in the nuts so many times during this I've had to code with a protective cup on.

With all that being said, I'm a one man show building a feature rich game that a professional studio has 50 people working on. That's why I spend every moment I'm free working on it because I'm going to do it come hell or high water. This golf game will get released and it won't suck.

I hope everyone is doing great and I'm sorry I haven't been around, but I have to keep grinding so I can get this finished.

Screenshots are coming soon I promise.

[dwg]

JC,

Good to hear from you and the progress you have been making, I recall you were working on a golf game.

Des