Links Corner Forum

Royal Lytham and St Annes 2020 by Bill Bunning, Sean Landry, Adelade Par 70 7094 yds. Excellent Links course - set up for tournament play. Wild grass and long grass if your off fairways and I say looks great up to waist high in places. Pot bunkers and if you land in some you will have to play out sideways or backwards. Fairways and greens are very nice. Play in tournament - small crowd or large certainly feel the immersion - what a treat. Need to give this its share of wind for some real authenticity. Awesome!

Atlanta Athletic Club - Highlands Course by Glenn Braden Par 72 7613 yds. Mostly pine trees alongside fairways. Fairways are a good size - greens are large and play good. Water does come into play on this course and waits for you at 17th and 18th which are very nice finishing holes. This course can be played in all conditions. Very Nice!

A big thumbs up to the just posted Valderama - especially the realistic elevation changes. Maybe its the night and day difference between this and the old Microsoft version I've been using. To me it fits right in with all the courses mentioned.

BL

As a non-designer I am curious as what causes files sizes to be so different? For example Valderama is 79, so many other courses are 130+
I don't notice differences while playing, maybe I'm oblivious

Thanks for the good review on my course Was a strange course that didn't turn out the way I wanted and kinda put me off the apcd thing

mccoist wrote: ↑November 20th, 2021, 12:11 am Thanks for the good review on my course Was a strange course that didn't turn out the way I wanted and kinda put me off the apcd thing

Whatever it was that you did not like or care for - I never noticed. It played good and looked good for me and I write how I feel about the course. Thank you for uploading.

bostonlefty wrote: ↑November 19th, 2021, 10:33 pm As a non-designer I am curious as what causes files sizes to be so different? For example Valderama is 79, so many other courses are 130+
I don't notice differences while playing, maybe I'm oblivious

Hi BL...

The file sizes of the courses has to do with how much graphics we use on the course. Graphics meaning the various grasses, sand, dirt, textures, etc.. Also the amount of plantings we use, such as trees, long grasses, bushes, buildings and such. Each different graphic adds more to the overall CRZ size. The higher the number of different textures and plantings there are, the larger the file size will be, and the nicer the course should look in the end.

Hope that made sense.

Dan

Danny D wrote: ↑November 20th, 2021, 4:53 amThe higher the number of different textures and plantings there are, the larger the file size will be, and the nicer the course should look in the end.

"should" being a big keyword. Although there definitely are a bunch of exceptions where larger file sizes actually are used to good effect (with complex but subtle varying tones of grass textures for example), most large-file courses simply mean that there are a lot of different high quality textures in areas where it makes little or no difference (such as a random house only seen from a far distance at one spot on the course, alone taking up 40 MB or something) and a ton of large size courses are poorly optimized in such ways. Some courses below even 60 MB could arguably contest for among the best-looking out there. Coogans Bluff is a good example.

I always try to keep my courses under 100mb. I think the only one that crept just over this was Battley Peak. Unfortunately courses I update can end up well over 100mb in size though, because every HD texture takes up 3mb and the original designer of a course may have used a lot of different textures!

[quote=mccoist post_id=12359 time=1637367067 user_id=551]
Thanks for the good review on my course :thumbup: Was a strange course that didn't turn out the way I wanted and kinda put me off the apcd thing
[/quote]

McCoist, I seem to remember at time of Campo El Punetero that you were dabbling with updating Cala Mesquida Pines much the same kind of look that has such a unique look about it such as possibly being located in locale such as Portugal beside ocean with hilly rocky terrain. It was done with an assortment of varied interesting hole designs with different objects and textures. Unfortunately where some course designers leave off a texture as none that makes no difference in playing---Detmar Kirschnar the designer of Cala Mesquida Pines unfortunately left some area seam blends in hitting range with ocean textures having associated penalty necessarily playing a mulligan when unexpectedly hitting to such an area. I remember some posts where you showed progress in working on course, such as a par 3 with large rocks in between tee and the green. Somehow you were given access to open up Cala Mesquida Pines where it is locked otherwise to make changes and the changes could have been just to clean up the misapplied texture qualities. Where you put yourself down for Campo El Punetero I personally like playing this course that is different than your mostly Scottish looking other courses or the way out snow covered Six Mile Lake Golf Course winter version done as your last course in 2015 just after Campo El Punetero was released.

Craters Edge by Gary Campbell Par 72 7507 yds. Low mountain panorama - mixed trees along fairways - no water to be a concern. Good size fairways and big greens - the greens will be where the action is so bring your putting skills with you. For some real excitement play in gusty and wet greens. This course can be played in all conditions. Nice!