Links Corner Forum

As I come back to this antiquated APCD designer thats over 20 yrs old now, it pales in comparisons to other designers I think we all know that. Every time I come back and start my courses and bring them into Links I'm so let down, the flat 2D world is just so lame. Has anyone figured out a good way to bring it up? especially the rough, it looks so bad! the only thing I can think of is grass planted everywhere in the rough to give it some 3D depth, but I'm thinking thats going to add to the file size and rendering times. Sage had a good rough on one of his courses there I thought, long wispy grass, but it still doesnt come close to the other games. I just loved the graphics on Tiger Woods 13-14, they were awesome, playing Royal County Down with the tall grass blowing in the wind - fantastic. I guess I just have to get over the flatness and move on. I cant remember, do any of the great old courses have great rough? MJs, Waynes? Merion by my friend Dex,

another issue I have is there are NO screenshots of the courses! I look and the courses at there is like 1 tiny shot, I'm like really!? how do you know if its any good?

I can't think of the precise wording, but I like it when the texture reveals details of what the grass looks like. The most important part for me is that the course plays well. I've seen, and played, competitors that look a little better, but none of them rise up to the playability of Links. My almost 30 years of loyalty is a testament to that!

Pete

I wouldn't call myself one of the great designers, but I was always happy with how the planting turned out on my courses, allowing for the limitations of the designer.

Life got in the way of me designing courses. When I was I tended to forest plant the deep rough and wooded areas. I would often work on a plot of the rough or woods texture, and try different combinations of grasses etc at differing densities until I go the look I wanted, then just apply it to the whole course. I very rarely used more than 3 grasses.

Hope that helps

APCD indeed has a lot of issues, and Links certainly has limitations, but I dont believe there is any designer for any golf game out there which allows for as much customization as APCD does

good answers there thanks

Has there been a great course that has a grassed planted rough I can check out?

dorse72 wrote: ↑July 19th, 2023, 5:41 pm Has there been a great course that has a grassed planted rough I can check out?

Kill Devil Hills by Eddie Schmidt comes to mind https://linkscorner.org/courses/course.php?crz=2376
But it depends on the texture and the local planting really.

In case you dont specifically mean regular rough / US open rough areas (as opposed to deep or tall grass areas), ignore this post.

In case you do mean in regular rough or US open rough areas, the only ones I can think of right away are the various courses planted by Sage (if I recall correctly, I quite liked the achieved visuals with it on Meadow Lark) and Thomas Wagner's Fontana GC (denser style)(hard to see in the course's screenshots but you can see a bit of it in the 3rd screenshot). Cant say whether those are what you were looking for.

A few things worth considering if doing mass-planting in regular rough areas:

1. It might end up looking odd within Links from certain distances where the render distance for the object maxes out and Links simply stops loading the grass objects beyond that distance. The render distance depends on the size of the objects set within APCD, but also on the individual end-user's resolution and "picture quality" slider setting within Links' graphics settings. One can make the objects bigger by adding empty space below or above the visual parts of the object - however:
2. It might make the course load slowly if using objects of too high file-size.
3. If the grass objects are set to have any impact on the ball physics whatsoever, some (perhaps even many) players may end up shunning the course because of it.