For My Next Project......

[Big Sexy JC]

My first ever post on this forum was the thread below explaining my PGA Tour replay. That replay is 100% my motivation for playing links still and the reason I ended up figuring out the animation stuff, creating apparel and golf clubs. I enjoy playing Links, but no other golf game allows you to create AI players with different animations/avatars with such a wide range of ratings you can assign. That's the best feature Links has in my opinion because it's so unique. That feature allows the user to always have a playing partner for someone that hates online gaming like myself. I used the feature to create pro golfers and then had them compete in a PGA Tour replay. Anyway, you can read the post below if you want more info on that.

https://www.linkscorner.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=1741

Now for my next project. In my real life I work 2 full time jobs and have for the last 25 years. I've been in the IT industry doing hardware, networking, desktop support, application support and helpdesk type stuff as my "real job". I use that skill set with Links every day. My other job though is running a travel baseball organization. I played college baseball and have been coaching baseball and running a travel baseball organization since the early 2000s. My true talent in baseball is player development. My organization has one of the top player development models in the country. In this next project I'm going to use that skill set with Links.

The PGA Tour replay was fun, but after spending the last 18 months on it, it needs a little twist and some excitement injected into it. So, my next version will be using players with randomly generated names and a player development algorithm/process I came up. I will put each randomly generated player into the algorithm and it will spit out all the players initial ratings. I then assign that player a randomly generated age between 20-45. I do this 64 times and I have my field of players. These names are deliberately created from a DB that allows me to pick the country or origin of the name so I have diversity in my field of players.

I then play out my season just like I did in my original replay. This time though, at the end of the season instead of pulling the PGA Tour stats to determine my next year's field, I will run those 64 players through the player development algorithm and they will get better and worse in each category. I will then create a "next 100" list of players that I also create initial ratings for. Each year the bottom 10 from the field of 64 get kicked back to the next 100 list and the top 10 from the next 100 list join my field of 64. I then rinse and repeat that process for as many years as I wish. Tonight I finished building out the ratings for the original 64 players. The next 100 list always has 100 golfers waiting (think Korn Ferry Tour) to get in to the field of 64. That means that each year players that don't cut the mustard on the next 100 list go away forever.

This process allows me to see a players career from beginning to end while I'm also testing my player development model to see if it functions how I expect it to. For those that do a career mode in Links, this could serve that purpose as I could certainly play along if I chose to. I could also use a lot fewer golfers if I wanted less work or didn't want the season replays to take as long. In other words this could be tailored to the desire of the individual.

So how will I do the anis for these? I just created a superani that has 14 faces and over 20 pairs of pants and shirts and hats that I will assign random diverse faces to. If I create 4 or 5 of those superanis I will have plenty of variety to get me through. I think I'm going to go LIV style this time around too so I might create some more anis with shorts, which is something I've not tinkered with at all to this point.

[Guitarzan]

Sounds like quite and interesting an involved undertaking! Does that mean you are done with making PGA players? If so, I just want to say thanks for all your work on those.

[Big Sexy JC]

Guitarzan,

I'm not quite done with the PGA anis. I'm in 2010 of the team portion of my replay. After I completed the individual portion I restarted in 1980 with a Ryder Cup/LIV style team competition. The team stuff has been a lot of fun to do, but most importantly, as I worked back through the years I've redone every ani in Hi Res and fixed any issues with the anis. Once I finish the team stuff in about a month or so I will also finish up the PGA anis. There should be roughly 210 of them when all is said and done.

I think this community prefers (I might be wrong) the non PGA tour anis so doing this new project will force me to create some more "generic" multi purpose anis that I can share with everyone. So, I won't stop doing anis, but I will be creating different types of anis than I have in the past. I'm glad you are enjoying them and getting some use out of them. That's why I made them available to everyone.

[Big Sexy JC]

Ok. So we are averaging like a post a day on the forum here lately and quite frankly it's starting to remind me of a digital morgue. I know nobody cares about the stuff I'm gonna post, but somebody has to say something right?

Here is where I've progressed on this project. As I stated in my first post, I have the original 64 players named and ratings applied. I decided to do a team competition in parallel to the individual one (somewhat LIV style, but I like my scoring system better). In order to do teams, you need team names. 64 players with 4 on a team so I needed to come up with 16 team names. I completely made these up with 2 goals in mind; Fun and golf related, First though, I needed to create a name for my league. I combined the PGA Tour with LIV and came up with TOUR LXIV (64 in roman numerals). I present to you the team names of TOUR LXIV.

TOUR LXIV:
1 Putters
Aces
Albatross
Birdie Brigade
Dimple Destroyers
Eagle Eyes
Fairway Finders
Golf Sharks
Green Warriors
Long Drivers
Peak PARformers
Pin Seekers
Rough Riders
Sand Blasters
Scramblers
Tigers (paying homage to the GOAT of course)

I've built out a 24 tourney schedule where each team will play each other once (15 matches) and then a playoff of the top 8 to get me through 18 weeks. The last 6 weeks will be individual only leading into the 8 player match tourney for the championship. I can't go this far and not have logos for my teams right? Of course not, so I've attached my logos below. I created all these from scratch using different images from the web. I know some of the names and logos are corny, but I lead the league in dad jokes so corny is good and I want this to be fun.

[Big Sexy JC]

Round 2 of Logos

[Big Sexy JC]

Last of the logos:

[Adelade]

Until I checked a second time what you had written, I thought for a while that you might have used AI to generate those.

I like em, which program do you use for image editing?

My fav is the scramblers one...

Only one problem........ how do you pronounce LXIV?

[GLF#44]

Sounds like fun. Keep up the good work.

[Jimbo]

In your post you said that "Nobody cares"...Sex Man you couldn't be morre wrong!
1. Everybody needs to see new ideas for the game-even our APCD legends know that.
2. We're a special group who are fans of the greatest golf game ever...trust me, everybody cares!

[Big Sexy JC]

Adelade,

JASC Paint Shop Pro version 7. I've used it for years, tried Gimp and PS and always come back to it. I use others for odds and end things, but 90% of the time it's old reliable.

Yep. It doesn't flow off the tongue as well as LIV does, so I'm going with the simple TOUR 64 pronunciation.

Jimbo,

My running joke with my wife (30 years this year) is that she married the sexiest fat guy in the world instead of settling for an average looking average sized guy. Hence the name, Big Sexy. To call me Sex Man though puts me at a whole new level. I can't tell her that one or she might hold me to higher expectations than my old body can achieve. I think I'll keep flying under the radar with Big Sexy.