Question about texture properties

[AJ Allen]

I'm wondering if there is any way to set "first cut" to be somewhere inbetween fairway and rough, as far as the ball flight, rollout etc goes?

I have tried setting the property to fringe, but then it's really no penalty at all, same as fairway. And if I choose rough, then no point in having a first cut. So, anyone have any ideas about this. What do other people do, if they want to have a first cut around their fairways? I could perhaps play around with it in Links extender, see if I can get it right. Though I find that a bit confusing. Also, I noticed that even if I do make changes to texture properties, they get set back to defautl when the course is resaved. So to use that, it would mean the changes could only be made right at the end of the design.

Cheers, AJ

[Adelade]

Well you beat me to bringing this up, I was intending to at least look for opinions about whether having a first cut with properties between fairway and rough is something that players even want (was going to make a poll. Let me know if you want me to make it already, a new thread would be necessary). Wanted to have a semi-rough like that for Nine Bridges that Im currently designing, but honestly having textures with custom properties isnt necessarily that popular, if a player doesnt know about it beforehand, they may just get frutrated when a texture doesnt behave the way they're used to, and how many players even read forums or course notes or readmes to know such things? And even if they do, would they remember for subsequent rounds in the future? I think a texture between fairway and rough wouldnt necessarily be so noticeable, I think it would be fairly hard to tell the difference between that and fairway/rough (perhaps except for long irons?) so maybe it wouldnt be that frustrating.

As for how to accomplish it, yeah you just do it to the final save, unless the method Stephen Sullivan described in this thread viewtopic.php?p=3331#p3331 works differently than the Links Extender method, I've intended to test it out but havent yet so I havnt yet seen how it works. That one may be easier than Links Extender, but for Links Extender what I had planned on doing was to simply look at standard fairway and rough textures, write down which properties of them are different, and then set a value right in the middle between the two for those categories.

The other reason for having a first cut even if it has standard rough or fairway properties, is because it simply looks nice and for some courses - its authentic visually.

[pmgolf]

Speaking as a Tour Director I can tell you that players do not like having penalizing textures (extra-penalty rough, 1st cut between rough and fairway, high grass that can only be escaped by a tricked-up full SW) AT ALL! They can not see it as they could in real life because its on a computer screen! It's a hidden hazard, like the "tricks" some non-golfers put in their fictional courses that turn players against playing fictionals. The game has rough, heavy rough, high grass, deep in the woods, water, in the midst of rocks, etc. You, the designer, don't need to provide additional penalties - the course provides the penalties for less than perfect shots. It's like putting high jumps on a basketball court. Making players swim to 1st base before they can run the rest of the bases. If players wished to have designers provide additional penalties, wouldn't real life courses have light rough, regular rough, more difficult regular rough, easy heavy rough, tough heavy rough - an exaggeration, of course, but you get the picture, right? You don't need to trick the course up! (sorry, rant over)

Pete

[Danny D]

I share Pete's feelings about using additional properties for fringes or collars. In all of the years we have played Links, no one has used different fringe properties. Introducing an "unknown" into the game after all of these years will give players the idea that "this course has been tricked-up". I suspect most players would think something is wrong and delete the course and never look back. Perhaps it would have been ok had it been that way from the start, but that type of a change at this point, IMO, would be a mistake. Perhaps it could be introduced if there ever was a newer upgraded release to Links2003, as long as everyone understood it was a new addition to the new release. But a sudden change to one or 2 courses would most likely not be a good idea in this version..

Just my opinion.

Dan

[AJ Allen]

OK, so you guys think that a first cut should be for looks only, basically? IRL, I have always found that the first mow around the fairway tends to be easier to play from that when you are 20' off the fairway. I wasn't talking about introducing extra penalties though, more the opposite. The first cut would have been easier than rough, almost like fairway, not as punishing as rough. Just seems if somebody misses the fairway by 5', it should be an easier shot that if you miss it by 50'.

Anyway, I will heed advice. What I think I will do is make the first cut as rough, and change the name to rough rather than first cut. And what is now rough will be heavy or deep grass. Thing is there simply isn't deep or heavy rough here on the course. It's more patchy, deadpan dormant style. But if that's what people expect to see...So, no confusion. I just didn't want a course that penalises heavily whenever you are a little bit wide on your shot.

But the rough over here is nothing like the rough you get in a wetter or damper climate. It's not lush, or thick, and you can have loads of run with no trouble getting the club to make decent contact with the ball.

I'm going to experiment, and try to see if there is a difference between the different grass types, as far as playability goes.

When I look at the default standard textures for rough type grasses that come with APCD, I see these ones in the list... a number of different ones of each.

*dormant grass
*deep grass
*tall grass
*dry grass
*wild grass

I guess there must be some property differences between (for example) dry grass and wild grass. I just need to play around with them and see what those are. Presumably it would be OK with players to have something like dry or wild grass, as long as it was labelled as such? Or perhaps the majority don't like to see anything beyond standard rough, with maybe a patch or two of heavier stuff in areas well away from the fairway?

Cheers, AJ

[Adelade]

While I get your overall point, I think you guys are overreacting? I dont either really understand why featuring a semi rough instead of a normal rough would be 'penalizing', sure its a slight element of unpredictability but wouldnt the player usually assume its rough rather than fairway if you call it semi-rough and make sure it looks a bit more like the rough than the fairway? Then in that case whats the penalty? If a player expects a rough shot and get whats in between fairway and rough, would they be penalized? Not really. It would just carry slightly further, roll slightly less (thus most of the time about even things out) and be more forgiving with missed snaps, so most if not almost all shots would just be positive results rather than penalties. Im pretty tempted to make a challenge with a test course to see if people would even be able to tell it apart even if they knew to look out for it. My guess is youd need a really rather thorough test session to determine whether it was custom properties semi-rough or standard rough, highly doubt anyone would notice in normal play even if they both knew to pay close attention to it and played the course 10 times while ending up on the texture in question a few times per round. Heck, I often even have a hard time telling rough and deep rough apart for certain if its not obvious from the name/lie icon, at least until I get to play several shots from it or make a proper practice test (I use to try a flat lie SW, for perfect hits normal rough tends to carry around same distance as fairway, while deep rough cuts the carry distance a much more noticeable 10% or so)

In all of the years we have played Links, no one has used different fringe properties.

Actually there are quite a few courses with custom properties for fringes that are highly regarded. Im not sure if I could remember exactly which ones... I know Excelsior Golf Estate and Buffalo Springs 2005 are some good examples (Excelsior had user rating 4.49 - people didnt seem to mind) but I swear a few other designers did it as well. There is also a great example of the exact same semi-rough/1stcut this topic was about - Inverness Club (rating 4.51), can check its designer notes document to confirm. I know I wasnt too delighted about the custom way the sand was made to play on Buffalo Springs because I found that to actually have an impact on gameplay while being hard to predict how to play in it, but I havent had any negative experiences with custom properties for fairways/fringes on any courses. I know some courses are said to have custom deep roughs, Im not a big fan of that unless its clearly mentioned exactly how they are set to behave, so that sort of thing I would agree are tricked up inconveniences for players but I personally dont think the same could be said for a modest semi-rough that we're talking about. Im glad Im getting to hear opinions about it either way.

When I look at the default standard textures for rough type grasses that come with APCD, I see these ones in the list... a number of different ones of each.

*dormant grass
*deep grass
*tall grass
*dry grass
*wild grass

I guess there must be some property differences between (for example) dry grass and wild grass. I just need to play around with them and see what those are. Presumably it would be OK with players to have something like dry or wild grass, as long as it was labelled as such? Or perhaps the majority don't like to see anything beyond standard rough, with maybe a patch or two of heavier stuff in areas well away from the fairway?

You need to go into individual textures' properties window to see their category of behavior (which is what matters for ball physics, along with the terrain flags of course). In the top right > "Category". Some stock textures that are called dry rough are Deep Rough category and others named dry rough have Rough as category, so I wouldnt look at their names too much. I know many Australian designers have kept their dry rough playing as normal rough in the past but across all courses I think it varies a lot... imo the most important thing for something called "dry rough" is that it should look thick if it plays like deep rough.

For grass textures, only these categories exist:
A. Green (these will always behave as they're set to within Links, they can be set to the designer's custom ones but I doubt any players actually use that)
B. Fairway (fringe, fairway, tee)
C. Rough
D. Deep Rough
Thats it. Just those 4. For non-grass there is also "Leaves" and "Undergrowth". I believe undergrowth is sort of pine needles style with far roll and from which shots carry far and bite well but right/left deviations exaggerate based on the snap of the shot and possibly side-lie too). Leaves I really have no idea how it plays. Ice, Sand, Water and Rocks speaks for itself (though I've no idea whats different between Rocks and Rocky Hills, perhaps Rocky Hills is less random bounce directions?), "Other" is said to be exactly as fairway, Earth I've found to play fairly close like fairway (not too sure though), Mud might be more penalizing (however its usually set as hazard among stock textures anyway). Gravel I think is fairly close to undergrowth except more erratic bounces, Pavement is pretty much like fairway when playing from it but obviously bounces like crazy when landed on. Snow is interesting, never tried. Molten Lava - yikes no clue!

[pmgolf]

OK, so you guys think that a first cut should be for looks only, basically? IRL, I have always found that the first mow around the fairway tends to be easier to play from that when you are 20' off the fairway. I wasn't talking about introducing extra penalties though, more the opposite. The first cut would have been easier than rough, almost like fairway, not as punishing as rough. Just seems if somebody misses the fairway by 5', it should be an easier shot that if you miss it by 50'.
Cheers, AJ

I feel like the "first cut" is actually the first cut OF rough, so it's rough, and if you set the penalty for it to the penalty of rough, you won't surprise anyone. If you try to create some artificial "halfway between rough and fairway", you WILL surprise everyone, and I have to ask why? Is it really necessary? What are you looking to accomplish? I know the hard work that goes into course creation with the APCD, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to discourage people playing it into thinking "I'll never play that one again!" over some desire to create a new level of penalty. But it is your course, and you are free to do what you want.

Pete

[GoBucks]

In my opinion, if you set the first cut as the same as rough, then what what do you do with the rough? Again, in my opinion the first cut of rough should mimic IRL and not be as penal as rough.