Anyone Interested In Checking My Course?

[wojo]

I'm officially stumped... My course is validated but it won't play. I've completed all the items in the checklist for the first hole. When I hit START PLAY, it flashes to a window briefly and then Links disappears. Before I invest more time into planting trees, etc. I'd like to get it running. Anyone (Lez?) interested in helping me find out why it crashes? My last thought was that it might have something to do with part of the DEM terrain being below sea level, but I dragged all those vertices upward. I don't know what else to try. If so, send me a private message with an email address where I can send you a copy.

Thanks.
Wojo

[Danny D]

I'm officially stumped... My course is validated but it won't play. I've completed all the items in the checklist for the first hole. When I hit START PLAY, it flashes to a window briefly and then Links disappears. Before I invest more time into planting trees, etc. I'd like to get it running. Anyone (Lez?) interested in helping me find out why it crashes? My last thought was that it might have something to do with part of the DEM terrain being below sea level, but I dragged all those vertices upward. I don't know what else to try. If so, send me a private message with an email address where I can send you a copy.

Thanks.
Wojo

Send it to me wojo. I'll take a look at it for you. Do you still have my email address? dannyd@sisna.com

Dan

[Danny D]

I'm officially stumped... My course is validated but it won't play. I've completed all the items in the checklist for the first hole. When I hit START PLAY, it flashes to a window briefly and then Links disappears. Before I invest more time into planting trees, etc. I'd like to get it running. Anyone (Lez?) interested in helping me find out why it crashes? My last thought was that it might have something to do with part of the DEM terrain being below sea level, but I dragged all those vertices upward. I don't know what else to try. If so, send me a private message with an email address where I can send you a copy.

Thanks.
Wojo

Check my reply in your email. I attached your playable course. Just make sure it didn't get caught up in the spam...

Dan

[sagevanni]

Hi Danny,

I would love to know your solution....????

Sage.....

[Danny D]

Hi Danny,

I would love to know your solution....????

Sage.....

In his attempt to change his overlay back to an acceptable sized texture, he didn't get the entire overlay texture removed. Plus he had the planar setting on the entire plot set to the overlay planar size. I simply replaced the overlay texture assignment to a stock rough texture, and then planar sized the entire plot back to the default size of 16.

Dan

[sagevanni]

Thanks Danny......that's what I thought.....I've had it happen.

Sage.....

[Danny D]

Thanks Danny......that's what I thought.....I've had it happen.

Sage.....

[wojo]

Yes! I just realized I should publicly thank Danny D. for his help. I imagine the golf course I'm working on would probably close and turn into a hillside full of blackberries before I figured it out on my own!

Wojo

[Danny D]

Yes! I just realized I should publicly thank Danny D. for his help. I imagine the golf course I'm working on would probably close and turn into a hillside full of blackberries before I figured it out on my own!

Wojo

You're welcome Wojo. As I had mentioned before, the APCD, even though it's very old, is a really complex piece of software and has so many little details about it that is hard to guess your way through. I recall the very first time I used it, it was the original first 2001 version. I dove into it head first without reading any instructions, which back then in 2001 were hard to come by. I did manage to create a practice range called "Golfcom Tees", but it's pretty simple stuff compared to today's standards. I was working full time back then and came to an understanding that if I ever got serious about creating a full course, it would have to be after I retired and had more time. Finally, after waiting all of those years for retirement, I now have the time to become more involved. It took me nearly 2 years to reach a good enough understanding of the overall APCD program that I was finally able to understand it well enough to create a full course without asking a lot of questions from the designers that were still doing them. I would never have figured it out without the video tutorials from Lez Marwick. He did the Links world a tremendous favor by doing all of those videos.

I have always prided myself with being knowledgeable enough with technology that I could usually muddle my way though projects and software without reading a lot of help files or instructions, but not the case with the APCD. There are just way too many details about it that, no matter how good you are with software, you will never figure out on your own. There is just too many tiny little details about the APCD that you cannot guess your way through.

Good luck Wojo. I believe what you have done so far is pretty impressive for an APCD beginner, but you will soon come to learn that you have only barely scratched the surface of what it will take to turn out a highly detailed course with the APCD.

Best wishes,

Dan

[Lez Marwick]

@wojo - I'm going to post some advice that will hopefully save yourself and others from dealing with many of the APCD problems that you will face in the future. The problem in this thread was addressed at the end of my video 25 as well as how to resolve it, and is also covered in 'Course design using Google Earth elevations' - a sticky thread, here in the Designers Corner forum.

Put your course on hold for a couple of weeks and work through the tutorials available to construct a couple of finished holes, either using 'APCD Inside and Out', my videos, or Paul Seaman's tutorial, which is stickied on this forum, and check out the other specialist posts that are stickied here. So much of creating a course for Links requires forward planning, and if you don't understand the restrictions, quirks, and bugs of the APCD you will just make more work for yourself down the line. I hope you at least checked someone's tutorials for starting out and didn't check the 'allow non-regulation fairways' box when you created your course because this will add unfixable issues to your course and I would advise starting again from scratch if you did this. Looking at your posted pictures so far you have already created problems for yourself when it comes to seam blending the textures because you can only blend 2 perfectly and it's easiest when the blend is a closed loop. Your bunkers will cause you problems because of this. If you are going to add 3D buildings then the orientation of the plot needs to be adjusted for the best lighting before any planting is done. Rotating the plot will not rotate the planting with it. Cart paths can be difficult to seam blend too if you're planning on using an extruded method, so thoughts about how these are constructed will also make things easier later on. Altering terrain after planting is possible, but is also more problematic, as plants, unlike 3D objects, pins, crowds etc do not automatically adjust their height to any changes made.
By creating a couple of holes as a learning process before starting out on a major project you would have discovered many issues and already know how to avoid some of them. Simply checking tutorials when you encounter problems will often be too late to easily deal with them and will take up far more of your time than going through tutorials on a test plot first and learning from the experience. It will also waste the time of others trying to deal with them.
I'm fine with helping people out now and then, as the APCD causes issues for all of us, but I'm not going to waste time posting solutions every day to things that have already been covered in multiple tutorials simply because someone hasn't read the information available. I'm not as kind, friendly, or patient as some people around here! I imagine that your experience with modern CAD programs may actually be a disadvantage in some ways because it's given you a confidence that you will be able to correct things easily as they occur, when in APCD these may be difficult to do, if not impossible.
Hope this post helps.