Test Course Terrain

[Cheeseness]

We'll need a test course to practice our (golf) driving and (cart) driving on.

Ideally this should include a tee, a hole, a green, some fairway and some rough.

For now, let's steer clear of sand traps, water, landmines, etc.

[Taekon]

Two course concepts I came up with:

I'm looking into expanding the second one into a full map with long winded cart chases before reaching the free-for-all brawling putt. Some ideas I noted from the forums:

• Bushes/low plants/foliage to conceal yourself in.
• Tall, thin trees to mess with a player’s ball trajectory. Serving the same functions are boulders of various sizes.
• Small and medium hills that act as ramps for epic golf cart flying action. Tall or steep hills act as solid walls (maybe there could be a tall strategic hill where you could see a large portion of the map, but also reveals your own location?)
• Sand dunes that decreases a player’s speed.
• Small rocks or objects that a player could hit like they would a golf ball to aim at and damage others.

In case of the tee: do we want all players to start at the same place or separated?

[Cheeseness]

I think at the same place fits best with Patrick's idea of a race-to-the-hole type approach. A lengthy fairway in the leadup to the green feels like it'd be worthwhile as well.

Love the atmosphere that your concepts have!

[Taekon]

Thanks Cheese! Here's the expanded concept map. I think I focused way too much on the "derby" aspect of the chase to the putt. Might need to look into removing objects or something. I don't know, suggestions?

[Taekon]

Concepts for the straight-forward, long, winded course. Probably needs to stretch it out even further but I wanted to get a good idea for the terrain first and foremost.

Legend:

• Shaded: ramps/hills of various heights.
• Horizontal stripes: steep cliffs (can't drive on).
• Pointy stubs: objects such as plants or rocks.

[Cheeseness]

The bridge idea is pretty neat, but I suspect we'll want to stick with simpler stuff to start with. I'm currently favouring number 2, but number 4 also has some interesting elements.

Great stuff!

[ghost]

I made a fast and ugly blockout so that we could get it into the game and drive around. I wanted to get a better idea of the scale we need. Note: I scaled this as best I could using the character model.
I've mostly worked with UDK so I didn't know off-hand what to do to make the ground have collision. I'll link the fbx file tonight and get a fresh start in the morning.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/107822001/courseBlockout.fbx

[Taekon]

Added a little dog leg as Cheese suggested! I don't know how fast the carts are going to go so obstacle placement is pure guess right now, but once I have an idea of the velocity, I should be able to try laying down a solid test course.

[Cheeseness]

Looking good! I think 9 and 10 are starting to get to the sort of scale we're going to need, although they all have interesting looking obstacle placement - definitely something to play around with as we progress :D

[ghost]

Using this video here:
http://youtu.be/E2GjF85hRuI?t=14m59s

I edited the test course to use the method of separate mesh/collision mesh files.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/107822001/Fatmandu/fbx/course_test_mesh.fbx
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/107822001/Fatmandu/fbx/course_test_collision.fbx

@Taekon In number 7, are those extra cart trails? If so, I like that idea. Once we get a good scale reference sheet going, I'll start blocking out a course based on your sketches.

Are we going to use the Unity terrain feature or are we going to have it modeled out in Maya/Blender and then imported like my test course? If Unity, then I'll need to re-download it and start watching tutorials.

[Taekon]

@fatmandu Oh gosh I didn't see your post from 10 days ago, apologies! The horizontally striped areas are tall cliffs. You can drive up the hill from the bottom and fly your cart off the edge!

Here's a test course concept with a relatively fitting scale:

Thought a good test course would allow lots of room for the cart driving. I added the bottleneck hill for a suprise jump :D. If the waterfall/stone wall isn't in yet, we can just use tall trees with collision to populate the borders.

[Cheeseness]

Nice work!

Some feedback on the course we've got in the game at the moment: I feel like that's a super small hole.

[mrsopkip]

Hey guys,.

it took a bit longer than i had imagined.
nut here's my take on the golf course,
it is 3 courses and i havent done a central starting area yet..

so i tried to make them of scaling difficulty meaning that the maps have different difficulties, this can lead to some nice meta-game-play once players get to know these courses.
i tried to implement cliff jumps as well as the hills mentioned before, the biggest difference between the two is that these cliff jumps only allow entry from one side, this allows for more strategic decision-making but also(hopefully) add a crazy mayhem of flying carts! :P
Some of these cliff jumps are located in a way that once you scored you can exit the green faster. this, again, allows for more strategic and engaging game-play.

I also think that the bushes mentioned before are a great idea, but i did not add those locations on the sketches because they can be added in later stages.

The green is an interesting thing though, as we currently use it as an conventional green I think that we can make it into a more interesting gameplay element. We could make the green overgrown or consist out of tall grass. This would add a decent second chance for other players once an player reaches the green because the tall grass would slow down ball movement, it could also create a nice visual difference that could contribute to the mayhem.

let me know what you think about it! :D

[Cheeseness]

Looks good! Playtesting is going to tell us a lot about how well cliffs work from a gameplay perspective. It may be that they become awkward bottlenecks rather than fun obstacles, but it's definitely important to experiment and explore what works and what doesn't.

At this stage, preserving normal golf type mechanics are the direction we're going in, but feel free to pop your long-grass green ideas in the Longer Term Ideas wiki page :)