Ball behavior coefficients

[DC#1]

Question on the library creator. When you want to create a new library and adjust the difficulty of the rough and how fast the greens are which numbers do you adjust. Example like greens rolling is set at .2, which way makes them faster? How much do you move it? Same for the rough texture.

[BrianZ111]

Velocity and Spin are the settings you want for rough difficulty. You can set 3 different lie conditions for this if you set your surface type as rough. When you set your conditions for a round in the game it favors one of these 3 conditions to come up more often but any of them can still come up in any round condition setup. Rolling is the setting for green speed.

As best I can remember:

Velocity - Lower number means the ball won't go as far. I'm pretty sure this is a percentage represented by a range from 0 to 1. So for example 0.8 would make the ball go 80% of what that shot would have done if it was set to 1 (100%).

Spin - Lower number means the ball with have less spin. Less spin means it will fly lower and not stop as fast when landing. I don't know what the scale on this is.

Rolling - Lower number is faster. No idea on the scale on this anymore either.

It's been a long time so I can't really remember any details but I created a page back then with the custom settings I used for The Ridges libraries: http://www.zagerdesign.com/golf_design/ ... erties.htm. I remember it was a lot of guess and check to come up with these. Maybe comparing these, and what I say about what I was trying to do with them, to the default numbers can help. Also comparing them between different surface types can help give a sense of scale, for example I see I have 0.175 rolling for greens, 0.5 for bunkers, 0.7 for rough.

[BrianZ111]

One other thing to note is these settings can interact with each other to produce different results. For example I see that I note on one of my changes that I set the velocity lower so it doesn't carry as far but also set the spin lower so if the ball is landing on a surface where it can bounce or roll out, it will still go about the normal distance.

[DC#1]

Thanks Brian that's what I needed to know. Thanks for the link that had all the settings for your Ridges lib. I did a search for the ball coefficients but it didn't find any matches. I think maybe it was on the copyright club where I saw the setting and what each one did. I looked in the tutorials from the CC but couldn't find them there. Thanks again for the info any for keeping this site going.

[BrianZ111]

No problem. Also, in the Library Creator if you go to Help > Contents there is info on using the library creator, including an article called Ball Behavior Coefficients with the following information:

Ball Behavior Coefficients:

These are the coefficients that determine how the ball behaves while it is moving and in contact with the texture. The Library Creator has many default sets of coefficients that you can use if you don't want to customize how the ball behavior. To do this, simply select the desired behavior set from the drop down combo box.

If you desire to customize the way the ball behavior, you can do so by adjusting the ball behavior coefficients. They are broken down into the following ball flight phases:

• Impact with club
• Ground collisions
• Transition between bouncing and rolling
• Pure Rolling

It is easiest to set the texture coefficients to one of the predefined sets that most closely behaves like the terrain you want to create, then adjust any aspects of ball interaction from there. Here are the terrain coefficients and what they do. In parenthesis is the ball flight phase affected by the coefficient:

• Velocity (Impact with club): a velocity multiplier that affects how much velocity is lost when the ball is hit out of this terrain type. For example, a shot off the tee would have a V Impact of 1.0 meaning the ball looses no velocity because of the lie type. Sand, for example has values of .6 or less meaning the ball looses a lot of velocity when being hit from it.
• Spin (Impact with club): Same as Velocity, but effects spin, not velocity. A value of 1.2 means the ball has abnormal amount of spin when being hit from this terrain type and a value of .1 means the ball has nearly no spin when being hit from this terrain type.
• Restitution (Collision with terrain) : Basically, this is how much the ball bounces with this terrain type. It is how much energy is lost when hitting this terrain type. For example, a value of 0 causes the ball to stop completely when impacting this terrain type and a value of 1.2 causes the ball to bounce 20% higher than it did before hitting this terrain type ( which of course is physically impossible )
• Spin Grip (Collision with terrain) : How much friction that terrain type has to grab and stop the ball spin. Sand has very low values (.05) which mean the ball looses most of its spin when colliding with this terrain type. Cement has higher values (.8) which means the ball looses little spin on impact.
• Terrain Deformation ( Collision with terrain ): This is the amount the terrain deforms on impact with the ball. This is an inverse factor, meaning the smaller the value, the more the terrain deforms on impact. For example water has a very small value (.01) which means huge deformation due to collisions. Cement on the other hand has a huge value ( 600 ) meaning there is very little if any deformation due to collisions with the ball.
• Surface Friction ( Transition between bouncing and rolling ): This value prevents the ball from sliding during the 'pitter patter' phase, or the phase of very small bounces just prior to beginning to roll. Cement has a value of 0 meaning the ball will slide easily and longer before beginning to roll. Weed rough has a value of .4 meaning the ball will begin rolling sooner.
• Kinetic Coefficient ( Transition between bouncing and rolling ) : This is a friction coefficient for putting only. When a ball is putt, it actually 'slides' for a part of its trajectory before beginning to roll. This value determines how far the ball glides before starting to roll.
• Precession ( Pure rolling ): When a ball changes direction due to uneven terrain, it actually continues to roll on the same axis, it just turns like a steering wheel. The best way visualize this is to imagine a ball with a stripe painted around it rolling along the stripe. As the ball rolls along an uneven slope, it turns so the strip is always facing the direction the ball is traveling. The rate at which the ball will turn on a terrain type due to break is called 'Precession'. Most all of our textures use the same value (.375)
• Rolling Coefficient ( Pure Rolling ): This is simply the amount of resistance to rolling. Water has a very large value (10) which means a great resistance to rolling. Glass has a very small value (.05) which means the ball rolls very freely.

Textures that have more than one sub-type (rough, weed rough, and sand) use the values of the 'medium' sub-type while in motion, and the corresponding sub-type when being hit by the club. For example, if you hit the ball from buried sand, the buried sand properties are used while you are hitting it. As soon as the ball is moving, it uses the 'medium' sand properties.

[DC#1]

Thanks again. That is exactly what I was looking for explaining what each term meant. When I try to access the help file in the creator I get this message "Error opening Help in Windows-based programs: "Feature not included" or "Help not supported." That is on the microsoft webpage. One more question, when you take an object or texture from an existing library and then save it as a bitmap will the color deteriorate and change the look in the game? You are starting with a bitmap and taking a screenshot which is a png and then cropping to get what you want and saving as a bitmap.

Screenshot (19).jpg

(768.46 KiB) Not downloaded yet

[BrianZ111]

The help file works for me in Windows 7 but I'm guessing you have Windows 10 and it looks like Windows 10 isn't compatible with the help files anymore. If you search for opening *.hlp files you may be able to find a 3rd party program that can open it. The file to open is at C:\SIERRA\PGA2000 Titanium\Bin\LIBRARYCREATOR.HLP in a default installation.

Any time you change between formats you could experience some loss. However I would expect it to be negligible going to PNG and back because PNG is supposed to use lossless compression. You'd more likely see issues if you were going to JPEG and back. You can completely avoid changing formats by just using your print screen key, pasting it into the program your going to save it out as a bitmap, and do the cropping in that program.

The key for this game is it has to be saved as an 8-bit (256 color) bitmap and you want to use an optimized palette so that it can use the best 256 colors to preserve the image. Since the original image only has 256 colors, as it was saved for the game once before, there is no loss in that save unless for some reason the program is not saving with a palette that has all of the original image's colors in it.

[DC#1]

I've tried in gimp but I can't figure out how to save as an 8-bit bitmap. I can get it to save as a 24 bit. I go to image,mode,indexed and check box for optimum palette, precision is set to 8-bit integer. I was able to do it in paint but the color is not the same, probably not optimized palette. I have an old PC with XP and was able to open the library creator help.

[DC#1]

Thanks for all the help Brian. I found a photo editor called Pixelformer that does bitmaps. Very easy and no loss of color, even I could do it. Maybe you can teach an old dog.

[BrianZ111]

Great, glad you figured it out! I'm sure GIMP can do it but I don't know the steps as I don't use it myself. Was going to test it out and find the steps but I ended up getting caught up in doing other things yesterday.