Water Question

[padre1161]

I have developed a product called "Fitness Golf" where a player must run, walk, or bike their distance hit while playing a simulated round of golf. The product can be viewed at: http://www.fitnessgolf.net and watching the video on the homepage will show the product in action. My software uses all of the WGC courses and was written for me by Red Chain. Because a player moves in a straight line thru the golf courses to their balls, there are many times that the first person movement goes over bodies of water. On most of the courses, the camera moves over the lakes and other water bodies such as in Cougar Ridge and Coeur d' Alene, but other times the camera travels under the water and appears to be moving over sand. An example of this is Blue Bayou. My questions for you course architects are:

1. What part of the course developer dictates which way the bodies of water are created to cause the above two behaviors?

2. If it is not much more difficult, could all future courses be created that allow for the movement over the water instead of under the water. Visually, movement over the water is much preferred for my product. I have noticed that the courses that have been designed with more realistic water features seem to already allow the over water movement.

Thanks!

[BrianZ111]

Yes, there are two different ways to create water. One way is to use a water object in the height layer to fill a depression in the land. The other is to create water covering the area of a land shape. The problem with the water from land shape method is if the border of your shape isn’t at the same height exactly all the way around then you get a hovering plane of water above ground at the lower parts. That’s why the preferred method is filling a depression in the ground in the height layer.

My guess though, without seeing it, is the camera is always a fixed level above ground and ignores any water. If that’s the case then it could happen with either method really. If the depression is deeper than the height the camera is above ground then you go under water. So what you really need is for the water to always be shallow enough for the camera to stay above it. I honestly don’t remember how deep my water is so I don’t know if it would be a problem on my courses or not. I can keep that in mind on future courses though.

By the way, I think you have an interesting concept there, I like it. Personally it would be even more fun for me if you could change direction with a controller while you walk instead of always going in a straight line to the ball. That would solve your problem as people wouldn’t walk out onto the water, unless you added swimming to it. I really liked the first person view they had in the older version of the game. You got to see more of the course and it added a bit more realism because you actually have to look for your ball (although you could cheat and just jump to your ball with a click if you wanted back then).

[padre1161]

Yes Brian, I think you are right about the fixed camera height and the camera ignoring the water. If I use the up, down, left, right arrows while moving the camera in a regular WGC game, the camera will go below the water on many holes just like it does in my "Fitness Golf" game. Red Chain must have kept the camera height the same for both games. I would think that all course architects would also like the camera to move above the water features as players move around the holes before they make their shots. Maybe all future courses could be made with shallow water features so the courses are more visually appealing for both WGC 2011 as well as all simulators which use the Red Chain courses including mine.

[BrianZ111]

Honestly it's not something I've given thought to in the past. It's not really a problem in WGC 2011 because when you move the camera to view the hole you can always move it up if you happen to go under water. I don't have any simulators to do testing with so when designing specifically for them I can only go by the feedback they give me. I will keep this in mind in the future. Even though you normally don't see the lake bed, the perfectionist streak in me had me judge how deep I thought the water body actually was when making it.

For moving objects there is a check box called "Honour Water" to keep them from sinking when going over water. It might be worth asking Red Chain if there is code there that could be applied to the camera system as well for a fix.

[padre1161]

Can you clarify this?:

"For moving objects there is a check box called "Honour Water" to keep them from sinking when going over water"

What moving objects are you referring to? What would be an example of such an object that you do not want to sink?

[BrianZ111]

At The Ridges I used it for the ducks on the pond between the 9th and 18th greens.