• hbdeveloper
• On April 2, 2015

We were taken a little by surprise last Friday when, sitting in a restaurant, I get an email from Microsoft declaring that they’d passed the update. Panic ensued as I decided that I’d release the builds there and then so you guys could get your hands on it for the weekend rather than make you wait until Monday. Microsoft weren’t sure about the immediate push but I persuaded them, Rami was getting into the official weekly tournaments when I rang him with the news and told him to push the PS4 and Steam builds. But pushing them then meant you all got some decent hours in over the weekend which was good.

I know there were a few disappointed people when it came to Xbox One performance. I’d said previously that there would be 40% frame rate performance improvements on some courses. Unfortunately the emphasis is on “some” and I hadn’t made that clear enough. Courses like Isla Madeleina saw drastic improvements but others that were already running well didn’t see any more than a 5% or less improvement. So apologies from me, for not making that clear, we’re continuing to work on optimisation though and still hope we can get to 900p for May. Each day we get a little more back it’s just a long process.

Cart paths are in and working really well. There’s a few little tweaks Paul is working on now but after that they’re ready to go. See the screenshots below. The first one shows the process of putting the path down and the second shows the course with the path laid.

Jim, with a bit of help from Devon, is working on the rain, it’s looking really promising and really adds another element to the game. I did see a few requests for rain gear for your avatar for the rainy days, unfortunately you won’t be seeing that in the near future.

Out of Bounds and Drop Balls are coming along nicely. We’re following the R&A rules rather than the USGA, I know a few people have been wondering.

Lastly our attempt at an April Fool’s Day prank fell flat, although it would have been hard to beat the “Maximum Backspin” build we put out last year. We had a Mars build all lined up but unfortunately it all came together too late and we couldn’t get it running on the Twitch feed in time. It was a shame because I always love seeing someone lose their mind at fantasy features

Regarding the Twitch Feed, we’re thinking of paring it back a little to once a month. That way we can show in-progress builds and give you an insight into what we’re doing rather than you guys just watching us play a round and answering a few questions. If you have any ideas on what you’d like to see, let me know.

Suggested Courses

This weeks suggested courses are:

• Chambers Hills – TasteGW
• Songbird Country GC – Ramjet
• Stone Hollow On Yeti River – Dr Yeti

Suggested Tournaments

I’ve also created a set of tournaments:

• HB Suggested Pro Cup – W6
  • 2 rounds at Chambers Hills (Handicap 0 or Better)
• HB Suggested Amateur Cup – W6
  • 2 rounds at Songbird Country GC (Handicap 0 or Worse)
• HB Suggested ProAm Handicap Cup – W6
  • 4 rounds at Stone Hollow On Yeti River– Tour Edition for players with a HC of 5 or better.

Until next week,

Anthony