Retail Here We Come

hbdeveloper
On April 23, 2015

We’re all very excited about next week and the arrival of the disc version on to the shelves of the big retailers in North America. Maximum Games have been working really hard to get as much shelf space as possible and talking to them this week, they’re very happy with the backing they’ve got from the likes of Gamespot, EB Games, Walmart, Target, etc. For us at HB Studios it’ll be great to see the game actually in the shops and push on to a much larger audience that don’t think of looking to buy games in a digital store.

Development wise, we’re continuing to work on the DLC update. Although this update is mainly being seen as an update that consists of what is on the disc (Season Mode and Tropical Theme) – it’s more than just that. Things like Drop Ball, Player Profile Screens for every player, Cart Paths, Rain, etc will really improve the build as well, and that’s all outside of the pay wall.

Mitchell has been working on the much requested feature of adding player names and a handicap to the guest players. The next step after this will be adding the guest player’s profile, if they have one. This is a bit more work so most probably won’t make it into the May update but will be worked on after that.

Devon continues to work on the controls and trying to resolve the issue with the issue of less than 100% power on certain shots. Reading the feedback from last week’s Dev Diary I have several questions for you guys. Should 100% power be the norm or should it be the maximum? In real life when I try and hit the ball as hard as I can, I often lose control of it in a trade-off for yards. Should you have to move the stick very quick to get the top power and risk not being straight? A nice tempo should get you 90-95% but to squeeze those extra few yards you should be in danger of losing control, wouldn’t you agree?

We’ve had a few questions about the Drop Ball rules as well. As I said last week, we’d be following the Royal and Ancient rules but I wanted to expand on what we are doing:

As per rule 27 (Ball Lost or Out of Bounds), result is a re-hit.
R&A Rule 26 (Water Hazards) is implemented minus the lateral rules. This is due to GNCD restrictions. We want to get it into the designers hands and see their feedback on how best to implement this
Rule 28 – The first 2 parts are done (Ball Unplayable) although the 2 club length option is missing (bunker rule is enforced for the line option). We’re looking at this now, it’s more a display thing than anything else
R&A Rules 24-2 and 25-1 (Immovable Obstructions and Abnormal Ground Conditions) we’re also looking into. We’re most probably not going to do this now but wait on some feedback from designers and players to see how we can get around people who will want to cheat.

So I hope that clears up a few things. It isn’t going to be a perfect implementation of the rule off the bat, where this is due to the GNCD being so flexible, but with your help we can get it to what you want it to be over the next couple of iterations.

Suggested Courses

This weeks suggested courses are:

Tobacco Dunes Golf Club by kckfire
Crow Creek by Wendy Airey
Sleepy Willow CC(blacks) by FriendBOMBER

Suggested Tournaments

I’ve added an extra tournament this week for the Elite players. You have to have a real pro +10 handicap if you want to get into this tournament. Enjoy!

HB Suggested Elite Cup – W8
- 4 rounds at Sleepy Willow CC(blacks) (Handicap +10 or better)
HB Suggested Pro Cup – W8
- 2 rounds at Sleepy Willow CC(blacks) (Handicap 0 or Better)
HB Suggested Amateur Cup – W8
- 2 rounds at Crow Creek (Handicap 0 or Worse)
HB Suggested ProAm Handicap Cup – W8
- 4 rounds at Tobacco Dunes Golf Club for players with a HC of 5 or better.