There's a nugget of something clever here but it's missing something, there's too much luck and not quite enough skill for a golf game.
My first thought was selecting from various dice with different distributions to represent the various golf clubs.
My second was that a hex grid would offer a much better variety of options. The square grid only has 1 or 2 useful directions that can bring you closer. A hex grid would typically have 2 to 3 useful directions.a hex
Doesn't work in Android Chrome. Clicking does nothing.
Edit: figured out what was wrong, I had bedtime mode turned on which desaturated the screen, making the light yellow impossible to see. Suggestion: make the highlight more visible/accessible
Or some sort of pulsing on the clickable areas. I reloaded the page a few times before I realized the pale yellow spots were supposed to be clicked. I assumed it was bugged, but I was wrong.
Wow, someone just sent me this post because I also made a golf game inspired by Gladden Design's this week! :D I made my own twist on it a bit, making it use a hex grid because I didn't like how diagonal moves were treated the same distance as orthogonal moves and I added bonuses and skill shots to give the player a reason to take a non-straight line path to the hole and made it a daily game but having a wordle style share score button. I'm surprised how many people saw that video and also all had the same idea that "this would make a great digital game idea" https://golf.jbat.ch/
Is the roll determined by your position on the board at all? I just ran into a seemingly endless chain of 3 rolls where I was bouncing back and forth between two positions for 15+ rolls.
edit: I kept going for another 10 rolls before bailing out of the loop for one iteration and got back into the cycle again immediately on returning to the start point. ie: I went A-B-A-B...A-C-A-B... where C was also 3 steps away from A and I rolled a 3 on C too). Definitely seems like it's a partially deterministic stroke roll.
You have to move exactly the number of dots shown in the roll.
Trees block you. You can't finish your move on sand or water. You also can't do "knight moves". So you're kind of stuck going straight or at 45 degree angles.
I know that. I was going back and forth between two squares rolling 3 every time for a statistically improbable number of times. I could have chosen a different move but after going A to B to A and rolling 3 AGAIN I was more interested in seeing if that was a fluke or if it was something else happening.
Being able to do that 20+ times makes it really improbable the rolls were truly random numbers hence my question.
> I was going back and forth between two squares rolling 3 every time for a statistically improbable number of times.
For a fair single die, every possible sequence of a given length is equally (im)probable. We tend to notice the ones that are particularly convenient or inconvenient, but they are exactly as likely as any of the less memorable ones.
Ah! I spent an hour today trying to recreate the golf course from gladdendesign too (I ordered one of each of their games when I saw it on youtube)! But I got sidetracked trying to fit perlin noise into the solution, still not sure what algorithm to use to generate similar terrains. Also I kind of assumed copying the game exactly wouldn't be super fair or even legal so I planned on keeping it private.
Heh, I also was inspired to implement the game with some major changes once the video popped up on youtube. I got it working but lost interest when it came to polishing the mapgen and generating interesting maps with the slope mechanic.
Hah! I've been emailing the creator of Paper Golf to ask if he would be ok with me creating something like this! Looks like you beat me to the punch :P
This is fun. Strategy is to get in line with the hole so there's a chance to hole out next shot.
Would be more realistic if you could hit any number of spaces up to the die roll.
Maybe have different clubs - driver = die roll +3, iron = die roll, putter that can hole out at any distance up to 6 not necessarily in a straight line if you roll that distance or more. So e.g. putter can hole out with knights move if you roll 3 or higher.
Interesting that there's no need to have greens around the hole. In real golf, construction and maintenance of the greens is a primary cost. I play a simplified form of golf in public parks (or any semi-open space) using one club and foam practice balls that won't hurt anyone and only go about 40 yards max. I use lightpoles and trees as targets and chip the ball to hit the pole or tree as holing out. Most parks you can arrange various holes through and around the vegetation and structures.
Hole in 420 strokes!
The only path to the target was through a corner of width 1, so I had to get a very specific set of 1s or 2s. But I kept rolling back & forth on 5s & 6s :D
The specificity of the result after such a long time gambling without real reward is oddly satisfying.
My only gripe is that it doesn't seem to be very desktop friendly. I'm on FF 192.0.2 (64bit) and I can't figure out how to pan or zoom around the play field.
It would also be nice to see a "par" or statistical breakdown of levels compared with other people. The randomness might make this a bit tricky but things like Crypt of the Necrodancer use seeded levels and, presumably, seeded RNGs for other elements of the randomness in levels to make it consistent across players.
If the ball is at 3 squares from the hole and the dices get's a 4, I'd allow to end the game. It's more fun to navigate the obstacles than to try to get the exact number to finish.
Ah, that explains why I thought I was getting very lucky to be able to get a hole in 3, and shortly afterwards, even a hole in 2.
Is it possible to get a hole in 1, or are levels constructed so as to prevent that?
I think it's more interesting if you have two kind of obstacles, so there are more tricks and path to try (but not as difficult as chess). This looks easy to implement.
Also, as an untested idea, it would be nice to have two dices and be able to select one of them or the other or the sum. Perhaps both dice then disappear, or perhaps the unused dice goes to the next round like in scrabble. The idea is to have more possibilities to think in each step (like make a small jump and aim to a nice diagonal, or go to the shore and hope a big hit next turn). This reduce the nasty effect of getting a 1. But I'm not sure if any of these variants are more fun, and all of them take a while to be implemented.
it's mini golf. it's in the title of TFA as such. in mini golf, the ball only rolls. the ball does not roll across water. it does not roll over trees even from the fairway. if your ball leaves the ground with a putter, something is very very wrong
Awesome! I watched Gladden Design's video too and loved it. It's great that you've made it accessible! Please consider giving attribution to Gladden Design.
I also got something like 12 rolls of 3 in a row. I would definitely check the RNG routine to ensure that it is not biased to the mean (i.e., verify that you are drawing from a uniform, rather than normal, distribution).
Also, maybe some optional crowd noise if you hit it past the hole or hit it in the wrong direction due to an over-roll.
1. The black circle is the ball; you roll the dice to determine the amount of moves
2. after the dice roll, the allowed moves will be shown - as yellow squares near the ball; this is a very faint yellow and easy to miss
3. to move the ball, roll the dice then click on the faint yellow squares near the ball (or further away if you rolled a 6).
- Click barely noticeable hamburger menu in the top left
- Click "How to Play"
You might need to zoom out a bit to see the whole map, the hole was hidden for me initially
[1]: https://afterburn.itch.io/golf-peaks
My first thought was selecting from various dice with different distributions to represent the various golf clubs.
My second was that a hex grid would offer a much better variety of options. The square grid only has 1 or 2 useful directions that can bring you closer. A hex grid would typically have 2 to 3 useful directions.a hex
Then I thought, this sounds like a good base for a board game, did a search and turns out there already is one that uses that formula! https://boardgamegeek.com/image/6370656/roll-in-one
Edit: figured out what was wrong, I had bedtime mode turned on which desaturated the screen, making the light yellow impossible to see. Suggestion: make the highlight more visible/accessible
I also thought the black circle was the hole, not the ball. Golf balls are normally white, not black.
EDIT: it appears that the highlights (and trails) disappear if you scroll up and down a few times (iOS mobile safari)
I also wonder if the graphics wouldn't make playing easier for color blind folks. :)
edit: I kept going for another 10 rolls before bailing out of the loop for one iteration and got back into the cycle again immediately on returning to the start point. ie: I went A-B-A-B...A-C-A-B... where C was also 3 steps away from A and I rolled a 3 on C too). Definitely seems like it's a partially deterministic stroke roll.
Trees block you. You can't finish your move on sand or water. You also can't do "knight moves". So you're kind of stuck going straight or at 45 degree angles.
Being able to do that 20+ times makes it really improbable the rolls were truly random numbers hence my question.
For a fair single die, every possible sequence of a given length is equally (im)probable. We tend to notice the ones that are particularly convenient or inconvenient, but they are exactly as likely as any of the less memorable ones.
I should do the following things first:
1) Give credit to Paper's app in next update 2) Convert it to mobile app
The docs say that's how it works, but clearly that's not how it was implemented.
"Move straight or diagonally up to the dice value"
The specificity of the result after such a long time gambling without real reward is oddly satisfying.
My only gripe is that it doesn't seem to be very desktop friendly. I'm on FF 192.0.2 (64bit) and I can't figure out how to pan or zoom around the play field.
It would also be nice to see a "par" or statistical breakdown of levels compared with other people. The randomness might make this a bit tricky but things like Crypt of the Necrodancer use seeded levels and, presumably, seeded RNGs for other elements of the randomness in levels to make it consistent across players.
Super simple and super effective. Very nice.
Scrolling is wrorking in a weird way in movile Chrome. I can go down but not up.
Try thinking of it as mini golf/putt putt where the ball only rolls
Also, as an untested idea, it would be nice to have two dices and be able to select one of them or the other or the sum. Perhaps both dice then disappear, or perhaps the unused dice goes to the next round like in scrabble. The idea is to have more possibilities to think in each step (like make a small jump and aim to a nice diagonal, or go to the shore and hope a big hit next turn). This reduce the nasty effect of getting a 1. But I'm not sure if any of these variants are more fun, and all of them take a while to be implemented.
Yeah. As a general rule of game dev, if there is a different icon, then its behavior should be different.
You should be able to go over water at any point, as long as you've got the distance for it.
Ugh, you sound just like the manager of the last seventeen mini-golf places I've been kicked out of. I shall not apologize for my athleticism!
Though I probably should have apologized to the parents of those kids who they had to call an ambulance for.
Water should probably be allowed to hit over too, but not in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcI9nzsCILI
Also I don't think the ball in that video is skipping, it's bouncing off a rock. Definitely possible to skip though.
Also I block html5 auto playback by default which you appear to use for some animation stuff. It'd be great if the game could work without it.
https://ibb.co/TRbGgVx
https://imgur.com/gallery/dilbert-random-number-generator-uR...