I come to you with a message of bad news, though not without hope. Unfortunately the game will be releasing 2 days later than expected due to unforeseen circumstances. Though this delay is not desirable the time will be used to prepare more content for the game and perform final testing before the game goes live.
Sound of Music
The game has recently received its first song in the sound track. This will likely be the only song in the soundtrack on release. Though we will be working on adding further songs to the soundtrack as time progresses. The first song can be heard in the new game trailer,,, oh, you haven't watched the trailer. Go watch it, its nothing big but it will let you see the game a little early.
Thanks to you all
Releasing late is not a great start but I will be releasing a few updates soon after launch to add more content and a longer game-play experience. Hopefully you enjoy the game on release and look forward to the updates soon after release.
Thank you for your patience on waiting a little longer for the game, We can't wait for you to play it and hit some golf balls around the course.
Devlog #2. Levelling up the map design
Hey Golfers
Another look behind the curtain into how the game is being developed today. During our live-stream today on our lead developers twitch channel level design was the key focus. Designing golf holes for the game is very important as interesting holes make the game fun and challenging.
Putting together levels can be slow but with the tools we use it makes it a little bit quicker and today we will show you how most of those make the process quicker.
Prefabulous
Unity's prefab system is great for making drag and drop items to be used multiple times and allow for instant updating of all the usages of those prefabs throughout the project. This allows for quick small changes to effect everything quickly.
Prefabs allow our team to quickly and effectively piece together levels in a seamless fluid way. This drastically cuts down on level design time. The first level took 3 times longer than the every other level as prefabs had not yet been created yet for the pieces of the golf course. Once these prefabs were created levels could be created in roughly 15 minutes. That's pretty quick!!
Con-Templating other options
On top of this prefab system a template level was created to base each level off of with all the lighting and level settings pre-baked in. This allowed for levels to be initialized quite easily as all the skybox, lighting and post processing was already ready to go in each scene. Each level is created by experimenting with small chunks or ideas of gameplay which are then extended to see their viability. one of these ideas that was tested was a balance beam.
Using this balance beam on its own created a nice easy hole for the earlier stages of the game. but it was found that it can be used later on in more challenging and complex ways. Ie. chaining the beams together offset, or using the beam as a ramp.
Sneak peak at hole 15 Shhhh...
Hole 15 is a pick a path style hole, risk the perilous balance beam or take the safer narrow path to reach the hole, Which one will you choose??
TLDR;
Overall, using both Prefabs and template levels allows for quick and easy level creation to quickly scale up the amount of levels within the game. Using this the amount of holes in the game has jumped rather rapidly and we are so excited for release!!
Coming 17th October!!!
Devlog #1. Hitting the ball running
Hello Golfers!
The time has come to open the doors to let you all see where the game came from and where its getting to. As the 1st day of development began the work began.
The Beginnings
The first steps were small but gratifying. Deciding what system to make first was quite easy we must admit, because what's a mini-golf game without minions to battle right? just kidding, the first step was a ball and some ground to hit it on.
Look at that majestic stroke, that shot must have been by the next golf mega star. With a ball and simple camera system implemented it was time to work on a slightly more complex testing ground...
Introducing The CORNER
The latest in trendy golf course design
With the ball being hittable and a basic testing course set up it was time to switch to the art side of things
The Logo-cal next step
During the preparation phase an artist was scouted out as the studio lacked an artist skilled in logo design. A logo was commissioned from the lovely artist MzSweetDevil to make the games Logo and taskbar icon.
First draft logo
The initial logo was very simple and had all the key elements of the desired logo. though we felt it was too simple and lacked the contrast needed to catch the viewers eye.
Finalised logo
After doing readability testing the the logo was updated to increase readability by changing the light red to a light blue. The text now has more contrast to make the text easier to read at smaller sizes and formats.
Development is puttering along slowly and getting to a stable point. Testing has started in its first round to selected closed Beta testers and is getting some great feedback and suggestions.
Keep an eye out for new development updates over the next few months.
