itch.io

Hi! Thank you, I'm glad you're enjoying the game 😁 Yes, I'm still updating it, and I'm always happy to hear feedback. I'll try to answer each of your points here, but if you're on Steam (you can claim a Steam key with your itch download) we'd love to see you in our community chat: https://s.team/chat/ERNurHg8 where many of us get together to talk about new features or things that could improve the game. We also have a weekly online game every Sunday if that's something you would be interested in. Back to your comments:

1) I agree with this, and I did experiment with it. However I couldn't get it looking the way I wanted. I might try again at some point though.

2) Someone else has suggested this in the past. I've made notes as to how it might be done, but on a technical level it's actually quite difficult because of the multiplayer networking. Even when you play single player the game still creates a local server, so it's always 'multiplayer' even if there's only one person playing, if you see what I mean. The trees and shrubs are generated in a pseudo-random way on the client each time, so you never eally get exactly the same trees every time you play. It also means that in a network game everyone has slightly different trees (you just don't notice if you can't see the other player's computer). The server, however, which performs all the physics and collision has no trees at all, because they were intended as purely a visual effect - and this is why there's no collision. Maybe I should have thought about it in the beginning (but to be honest I never thought the game would get this far... it was just a hobby), but to add tree collision I'd have to completely rework the server side code, and then find some way to sync it with all of the clients. So it's *technically* possible, but it's also a lot of work, and I'd like to put the effort into other features for now. Maybe one day in the future 😁

3) Yeah, I'm a better programmer than an artist. Although it could be a scaling issue with the textures used to show the faces in the editor. I'll make a note to look into it.

4) I might look into this. I'll have to put it to community vote first though - when I messed with the wind in one update there was a lot of confusion as to why the game felt like it had changed 😅 I do like the idea of a damp green affecting the putt. If you set the weather to 'showers' it will switch between raining and being sunny while you are playing (so it's not always raining).

5) Bunkers and long grass both affect the the distance of your stroke. The top right corner of the screen also has an up or down arrow indicating the ball's lie when you're in the sand. There's a guide here which explains how it all works in detail: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2910207511

6) I did consider adding this berfore, but there was a lot of push back from the community. Although I think that maybe now you are also for adding it, maybe I'll try again 😅

7) I'm not sure which score you mean, but at the bottom of the screen you will see numbers appear which are XP that has just been awarded. You can see your round score at any time by pressing Tab or the back/option button on your gamepad.

8) The career mode should take you through every single hole on each course. The courses are split into 'leagues', and each league is played on 2 courses. When you complete the first league and finish in the top 5 the next league opens up along with the next 2 courses, and so on. When you have unlocked all the leagues you will have played all of the courses.

9) I agree with this, but the celebrations are limited to my resources. For instance all of the announcer voices are from the 'Super Golf Announcer Pack' here on itch. There are fireworks, although those are reserved for a hole in one 😁.

10) Replays and being able to save them have been requested a few times. Again this is down to being a technically challenging thing to add, especially with the networking. I've thought hard about how I might add it, and I do have some designs so it might get added in the future, but I couldn't say when.

11) I think the nearest to this is the 'awesome shot' callout, which you get when making a powerful and accurate shot. It does mix it with some other random voices though so it always says something a bit different each time.

12) As you gain XP and start to level up you'll start to get access to more clubs with a longer range (there's an explanation of that in the guide I linked above). When you have the 'pro' clubs you'll find that a par 5 eagle is possible with, as you say, the right wind conditions (and even a par 5 albatross on hole 15 of course 12!).

13) You know I never thought of it like that but you're quite right. For now though you should be able to see all of that together on the scoreboard. I'll make a note to look at rearranging the layout to something more sensible.

14) I actually thought they kind of were! I've tried to take influences from around the world for the different courses, hence the desert and the beach, but there are also the mountains/cherry blossom courses, and course 12 is meant to be quite hilly and stoney. I do have some more ideas in the works for future courses though, so I'll definitely bear it in mind when designing them.

15) The character will rotate when aiming but not until you reach the edge of the aiming cone (although in hindsight I don't really know why I did it like this 😅). If you hold the aim button the character will eventually do a complete 360 turn. You can also rotate the camera with 3 & 4 on your keyboard, or the right thumbstick on your controller. (You can also switch to the drone camera or a free camera by pressing 1 or 2, or Up or Down on the d-pad)

16) The game sound be packed with ambient noises - in fact I went to great lengths to make sure they work well if you have surround sound speakers, or HTRF capable headphones. Double check the environment sounds aren't turned down - you can either change the volume in the options menu, or if you press F1 to open the console and click on the Audio tab there are sliders for the different audio effects volumes.

17) There are a few animals in the game. For instance the desert course (course 10) has grazing sheep scattered around it. There are also birds which fly away when the ball lands in the bushes. There's always room for more animals though, so I'll look at adding some in the future 😁

18) Saving has always been a problem when it comes to cheating. Originally there was no opportunity to save at all, as the Steam version has competitive online leaderboards which could be otherwise cheated. In the end I compromised where you can only save in Career mode and only score on the leaderboards in freeplay, where you can't save the game. However if you're playing the version without leaderboards I guess this doesn't make much sense. Unfortunately the game requries a service like Steam to support leaderboards, as renting my own servers is just too expensive for a hobby game.

19) The above applies for online games too I guess. Without, as you say, special servers to facilitate match making it can be difficult to set up an online game. Again, the Steam version doesn't have this problem, you can click on your friends (or join a group like the Super Video Clubhouse) and get into an online game easily.

20) The shop and stats have been suggested before. I'd like to add both, however the main problem with the shop is that it would take weeks or even months just to make all the items to put in it. For now I need to prioritise my time on other parts of the game.

21) This is a nice idea actually - although as I mentioned earlier you will get longer clubs, all the way up to 260 eventually. It could work as a combination though.

I hope that answers some of your questions! Thanks for the feedback, I do take it all seriously, even though you probably won't see any suggestions appearing over night. As I say, we'd love to see you on Steam https://s.team/chat/ERNurHg8 but if not do make sure to check back on this page where I'll be posting new about any upcoming updates.

Cheers!

Thanks! 😃

Thank you! 😁

Thanks! The style is inspired by this palette: https://lospec.com/palette-list/colordome-32

I'm away from my linux box atm - but you can try this: use readelf to check the rpath of golf (it should be the lib directory). If it's not you can use chrpath or patchelf to fix it.

Or you can try installing the libraries to somewhere in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Failing that the Windows version *should* work under Wine.

Failing that you can redeem the Steam key from the download page - the Steam version has a native linux build.

Thank you! :D

Yes! All updates are free once you bought the game. Simply go to the link in the original email you received to get the new download. If you don't have the link anymore you can request it again here: https://itch.io/docs/buying/already-bought

I've included a new linux native build in the 1.14 update - hopefully it works better for you! If not I have a friend helping me out getting a native build running in Steam Runtime which should make a better distributable. Fingers crossed 🤞

No no, thank you! :D I've added the connect command to the console, which will be included in the next update (due out pretty soon). I've also worked on fixing up the linux build, so if I can get the thing to package properly there'll be a native version with the next release too! (Though not the Steam version unfortunately).

Hey, thanks! Sorry you're having that problem - I have to admit I haven't tested it in Wine for a while. I'll look into adding some console commands for connecting - that's a good idea! You could possibly also try using proton (if you don't mind using Steam) or even try using the Steam version (Steam key is on the download page). I know that works OK because it runs on the Steam Deck. If not, no worries I'll look into updating the linux build. Thanks again!

Thank you :D

Thank you! Feel free to drop a comment on the GitHub issues if there's anything you come up against 😁

Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying the game. I appreciate the offer to compile a mac version - but while the game is still in flux (I have plenty of updates planned 😉) collaborating on multiple builds is just too far out of scope. Once a more final version of the game is on the horizon I'll re-evaluate the mac options available.

You can still build the non-steam version from the source on GitHub - though there may be kinks in the mac version. Someone else has also been working on mac builds - perhaps you could collaborate with them? With that you can copy the assets directory from Steam to the app bundle and copy your characters from %appdata%/Trederia/golf/user/profiles/ on Windows to /users/<user>/library/application support/golf/user/profiles (I think, my mac is *very* rusty). It's rather inconvenient, I admit, although there are bound to be some automated solutions out there, even if it's just a shell script 😅

Thanks again for the support, I really appreciate it! 😁

Thank you!

That's a definite "maybe" - I want to, but native versions are ridiculously complex to build. I can promise that I'll always test every update on Steam Deck hardware and on Manjaro desktop with Proton though, to make sure it works. Being officially verified is very important to me 😁

Hi, I did consider making this possible, but it turned out it would be far too easy for someone to cheat all the achievements on the Steam version by manipulating the user files of the itch version, sorry. The new update is due soon though, and I'm hitting the drone by accident, mostly on the pitch n putt course, more frequently than I'd like 😅 I'm sure it won't be long before you get the achievement again 😁

Hi! Thank you, I'm glad you like it.

Thanks for the detailed feedback, this is the kind of information I thrive on. You're not the first to raise a few of these points, so I'd like to reassure you that many of them have already been addressed and updated for the next release. You do bring up some new points however, so I'll make sure to look into them. Just to clarify:

I agree about the animations - however as a solo dev I'm limited to whichever stock animations I can obtain. I agree entirely about the slightly jarring impact of hitting a ball apparently full pelt and having it drop only a few yards. Unfortunately it's not something I can foreseeably do anything about, although if I find a way I will 😁

The scoreboard can be viewed at any time by holding Tab or Back on the controller. It's missing from the Options graphic, but I'll make sure to add it.

Increased avatar customisation will come later. I'm hoping to add it as a Steam workshop item, so people will be able to add their own, increasing the variety available.

The current release here on itch has slightly broken power values for shots. It also doesn't select a good default club. This has been completely re-done for the next update so that the power bar more intuitively represents a percentage of the club's power. The terrain does affect the shot, I've uploaded a guide to the Steam page which explains how it works - although it's more applicable to the upcoming release rather than the current one. You can read it here.

The restriction on left/right aiming is apparently a much debated topic! There are those who say, justifiably, that in real golf you could hit the ball anywhere you like - however others say that in real golf you wouldn't say 'well the hole is over those trees so I'll just hit it that way' because you don't (or maybe you do?) have a mini map which tells you where the hole lies... so it's a difficult topic to balance. In the upcoming version the direction is still limited, however the angle is much wider. It's also possible to deliberately hook or slice the ball for a further increase in angle if that's a tactic you'd like to employ. It probably sounds a bit weird, I know, but as I get more feedback I'll certainly try to refine it.

The club range is designed to try and best fit the game, rather than reflect an actual set of golf clubs. Similarly to the par values - for instance there are no par 5s simply because the game engine isn't capable of making holes that big. The included range of clubs are enough to play the game tactically enough that it's competitive, without overwhelming players who aren't well experienced with golf. The auto selection is fixed for the next release, and I have vague notions of a 'shop' which allow you to buy different clubs based on experience, although there's no solid plan for that yet. Perhaps based on your and other player's feedback I can refine that idea in the future.

I agree the greens could use some work, if at least visually. It already irks me that many of them have stripes which don't go in the same direction as the fairway 😅. I've worked to refine them for the next update (and the update after that which is already being worked on!) so I'll take this under consideration, particularly the transition from fairway to green.

Tournaments and other gameplay modes have been on my list for a long time, but have not been implemented for weird technical reasons involving the layout of the lobby menu 🙄 This will first be addressed as I redesign it to allow for custom courses and course thumbnails to preview the selected course, at which point I hope to add extended gameplay modes as part of the game rule selection that currently covers matchplay/skins/gimme rules etc.

I could possibly make the scoreboard show a little longer, although as I mentioned you can view it at any time with tab / back button. The problem is that in multiplayer games online if someone refuses to acknowledge the scores it holds up the entire game. I'll spend some time trying to find a better solution to this. I'll definitely remove the zeros from unplayed holes - it won't be in the initial Steam release, but certainly in the first update afterwards.

Showing your own score at all time would be nice. I'll try to add this.

Imperial measurements are not what I'm used to, so I have to apologise for any inconsistencies. I'll make sure the putter values and the green values at least match up, and stick with yards rather than feet.

Again, as mentioned, the overall power/aim/distance of clubs have been overhauled, hopefully for the better 😄. It's one of the things I've worked hardest on improving.

The sound effects are, as a solo developer, what I can get my hands on 😁. The voices do vary between avatars, although you can always turn down the voice effects from the options menu (scroll through the selection at the top of the first page, it lets you set the volume for different groups of sounds) - or failing that just delete the sound file from the assets directory. It won' t break the game 😁

Computer opponents are completely rewritten for the next update. Without getting technical you'll just have to take my word that they're a lot better - although there is a brief overview here.

Thanks for taking the time to provide the feedback! I'm glad you're enjoying what you've played so far. The Steam release / next update is by no means the last, and I try to take in everyone's opinion and balance them as best I can. I hope you enjoy it once it's released!

Hi! Thank you, I'm glad you're enjoying it! As far as I'm aware there is currently nowhere dedicated to sharing content, however I am planning a post-release update for the Steam version to add workshop support for custom courses and custom balls 😁

Hey! Sorry you have this problem. You can check to make sure the settings are being saved OK by opening the options menu, then closing it again (this forces the game to save the config file) then press F1 to open the game's console. In the console window there should be a message stating whether or not the file was saved successfully:

You can navigate to this directory to make sure (you may need to enable hidden folders, or use the %appdata% shortcut in windows) and then open cfg.cfg in a text editor. Make sure width, height and window_size are set as appropriate. You can even edit these and try launching the game again - if you accidentally put invalid settings and the game won't launch just delete the file.

If you're able to create a larger window, but the resolution still looks wrong try disabling 'pixel scaling' in the options menu. When this is enabled it takes a 640x480 resolution and stretches it to fill the window creating large retro(ish) pixels. By disabling it you will get the window's native resolution. If your keyboard has a number pad the + and - buttons can be used to toggle pixel scaling at any time, so you can quickly see how it affects the look of the game.

The game's default fullscreen mode is in fact borderless window - there's no fullscreen mode which completely takes control of the display as some other games do. Fullscreen mode will always set the resolution to match your current display. There's also a keyboard shortcut to toggle fullscreen at any time - alt+enter. Hope this helps!

Hi! Thank you for the detailed post - I really appreciate feedback like this as it helps me to dial in the game. To address your points:

1. I'm inclined to agree with this - it's one of those things that I've gotten so used to now that it has fallen by the way. I'll definitely look into making this more intuitive for the next update.
2. Again, I agree. In hindsight it seems quite unfair that not every player gets to attempt the same shot. I guess this is a tell that I tend to play against the computer more than other human beings 😅. I'll modify the behaviour so that the wind only changes when the hole does.
3. This is a bug 😔 It used to auto-suggest a club based on distance, I'm not sure where or when it broke... I'll fix it 😁
4. This is a good idea. I'll tie it in with the flag beacon, so that players will have the option to turn it off and choose its colour. While red is a common choice colour-blind players will often choose blue or yellow as to them red is usually invisible or hard to see on a predominantly green background.

If you'd like to track the progress of the updates follow me on Twitter, as I post most often there. Thanks again for the feedback, it really is the people who share their thoughts who help steer and fine-tune the game. I'm glad you're enjoying it! By the way, if you haven't already, check out Tee Time Golf on Steam. There's no affiliation, I just think it's one of the better full-sized golf games available 😁

Hi. The game is stand-alone so doesn't require an emulator. Which version do you have (windows, linux, etc)? And which graphics card do you have? Usually if the game doesn't launch it means your GPU doesn't support OpenGL 4.1 or higher, although on linux there may be some missing libraries. On windows if you go to %appdata%/Trederia/golf/ there should be a file called output.log which contains any error messages that may have been printed. On linux running the game from the terminal should print any errors there. If you find any error messages, post them here. Thanks!

Thank you! 😄

Thank you 😁

Happy to help, glad you fixed it! Thank you for the kind words and your support 😁

Hi! Sorry you've had this problem. You can reset the game settings to default by going to c:/users/<username>/AppData/Roaming/Trederia/golf and deleting prefs.cfg. Or if you don't want to reset all settings, open prefs.cfg in a text editor and change use_post_process = true to use_post_process = false. 

Thank you! I'm glad you've been enjoying it. I shall definitely look into improving the AI in a future update 🤖

Whoops! This should be fixed now, if you'd like to try downloading it again. Thanks!

A very good question. Linux is a tricksy thing at the best of times. 😅 The rpath of the binary *should* be set to the lib directory - however you can check it with readelf -d vga_golf which will list all the dependencies and the current rpath of the binary. If the path is incorrect, or I've made a typo you can use chrpath -r lib vga_golf to set it to use the lib directory. For more in-depth information on this approach check out this blog: https://pvigier.github.io/2018/10/07/distributing-c++-program-linux.html

If that doesn't work I have been told that the Windows version of the game works well under proton so that might be worth a try. In the future I'm hoping to create an AppImage for the linux version, but until then this is the best advice I can offer 😥

OK So I guess for now I'll stick with trying to get the windows version working with proton. It could be as simple as using 127.0.0.1 internally as the loopback address instead of 255.255.255.255, which is currently hard coded, so I'll try once I get set up. I'll have to see about installing proton on my desktop (although I'm by no means a linux expert, so adventures ahoy!) 😅 Thanks for digging out the user path, I had a feeling proton was going to do something like that when emulating the user dir of a windows system, so that's useful to know.

I did modify the rpath of the linux bin to point to the included lib folder, specifically because libraries like bullet are so varied between distros, but the fact that arch/ubuntu-debian are so different that it doesn't work doesn't surprise me all that much. It's a shame that linux distros are just so fragmented - it puts me off spending more time with the platform.

AppImage looks promising, especially if I can hook it up to the cmake script. I've still got a big chunk of work to do to get the next update to VGA Golf done, but after that I shall definitely be looking into this more. Oh, and you didn't hear it here, but there may be a chance of the game coming to steam in the future 😉 Potentially this could make things a little simpler when running on steam deck, if only because it'll be ported to Valve's networking libraries.

Thanks again for the help and feedback, it's really appreciated!

Shame. I'd be interested to know if steam deck supports installing packages from pacman (I *really* need to get my hands on one 😅) - although from what I hear it's generally easier to use use proton than it is to get native versions running... The game itself should dump some log files to your user directory if there's an error, although I have no idea where that would be under proton, presumably /home/user/.local/share/ but maybe not if proton handles this differently. If you have access to a keyboard you can also open an in-game console with F1 which ought to have some error messages printed to it. Thanks for all the feedback though, it's most appreciated! I've looked at flatpak in the past but my brain was unable to comprehend the packing process - if you can shed any light on that I (and all the linux users) would be eternally grateful!

Interesting. Firstly, thanks for letting me know how it works on a steam deck! I don't have access to one so I've not been able to test it (although I'd love to at some point). The local server thing should be fine without a network, at least it is on a regular Windows machine, so I can only assume it's a quirk of proton. There's a version of the game built with manjaro linux available to download (which valve recommend for steam deck development) - does that run at all? I'll definitely be making an effort in the future to make sure the game is fully steam deck compatible so I'll take your feedback into account. Thanks! 😁

🤦‍♀️ Thanks for letting me know!

Thank you 😁

Hi! Sorry you've had problems, I've been having real difficulty getting golf to run well on a mac unfortunately. If you are using an M1 mac then game won't run too well on Rosetta, and I don't have a newer mac capable of creating a Universal binary (not yet anyway). If you are using an intel mac, there is a bug with intel graphics cards that causes a crash, particularly in the options menu. As it's a driver problem it's up to Apple to fix it, but again unfortunately, they're unlikely to fix/update older software. There is an alternative options menu which you can open by pressing F1 at any time, perhaps that will help - usually turning off post processing gives a good performance boost. If that doesn't help I can add an option to disable shadows - but that won't get added until the next update comes out. One last thing you can try is after a crash click on the button that says 'Report' and then from the new window copy paste the text between 'Thread 0 crashed' and 'Thread 1'. Paste it here and it should at least tell me if the crash is related to the intel bug, or if it is a new one I might be able to fix.

Sorry I can't be more help! 😢

I've uploaded version 1.6.1 which should fix this now, thanks!

Awesome, thanks. This looks unrelated to the other crash, in fact I'm pretty sure I know what this is, and it should be an easy fix. FWIW the other crash happens if you hover the mouse over an option in the option menu, or over the Add Player icon - it *should* have a little tool tip/bit of text which tells you what the option does, but on intel graphics cards it just crashes 😥 This crash on the other hand is just me being forgetful (not setting the file path correctly to load something on the driving range) 😳 Thanks again for the help, I'll have an update uploaded ASAP!

Oh, hum. Sounds like you've found a new bug 😥 If you could tell me exactly the steps you do to cause it to crash, that would be awesome, so I can try and reproduce it myself. Also, if it's possible, if there's a message which says 'vga_golf quit unexpectedly', could you click on the button that says 'Report' and then from the new window copy paste the text between 'Thread 0 crashed' and 'Thread 1' and send it to me? You should be able to paste it here. I'd really appreciate it, thanks! 😁 (You don't need to send it to Apple, I doubt they'd do much lol)

Thanks! re: the crash - does your mac have an intel GPU? I've noticed on my HD4000 (mac mini) that there's a very specific bug which causes the game to crash when it tries to display tool tips. I've had people test it on other mac hardware without problems, so I think it's a niche Apple aren't going to fix (they're trying to steer everyone towards using their proprietry graphics APIs, and would rather sell you a new mac than fix an old one 🙄) which is unfortunate. Best I can do is isolate tool tips in the next update and, as ridiculous as it sounds, ask people to navigate menus by keyboard (or controller) rather than mouse for now - sorry!😅 To address your other points:

• There's a hard limit on the physical size of the holes in the game engine, so par 5s tend to be a bit too easy because they're too short. However you can edit the hole files by exploring the app bundle and going to Contents/Resources/assets/golf/courses/ where you'll find the course data. The files ending in .hole are simply text files in which you can edit the par. Make sure to back these up before editing though, as it'll cause problems if you try playing a network game and they don't match the other player's version.
• The club limit is a side effect caused by the game trying to guess your club set based on the distance to the pin. This was introduced with the Pitch n Putt to prevent players being able to drive the ball 200m on a 70m hole 🤦‍♀️. I'll look into adjusting this.
• This is very true. I will endeavour to add it in the next update 😁

Thanks for all the feedback, I really appreciate it. It's what keeps me motivated and the game improving!

Good luck! If you do get a hole in one then take a screen shot (F5) - as you may be the first person ever to do so! In what must be nearly 1000 hours of playtesting the closest I've gotten is ~17cm 😥

Weird isn't it? I've never enjoyed golf in real life - the only time I tried playing it I nearly injured myself 😂 - but there was always something satisfying about those old 90s games that made it enjoyable to play