Golf Game

[planetneptune]

First, let me introduce myself. I'm Drew. I have created several games using flash and I'm ready to move to HTML5. 

I'm looking to create a golf game. Nothing terribly fancy, in fact, think PGA Tour 96-ish. So, with that in mind, I'm looking for any thoughts to point me in the right direction of where to get started. Is there a development package that might be better for this type of application? 

First thing that comes to your head.... OK, go.

[b10b]

I was looking into to creating an early PGA Tour Golf clone the other day.  My opinion is that much of the gameplay of these games is a proprietary physics abstraction rather than actual, and similarly the 3D view was only what was needed for the time.  e.g. notice subtle time tricks like playing the player swing after the input bar has completed - giving time to generate the reverse-angle view during the outbound flight.  Modern temptation might be to go full camera 3D and full physics - which I suspect will make things less gamey than the classics and head towards simulator land as ~realism is easy?  Therefore personally I'd start with an overhead 2D game, and add a 2.5D view to it as a second version - that way it would stay grounded to the classics.

[planetneptune]

Thanks @b10b

I'm not exactly looking to make a clone, but more simply, use that era of golf as a basis for my game. Agreed, not into going full 3d as that's not the draw of my game. I intend to add video to it so that you can select players to play against. A pretty girl, old man, punk, etc. I will add this video content to the game somehow and that's what the focus will be. 

I've created games in the past and I'm a bit of a barbarian with my coding but I tend to get my conceptions to fruition. That being said, I'm interested in starting the ground work here. Would you recommend Phaser for something like this or should I be looking at another framework?

[b10b]

@planetneptune I don't use Phaser but many people do and seem to get a lot from it.  I'm sure it's more than capable for such a golf game, as are any of its competitors.  However, in my opinion, any fully featured game development framework risks being too opinionated, or too-well suited to a particular style of game, which can create tunnel vision and reduce options or independent innovation longer term.  I would also avoid Javascript as a first class citizen for games, Typescript is more my thing, but Haxe is my weapon of choice.  If you are a coding "barbarian" (!) you may prefer a game development toolkit instead of a framework - e.g. Gamemaker, Playcanvas, Construct, even Flash CC - they should allow you to concentrate entirely on the game rather than the underlying architecture?  No choice is perfect, opinions will vary - so pick one and make it work.

[planetneptune]

Here is where I'm at with this: I decided to use Phaser as the documentation seems to be pretty well done with tons of examples (which is the way I learn best). I use a png file of the course where the color codes represent different things, for example: the red value indicates what the feature is (water, sand, fairway etc.). The green and blue is the elevation of the ground for topography. From this I can create overhead shots by adding in the right colors after the image loads. 

I am trying to figure out the best way to show the topography when the person is lining up his shot. I was thinking it would be a split screen where the overhead map will show the direction of the shot and the other screen would be a perspective of the golfer (which would show the topography). I'm sure I could build this perspective view from scratch but before I do that, any suggestions for any pre-existing systems that work well?

[b10b]

4 hours ago, planetneptune said:

any suggestions for any pre-existing systems that work well?

A "Mode7" pseudo 3D approach works well (flat ground plane made of strips  + viewport aligned sprites).  I did that once for a golf game, nobody complained the world was flat.  I used the same technique you mention of a color map representing different surface types: fairway, rough, solid, water, sand, green.  A second image had the visual textures, and I used Photoshop styles and filters for each - so making new holes was fast.  Flybys and pulsing were important to the visual illusion - always keep the camera moving.

To go full ground-contour is going to need voxels or polys, and the ball trajectory physics will get a lot more complicated too.  Depends upon your audience as to whether this is a better approach or not?  Main benefit of poly 3D is that you'll likely use WebGL, so it won't cook your mobile device like some pseudo 3D techniques often end up doing.