Little Cliff Mountain by Lifeonaboard (CC Design Contest)

[Lifeonaboard]

1,260 boxes of tnt exploded.
360 diamond drill bits dulled.
540 specially trained goats carrying turf rolls.
1,440 trees planted by unpaid gap students.
180 golf balls lost per round.
270 hours of lost sleep.
1 baby born during production.
Enjoy!

[Lifeonaboard]

This course was a massive undertaking. My goal was to make an epic mountain fantasy course in honour of my newborn son Cliff who was born during the production of this course. This course was meant to be thrilling, crazy, unique, terrifying, beautiful and fun just like becoming a new father. With OB on every hole each shot demands your full attention. The course is well balanced with plenty of risk/reward options. Every hole is a new chance to lower your score or destroy your round. Pay attention to the pin position before planning your strategies as they can greatly affect which shots are rewarded. 

Since there are a massive amount of quality courses in this contest I thought I'd help out the judges with some stock judging notes to copy and paste as needed.
-This is way too demanding for the cc difficulty level.
-Constant elevation changes become tiresome pretty quickly.
-Hole number (#) is too close to the edge of the cliff.
-Fairways could be smoother.
-Did you even test the pin positions?
-This bush is blocking my view.
-These bunkers look like the were sculpted in a 90's arcade game.
-How come none of these holes turn left?
-This is the greatest course ever made times infinity.
-Not enough cars in the parking lot.

If you want to see more screenshots and learn more about the production of this course, please check out my WIP thread.

[Deleted]

My final course for tonight's CC design contest tour couldn't have finished on a better course. Contest aside, this is one of my favorite courses for this game... period.(Well, three periods before the word "period" and the final period after that... but you get what I'm saying) I wanted to design a course like this when I first picked up this game, but there were a bunch issues that I kept running into. I didn't have the skill in the designer or proper vision to pull off a good course while overcoming those issues. You nailed it. In total. The path work must have taken ages alone. The vistas were great, and every hole had a sense of excitement when a shot found a fairway and/or green. Longclaw Point had some really great visions, and this course is an absolutely fantastic follow-up. You and lessthanbread are now my favorite high-fantasy designers, and I truly hope both of you bring some of these jewels to PGA 2K21. Truly phenomenal publish sir! Also, I took a lot of your recommendations for my greens on Lake Lyla, and got some good feedback on them. Thanks you for the support, and for releasing such a masterful entry to the CC design contest! Bravo!

 

[coggin66]

I'm looking forward to this one. I hope it loads faster in game than your screenshots do in the opening post! :-)

[Lifeonaboard]

Jun 30, 2020 2:06:00 GMT -5 @babybull said:

My final course for tonight's CC design contest tour couldn't have finished on a better course. Contest aside, this is one of my favorite courses for this game... period.(Well, three periods before the word "period" and the final period after that... but you get what I'm saying) I wanted to design a course like this when I first picked up this game, but there were a bunch issues that I kept running into. I didn't have the skill in the designer or proper vision to pull off a good course while overcoming those issues. You nailed it. In total. The path work must have taken ages alone. The vistas were great, and every hole had a sense of excitement when a shot found a fairway and/or green. Longclaw Point had some really great visions, and this course is an absolutely fantastic follow-up. You and lessthanbread are now my favorite high-fantasy designers, and I truly hope both of you bring some of these jewels to PGA 2K21. Truly phenomenal publish sir! Also, I took a lot of your recommendations for my greens on Lake Lyla, and got some good feedback on them. Thanks you for the support, and for releasing such a masterful entry to the CC design contest! Bravo!

 

Thank you very much sir! This is the course I've wanted to make for a long time as well and finally felt like it was within my capabilities. The technical side of the sculpting on this course was painstaking and I was fighting a couple of glitches that made things even harder. One was the black spot glitch which has something to do with rendering shadows on steep terrain and the other was the super annoying sculpting ripples that usually just show up on the edge of bunkers but I was getting on my greens. I've spent the last 2 days just trying to clean those up and playtesting. I have no idea why they were happening so if anyone out there has any insights into this I would love to know them. I will try Lake Lyla tomorrow as I've only seen it on stream and the greens did look super smooth. I did find time to play Toby's Rock and I do think that is right up there in top quality mountain courses with lots of good ideas. My only thoughts on that course would be to consider making more of your risk/reward shots grey instead of black and white. If that makes sense? I'm not saying I do that much better myself but it's something I'm working on.

[b101]

Jun 29, 2020 23:08:07 GMT -5 Lifeonaboard said:

Since there are a massive amount of quality courses in this contest I thought I'd help out the judges with some stock judging notes to can copy and paste as needed.
-This is way too demanding for the cc difficulty level.
-Constant elevation changes become tiresome pretty quickly.
-Hole number (#) is too close to the edge of the cliff.
-Fairways could be smoother.
-Did you even test the pin positions?
-This bush is blocking my view.
-This is the greatest course ever made times infinity.
-Not enough cars in the parking lot.

Fixed it for you.

[Lifeonaboard]

Jun 30, 2020 3:07:15 GMT -5 b101 said:

Jun 29, 2020 23:08:07 GMT -5 Lifeonaboard said:

Since there are a massive amount of quality courses in this contest I thought I'd help out the judges with some stock judging notes to can copy and paste as needed.
-This is way too demanding for the cc difficulty level.
-Constant elevation changes become tiresome pretty quickly.
-Hole number (#) is too close to the edge of the cliff.
-Fairways could be smoother.
-Did you even test the pin positions?
-This bush is blocking my view.
-This is the greatest course ever made times infinity.
-Not enough cars in the parking lot.

Fixed it for you.

Damn it, I thought I could sneak that one in there. I've just edited it to add some more.

[Lifeonaboard]

Cheers to everyone playing this course. Getting handicap rated in 2 days is definitely a nice surprise. After seeing some playthroughs and how the stroke index turned out I'd like to give a few tips on how to get the most out of your round here. First off it seems like most people are struggling on the uphill holes, even the ones that should be pretty easy. If you have a drive that is going up 30+ feet you will get more distance lofting up your driver. This effect becomes more obvious the higher up the landing zone is. For example, on hole 15 the plateau on the left side of the fairway is just barely reachable with no loft and no headwind but lofting up completely I've easily gotten it up there with a 9 mph headwind and even still made it another time accidentally hitting a 95%. You can also use this with fairway woods to help reach some of the par 5's, just keep in mind when lofted you have less accuracy so be smart about when you use it. Hopefully this tip helps you claw your way that little bit higher on some of these holes to make your approach shots much easier. There are still a lot of strategies I have not seen anyone try yet so plenty more to discover on this course. Also, don't go for the green on 17. I thought that would be pretty obvious but stroke index 1 says otherwise. I'll leave you with this epic moment from Casanova7448.

[15eicheltower9]

Play this course. It doesn't suck.

[notaburneracct]

I concur, it's pretty good.

[Lifeonaboard]

I'm starting to come around to this notaburneracct guy. He has some solid opinions I think we should all listen to.

[OldSouled]

This is a super fun course. I shot -12 with high winds on default conditions from back tees on pin position 1. I will definitely play the course again. I have never seen certain hole designs like you’ve created. I found 17 to be really cool. I don’t remember ever looking at a hole from the side view for so long contemplating if I could hit it high enough over a mountain...(I decided not to try). Thanks for letting us enjoy this course. Good luck in the competition.

[Lifeonaboard]

Dan's Golf 2020 on Youtube is currently running an extremely generous PGA 2K21 giveaway contest. All you have to do is beat his round on Little Cliff Mountain. Sounds easy, right?

Huge thanks to everyone playing this course, it just cracked 5,000 plays which is amazing. Even though it missed the first cut in the cc contest I'm still extremely happy with how well the course turned out. I've learned a lot from watching playthroughs and will use this information to make my next full release course even better.
Here are a few more video playthroughs.

[cd06]

It's a lot of fun! Definitely falls under the fantasy category. My one problem is that hole 17 is a par three in this game, but it doglegs uphill? Not sure what that one's about. I think it's meant to be a par four?

[Lifeonaboard]

Dec 13, 2020 9:11:59 GMT -5 cd06 said:

It's a lot of fun! Definitely falls under the fantasy category. My one problem is that hole 17 is a par three in this game, but it doglegs uphill? Not sure what that one's about. I think it's meant to be a par four?

You are correct. When I ported this to 2K21 I adjusted the waypoint on 17 and it switched it to a par 3 without me noticing. I republished a corrected version but it has the exact same name so you just need to check to see if you are playing the par 72 version. Just 1 star the par 71 version so it falls into oblivion. Thank you for playing the course. It is really nice to see that it is still getting so many plays.