Post by ZoSoSF on Nov 17, 2020 19:22:10 GMT -5
hoo-boy... i didn't know Landscape Architect 2019 was a game i would enjoy but here we are....
hi ever'body --feeling like i'm *almost* done with my first course. Windsor Golf Club is about an hour north of San Francisco, and hosted the Nike and Nationwide tours in the '90s.
i have a fairly sizeable list of suggestions for first-time designers but i'll get to that later. many thanks to Chad for the tool, also The Lidar King, Canuck, et al for the great videos and forum posts. also to my TGC buddy Mark (BlackPanda) for playing a few rounds in the beta and helping me greatly.
WGC is only 6599 from the tips, but as mentioned, still tough enough to host John Daly and others on the Nike Tour. the course's defense is well-placed trees and small, firm, fast greens. i spent a lot of time on the 4th, 9th and 17th holes where there are critically-difficult shots that make the hole much easier if pulled off. the 4th is a par-5 that reads 501 on the card but is only 462 as the crow flies. the trick is the trees around the small green. it's possible to clear the trees and hit the green but you probably won't finish there.
the 17th tee is where i heard the legend of John Daly. most normal people have to hit a fairly short draw into a sharp dogleg left fairway with a bunker long. John took the shortcut over the trees on the left and ended up with a 7-iron to the green on a par-5. you have to draw around the trees -- a straight drive will land in the heavy rough and aiming left without draw will hit the tree.
some screens, starting with 17 tee -
foremost among my suggestions for newbies is to not overdo things. i nearly built an entire frickin' neighborhood before i realized what a waste of space and effort it was.
this is what i ended up with:
this is where i was headed.... there are flowers in some of those yards, for cryin' out loud...
another big suggestion is that i used waaaay too many trees around the perimeter trying to hide the background.
i ran out of resources several times when trying to actually plant the course...
it's much better to sink a tree way down in the ground and then scale it bigger. you get the same height but you cover a lot more
width and it's much better for hiding the background. i deleted half the trees i'd already planted and just bushed up the ones that
were left around the edges. unless you fly really high you can't tell the difference.
will probably publish a test version tomorrow or the next day - still tweaking.....
by the by - i run a 2019 society called x four sticks x with just over 60 holdouts who won't fork up the cash for 2k21.
peace folks - martin (ZoSoSF)