Adventure Golf
UPDATED: 12/14/2001 - New Demo!
Click on the above to view larger screen shots of the demo.
Note: These are just preliminary images from the demo. The courses in the final game will be substantially more sophisticated.
Concept:
Here's the concept paper for Adventure Golf...
Adventure Golf is a hybrid action-adventure/miniature golf game. The basic game mechanics are vaguely similar to some of the PC miniature golf games made in the 1990s, but instead of using pre-rendered course images and flat terrain physics, it would use 3D environments rendered in real time on all kinds of terrains (made of different materials) and would include a wide array of complex game objects, each with different behaviors and physical properties.
While the game would play like a PC miniature golf game (with a ball, a putter, a hole, a stroke count, etc.), it would be more similar in game play to a 3rd person adventure game. The player must navigate the ball through a fantastical land filled with outlandish obstacles and puzzles. Courses would contain traditional green golf fields, but would also include a mixture of real life environments as well. There may also be intermediate checkpoints the player has to reach between the initial position and the hole. He would have a reserve of “lives” to begin with, which would be depleted each time the ball enters a trap or a maximum number of strokes is hit without the ball reaching the next checkpoint. Each time the player loses a life, he would begin again at the last checkpoint he reached until all his lives were depleted.
Many of the objects with which the player interacts would be familiar mini-golf obstacles (e.g., windmills, ducts, and water traps), but the game would also feature more surreal game objects (e.g., levitating platforms, gravity-altering portals, force fields, etc.). There would be enemy characters with AI that would try to hinder the player. There may even be boss characters. In this sense, it would be as much of an action/adventure game as a miniature golf game.
The most interesting feature would probably be that the ball’s motion against the terrain and game objects would behave according to realistic physics, accounting for gravity, rotational inertia, momentum, friction, and other physical constraints. The look and feel of the game will be similar to that of a Nintendo 64 action-adventure game (such as Mario 64). It would have fantastical, colorful, smooth-shaded objects, and a dynamically moving camera, possibly with some user influence on the camera behavior.
Depending on time constraints, I’d like to implement a tool with which the user can design his own holes that can be implemented in the actual game.
Currently, the plan is to make this a single player, multi-level game, but it’s quite conceivable that a multi-player feature could be added down the line.
The graphics for Adventure Golf would be done entirely in OpenGL, most likely featuring smooth-shaded polygon-modeled objects, a freely moving camera, texture mapping, mip-mapping, Bezier surfaces, constructive solid geometry, dynamic lighting, and other such advanced OpenGL features. Other aspects, such as sound, music, and input would use DirectX.
Demo:
The demo NOW contains one complete, fully functional level... try it out, and let me know what you think.Controls and objectives are explained in the game.
To Install:
- Download this file here.
- Open it. This will extract the game files to the directory you specify.
- Play the game. Click on the executable. This demo comes with one game level.
Note: Change to 16-bit color mode through the "Display" dialog ("Settings" tab) in the "Control Panel" for optimal performance.
Design Document:
The demo .zip file above now contains the design document.