Speccy golf - a good computer spoiled

[toot_toot]

Yeah, the Spectrum really had some awful golf games. But then in all honesty, it wasn’t until Leaderboard that golf games got kind of decent. But I think the Spectrum just struggles with a “behind the player” view, like the eventual PGA Tour games or Links (which I think came from Bruce Carver who developed the original Leaderboard).

But one type of golf game where the Spectrum could really succeed would be the 2D top down view of the original Golf on the Gameboy.



It only has two courses, but I’m certain the Spectrum could have had something like this? Maybe 128K only or maybe multi-load for courses. But the ball physics doesn’t have to be that exact, unlike some of the later golf games like Greg Norman’s or Links which seemed to really focus on the “Simulation” aspect (and weren’t as much fun)

Sensible Golf tried to take the same formula, but let’s be honest, it wasn’t as good as the Gameboy one



But still, it had a lot of courses which made it fun. And you only need a very simple control scheme.

Mario Golf on the GBC was another cracking game, I think the Spectrum could cope with something similar, but maybe only focusing on the 2D overhead part, instead of having the initial behind the player shot



So YEAH.. how come the Speccy didnt have a great golf game??

[Wizwords]

My dad and I sunk hours into Golf on the Intellivision, which has a top down view similar to a few of the games here.
I never found an agreeable one on the Speccy though, so maybe an opportunity for someone to do a Next golf game?

[TMD2003]

All this talk of golf and not a single "MASHED POTATO!"?

Anyway... I had that generic Game Boy Golf game back in the day, played it to death, cheated on it harder than Lance Armstrong, and my records show that it's a 128 KB cartridge. However, it was heavily based on a NES (well, Famicom) original from 1984 - and that's a mere 24 KB.

So, how did they do it? Who's up for a bit of 6502 disassembly?

[Morkin]

So, how did they do it?

...They've clearly got their compression routine down to a <snip>...

[Jbizzel]

Golf on the gameboy is so, so good.

I play it still, on a little Gameboy pocket. The game is so tight.

It has 2 courses, but do you need more? The gameplay has some depth and load or reply value.

I would love to see a version for the spectrum, but how would the graphics work? I just can't get my head around the spectrums limits when it comes to golf games.

[StanVanman]

Golf on the gameboy is so, so good.

I play it still, on a little Gameboy pocket. The game is so tight.

It has 2 courses, but do you need more? The gameplay has some depth and load or reply value.

I would love to see a version for the spectrum, but how would the graphics work? I just can't get my head around the spectrums limits when it comes to golf games.

The Game Boy is (essentially) mono, so surely the Speccy can cope with anything the GB can?

[Jbizzel]

Not so. The Gameboy is not mono, it is 4 shades of green.

Perfect for golf games lol.

[ParadigmShifter]

Gameboy has a smaller screen and hardware scrolling as well. You could probably do a decent golf game if you didn't scroll though.

I converted a PC/3DO golf game to the PS1 a long time ago. SPOILER: It was crap. There's a lot of maths involved especially if you want realistic ball physics (spin, wind resistance, drag etc.). At least you don't need to do everything realtime you can work out the trajectory of the ball each frame and buffer it while you are waiting for the swing animation to finish (or you can precalc everything before you start the swing).

AI will probably be slow if you do it in the same way we did (which was the CPU takes a load of shots and picks the best one, adding random noise when it comes to making the simulated button presses). I don't think many speccy golf games had AI though. It's not hard to do just likely to be slow?

EDIT: Gameboy golf physics isn't that hard though it looks like the course is flat except for the green anyway.

EDIT: I know that for Leaderboard Jim wrote a 6502 instruction interpreter and just ran the 6502 code

[Jbizzel]

I know this is for the CPC - but got it out over Christmas for research purposes.

The weakest part of the game is the routine for when you're on the green. That seems to let it down a bit.

I love the graphics though

[lexi]

Gameboy has a smaller screen and hardware scrolling as well. You could probably do a decent golf game if you didn't scroll though.

Can you do a good top-down golf game without scrolling? A good golf game to me is about rhythm and a sense of exploration as you experience the journey with the ball as it travels. There's a necessary element of anticipation as the ball careens out of sight/towards the screen border - a flip or judder-scroll breaks that rhythm for me.

There seem so many frames potentially between selecting the shot angle and handling the power bar - it seems possible to me that differential (e.g x+4, y+1) scrolling for the perfect shot angle could be pre-computed between shots and shared between players. Even if so - i guess max/min trajectory animations for hook/slice would also need to be pre-computed, ideally without duplicating effort.

EDIT: I know that for Leaderboard Jim wrote a 6502 instruction interpreter and just ran the 6502 code

I love that a) someone considered doing this; and b) it actually worked.. i kinda want to know more of that story - like, was that a one-off desperate attempt to beat an unrealistic porting schedule.. or was it a unremarkable/boring solution at the time?

[ParadigmShifter]

You calculate the trajectory after the input has finished.

Doing it during the swing animation would be more complicated, on the PS1 we just did it before starting the animation. You could probably do it in bits during the swing anim though. Game I converted you could hit the ball backwards but it still played the same animation, that was a bug though lol

If the shot goes on for 10 seconds you only need to buffer the position for 500 frames so assuming 16 bit precision that would be 500*6 bytes ~3K or 6K for 32 bit precision (I think 24 bit precision ~4.5K would be fine if 16 bit precision is not enough). If you store deltas you can cut the buffer size down a lot of course (since position won't change much between frames and if it does you can put in data/code to handle that).

You can do the 3d projection real time though (if it is isometric it is super easy, game boy looks isometric to me). Perspective requires a division but if you just play back a buffer you'd have time for that too I think.

You could just as easily do the physics during the shot playback and get rid of the buffer that might affect the frame rate though.