85 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] thread
Great project. Makes me think on a digital version of this https://gladdendesign.com/products/paper-apps-golf
Yes i am inspired from this :D
It might be worth putting something on the page directing people to Gladden's original.
But neither seem to compare favorably to Golf Peaks[1]. Instead of rolling dice you're given a hand of cards to play, making it into a puzzle!

[1]: https://afterburn.itch.io/golf-peaks

Gladden's is a physical game and great for face-to-face multiplayer.
The only negative point of Golf Peaks is that it's too short !
I got generated hole in a tree.
It's neat but I soft locked because my roll had no valid moves.
Hmmm... That seems like a valid move needs to exist for all possibilities for every square.

Water should probably be allowed to hit over too, but not in.

how do you hit over water in mini-golf?
By hitting it sufficiently hard
There are videos of people skipping balls off the surface of water.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcI9nzsCILI

Yes, but that's not mini-golf.

Also I don't think the ball in that video is skipping, it's bouncing off a rock. Definitely possible to skip though.

Ah! I spent an hour today trying to recreate the golf course from gladdendesign too (I ordered one of each of their games when I saw it on youtube)! But I got sidetracked trying to fit perlin noise into the solution, still not sure what algorithm to use to generate similar terrains. Also I kind of assumed copying the game exactly wouldn't be super fair or even legal so I planned on keeping it private.
Heh, I also was inspired to implement the game with some major changes once the video popped up on youtube. I got it working but lost interest when it came to polishing the mapgen and generating interesting maps with the slope mechanic.
Sounds like a job for wave function collapse?
This is fun. Strategy is to get in line with the hole so there's a chance to hole out next shot. Would be more realistic if you could hit any number of spaces up to the die roll. Maybe have different clubs - driver = die roll +3, iron = die roll, putter that can hole out at any distance up to 6 not necessarily in a straight line if you roll that distance or more. So e.g. putter can hole out with knights move if you roll 3 or higher.
I see what you’re saying, but it’s mini golf, so you only get one club.
> be more realistic if you could hit any number of spaces

The docs say that's how it works, but clearly that's not how it was implemented.

"Move straight or diagonally up to the dice value"

If the ball is at 3 squares from the hole and the dices get's a 4, I'd allow to end the game. It's more fun to navigate the obstacles than to try to get the exact number to finish.
I fixed it, if you are close to the hole, you will get exact number to finish the game
:)

Scrolling is wrorking in a weird way in movile Chrome. I can go down but not up.

Why I can't move over water???
I thought the same thing about trees and assumed the dev based the game on my golf skills where going over trees is impossible

Try thinking of it as mini golf/putt putt where the ball only rolls

In the original game, you can only go over trees if you're hitting from the fairway; OP may not have coded that in.

You should be able to go over water at any point, as long as you've got the distance for it.

it's mini golf. it's in the title of TFA as such. in mini golf, the ball only rolls. the ball does not roll across water. it does not roll over trees even from the fairway. if your ball leaves the ground with a putter, something is very very wrong
> if your ball leaves the ground with a putter, something is very very wrong

Ugh, you sound just like the manager of the last seventeen mini-golf places I've been kicked out of. I shall not apologize for my athleticism!

Though I probably should have apologized to the parents of those kids who they had to call an ambulance for.

I think it's more interesting if you have two kind of obstacles, so there are more tricks and path to try (but not as difficult as chess). This looks easy to implement.

Also, as an untested idea, it would be nice to have two dices and be able to select one of them or the other or the sum. Perhaps both dice then disappear, or perhaps the unused dice goes to the next round like in scrabble. The idea is to have more possibilities to think in each step (like make a small jump and aim to a nice diagonal, or go to the shore and hope a big hit next turn). This reduce the nasty effect of getting a 1. But I'm not sure if any of these variants are more fun, and all of them take a while to be implemented.

> more interesting if you have two kind of obstacles

Yeah. As a general rule of game dev, if there is a different icon, then its behavior should be different.

Ah, that explains why I thought I was getting very lucky to be able to get a hole in 3, and shortly afterwards, even a hole in 2. Is it possible to get a hole in 1, or are levels constructed so as to prevent that?
Doesn't work in Android Chrome. Clicking does nothing.

Edit: figured out what was wrong, I had bedtime mode turned on which desaturated the screen, making the light yellow impossible to see. Suggestion: make the highlight more visible/accessible

I couldn’t see the highlights either on my first hole. Or maybe there were no valid landing spots, I’m not sure.

I also thought the black circle was the hole, not the ball. Golf balls are normally white, not black.

EDIT: it appears that the highlights (and trails) disappear if you scroll up and down a few times (iOS mobile safari)

Or some sort of pulsing on the clickable areas. I reloaded the page a few times before I realized the pale yellow spots were supposed to be clicked. I assumed it was bugged, but I was wrong.
I just got 13 rolls of 3 in a row. I think there may be an issue with the RNG
Ha, that's pretty random to me!
I also got something like 12 rolls of 3 in a row. I would definitely check the RNG routine to ensure that it is not biased to the mean (i.e., verify that you are drawing from a uniform, rather than normal, distribution).
I like that you can hear the club swing and contact on higher rolls, but I NEED to hear the ball hit the bottom of the cup when I sink the putt.

Also, maybe some optional crowd noise if you hit it past the hole or hit it in the wrong direction due to an over-roll.

Awesome! I watched Gladden Design's video too and loved it. It's great that you've made it accessible! Please consider giving attribution to Gladden Design.
I'd prefer if I had several moves to make after a single roll of the dice.

Also I block html5 auto playback by default which you appear to use for some animation stuff. It'd be great if the game could work without it.

Wow, someone just sent me this post because I also made a golf game inspired by Gladden Design's this week! :D I made my own twist on it a bit, making it use a hex grid because I didn't like how diagonal moves were treated the same distance as orthogonal moves and I added bonuses and skill shots to give the player a reason to take a non-straight line path to the hole and made it a daily game but having a wordle style share score button. I'm surprised how many people saw that video and also all had the same idea that "this would make a great digital game idea" https://golf.jbat.ch/
Hex tiles are a really smart improvement on the game. I do kind of miss the little trees instead of just the dark green color though. :D

I also wonder if the graphics wouldn't make playing easier for color blind folks. :)

This is cool! Well done. Where did you get the sound from?
PSA: I needed to disable my "Disable HTML Autoplay" Chrome extension in order for the game to work.
Nice but I got stuck near the end. I kept rolling 3 and then the button shakes and that is it.
The strokes does not get updated properly. It needs to be fixed
Highlighting the valid squares to shoot to would be nice
Great stuff! Thanks for making this. Would love the ability to turn off the sound, but that's a minor nitpick.
This is a lot of fun. Thank you for making this.
A bit intuitive - the instructions should be on the screen next to the map
Random flight lengths and double digit stroke counts for one hole? Finally a realistic game that matches my experience on the golf course.
Very nifty idea! And cute, simple visuals