sjividen

A few questions...

1. I got Tiger Woods 2004 and played it for about two weeks before it got boring due to being way too easy. I've played a lot of Jack Nicklaus Golf for the PC (and was pretty good at it), so what can I expect with Links on Xbox? EGM apparently gave it a very average review, which makes me kinda wary.

2. Will new courses eventually be available through Xbox Live?

3. When is the damn thing going to be released?! Here's what I've been able to find online...

Xbox.com: Holiday 2003
EBGames: Ships on 11/11/03
Circuit City: 11/13/03
Best Buy: 11/12/03
Amazon: 11/14/03
GameStop: 11/11/03
Wal-Mart: 11/15/03

Is it safe to assume that it will be out this week? Or does this nice variety of release dates indicate that nobody has a frickin clue?

PixyJunket

Mmm.. Golf.. online golf..

sjividen

I'm right there with you Pixy. I don't even like to think about how many hours I lost to Jack Nicklaus 5 online. But it was so much fun, which is why I WANT SOME DAMN ANSWERS to my questions!

GatorDeb

I'll be playing you people online This is the next to the last XSN game I'm picking up of the ones announced already. I already have Crimson Skies (is that XBN or just XBL?) and Top Spin, and I'll be getting Project Gotham Racing 2.

Edison

Yep, I'll be picking this up had a chance to play a little bit of it and really enjoyed it. I think we have it shipping the 11th so it should be in store on the 12th. I will check tonight at work.

nickdawgy

I'll be picking this up as well.

mr.snowmizer

Somebody at the Sports Reviewers forum put numerous reponses of Daryl Welsh, copied-and-pasted, into one thread.

I will now do the same with his post, since there may be some who just want some info without actually leaving for a different forum.

http://www.ianstorm.com/Forums/peris...p?Do=top255160

************

Daryl Welsh
Group Program Manager
Indie Games Studio (Links, Amped, Top Spin)


• Links 2004 will support 4 players on 4 different boxes. This was a key design decision of ours early on. Golfing (online or off) should be about playing in 4-somes. One mode I really look forward to people playing is Stroke-fastplay. Where all four people play simultaneously. You see the other 3 people's balls (and ball flight) and ghost/contrails. Internally we call it our '4-player crack cocaine' mode because it is so addictive and fun.

• Links 2004 will support custom soundtracks, which will play in both the menu's and during play.

• There will be downloadable courses. I can't provide a lot of details here, but expect the first one to be available before the end of the year and expect more in the first half of next year. Xbox Live gives us an awesome opportunity to update content and we plan to take full advantage of this.

• XSN Sports is scheduled to go Live (beyond just Fever) on 11/18. Links will hit store shelves a week or so before then so people should have a little bit of time to get familiar with the game before jumping into competitions.

• The store shelf date versus release date is not an exact science, so I can't give you a crisp answer. As with Amped and Top Spin a lot of stores had product on the release (some call it the shipping date), other stores had it 1 day later. From a development team perspective we don't have a lot of control on this.

• For the clubs the branded equipment in the game includes:
1. TaylorMade
2. Callaway
3. Cobra
4. Mizuno
5. Ping

• There's no difference between brands. (You can imagine the legal ramifications there)

• At its roots Links 2004 is about being the more realistic golf game on any console period. Balancing this against the fact the game is not on a PC and still has to be super-fun for a novice was a huge design challenge.

• We do have some steps in difficulty. For those who want a real challenge, choosing the "Advanced" profile type will deliver that where everything you'd expect from lie's to elevation changes, to wind and rain affect the flight and roll of the ball. We do have a stick swing very similar to TW (although we'd never let you change the spin of the ball in-flight, my own personal pet peeve about that game). On Intermediate and especially on Advanced you *really* have to get the swing on plane if you want the ball to go straight.

• I've obviously played the game a lot. On beginner skills I can do a round easily in the low 50's. On intermediate it's high 50's or low 60's. When playing advanced, especially if weather conditions are bad and pin settings are difficult, breaking par is a challenge for me.

• The game has gone gold. It was released to manufacturing on 10/17. You should expect to find the game in retailers NOVEMBER 11th (12th at the latest)

• Online our Pro characters are only appearance based. The skill points of the players needs to be built up off-line before playing on-line.

• When joining the lobby for a game you'll be able to see the number of skill points your opponents have.

• The course list was on another thread. It was correct including the fantasy course "Ocean Mills Country Club".

• In Stroke-Fastplay you are able to talk to everyone while you play. We do require people to sync people at the end of each hole. 90% of the time for whatever reason people tend to play much much faster in Stroke-Fastplay. People hate to be the last one to putt out. Which means you can normally get a foursome round of 18 holes in the time it takes to play 18 holes in single play.

• In XSN Sports you can play a round solo. For regular Live you cannot.

• There are official on-line matches which count towards the leaderboards.

• There are also unofficial matches which don't count. This allows matches between people with beginner skill levels to play people of intermediate or advanced.

• Putting on the beginner level is easy. That was a conscience design decision. We want beginners to have success. The problem with a few of the reviews that have mentioned this is that the reviewers only used the easiest level. They didn't spend anytime creating profiles with more advanced skills.

• Hmm, the question comes up how should I know which level of difficulty to choose? My suggestions: Pick beginner if you've never played a golf sim in your life. Maybe if you've never played a console. Pick Advanced if you want the most challenging hard-core sim you'll find on a console.

• To answer your question YES you can create left handed golfers. One of our pro's Mike Weir is left handed and we made it so any character you create (other then the pro's who are right handed) can be left handed. Why can't you make a pro left handed? Their in game appearance is part of the license. If the pro player is not left handed legally we can't make them left handed.

• Sorry, but I can't leak what the downloaded courses will be. Expect some of them to definitely be PGA Tour stops.

• Also expect official Microsoft sponsored tournaments with some really great prizes (both on Live and XSN Sports). I know this will trigger a ton of 'can you tell us more' messages. I can't give more details here because contracts and things are still be ironed out, but it is super exciting about how we are going to fund and support online tournaments.

• I'm 99% sure you can optimatch for profile level settings. I'm holding back that 1% because I'm don't have my console in front of me and I usually dbl-check things before I post here so I don't disappoint people.

• Hosts can boot players in the lobby before getting into a game.

• Yes in the lobby you can tell their skill level. Nothing fancy (B), (I), or next to the user's name to designate the differences.

• You can play two players on one box on Live. It's turn based (instead of supporting the Stroke-fastplay) but it is doable. We had to focus our design and dev efforts, we pushed to fully support the single user on one box but more of them in a match. It was touch choice but a lot of data showed >90% of people play online with one player per console.

• Links '04 does not have a full blown character creator like Top Spin (it is something we are looking at for future versions, but no promises).

• There are a total of 10 characters, and there is actually a lot of customizations you can do. Handiness, Skin color, hair color, shirts, pants, shorts, motion-set, hat, shoes, and gloves. Each of these has many variations so the permutations are really huge.

• Some settings are no changeable on some characters like handiness on pro-players because of legal issues.

• When playing in Stroke-Fastplay you'll see your shots and also the shots of the other people in your foursome. They will appear as different colored contrails. (Boy a picture here would be worth a thousand words). So as an example, 4 people start a round and instead immediately hitting I wait a few seconds, I'll see all the ball trails of my opponents shoot of the tee. (Game play hint: waiting to smack the ball after your opponents is a good tactic to see how much the wind is going to push the ball while in flight)

• If you happen to finish the hole really quickly, your camera will switch to another players view while they finish the hole also.

• The speed and firmness of the greens (not to mention fairways) change based on weather conditions that are set.

• Question was: "What happens if you're beating someone in Links and he decides to just not hit his shot?" This is something we thought about for Live. There are timers that fire on-line so if some trys to screw you by pulling their controller, pausing the game, not taking their shots, etc.... the timers fire and depending on the mode of play certain consequences happen.

• The right and left analog controllers are not swappable. Its a great idea that I make sure gets put on the list for the next version though. (sorry can't be full of all good news today.)

• Yes there will be 5.1 surround sound and it is so sweet. (Another perk besides the HDTV is a surround system in my office). Course audio is totally directional. In doing some testing on sounds I was free roaming around (which is supported in game, you can fly the camera anywhere you want [within reason]) to a pond that had ducks on it. As you look at the ducks you hear them out of the center channel, rotate right/left and the sounds 'moves' on the speakers but in the 3d space are still in the same spot. Facing 180 degrees from the ducks the two back speakers are sounding off to give the appearance the sound is coming from directly behind you.

A ton of work went into the audio by our team and it is really taking full advantage of what the Xbox offers. We have in game tournament updates where you get a pop-up telling you someone on the leaderboard made a big move. If his hole was close to yours from the direction the noise came from on course you'll hear a crowd roar or disappointment.

• One of the key points in having different skill levels was to avoid the exact scenario you described. I know we're going to get some heat from customers on this, but once you create a profile at a given skill level they cannot be switched to another. It's unfair to spend time on beginner, build up the character then switch to advanced and take them on-line.

• It will take each person a differing amount of time to completely complete the career mode. You need to get really close to the end to earn all the possible skill points. In rough numbers on Intermediate level it took our testers on average between 55 and 65 hours. Some of you will be shocked that's too high or too low, we felt it was a good amount of time.

• If you end up playing someone online who has max skill they put a tremendous amount of time into the off-line modes to build them up and should be respected.

• In-game updates occur for career mode only. It is definitely something we should look into for our next version.

• (With XSN today you can I believe sign-up for notifications via e-mail/pager and other wireless devices in XSN to be notified of updates..... Nothing like sitting in a meeting and finding out you've missed the cut in a 4 round tournament

• Online modes include: Stroke, Stroke-Fastplay (our crack cocaine mode of play) , Match Play, Nassau, Skins, Stableford, Bestball Stroke, Bestball Match, Bestball Nassau, Bestball Skins, Alternate Shot Stroke, Alternate Shot Match, Alternate Shot Nassau, Alternate Shot Skins

• Without trying to sound like a TW basher (because I do respect what they've done over the last three years on the console), our online modes kick their butts.

• For a Match Play based XSN tournament the maximum participants in the
tournament is 32. For Stroke Play based tourneys it's 64.

• Money you earn online does go to the pot of money you use to buy skill points with.

• All the alternate shot and best ball can be played as teams (2 vs. 2)

• Sorry, but the details for the tournaments are far from locked down. I wouldn't even want to speculate at this point on the off-chance they go differently.

• I can do a whole 18 holes in about 15 mins if I'm rushing. If I'm trying to make sure I cover all my bases to get the best score possible, add another 5 to 7.

• *for cheaters on xbl* - Did we catch every corner case? I'm hoping so, but the brutal truth is there's always a possibility a case slipped through our testing efforts. We're already developing contingency plans on what should happen should something come up we missed.... more of an insurance policy you hope to never have to use, but definitely something needed in case things get ugly.

• I just took a peek and counted >35 different stats that are tracked on XSN for Links 2004. All the one's you listed and of course many more. All these stats will be tracked across a single tournament. In Fever they have seasons, in Links we have tournaments. Your stats across multiple tournaments does accumulate.

• There are three types of tournaments:

1) Match Play Tournaments, with a max of 32 players. Typical ladder basis with single elimination.

2) Stroke Tournaments, with a max of 64 players. You can have 1 to 4 rounds (9 or 18 holes) for the tournament. Lowest aggregate score wins (the question will come up, and I'll have to find out as I don't know off the top my head, how ties are handled.)

3) Stroke Tournaments with Cuts, with a max of 64 players. You can have 2, 3 or 5 rounds for the tournament. I have to dbl-check but I don't think you can specify the cut-line, its dynamic and cuts off half way through the tournament.

• It depends on the type of game you launch. If you launch a Stroke-Fastplay game, everyone tee's off together and you do not see the other people take their shots (when I say that I mean, you do not see their character do the aiming, and taking the backswing, etc.). In this mode you are watching your character and the other player's balls are flying out in front of you or hopefully to the left or right of the fairway.

• In regular Stroke play it's the turn based method. Everyone watches you take your shot (they see your character) then after your shot is done, you go back to the tee box and watch the second guy aim and shoot, then repeat until everyone holes out. You start over again on the next hole.

• You can pause the game on XBL to grab a soda or a 'health' break. When you pause you'll get a countdown timer fired that displays on your screen in addition to your playing partners. There is no facility for people to vote the counter away. The penalties for not finishing the hole in the allotted time vary depending on the mode of play.

• Off-line you can save a game and save a shot. You can also copy those to memory units if you want to share with your buddies. The number of saved shots is dependent on the amount of free hard drive space you have, even then you can dump saved shots from the hard drives to memory units. The saved shots are small, the hard drive is big (in block sizes for saves), so I'm guessing many many thousands of saves.

• who asked about how TW & Links compare graphically.
Remember, I have a biased opinion)

Now having stated that I think the differences between the two games is staggering. We used every possible cycle of the GPU and CPU to wrench out as many polys and textures as possible to give players a stunning environment.

I'm not even sure where or how to begin describing all the differences. I would encourage people who have TW'04 to play a few holes that have water (lakes or ponds). Note how the water is lifeless and flat. In Links the water is vibrant and alive. When you free roam the camera to the edge where the water of the lake or pond meets the shore you'll see that it ebbs and flows against the sand. It really is lifelike. And I hate to use that term because it can be interpreted so differently from person to person.

The shadows in the game are dynamic and change with the time of day. On hole 1, it'll be a certain time of day, on hole 18 it's about 4 hours later. The sun and shadows move across the game world to account for this.

One *huge* difference to note is between the one course that is shared in both games. Play the first four holes of St Andrews on TW and on Links and you will undoubtedly see the huge differences between the courses. There are major swails and mounds throughout the fairways of St Andrews which seriously affect game play. In TW the appearance and play is very flat. Our goal has always been to be within 1 inch of accuracy in our courses and we've continued that level of detail with Links 2004.

Finally our wild life system is incredible. Find a pond in TW and observe the ducks. What do they do? Do the same in Links, you find the ducks, the roadrunners, the birds, the bears and more are all animated have behavior associated with them and give an extra layer of polish to the environments.

• The harder the difficulty setting the more realistic the physics, which make it harder to score. Remember our game is about realism. You probably won't see 400+ yard drives, unless you can get a 30mph tailwind, have maxed out your power points and have a severe elevation change (drop) with a lot of roll. I've yet to see a drive that far, but I guess it's possible just like in real life if all the factors are just right.

• I think those who play golf in real life will have an advantage when playing in Advanced mode. There is no swing gauge so the character's animation is your only clue to how much power you're applying to the ball. Uphill/Sidehill/downhill lies need to be factored in. There is no lie indicator so you have to observe the feet and legs of your golfer to determine their stance. Trajectory of the ball as it hits the green needs to be factored in (shallow flights balls are going to roll much more). Hitting out of the rough affects spin, experienced golfers know in what way (and hopefully why.) A distance ball doesn't spin as much and needs to be played differently then a hi-spin ball, and both need to be played differently then a premium spin/distance ball. Sometimes its better to punch the shot under the wind with a less lofted club, other times you want to throw it high and into the wind so it stops on a dime without any roll. Our goal, and I'm anxious for the feedback to find out if we hit it, was to make sure we have captured this essence of real golf in our game play. As I've played the game factoring in the exact same decisions then when I play in real life (btw I'm a 13 handicap) I've felt we've hit on the right issues.

• I believe the maximum *number of shots* you can take on a hole is 12 before we end that hole for you. Remember there are also timers counting down (in the background) on how long you have to complete the hole. So we've tried to cover both angles.

• (Game hint: after creating a profile we offer the opportunity to play through a quick tutorial. Go through it, you'll get some base skill points by completing it. I expect lots of people will skip because they're above things like tutorials and will be further behind in points then they need to be)

• We have challenges and skill events. Nothing is over the top, and many people here have found actually completing the challenges (which gets you cool unlocks) and skill events (which gets you lots of cash) have really helped them become better players in career mode and on-line.

• My favorites are the historical moments we have in the skill events of career mode. Here we put you in a spot that accurately recreates a moment in history (Like Johnny Miller's record open in 1973 at Oakmont for example). These historical moments are challenging and really makes you understand how amazing some of the real Pro's are to have done what they did in real life, when you struggle on your console to match their feats.

• *replying to whether or not it uses code from the old access software links game* We rewrote the engine from scratch (obviously since we've gone from a 2d to 3d engine). The networking has been rewritten (Xbox networking), and the AI code as well. What has been brought forward is a lot of our ball physics and ball flight code. Access and subsequently Microsoft has invested a ton in making sure the physics is as accurate as possible and whether on a console or a PC that stays the same.

• The guys who did our crowd animations did an incredible job with what they had to work with. We had very little budget allocated for the crowds and these guys performed some real magic to get them to look as good as they do now. Our crowds respond to the situation, an okay shot gets some polite clapping (including animations) and it scales up from there to where if you've done something super well (chip-in for eagle for instance) they really go crazy. The game won't change the gallery based on progress. This is definitely something we looked into and weren't able to get in this version. There are some other cool crowd affects...check out the gallery in the rain. They actually pull out umbrella's, which when I first saw this I thought was cool. I went back to check TW'03 to see if their crowds had umbrella's and was bummed to see they did, but then I check their crowds in clear weather and I noticed even on sunny days their crowds had umbrella's too. It was a small but nice touch by our artists and devs.

• On a few other threads I've noticed the question come up about how many arcadish elements found their way into Links. We do have a few console type additions to the game. An example of that which many have seen in the videos posted on the internet is what we called the "crush drive sequence". We know the first few times people see these they think okay cool, but I don't want to have to sit through these everytime. We addressed this in two ways: 1) The frequency these fire decreases the longer you play the game, meaning you will probably see a few of these when you first create your profile, and then they become less and less frequent. 2) We allow users to skip them altogether. If one of these sequences fires and you don't want to watch, mash the A button and it blows right by it. (my second peeve of TW is you have to watch every one of those cutesy animations/widescreen heartbeat moments and can't get back into game play) Balancing that goal of being a hardcore sim, but having enough fun elements to rope people into the game who may not have traditionally picked up a Golf game was super tough. In every situation we always came down on the side of being more a Sim, but I wanted to be upfront on these issues so when you guys saw one of these elements you didn't think Links had 'sold out' on you.

• Regarding your putting question, at the Advanced level I'm not sure anyone will find the putting necessarily easy. We provide great tools to approximate what the break is, the rest totally depends on the user to get the stroke (power) right when aiming in the right direction. It does become easier with practice, just like putting in real life.

• *in reponse to whether or not tournaments will be set at a specific skill level* The details on the official tournaments are still being worked out, so I can't answer this specific question. *IF* I had my way it would be on advanced only (but this is just my opinion.)

• To answer your question in the simplest terms, yes even a golf simulation can slow down if tuned for non-hdtv and 480p when switching to 1080i or 720p. To get framerates back to acceptable levels on 1080i or 720p you have to drop polycount or textures and the game doesn't look as good. You're correct there are business decisions behind game development, and targeting the visual display for 95% of the market is appropriate in my opinion.

Gallant Pig

I'm all over this game. It'll be the 3rd in the buy one get one free TRU. I'm a links expert so watch out.

tommy28

Guys/Gals i wont pull it up because this Links 2004 thread is taking off,,,and mine is ending up in the Gravyard

but id like to add the link herebecause there is a 10.00 off Links 2004 BestBuy Coupon in thereand i don`t want anyone to miss it....

also some video to get you pumped....

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=329172

Gallant Pig

Guys add my gamer tag to your list if you wanna play this game with me: Bob Roberts

tommy28

Hmmm Kick the Mods Arse and get awaaaay with it

sounds good!!!

Mercury28 Bob-ill put you on my friends list...

Gallant Pig

You going down my friend.

sjividen

Snowmizer...that was...[crying]...

Seriously, thanks a ton. That answered a ton of questions that I had, especially regarding how it will compare to TW 2004. I'm still perplexed at why IGN's reviews were so average. Oh well, I guess it's possible that they've only been exposed to the TW arcade style and haven't played a real sim.

You can bet I'll be burning up the lines tomorrow to see who's got it in stock.

Gallant Pig

I can't tell from Mizer's post. Is this game 720p?

young

hmmm... i wasn't going to get links, but this kind of way off base trash talk needs a RECKONING!

nickdawgy

People say TW2004 is easy and I still suck at that. I can't wait to be royally spanked by a human for a change.

sjividen

Well, so far I've called 2 Wal-Marts, 2 Gamestops, Circuit City, Target, and TRU. AND NOBODY HAS IT! Actually, most of them admitted to not even opening their deliveries yet, so maybe it is there. Has anybody scored a copy?

J_J

Thanks for the coupon!

Edison

EBGames says it will ship on the 12th so same date stores should get it then, and others will be Thursday the 13th.

nickdawgy

I just ordered mine from the MS Retail site w00t

GatorDeb

Nick when are you going to play me Top Spin?

nickdawgy

You said Wednesday didn't you? Maybe sometime then.

sjividen

Anybody find it yet?

nickdawgy

Should be out by now.

sjividen

Just got off the phone with a Gamestop and they claim to have 3 copies in stock. Of course, I refuse to give them my money because of their horrible used game prices (and new games prices; I stopped by last last week just to kill some time and saw a GC game--Rogue Ops, I think--marked at $55).

So, I'll continue to search for a copy at Target, Wal-Mart, or CC.