Alright, let me tell you about my little adventure with this “cascada golf” thing. It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing, but hey, that’s how you learn, right?
So, I started out thinking, “Golf course, right? How hard can it be?” Famous last words, I swear. I jumped straight into trying to build out some terrain. I grabbed some heightmap data – basically a grayscale image that tells you how high each point on the ground should be. Finding a decent one that looked remotely like a golf course was the first hurdle. Ended up tweaking one I found online for way too long in some image editing software.
Then came the fun part – getting that heightmap into something usable. I tried a few different methods, mainly messing around with terrain generation tools. There are a bunch of free and paid ones out there, but getting them to play nice with my existing setup was a pain. I spent a solid afternoon just wrestling with import settings and resolution parameters. The initial result looked more like a jagged mountain range than a rolling green fairway. Oops.
Okay, new plan. I decided to ditch the super-realistic approach and go for something a bit more stylized. Think simpler shapes, less detail. That meant hand-sculpting the terrain. Tedious? Absolutely. But at least I had more control. I used a terrain editor, basically painting elevation up and down. Slowly, painfully, a basic golf course shape started to emerge.
Next up: the green itself. This had to be smooth, obviously. I used a combination of flattening tools and some very careful manual adjustments. I probably spent way too long making sure the transitions between the fairway and the green were seamless. Details, details, right?
Now, the fun part – adding the “golf” part! I needed a ball, a club, and some basic physics to make it all work. I grabbed a simple sphere model for the ball. For the club, I used a very basic capsule shape – no fancy modeling here. Getting the ball to react realistically to the club swing was another can of worms. I played around with force and direction, tweaking values until it felt somewhat believable. Still needs work, to be honest.
Finally, I added a basic camera system so I could actually see what I was doing. Just a simple follow-cam that tracks the ball. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.
It’s far from perfect, but I can now technically “play” a very rudimentary game of golf on my procedurally generated (ish) course. The biggest takeaway? Terrain generation is hard. Physics is harder. And I need to practice my golf swing, even in the digital world. It was a fun learning experience, though. And I’m already thinking about what to tackle next – maybe some AI for other players? Or perhaps a more realistic putting mechanic? We’ll see where the fairway takes me.