Story - Creating Mini-Golf in under a week!

[Igor Q. 519]

Hey everyone, IgorQ here
Recently I had the opportunity to work with the P1 group and create a Mini-Golf Game in Ylands in under 1 week!
Right now we are starting to finalize the game, add features, fix bugs, etc but it should be available to everyone on the workshop in 1-2 weeks from now.

Here is a story of how the game came to life!

Chapter 1 - The calling

While learning the new UI system on patch 0.14 I had @RedEagle_P1. message me asking for help with his weekly weekend party for a special guest @Adam Snellgrove .

After pondering for 60 seconds (the equivalent of microwavable rice) I came up with an idea that would change my life....for the next 5 days.

Chapter 2 - Development

We first started brainstorming ideas on what exactly would be interesting as a Mini Golf game, while keeping in mind that our friendly community

manager @Adam Snellgrove was a huge Scottish culture advocate, particularly towards kilts. Obviously we started coming up with TONS of different ideas..?.

 We even had people who tested different size/scale models such as one of the newer players @Arcos

We were happy using a Musket ball (one of the smallest ball-like objects in the game) being the appropriate size of a golf ball and although we

greatly wanted to make it into real golf (with people power driving a ball 20 meters in the air) the math was just a bit too difficult to pull off in

3D vectors (in under a week) and no one would have the patience to create golf courses that big so we settled on mini golf. At this point we

started gathering ideas online from google image search and I even had the help of my wife to make us concept art for possible golf courses.

Chapter 3 - Starting the framework

With everyone starting to get busy I had to start pulling double shift as I was in charge of not only leading people to build appropriate

courses, but also building one myself and making the entire back-end logic. It's an under-statement to say that I needed a few cups of coffee

at 10pm to keep me driving. ? Although the logic doesn't look very big here, getting the math vectors to work consistently and reliable

was a HUGE challenge taking up easily 1/4 my time. The biggest issue was making a golf ball bounce off different angled walls consistently. ?

At this point, we had our builders starting to get the foundation of their course sets going as we finished our brainstorming by Tuesday night.

@P1Ed Was starting the creation of a mini castle

@Arcos Was starting the creation of a Dragon Siege

@Yo HasLEGO Was starting a small mountain valley

@Igor Q.(myself) Started creating a small museum, as I am a huge fan of immersive environments.

Chapter 4 - Finishing the deed

While we had everyone scrambling to get things done, our super short time deadline (by Saturday morning) was obviously a major worry and compiling the maps was

no easy task, especially with me running around trying to make my own course and getting all the logic to work! Inevitably, I had lots of the creators asking me when was

the latest they could submit their map to me ? Fortunately,  some people were responsible enough to finish on time @P1Ed

At this point, other projects started coming in and the transformation from the first blueprints to the final product was awe shocking and was truly marvelous to behold. ?

@Arcos

 

@Yo HasLEGO

@Igor Q.(myself)

Chapter 5 - Finishing Up

While Friday night I was busy working, all those coffees I drank earlier from the week were making me build up an immunity to caffeine ?and although it was difficult

staying awake, I thankfully was able to power through and compile the maps and add (most) of the hit boxes to it. Thankfully,  I had @FavoryPluto and @Yo HasLEGO

show up early in the morning to help me do some quick bug testing at 6am.? (Talk about tight deadline in 6 hours!)

After fixing (most) of the bugs I passed out on the bed and luckily managed to wake up about 4 minutes before the weekend party with Adam at 2pm.?

Chapter 6 - The Grande Finale

With the group there, and everyone surprised I somehow managed to wake up, we were then able to start our event and play the game with @Adam Snellgrove.

Although there were a few small quirks, we were able to fix them pretty quickly/easily and play the game. For those interested on seeing the event,

it was recorded by @RedEagle_P1. on his Twitch Channel; video below.

It was quite an interesting experience since not only did @Adam Snellgrove get to play with us but he also answered some of the questions the community had and

we finally got to find out who was the best at Mini-Golf (Hint: It wasn't @RedEagle_P1. :V   )

 

 

This about covers my entire journey on making this Mini-Golf game from Tuesday Night until Saturday Morning. I hope you had a fun reading

Once I find out the next project I'm working on, I'll be sure to make another small documentary on it ?

Have a great weekend guys

-IgorQ

 

For those are interested in the experience of building a single Mini-Golf course from just one creator, the spoiler below will show @Arcos entire experience of what he did for his Dragon Siege Map.

Spoiler

How did you get involved in the golf game development?

Prior to to 0.14 I had always played ylands locally or on my own; However, something felt different this time and I decided to dive into getting invovled with the community.
Connecting through a good group of people on their discord It was announced that a welcoming event was to be help for Adam Snellgrove was to take place at the end of the week.
The end of the week? "Today is sunday! surely it must be a small gathering over some games," I had thought to myself. That is when I was asked by RedEagle_P1, who happened to see
my ship i created on an explore server, if I would be interested in assisting the development of a new game for the event. I have never used the editor before... ever.
However the group reassured me that this wouldbe a good learning experience and to feel free to ask any questions.

How or what lead to decisions behind designing your golf course?

To begin I had no idea what I was doing where I was going or why I found myself in the middle of this. Though, that feeling of uncertainty brough happiness to me as if I was
on the cusp of a grand adventure. That adventure would lead me down the path of connecting with helpful individuals whom were always there to answer my questions! The design
choices laid out were simple enough for me to begin my path to learning editor. Start small and work up from there, Can place blocks in a straight line, Check. Now can I place
blocks as a circle? Questions asked later, and I can! A course began to take shape though a new questioned loomed, "now what?" Detail they said and details about what with
such a wide range of possibilites what idea do I possible reach out and capture? Well luckily enough we had a theme for the party which was to be scottish: Dragons, Castles,
green hills, all of my childhood intrestest took to life as I began work on the miniture castle. Castle complete, check. "Now what?" Well a dragon breathing fire would certainly
look cool, (Thanks to Igor Q.), the plan was set. Dragon breathing fire onto castle, check. Now lets take my skills I learned and make it BIGGER! Fantasy castle surrounding
the dragon breathing fire on the minicastle! But something was lacking, the dreaded detail of interior design. However not all was lost to despair as ylands editor has a
lovely selection of blocks to choose from I am all to familier with from my grand travels in explore searching for items to bring the castle a breathe of life was icing on the
cake! Thus, is the adventure that began my journy into the world of ylands editor development that I hope isn't a short one because I had a great time being involved and
a big thank you to everyone who was there to answer my questions give me feedback and Bohemia Interactive for making a wonderful game. (Explore is how I got here but a moment
of silence for the beautiful ship lost in a server wipe because ship blueprints aren't possible yet :,(.  )

 

 

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

Somehow this game idea turned out to be super-doable because everyone could build 1 course and we all know mini-golf so everyone was like "I can do that". 

Great job to the whole team for pulling it off in a WEEK!! 

If you want to join our friendly building community, check out: https://discord.gg/Ju82y7g

 

Edited September 15, 2019 by RedEagle_P1.

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

@Adam Snellgrove do you think you can feature this topic! Some much cool stuff here!

[Adam Snellgrove 1451]

Sure stuff! And again Thanks to everyone, that participated and especially the creators behind the map. It was an absolute blast and it totally blew me away, the sheer ingenuity of the project. 

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

On 9/16/2019 at 7:35 AM, Adam Snellgrove said:

Sure stuff! And again Thanks to everyone, that participated and especially the creators behind the map. It was an absolute blast and it totally blew me away, the sheer ingenuity of the project. 

It was fun having you. You just seem like a really fun guy. You would make a good streamer

It would be awesome to see you lead some events! We will support! 

Edited September 17, 2019 by RedEagle_P1.

[Adam Snellgrove 1451]

I'd  love to and probably will closer to release ?

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

On 9/18/2019 at 1:47 AM, Adam Snellgrove said:

I'd  love to and probably will closer to release ?

Btw 0.15 is the last update before release right? 

[Adam Snellgrove 1451]

We're not even sure there will be a 'proper' 0.15 update, more like a series of hotfixes before 1.0 ?

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

Ins't November the last chance to release within Q4? Are the chances of a Q4 release now slim? 

Edited October 11, 2019 by RedEagle_P1.

[Adam Snellgrove 1451]

35 minutes ago, RedEagle_P1. said:

Ins't November the last chance to release within Q4? Are the chances of a Q4 release now slim? 

So far we're on schedule for a Q4 release.

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

4 hours ago, Adam Snellgrove said:

So far we're on schedule for a Q4 release.

Great news!