Here is a list of the functionality and improvements that have made it into this release.

New Real Course Release - Kissing Tree in Texas

We have released a new official FREE real course in Texas called Kissing Tree. Built as a fun to play resort course it offers a number of risk and reward holes as is great fun to play. http://kissingtree.com/blog/thrive/golf-chat-kissing-tree-course-architect-gary-stephenson/

Recorded Rounds, Compete Against Friends and Save Shots

Under the solo game type you will now see 4 tabs: Local Recorded rounds, Friends Recorded Rounds, Saved Shots and Create New Game. Recorded Rounds. Players can now select to record their round either locally to their hard drive or to both hard drive and the PG cloud making them available to their Steam friends. The friend rounds tab contains the 20 most recent rounds recorded by friends.

Saved Shots. Players can now save shots to their local hard drive for replaying later.

You can lock a recorded round which means that when playing against that round, you must play at the same level and from the same tees . If the round is not locked you can force the game to use the same tees as the recorded round by selecting ‘match tees’ in the pre round screen. To save time on loading, Solo Play saved rounds and recorded rounds are only updated on game start.

Physics improvements

As Perfect Golf is now compatible with a much larger selection of Launch monitors this seemed like an ideal time to cross reference our numbers for ball flight and reaction on landing with direct comparisons to real shots in a much wider selection of scenarios. This meant that we could for the first time, gather and compare shot data from a myriad of short shots and bunker shots which had not been possible before. It also meant that using a large number of real golfers hitting real shots in full size simulators, we could really start to fine tune the ball flight and ball reaction on landing on a much wider range of shots. After comparing the data we made some changes to the physics calculations which brought PerfectGolf even closer reality meaning that a player’s creativity could be rewarded while at the same time reducing the number of ‘go to’ shot’s that people had become reliant upon in almost all scenarios (such as the very high spinning pitch). Further to this, another goal was to blur the lines between the different shot types in the ‘scoring zone’ ie a part ‘Full shot’ swing, the pitch, lob shot and chip. Rather than having one basic shot that would fit the bill for a certain distance and lie, now the player has the opportunity to create realistic bump and run shots from off the green due to our improved fairway physics or they can play a 3/4 Lob wedge and spin it out close to the hole. Another option is to pitch it and have the ball grab and release or lob the ball up high from short ranges without having the unrealistic ability to constantly stop the ball on a dime. We have Increased the amount of overswing power that can be accessed when chipping which helps when playing those bump and runs around the green. Bunker shots have also received some physics love and now the ball behaves more realistically on shots where the ball is caught slightly fat or thin on levels above Amateur. We have separated out Fairway firmness from Green Firmness allowing for a greater variety of game play settings and shot results so for example you can now play with normal fairways and soft greens if you choose to.

Green Surface Options

We have added two new settings to the putting options when creating a game. Previously in all golf games and even in PerfectGolf, the greens have always been, well...Perfect! This is quite obviously not the case IRL and even the greens on the PGA tour have small imperfections which can cause the ball to move slightly offline (or even back online as the case may be!) Using robot putting devices the ball can miss the hole between 1 and 2 times on even a perfectly hit straight 10 foot putt and so again in our search for golf sim perfection we have added this as an option to the game. You now have 3 green settings to choose from: Perfect - defaults to this green type which is the same as before and is billiard table smooth Realistic - behaves very similar to a PGA tour green Bumpy - Slightly less manicured courses or courses where the weather often stops the green surfaces from being as smooth ie. Links courses.

Enhanced Cup Physics

The ball/cup physics has been improved so that the ‘vacuum’ cup bug of the past few builds which enabled players to ram the ball into the hole at high speeds when putting has been eliminated. You will now have be more accurate with your line and your pace too as many of the putts that would previously been ‘sucked’ into the hole will now lip out if offline or jump out if struck too firmly. Three new Putting mode cameras have been added, designed to make it easier to play real time swing modes where putter movement is now more visible. These can be selected in the settings menu and you can also toggle through them using the camera toggle key or ‘Dpad left’ function on the controller when on the green. At first this change will make putting seem more difficult but once you realign yourself to the new pace requirements, things will become much easier. Overhitting putts which used to work well will now likely result in a lot of lipouts or the ball jumping over the hole. A little bit of practice will help here until you get a feel for the new physics

Swing Method Balancing

In conjunction with the enhanced cup physics which have made putting a little more difficult we have adjusted and balanced the skill / swing types: 3 Click: We have tweaked a few of the difficulty settings for various swing types. 3C has had the long game balanced by reducing the spin axis (sidespin) penalty for missed ‘snaps’. This will enable the pro and tour pro players to miss the ‘snap’ slightly on purpose to help control the curve of the ball. Larger missed ‘snaps’ will also have less of an effect. Motion swing and RTS-M: The effect of offline swing paths on putts has been reduced and also the tempo factor has been removed from putting on tour pro difficulty levels. The timing of full and part shots has been altered so that time spent in the ‘overswing’ area is now counted when calculating the tempo of the swing which makes over swung shots less difficult to time correctly. The amount of the overswing penalty has been halved making it a more practical risk and reward All swing types: Fine tuning of fat and thin shots for flop shots and bunker shots. Motion swing and RTS - M tempo, controller swing path and 3C snap penalties have all been tweaked for fat and thin shots.

Improved Wind

Improved Wind effects on the ball in lower wind speeds and added the ability to change the wind in the game set up screen. It will default to your preferred setting in Weather Settings but you can now change it on a round by round basis. Restored the fluctuating wind meter on Pro and Tour Pro. We felt that it’s possible IRL to feel the wind changing as you plan your shot and it was unfair to hide this detailed information from the player at any level. We will be revisiting Wind again in a future release ------------------------

All new AI player Implementation and skills settings

We have rewritten the AI code so that the golfers play much more like a human player, are faster and a greater variety of different skill levels can be achieved. The computer player skill level for a listed shot type affects how likely he is to be able to pick a good shot from all the choices available to him. The Accuracy affects his ability to hit the snap on a particular shot he has chosen The State of Mind affects whether his is always trying to hit the longest shot with a club he can and whether he sticks to the aim points planted on the course by the designer. Aggressive players will overswing more. The Skill level of the golfer (In Player Difficulty) will affect how much the missed snap affects the trajectory of the ball

New ‘in game’ Controller menu X Key

We have an all new in game controller menu which can be accessed with the Blue X button. This brings up a menu of several items that were previously difficult to access due to combinations of buttons on the controller. Items such as the original settings menu, scorecard, leaderboard, spot pin, tend pin, move tee, drop and the practice options were all added to this menu

Bug Fixes

Bug fixes to several modes of play including matchplay bug where players still in hole could be ignored Added 3 person points alt shot to list of mops for that time when you have 6 players Fixed pin tending on Alt Shot Fixed plugged lies on Alt Shot following the player instead of the shot resulting in people seeing plugged lies in the green or outside the bunker Fixes to hazard golf. Improvements to the Simulator Console App Improvements to the tournament API to allow for scoring events like hazard golf and stableford to be played using the api Pressing the left Stick (RH) while in drop mode will allow you to position the drop within the defined drop area Many more minor bug fixes

Known Issues with this Release

Sometimes the end game routing can take up to 45 seconds to complete expecially when using a controller. This affects some poeple and not others. Occasionally when playing against a recorded round some shots will be lost and you will see a post shot screen at which point they will be moved to their second shot without the first shot being played Occasionally a computer player will encounter a situation he is unable to find a shot to play. We have a timer that will reset him to have another attempt which runs after 60 seconds which cures 99% of these problems but there were a couple of occasions where beta testers had to resume in order to get him to hit out of hundreds of rounds played with the AI

[ 2016-12-08 22:49:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Jack Nicklaus Perfect Golf is a next generation golf game from Perfect Parallel Studios an independent game developer and published by Perfect.Golf Inc.

High resolution visuals, highly accurate ball flight physics developed using state of the art launch monitors, Jack Nicklaus Perfect Golf is the best simulation of golf released to date.

Jack Nicklaus Perfect Golf

Acclaimed golf course designer Jack Nicklaus—perhaps best known for his record 18 professional major championship victories in addition to his global portfolio of award-winning courses and host venues for the game’s most significant events - has teamed with Perfect Golf to bring you an all new Golf Game. Expect many of the great golf courses designed by Nicklaus to be released for Perfect Golf in the coming months as well as many designs that never made it to the real world

Game Play Modes

The default game comes with well over 20 different game play modes including StrokePlay, MatchPlay and Skins scoring methods and supports, many team based modes of play including Foursomes and Greensomes (Alternate Shot), Better ball and Scramble

In addition an online MOP editor will be made available post release to allow users to create their own modes of play and share them with the community

Multiplayer

The game has an integrated multiplayer lobby with matchmaking and course checking to give you a seamless experience in finding online players to play against. Visit the lobby and join in the chat and find a game to play, or set up a private game for you and your friends using a password protected online game

Highly Accurate and Detailed Courses / Course Forge

The game comes with over 12 courses inclduing a driving range and a dedicated practice facility. All our official courses are fully georeferenced to the real world so the sun will rise and set in the correct place at the correct time for the day of the year.

Nicklaus Design Course Forge is our Golf Course design software and is used in house by Nicklaus Design for all their golf course designs. You will get to use the same tools that one of the most award winning designers of all time uses. While it will not available at release, pending the conclusion of negotiations with vegetation content developers it will be released very soon. Already there are many user course creations that have been created by the community for the community. Community developed content can be played in Perfect Golf so long as you keep your game updated to the latest version.

Advanced API for Tournament and Swing Integration

We have built an API for external tournament sites to be able to fully integrate into the game for online real time scoring and tracking. Tournaments set up on remote sites will show up inside the tournament lobby giving players a wide range of different tournaments to enter every week from public to private to official Jack Nicklaus Perfect Golf Tournaments. In addition we also have an API to allow anyone to develop a hardware integration to Perfect Golf. Already people in the community are using these API to work on WII integration and other items. We have several official integrations with Launch Monitor companies and Simulator Systems Integrations are also in development.

Full Controller Support

The game comes with support for almost all controllers. We have not left Controllers as an afterthought, almost everything you can do with a mouse in the game you can do with the controller from moving your ball on the tee to aiming, dropping and moving between main and overhead cameras all without the need to have a pointer on the screen.

Multiple Camera Angles

We provide the player with many choices for Cameras. From the player camera, to the spectator camera to the follow camera there are many ways to watch the game unfold. In addition we have several different replay cameras to choose from after the shot has finished fully integrated into the multiplayer online experience.

Highly customisable Options

Whether you want to change the contrast, brightness or saturation of the golf courses, add a little vignetting, set up your sun rays and lens flares, add a sky scattering effect change the weather, change how far back the camera follows the ball etc pretty much everything is configurable inside the game.

Multiple Difficulty Levels and Swing Types

Jack Nicklaus Perfect Golf offers 5 difficulty levels and unlimited assist customisation to allow anyone to set the game up to play as easy or as difficult as they like. Do you like par to be a challenge or do you want to have a shot at birdie on every hole. Whatever your style Perfect Golf has a setting that will work for you.

We also have many different swing types from two swing meters to motion swing with the mouse to real time integrated swing with the controller or mouse. There are several simulation options too.

True Time Of Day

Configure the time of day you want to play and watch the lighting change as the day progresses. Not only that but everything is accurate to real life as the sun will move at the correct angle and rotation for the course being played assuming the course has been properly georeferenced in Course Forge.

Customisable Green Speeds and Course Conditions

Jack Nicklaus Perfect Golf offers totally customisable green speeds based on official STIMP measurements from 8 to 14. In addition there are three firmness settings that can be used to set up a different challenge each time you play.

The Free Camera

At any time engage the free camera and go for a wander around the golf course. While you are waiting for your opponent to hit you could be lining up your putt or taking a look down the hole at the green or simply moving to an aerial view of the course to watch your opponent hit. Our innovative free camera lets you take control of the way you want to watch the round unfold.


Jack Nicklaus Perfect Golf has been designed from the outset to be a community driven game with regular content and feature releases based on player feedback. We have spent a long time in early access trying to get the game to be the best golf game on the market. We have incorporated many community suggestions during this process.

While Jack Nicklaus Perfect Golf is still a work in progress we will continue to develop, update and imporve the game over time.