That’s one of the things beginning golfers are told when they first set foot on a golf course, and it’s something many veteran duffers mumble under their breaths just before they flub another short approach shot. For the legions of golfers who get their hacks on the virtual fairways of golf games, keeping their eyes on the ball used to be nearly impossible.
However, that will change when the next version of the highly acclaimed Links golf series—the undisputed leader of PC golf games—makes its debut on the Xbox. Links® 2004, a member of Microsoft Game Studio’s XSN Sports brand, is scheduled to reach store shelves in mid-October.
Matt Smith, the Microsoft Game Studio developer responsible for the game’s ball physics, thinks people will be as impressed by how the ball looks in Links 2004 as they will be with the way the ball performs. He said most of the game’s physics, including ball performance, were brought over directly from the PC versions. But, differences between PCs and the Xbox required changes to the way the ball was presented to players.
“If you hit the ball close to the hole, you can see it roll up to and teeter on the edge,” said Smith, referring to Links 2004. “Before it falls in the hole, you can see some of the ball hanging over the edge. The first time I saw that was a great moment.”
“You can just see so much more detail. You can see the dimples. You can see the logo. You can see the ball spin. That, to me at least, is one of the coolest things about the game.”
Other cool new features include online play via Xbox Live, a nifty real-time swing, and the ability to track your progress in tournaments and other events on XSNsports.com. Combine these features with Links’ tradition of excellence, and you have a game that has realism as deep as a St. Andrews bunker.
While watching the ball fall into the cup was an enthralling revelation for Smith, it also showed him where he needed to get busy.
“One of the things we had to work on was the interaction between the ball and the cup,” Smith said. “In Links on the Xbox, you can see what’s happening. You couldn’t see that level of detail in the PC versions. But this is the Xbox, and it exposed some of the missing detail. That’s where there were holes (in the game presentation).”
Not only can you see the ball rolling toward the hole—and sometimes into the jar—on putts, but you can also see incredible detail of the ball’s movement in replays. You’ll see the logo and the spin of the ball. The game will ship with a wide assortment of user-selectable logos, including those of a couple of leading ball manufacturers.
Links 2004 offers a choice of balls. Some are designed to give players more control over their shots, while others are set up to give players more distance. Smith said getting those characteristics into the game, in a way that players would notice, was simply a matter of tweaking a ball’s properties.
“That wasn’t too difficult,” he said. “We don’t have separate models for each ball. We give them different properties—it spins easier, it flies farther off the club face. We give the ball’s performance a boost to give you the sense that it’s flying farther or coming off the club face faster.”
While making the game for the Xbox created additional work, it also provided Smith with the means of getting the job done. Because he was working on the Xbox, he was able to build a debugging tool to work on solving the presentation problem.
“I could get a close-up view of replays,” Smith said. “I could use the [controller] triggers to control the ball’s movement. I could look at it in close-up detail. I could see how it flew through the air. I could see how it went through leaves.”
He said there are aspects of building games for the Xbox that made his work easier, such as its one-size-fits-all configuration. When working on PC titles, developers have to make decisions about scaling the game, so that it is playable on high-end and low-end computers.
“For an Xbox game, we have a specific platform that can do all the things a powerful computer can do,” he said. “We can do all the whiz-bang things people associate with PC games because the Xbox is powerful enough to do all the things we want it to do.”
And that includes giving video golfers the ability to—finally—keep their eyes on the ball.
