- Designing for the Needs of the Coin-Op Market
- Going Online All the Time in Real Time
- Restructuring the Tournament System
- Introducing Player Customizations and Other Options
- Offering a Helping Hand
- Animating the Golfer with Motion Capture Technology
- Making the Game a Little More Interesting with Hole-N-Win
- Selling the Idea Back Home
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Animating the Golfer with Motion Capture Technology
The decision to use motion capture technology to animate the golfer in Golden Tee LIVE was nothing revolutionary. The technology was readily available, and had even been considered for use in Golden Tee Fore!. Back then, however, the hardware, particularly the video card that was available at the time, was ill-equipped to handle the burden of a true 3D golfer. The performance of the game would have taken such a hit that it would have looked worse than the 2D golfer used in Golden Tee Fore!.
By the time the game came up for its next revision, however, the hardware was powerful enough to handle a fully 3D golfer along with all of the other demands of the game. In addition, the decision to include a female golfer in the game and other player customizations made it imperative to use motion capture. With motion capture, the developers could create two animated golfers—one male and one female—and then wrap them in different skins for race and ethnicity and in different clothing. Motion capture also gave developers more flexibility to adjust the golfer’s stance to accommodate different elevations in terrain. In almost every way, motion capture was a much more efficient and realistic way of animating the golfer, and now that the technology supported it, IT was ready to implement it in the new version of Golden Tee.