
Show HN: My first game, minimal procgen gravity golf inspired by Desert Golfing - mrspatula
http://astro.golf
======
mrspatula
Hi HN,

I just launched this little game of mine - Astro Golf. You can think of it as
Desert Golfing but in space, where the gravitation pull of the planets create
some interesting levels. I think it was on an HN comment that I first heard
about Desert Golfing many moons ago, so it felt fitting to post this back
here.

All the levels are procedurally generated, and are guaranteed to be hole-in-
one-able. I did this by computationally testing a huge amount of levels
offline.

This is my first game, and I learnt a lot doing it. Happy to answer your
questions! I hope you enjoy it.

Peace

~~~
albi_lander
So simple, yet incredibly fun, well done! Could you share how long it took to
build it ? I've been thinking about creating a small game, for fun, and to
learn stuff along the way, and I am wondering how much time it would take me.

~~~
mrspatula
Thanks. The goal of this project was to actually get something out there, so I
deliberately set myself quite a small goal. I probably got "80%" of the way
there in 2-3 weekends back in March, then I got busy with some other stuff. I
didn't want to let this become another project that falls to the wayside, so I
then spent another ~6 weekends polishing, refining, etc in the last 2 months.
It was a great learning experience, and I would 100% recommend making a game.
It's such an interesting mix of programming, animation, design, art, sound.

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furyofantares
I loved Desert Golfing, and also love gravity games (Angry Birds Space is
great, and Mario Galaxy is one of my top games ever) but I really wasn’t
enjoying this until I read a comment here mentioning hard mode being more fun.
I never would have tried out hard mode on my own, or bought the full game, due
to the main mode being so hard and, for me, unrewarding.

I’m finding hard mode easier in a way. I learn something between each shot,
where I don’t necessarily when I land on different planets and have to make a
brand new shot. This also just keeps my motivation up. Coming into a new level
in Desert Golfing I usually see some way to get the hole in one, and can
evaluate less risky plans that make progress — I get very little of that in
this game. So having a mode that lets me learn from each shot helps.

I think what I’d really like is a mode that resets unless you land on the
target planet. Let me make the putt. The aforementioned ghost arrow would be
nice too.

~~~
mrspatula
Thanks, that's interesting to hear. I need to think about how to make hard
mode more discoverable.

I do think you can actually get good at zen mode as well, but it takes a bit
of practice. Having played a lot, I can usually set up the trickshot I
intended and get it most of the way there - and when it doesn't, it's usually
quite funny anyway. It's definitely a steeper learning curve than DG.

I'm definitely coming round to the idea of a ghost arrow in hard mode. Your
idea about a shot and a putt is also very good - perhaps that could even be
the default mode..

Great feedback!

~~~
furyofantares
Oh I’ve got no doubt it’s possible to get good at zen mode — just a brutal
learning curve for me that I wasn’t going to make it past without the helpful
tip from another poster. :)

~~~
mrspatula
Yeah, perhaps it is a bit too hard for a mass appeal. I'll have a think about
what I can tweak. :)

------
Insanity
I don't normally install games on my phone, but this looks fun so I just
installed it. Seems like something I could entertain myself with for some
time!

Also kudos on having a Linux version <3

~~~
mrspatula
Thank you! The entire game was developed on Linux as well ;)

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baxtr
Interesting! Including the iOS game? I would not think so?

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mrspatula
You're right, I used a mac to build the iOS version but it's literally copy
and paste then hit build in Xcode.

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gorgoiler
Finished the demo and enjoyed the experience. Fun! Thank you!

Some ideas that would have made it even more fun for me, though which might
change the game too much from your original vision:

Ghost arrow: show what shot I played last time, so I can tweak my strategy.

Reset: some sort of gesture to quickly go back to the start, so I can tweak
based on the ghost arrow.

Escape velocity: a fun part of orbital mechanics, and a way to penalize me for
just using a “hit as hard as I can” strategy where the only changes I make are
shot direction.

Hard mode was the most fun because getting a cool hole-in-one felt really fun.
I almost missed that hard mode was even an option — the help screen says “hard
mode” so I assumed that was the mode I was in, but it turns out it was the
button to play in hard mode, which turned out to be a lot more fun because of
the reset mechanic.

~~~
spatulagames
Thanks for the detailed feedback - some really good points.

Ghost arrow is something I thought of, but I was concerned it would make the
game too easy.

Reset: you can long press without dragging to reset. There's a tutorial-prompt
for it, but it only comes up when you appear to be stuck in a gravity well
(which can happen).

Escape velocity: I did have this initially, but playtesters found it very
frustrating and preferred to see a crazy figure-of-16 through lots of planets.
I understand your point of view though.

That's very good feedback on hard mode - I wonder what I can change to make
that more obviously a button. I personally prefer hard mode too.

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blairbeckwith
This is brilliant! I've put hours in to Desert Golf, and this is an
improvement on every level.

In particular, I find it much more relaxing that Desert Golf, which I think
comes down to a couple of factors. The design is one – the cute graphics and
colours really help. Music is another – you've done a great job there.

I think the most important bit is the gameplay though – with not showing the
score constantly, I'm not as worried about trying to keep my stroke count as
close as possible to the hole number constantly. The gravity dynamic also adds
enough whimsy that I don't feel like I "absolutely should have got a hole in
one" like I did on some holes in Desert Golf.

All in all, great job! Instant purchase from me and I think I'll be spending a
lot of time with it.

~~~
mrspatula
Thank you, those are very kind words.

Have you discovered Hard Mode in the menu? That might scratch the high-
pressure itch if you every get bored of relaxing!

PS: and please tell your Desert Golfing friends!

~~~
CathedralBorrow
Yeah I'll second that. This game -- on hard mode -- is hitting exactly the
same notes as Desert Golf but even better. Super relaxing and very strong on
the "one more hole". I've been playing on and off throughout the day, up to
level... 58. And now 61 because of course I couldn't just put the phone down.

Extremely impressed that this is your first game. There's a ton of polish in
there. Love how pleasing the animation between holes is; you can just tell
that went through many iterations until someone with the exact vision said
"Yep, there it is".

~~~
mrspatula
Thanks - people seem to be really liking hard mode!

That level transition took a lot of iterations indeed - I'm glad people are
noticing it!

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xelti
The gravity mechanic is really amusing! I was actually laughing at a
particularly poor shot I made that somehow went into the hole after a minute
or so of fast-forwarding. I also really like your use of typography in the
tutorials. Well done.

~~~
mrspatula
Thank you. Yeah, a fluke trickshot after 10 loopy orbits feels pretty epic!

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robodale
Congratulations on making something and seeing it through to the end (launch).
I love posts on HN like this, people like you out there hacking away,
learning, and make something useful/fun/cool like this. Bravo!

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soared
Odd bit of feedback for you and others - you should register your domain and
put some placeholder content that at least a week before posting the link
everywhere. Many corporate firewalls block brand new domains!

~~~
mrspatula
That's a really good point. Currently I have astro.golf just set up to
redirect, so there's no "content" as such. How do you think that could work?

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Waterluvian
Feedback:

It says any level can be beaten in one shot. Okay challenge accepted. Give me
a quick way to reset if my first shot fails. (or if there is, make it more
obvious please)

I love how fast it loads and how seamless it is. I love love love games that
don't have level transition screens.

Okay I think I figured out how to reset. Hold down tap when not moving. But it
doesn't reset the shot count. Why not??

~~~
mrspatula
What you're looking for is "Hard Mode" which you can access in the menu. Good
luck ;)

As for the reset not resetting the shot count: that would be too easy!

~~~
Waterluvian
Aha perfect!

Also idea for a power up if you're so inclined: when you get a hole in one on
normal mode, visualize the gravity wells for the next level or two.

~~~
mrspatula
That's a nice idea - might be a bit tricky though. I'll consider it.

I like the ghost arrow idea a lot - I'm thinking of adding that to hard mode.

~~~
Waterluvian
Yeah by all means you don't have to implement what everyone suggests.

Another suggestion: replay shot.i just had a hilariously roundabout hole in
one. I wish i could replay it to grab a video to share (and therefore
advertise your game!)

~~~
mrspatula
Yeah, the replay is an idea I'd like to implement - just need to work out how
to do it easily without going down a rabbit hole..

~~~
Cogito
Surely just record the last shot parameters? or even all shot parameters?

As long as the simulation is deterministic you'll be good to go.

Given a level and a list of velocities any sequence of shots should be
reproducible.

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melonbar
Wow, absolutely fantastic mate! So cool; a friend and I tried our hands at
making a game in Unity called Galactic Putt a while back, with a similar riff,
but sadly the physics got the best of us and we never finished. It is really
inspiring to see someone with a one man team put out something so stellar.
Keep up the good work!!!

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codesushi42
Congratulations on your first game, and keeping it simple and fun.

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heyitsguay
Great game! Purchased. I think you could have a lot of fun visually by giving
the ball some trailing particle effects or some other creative coloration of
the trajectory. Especially on the long shots that loop around a bunch of
planets, i want to see the curve I've traced out!

~~~
mrspatula
It's probably a bit buggy, but there's an Easter egg if you tap 3 times on the
middle right planet during the loading screen.

~~~
heyitsguay
That's too awesome a feature to keep hidden away as an easter egg! Your trail
should start looking cooler and cooler the longer it continues on a single
shot, and you should be able to unlock designs by doing stuff like making long
shots, orbiting around a planet several times, making N holes in one in a row,
etc.

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Xophmeister
I remember playing a game like this when I was a kid (25ish years ago) at
school, except it wasn't golf, but rather a two player game where you shot
gravity-assisted missiles at each other (think Worms-in-space). I remember it
being on an Acorn Archimedes, but it may have been a PC.

~~~
0-_-0
Warheads? I played it too!

~~~
TeMPOraL
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu3jzhwK60A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu3jzhwK60A)

This one? If so, I played it three! One of those non-AAA games I most fondly
remember from my teenage years!

------
arayh
Great game! Reminds me of Gravitee which was also a blast to play, but
requires Flash
[https://www.kongregate.com/games/funkypear/gravitee](https://www.kongregate.com/games/funkypear/gravitee)

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azhenley
This is a lot of fun and so simple! Congrats on the release.

What was your experience with using Unity? I have been dabbling with Game
Maker for the last few months and find it fairly easy to work with, but I
haven't attempted anything for mobile.

~~~
mrspatula
Thanks! I personally wouldn't use Unity again. I've run into so much trouble
and so many little bugs. An example: just yesterday I updated Unity itself (a
minor patch upgrade), and it broke half the links in my project, I had to
manually downgrade some official unity packages to get it to compile, etc. I
also find the fact that C# is garbage collected to be very annoying - in a
real-time application, I just want total control over when stuff is allocated
and deallocated. Even in a simple game such as Astro Golf, I spent ages
tracking down silly allocations that lead to stutter-inducing GC. Unity
physics is also a right PITA - I could go on and on..

~~~
asdf21
Wow, surprised to hear this! I had assumed in a project that large and
longstanding, most of the bugs would have been smoothed out.

~~~
mrspatula
So had I :(

A lot of these bugs seem to also go unfixed, I think with the intention that
you pay for Unity Pro which gives you source code access to the engine and you
can work around them / fix them yourself.

~~~
meheleventyone
Pro doesn't give you source code access, just you need to at least have a Pro
license to buy source code access (which is very expensive).

~~~
spatulagames
Ah, my misunderstanding. That's good to know. I imagine Unity pays more
attention to Pros though? If you're free and you open tickets / post on the
forums, they seem to just get totally ignored.

~~~
meheleventyone
Each level gets better support, right up to getting roving Unity engineers in
to help you out.

I don't think they are deliberately leaving bugs unfixed in order to up sell
people though. More its just an enormous software project with an awful lot of
people using it in lots of different ways. Basically an enormous surface area
to try to tackle.

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coldcode
I built a game based on gravity and other physics and pool a long time ago on
iOS which did not go anywhere; possibly because the next game that came out on
the same day was called "Angry Birds".

~~~
mrspatula
Oh man, that really sucks. Getting anywhere in the app store is so difficult
nowadays. I'm a complete marketing rookie but atm I'm just trying out random
ideas to see what sticks.

~~~
baxtr
Has anything sticked so far that you could share? I am also thinking to do a
small little video app.

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pohl
Brilliant first game!

How does one make the in-app purchase? Do I have to complete multiple levels
in an on-boarding flow first?

Edit: I found it: I needed to play 10 holes.

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CathedralBorrow
Great job on completing it, and great job on nailing the same beautiful
simplicity of Desert Golfing, but with planetary gravity.

~~~
mrspatula
Thank you, I was hoping it would appeal to the DG crowd. I couldn't go as full
minimalism as DG since I felt that some explanation / tutorial was necessary
(the game being a little less obvious). I also wanted to play more on a "Le
Petit Prince" theme!

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kid_cubi
That's really neat !! :) You should add a trail to the golf ball so we can see
its trajectory.

~~~
mrspatula
There's a little easter egg if you triple press on the big top right planet
during loading

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sohkamyung
On Android, is there a way to restart the whole game from the first hole? If
not, I presume erasing user data will do the same thing. :-)

In Zen Mode, a way to retry a previous level would be nice, for practice and
to try to get a better score, even if it's not a hole in one.

~~~
mrspatula
No way to restart the game - you'll have to reinstall :)

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martin-adams
Such a great game. This is exactly the type of pick up and play game I enjoy.
Very well done!

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thescribbblr
I think a leaderboard feature would be awesome an a way to share the score
with friends

~~~
mrspatula
Do you mean to compare scores after a specific number of levels?

~~~
thescribbblr
Absolutely

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randrews
This is a great game! One request: there's a way to turn off the music but the
sound effects keep playing. Could you make that button turn off all sound, not
just the music? Or add another one to turn off the effects as well?

~~~
mrspatula
Thank you - that seems sensible, I'll fix that shortly.

~~~
randrews
Thanks! That'll make me play this game a lot more. :)

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spatulagames
Presumably you want to listen to music over it?

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randrews
Mostly I just want to play it in situations where my phone making sounds might
bother people.

~~~
spatulagames
Can you turn down the volume? On Android, there are separate volumes for
games/music/videos, and for notifications - are you on iOS perhaps?

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choward
I don't usually install apps (especially games) with in app purchases. The
only time I sometimes do is when I know what they are up front. Can you
explain what the in app purchases are in the description?

~~~
fatboy
You can expand a section lower down on its App Store page to see what's the
iaps are. In this case I think it said unlock full game.

~~~
spatulagames
That's good to know. Not sure if that's the case on Android - I don't think it
is.

~~~
fatboy
Ah yeah, I'd not clocked your link takes us to the relevant App Store so I'd
assumed it was an iOS only game.

It's great by the way! I've played a bit of desert golf over the years after
reading a HN comment about it, and your game is a delightful improvement =]

~~~
spatulagames
Yup, it's a smart link that should redirect to the right platform
(hopefully..)

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robertbalent
I was little frustrated in normal mode. But hard mode is so much fun.

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frou_dh
I don't know whether you have access to the "Taptic Engine" API on iOS, but a
tactile ping when striking the ball and thuds when it hits a planet surfaces
could be nice.

~~~
spatulagames
That is a nice idea indeed. I'll have to look into it. I'm always a bit
concerned about vibration in games since you don't know how intense it will be
on different devices: it can be very tacky if it is over-the-top.

~~~
frou_dh
Some of the good quality iOS apps that aren't even games use the TE in
multiple places, so it definitely can be used tastefully.

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jefftime
Really well done! This is a very great idea and well executed

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meritt
Mostly just curious: Why is the android version 9MB, the iOS version 62MB, and
3 different desktop versions a fixed 22MB?

~~~
mrspatula
I really don't know. I'd like the iOS version to be lighter, but I'm at the
whim of Unity. I've tried a couple of ideas to make the iOS bundle smaller,
but no luck.

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ablation
This is very, very good. Congratulations.

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turbo_fart_box
Cool game! Played till the end. Does this suppose family sharing? Would buy it
instantly if it did

~~~
mrspatula
I don't know if it supports family sharing - do I need to opt in manually on
my end? It's just a normal IAP to unlock the game, so if IAPs work with family
sharing then it should be OK

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thescribbblr
Awesome, downloading now!!!

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LoSboccacc
why no portrait?

it also wouldn't be bad to have the previous launch vector shown

~~~
mrspatula
Hmm, the game can be played in portrait with one thumb without much loss. The
only thing that has an orientation is the shot count.

~~~
LoSboccacc
and the notification drawer, app switch gesture etc, the orientation change
has a lot of annoying side effect on the os itself

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ensiferum
Looks like a rip-off of the good old "spaced penguin" shockwave (flash?) game.

~~~
mrspatula
Hadn't heard of spaced penguin, but I make no claim that the gravity mechanic
is original. There are a long trail of similar games going back to the 80s!

