Super Video Golf News

Howdy golfers! It's a new month so, in what's become a tradition around here, it's time to look at what's coming soon to Super Video Golf - let's jump right in!

Firstly I've been working on a selection of cosmetic changes. Thanks to a suggestion over on the discussions I've updated the profile editor to allow changing the colour of balls. This means that, for those who prefer, the 'vanilla' balls now have a greater range of possibilities. Simply go to the profile editor and click on the palette flyout to choose a new colour for your ball.



Colours are also synchronised in network games, so other players will also be able to see your customisations.

Version 1.15 brought with it night mode and a new lighting system - so in 1.16 I've updated avatar materials to take advantage of that. Once the update is available you'll be able to supply illumination and reflection maps to avatar models via the Workshop tools. As an example, allow our friendly neighbourhood cyborg to demonstrate his new neon trim 😁:



Another suggestion from the community was the option to have bigger crowds. While still in the early stages (the model placement needs to be fine-tuned) I have implemented this in the Options menu. It's now possible to select from anywhere between a group of casual observers all the way up to a tournament crowd:




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The biggest new feature coming soon, however, is the new Career mode. I mentioned it briefly at the end of last month's retrospective post, and now that things are a little more baked I can go into more detail.

Career mode builds on the concept of the Club League added in update 1.14. The Club League is an offline competition between the default player profile and 15 computer generated profiles, whose scores are calculated based on a series of fantasy-football style stats (you can read more about it here).

Currently regular 'free play' games in either Stroke or Stableford scoring mode contribute their scores to the Club League. In Career mode there are 6 new unique leagues, each of which are composed of 6 rounds of Stroke play across 2 courses. Complete all 6 rounds (which persist between sessions, so no need to complete them all at once!) and finish in the top 3 of the league to unlock the next one. Each league gets progressively more difficult, so you'll need to make sure to rank up your profile and unlock those fancy long range clubs!



If, upon completing a league, you're not happy with your final position then fear not! You can replay any unlocked league at any time in an attempt to beat your previous placement, and unlock something new.

Oh yes - completing the leagues, as well as dishing out plentiful XP, also unlocks new cosmetics 😁 - I haven't actually made these yet, so I can't share anything specific, however there will be 6 new balls for each 3rd place achieved, 6 new hair styles/hats for each of the 2nd place rankings and coming top of the league will unlock one of 6 new player avatars. Once unlocked all of these cosmetics will be available in free play, and sync across network games too.

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Finally, to further expand on the league system, there is also a new Global League. This league is based on the existing monthly Steam leaderboards - it takes the sum total of a player's monthly best scores and inserts it into an online leaderboard so you can see how you're doing compared to your fellow golfers.



The league lasts one calendar month, along with the monthly leaderboards, starting and finishing at midnight UTC. There are 36 rounds, or total scores, for the league - one for each front, back and 18 hole round on each course. Scores can be contributed at any time throughout the month, and if you improve on an existing score the league is updated to reflect that. To help track which rounds you've already played there's a new message in the lobby:




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That's it for this month! There's more going on behind the scenes, but I'll talk about what those things are in the next post. If you have any comments or questions about the Career mode, or anything in general, please feel free to post in the discussions, or join the Chat Room. Also, don't forget that every Sunday is host to Super Video Sunday where we get together to play Super Video Golf online, very often with the public beta, so you can always join in and try out new features as they are available! More information on how to join can be found at the Steam group here.

Thanks as always to everyone who plays the game, leaves comments and makes suggestions for new features - I couldn't do it without you!

Until next time, happy golfing! ⛳

Hello folks! Can you believe Super Video Golf has been on Steam for a year already? A lot has happened in that time, so I thought I'd mark this milestone with a look back over the game's progress in the last year.

First and foremost I have met some wonderful people thanks to the game - the community is small, but warm, welcoming and competitive! Thank you to everyone who has given feedback, offered suggestions or just made kind comments about the game 😁 A particular shout out should go to yourjaguarlover for his persistent enthusiasm, ideas and support within the community. Along with yourjaguarlover a special thanks should also go to Dechrissen who, between them, have been running the 'Super Video Clubhouse' which, each Sunday, plays host to community games online under the guise of Super Video Sunday. The clubhouse is open to everyone, so if you want to meet new people and play a few rounds each week, then do drop on by! You can find the Steam group here.

It's thanks to all of you I am enthused and delighted to continue working on the game, and to try and shape it in to something everyone can enjoy - and will attempt to do so for the foreseeable future.

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When Super Video Golf was first released on Steam it had existed for a little over a year on itch.io, first as a fun little side project, and then as something more serious as interest in it grew.



Eventually I was buoyed by support enough that I could bring Super Video Golf to Steam. At that point, then, the first release on Steam was version 1.10.


Version 1.10 (February 2023)
When version 1.10 released its most prominent feature was the new course at Fairland Rock, along with Purcitop Pitch'n'Putt, which had previously not been included in the game. It also featured all new networking thanks to Steam, with the built in community-driven features providing quick and easy matchmaking. However it was not exactly perfect... can you believe that the balls didn't actually roll across the green?? 😅




Version 1.11
Next came update 1.11 in March 2023. This update brought new features with it such as the Stroke Play and Driving Range leaderboards, the first to really start taking advantage of what Steam has to offer. Significantly, in 1.11, Steam Workshop support was added. Putting was refined (balls were made to roll!), trees were prettified and new club sets were added, which can be unlocked as the player progresses. This included both new clubs in the bag, as well as an increase in range as the player ranks up.
Clouds were also overhauled with full 3D rendering, as well as the controversial aim clamp being removed.

And it was at this point Super Video Golf was Steam Deck verified!




Version 1.12
In April 2023 version 1.12 landed, which was a smaller update centred on player customisation. It also brought the option to fast-foward the current shot, both for human and CPU players, as well as added a clutch of new achievements, particularly for taking advantage of the new ball spin mechanics.



1.12 saw 5 patches, which were mostly fixes, though they significantly improved the unicode support allowing the game to embrace more international players 😁


Version 1.13
A few months later, in August 2023, version 1.13 arrived. This update focused particularly on the experience on Steam Deck (everyone's favourite handheld PC!). Users with a Steam Deck would now see better defined power bars and stroke indicators to compliment the small screen, as well as the options menu now displaying Steam Deck specific glyphs for the controls.



1.13 also made specific club sets selectable, so players could choose which bag to take with them to the course. In the clubhouse much work was done to display stats and information about the player profile, including charts for scores on each course over time, leaderboard browsers, and a new view of awards and achievements gained for playing.



Yourjaguarlover spent many, many hours playing and training the CPU (more than I could probably bear!) to ensure that matches against CPU players are a great experience. It was also around this time Dechrissen and yourjaguarlover started the Super Video Clubhouse.

Oh, and the option to add custom music was added 😁


Version 1.14
All about the game modes, version 1.14 was released in September 2023. These new game modes, for both single and multiplayer were:

• Stableford
  
• Stableford Pro
  
• Multi-target
  
• Shortround
  

The club league, a fantasy football style progress tracker, was also added to the clubhouse. And what would turn out to be a player favourite was also added - the in-flight ball cam:



With 1.14 also came the monthly challenges - every player has one calendar month to complete a challenge as outlined in the Clubhouse. Successfully fulfilling the challenge rewards a huge 500xp!


Version 1.15
Most recently version 1.15 was released in January 2024. Focused on content this update brought two new full size courses, Nguyen Valley and Hertog Regis:




It also brought with it night mode, with a new lighting system as well as selectable weather. Die-hard golfers can now play in the fog and rain if they want to!



And on top of that the update also added in-game chat in multiplayer, and SteamOS support 😀


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It's been quite a year! 😁

What's Next?
Moving forward I'm looking to add a career mode to enable players a sense of progression, as well as providing an opportunity to unlock more cosmetic items, such as new balls, new hair styles and new avatars. I have plans in motion already - though I will say this isn't going to be your full immersive golf career sim... so I hope you won't be too disappointed. However nothing is entirely set in stone (which is partly why I won't go into too much detail just yet) so if you have any suggestions or feedback on the new mode do come talk to us! You can find the Steam chat room here, and I'm always happy to find out what you think.


That's all for this update, thank you for playing, thank you for reading and thank you for being a wonderful community! Until next time, happy golfing! ⛳🏌️‍♀️

Addresses the following:

• Fix maintaining player’s preferred clubset independently from any multi-player game rule override
  
• Fix possible crash when playing games with a lot of players
  
• Fix edge case that could lead to mis-identifying remote clients as CPU players
  

1.15.2 addresses the following:

• Enabled High DPI awareness on Windows to correctly scale the window when using display scaling of anything other than 100%
  
• Increased size of icons on emote shortcut buttons in chat window
  
• Added emoji selection pop-out to chat window
  
• Rebalanced audio volume in tutorial
  
• Cleaned up parsing list item html tags in the news window
  
• Fixed regression which prevented Hot Stuff achievement triggering
  
• Fixed regression which prevented Sub-scriber achievement triggering
  
• Fixed setting friends only status of lobby based on previous round when returning
  
• Shooed geese.
  

Happy Golfing! ⛳

This update addresses the following issues:

• Fixed thumbstick threshold preventing some controllers from zooming the map overview
  
• Fixed hole numbering on map overview when playing course in reverse
  
• Fixed potential crash related to offline mode in Steam
  
• Added option to set weather to random
  
• Added emote shortcuts to chat window
  

Which brings Super Video Golf to version 1.15.1! 😁