Dev Log: The Light Moves
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This one was about making the world look like a place: light that moves through the round, ground with real shape, North Woods rebuilt hole by hole, and every course finally talking about itself. Here's what changed, and what went wrong along the way.
The Plan
The courses looked flat. Not bad, just flat. The ground was one color with a tint on it, every shadow fell the same way all day, and North Woods' cliffs were a blue rectangle meeting the grass on a ruler line.
Tweaking colors never fixes that. So this time the work changed how the world is drawn: ground with height, light with a direction, and land with faces.
What's New
The ground has shape. It's lit from its real elevation now, so hills, hollows and banks read as land. The banks are real for the disc too.
Land with faces. Classic 4's creek runs in a cut bank: stop on the bank and you're in the creek. Palisade's tee sits on a timber-walled shelf. The Ledges got one real granite ledge.
The sun moves through the round. Every hole is played at its own hour. Long shadows to the west at dawn, short at noon, long and gold by 17. Bushes, benches and trees turn to face the morning light. In the Hollow it's a fading glow, then a rising moon.
Lamps throw shadows. Pumpkins, torches and lamp posts cast shadows off trees, rocks, rabbits and your disc, swinging round as things pass them.
North Woods, rebuilt. I went through all 18 holes asking where the land itself wants a face:
Palisade, Raven's Roost and the Promontory finally have their cliffs, in the reddish rock of the real Palisade Head.
The Lake Superior holes get rocky shores, and the lake no longer ends on a straight line.
Trout Brook and Devil's Kettle run in cut banks, with worn ramps down to the Kettle's stepping stones.
Timber steps up the two big climbs, routed round the trees.
A summer chairlift on Lutsen Ridge, chairs running. The towers are real. You can hit them.
The fire tower stands at full size on its own hole.
Every course talks about itself. Crooked Hollow now has about 840 lines of its own, across the championship and match play, and the three home courses each got their own layer. Your rival on the Classic heckles you about the Pond Gods. On North Woods it's the cold water.
The edge push. On a phone, holding your pull at the edge of the screen slides the view so you can keep pulling. Big doglegs got easier to aim.
What Went Wrong (All Fixed)
A make cleared the sky. Sink a putt and the rain, fog and night all switched off for the celebration. They stay on now, through the putt, a rival's turn and the mulligan rewind.
The disc trail drew a stick. On a hammer, the little dots behind the disc made a line from the ground to the disc. The trail is gone. The disc's shadow does that job better now that it follows the sun.
The fire tower shrank as you walked up to it. It was drawn smaller on its own hole than on every other hole's horizon. Now it's the biggest thing on the course, the way it should be.
Lutsen Ridge had a row of green bars with a pin flag, meant to be a glimpse of another hole. It was an early idea that I never properly cleaned up. It's gone.
The field didn't know where it was. Peaches warned you about "the water on eleven" on a course where eleven is a crypt. Lines that name a place now only get said on that course.
The first cliff looked like brickwork, and the first steps looked like a railroad track. Both redrawn.
Things I tried and threw out: heavy shadow blobs, mowing stripes (this is disc golf, not golf), a dry ravine that looked plopped in, and trees that lean as the camera scrolls. That last one worked; it just didn't do enough.
Devil's Kettle got a little harder. The bot that plays every hole with perfect throws now averages 3.6 on the par 4, up from 3.0. The banks earn it.
Your Turn
Play North Woods start to finish and watch the day go by. Throw one left on Lutsen Ridge and find out what a lift tower does to a disc. And Crooked Hollow is only open until October 31, so there's still time to beat my -9. 👀
— Alex, Assistant Greenskeeper