Open Post to Protee

[Cklguy2013]

Hello Dennis and Protee,

I was wondering if you could offer some comments regarding the current development of TGC for Protee use, back some time ago a list of the top 5 features requested from TGC was posted on here ( see http://golfsimulatorforum.com/forum/...rtant-features) and as far as I can see not one of those items has yet been addressed or changes. Furthermore, we the users of your product are having to take upon ourselves to beg/cajole the wonderful developers over at the HB-Studios forurm to get new courses and make them playable for our various skill levels. During this entire process Protee has for the most part remained silent, which is frustrating to say the least.

I look forward to reading your comments on the state of the union between TCG and Protee and the expected completion date of the items requested by your customers.

Thanks in advance for your reponse.

[ProTee United]

Hello cklguy2013,

Sure, I would be happy to give you an update!

End of August 2014 we partnered up with HB studios to convert TGC into a real Golf Simulator to be played with real golf clubs and ball. We informed everyone about this exiting new partnership and promised we would release something before the end of 2014. We have been working hard together with HB and the ProTee Beta testers to get The Golf Club Simulator (TGC Sim) to a point were it was playable and "good enough" for the initial release scheduled for November 24, 2014. And guess what... it was not easy, we kept our promise to all our customers out there and we did it!

The biggest challenges were in the SDK and the Friends system. We wanted to build something that could be used by other simulator manufacturers as well, so we had to develop an SDK from scratch. We could not just throw software at you – bamm -, so a user-friendly installation procedure was required. All custom functions (like the friends system) Steam was providing to the game needed to go into the SDK. We also had to setup big and fast game servers to separate the golf simulator platform from the rest and to host (now) 42000+ golf courses and all your statistic inside the cloud.

HB Studios is 200% committed to implement great new features and to fix low level software bugs on a quarterly basis. New features and bug fixes need to be tested before the can be pushed out. The ProTee Cloud is not connected to Steam, XBOX and PS4 cloud systems so new features are not automatically distributed. Actually for ProTee users this is a good thing. We might not want all the new features and we want to test everything before we release it. What might be a great feature for a console game might not be a great feature for a golf simulator. We want to make sure when you get an update, its tested, working and approved by us.

TGC is now running for 2 months in a live environment. We did not sit back and relax. We made a lot of changes on the background and fixed all sorts of problems we encountered. We also had to make changes to all the ProTee software to actually talk to the SDK we developed. Without this we would have a great game, but no hardware being able to send shot data to it.

We have come to a stage were we can say that we have a stable environment. The servers are running normally, the friends system is working fine, your hardware sends shot data and you can play a full round -single player and local multiplayer- without any major issues.

So whats next?

There are 2 development teams from 2 different companies involved when it comes to implementing new features and fixing bugs. This is a little unusual, but we will try to give you a better understanding.

1] The TGC PC and Game Console users experience their own bugs (nothing is perfect!) and will request new features.

These features and bugs could also have an effect on TGC Sim. HB studios will handle these accordingly and provide an update (like update 2, update 3, etc). You can check their update schedule and planned releases online. You will not get these updates from us the next day. We will first test these updates to make sure you can keep on playing your sim and do not need to face possible weeks of downtime for whatever reason. After testing we will need to make user friendly installers for distribution.

2] The TGC Sim community will also find bugs and want new features.

The features and bugs first are evaluated by ProTee. We then need to check if HB does not already schedule these bugs/requests. Next they will be handled accordingly. We do not want to make promisses on improvements and updates we can not keep, so we will always first implement and test new features ourselves before they are announced or released.

You all have been using ProTee Golf for many years and got used to many of its features and functionality. We do not want to copy the exact same functionality to TGC one to one. TGC has its own identity, which we want to keep. On top of that we only want to add features, which are a real must for simulator game play and follow the game development cycle (which is awesome!) from HB. We have been listening to all of you and have been reading the forums. Instead of everyone just sending feature requests to us, we asked you to make a list of important features you would like to see in future releases of TGC.

This list is no guarantee that the requested items will be implemented, but if you know ProTee you also know that 95.3653362 % of feature request in the past have been implemented into ProTee Golf 2.0.

Also please do keep in mind that bug fixes might cause other bugs and new features might have bugs or could have an unwanted side effect on other things. As much as we would like to satisfy everyone’s needs, we know from experience that this is an impossible task. Both ProTee and HB studios are relatively small companies. We both are dedicated to make TGC the best game and simulator EVER. Something that might look very simple to you can have a huge impact on thousands and thousands of users. Both companies need to be very careful on what to release and when.

Furthermore, we the users of your product are having to take upon ourselves to beg/cajole the wonderful developers over at the HB-Studios forurm to get new courses and make them playable for our various skill levels.

Some of you are very smart people and found a work around to adjust courses to their needs. This by itself caused issues on our servers. Courses were published using themes that were not supported yet by the game. Be careful with work arounds this please…

We might not be able to adjust course yardages by script, but we probably can set a 12 o’clock setting for firmness and green speed by default. Its not a good idea to make this user adjustable, as this will cause all sorts of other issues.

There is no need to beg for courses, unless you want something quickly and publish using the work around. All console available courses will become available for ProTee users over time. We do not sync console created courses daily, but we try to do this at least 4 times per year.

If you have any questions or feature requests, just let us know. We do not have the time to respond to every single post on the forum, but we do read them. Your comments and input is appreciated and –still what you are used to from ProTee- taken seriously.

Thanks.

Dennis

[Richard_Askren]

Thank you very much, Dennis. That was an excellent post. Like any gaming community some people get impatient for changes and don't realize the time and work it takes. You guys have given us a lot in a very short amount of time and it's much appreciated. I love playing TGC on my sims right now and I look forward to it's future.

[ProTee United]

For those who are interested we have setup a feature and bug tracking section on the ProTee Support Desk website: http://support.protee-united.com

You can send detailed information of TGC bugs you find and feature requests to support(at)protee-united.com.

[Throttle]

Thanks for the post Dennis! Can you clarify if a real driving range or practice mode is planned? I noticed it was not listed on your support site but has been mentioned here on the forum that it is in the works. Also timelines on estimated release dates of the updates would be appreciated. Not looking for exact dates, quarterly estimates are fine.

[ProTee United]

This feature is being planned/scheduled by HB. This means it will be implemented. It has been requested by the console platform as well. There is no exact date on this yet, but as soon as we know more we will let you know! In the mean time you can still use the driving range from ProTee Golf 2.0.

For those who are interested, here is a list of all feature requests made by the TGC gaming platform. You can find out what has been scheduled in the general update sequence:

http://www.hb-studios.com/forum/index.php?topic=6753.0

[HWoods]

For those who are interested we have setup a feature and bug tracking section on the ProTee Support Desk website: http://support.protee-united.com

You can send detailed information of TGC bugs you find and feature requests to support(at)protee-united.com.

Very nice. Thanks for adding all the TGC stuff.

[Cklguy2013]

Hi Dennis,

Thank you very much for taking the time respond to my post, it's nice to hear what has been done, and the link outlining future projects was very helpful as was the Protee link outlining feature request.

It is interesting to note some of the projects and their status:

Ability to play front and back nine separately - not planned
Ability to change the clubs in one's bag - investigating
Ability to aim and change club in scout mode - not planned
Out of bounds/Unplayable lies - High priority
Ability to do different pin placements for different tourney days - Scheduled (hopefully scheduled means this update or next)
Driving range, chipping green, putting green - Scheduled
Multiplayer lobby - Scheduled

Unless I missed it thought the one glaring omission I see is different tees for a given course, although I realize this is a non issue for gamers it is a HUGE issue for Sim play, and one that would pretty much solve the problem of Protee Users having to track down course files and change. One other minor issue which doesn't seem to have made the list is the ability to assign guest names as opposed to Guest 1, Guest 2. Also, would the ability to mirror course one at a time be something that could be done, that way we could play courses as they first become published.

Going forward Dennis it would be great if we could a regular update from you as to what is upcoming for Protee and the TGC, I know that I would certainly appreciate it and it would keep us informed as to all the great stuff being done.

Thanks again for the update.

CKL

[ProTee United]

Hi Cklguy2013,

The different tee option has been noted. This is logged here:

http://csc.protee-united.com/forums/23068958-The-Golf-Club-Feature-Requests

Different tees is something we will discuss with HB to find out what the possibilities are.

The one-at-a-time course mirroring is something we will look at some day. This is a low priority item. As said earlier we will sync all courses on a quarterly basis, and sometimes in between quarters when required for a new theme (for example).

The guest renaming feature is also something we should have. Keep in mind the system will only track the stats of the owner/first player. We will put this on our list.

Dennis

[Cklguy2013]

Thanks again for the response Dennis. I'm enjoying Protee and TGC right now and it's nice to know it's only going to get better in the future.

[Bubba22]

Thanks Dennis. Great post!.