Pitch and Putt Club

Scroungin_4_Catsup's picture
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A golf simulator that allows you to actually, physically play golf using your computer's mouse as the target hole. I'm sure most people reading this do not have golf balls and clubs laying around, but part of the appeal is that anything you want to use can fulfill those roles. I did not intend for the first two sentences to rhyme with each other.

Work on this began in September 2018, and I kept putting it away due to various life circumstances, as well as getting frustrated because my grand ideas were not always possible - or the solution for making them possible wasn't readily apparent to me. All in all, if I tallied up the amount of time I actively spent working on it, excluding the brainstorming stage, it probably took me a month's worth of full time work. I'm happy with the end result, a funny program that lets you to play a pretty well known game in a way that's just slightly different enough to seem weird and interesting.

Something I discovered during development, while I was testing this, is that you can play this game without actually treating it like a golf game. You can just swat the mouse around to activate the "hole out", and it almost takes on this fidget-spinner type quality to it. So while I keep referring to this as a "game" or a "golf simulator", in many ways it can also serve as a toy.

I'm glad to be able to work on other stuff now, free from the looming spectre of "but you haven't finished Pitch and Putt Club."

Hope someone out there enjoys this!

Author: 
Scroungin' 4 Catsup
Made For: 
An event

Comments

bpseudopod's picture

Going to Sue You

I ended up deciding to use the mouse as the ball, as well as the hole. This made the first hole trivial, but now my mouse is broken due to your faulty software. You'll be hearing from my lawyers.

bpseudopod's picture

Just read the readme

Oops. Turns out I forgot to read the readme. I read that wikipedia article, and now I feel very silly. I'm dropping the charges, and I'll send you a gift basket as well.

Scroungin_4_Catsup's picture

Fear of being sued was the

Fear of being sued was the third, unlisted reason why it took my so long to finish this game. You gave me quite the fright!!!!! I'm glad I covered my rear in the readme.

To everybody reading this please do not use "the back of your hand" as the ball and "a railroad spike" as the club, thank you.

everythingstaken's picture

Brilliant!

This is so clever and unique. Have you actually played it with a golf ball and a small course and what not? I'm wondering what your ideal or recommended setup of this game. I love the idea of getting 10 computers and having 10 holes in my apartment and I try and do this...

Scroungin_4_Catsup's picture

Thank you!

Thank you! My laptop's battery doesn't hold a charge, so I have to keep it plugged in, and that makes moving it around to different places a giant pain. Shut down, unplug, move, restart, repeat etc. This means I've only pretty much played it in my room so far. However, one of the ideas is certainly to plot out a course in your surroundings, picking out places to tee off from and other spots to put the hole down at. I have a putter and a box full of golf balls from back when I used to work at a course, so I'm able to play with real equipment, but I also really like that people can just use whatever they want - I imagine there are a lot of funny ways someone could play this.

Even placing the mouse down in one area and just putting from different parts of the room works, because the 10 different hole types still allow you to have some variety. Plus, the mouse tends to move around once it's hit, so it's never QUITE in the same spot (which allows for some pretty devious situations if you're playing competitively). I like that this can both be a relaxing experience, as well as a party game of sorts.

Getting 10 computers and setting up a big course would be super funny. I've thought of that myself. I'd love to know how people react to playing this.