Show HN: I made a mini golf in my lunch time (opens in new tab)

I like that you can hear the club swing and contact on higher rolls, but I NEED to hear the ball hit the bottom of the cup when I sink the putt.

Also, maybe some optional crowd noise if you hit it past the hole or hit it in the wrong direction due to an over-roll.

In case anyone else has trouble:

1. The black circle is the ball; you roll the dice to determine the amount of moves

2. after the dice roll, the allowed moves will be shown - as yellow squares near the ball; this is a very faint yellow and easy to miss

3. to move the ball, roll the dice then click on the faint yellow squares near the ball (or further away if you rolled a 6).

Great project. Makes me think on a digital version of this https://gladdendesign.com/products/paper-apps-golf

There's a nugget of something clever here but it's missing something, there's too much luck and not quite enough skill for a golf game.

My first thought was selecting from various dice with different distributions to represent the various golf clubs.

My second was that a hex grid would offer a much better variety of options. The square grid only has 1 or 2 useful directions that can bring you closer. A hex grid would typically have 2 to 3 useful directions.a hex

Then I thought, this sounds like a good base for a board game, did a search and turns out there already is one that uses that formula! https://boardgamegeek.com/image/6370656/roll-in-one

Doesn't work in Android Chrome. Clicking does nothing.

Edit: figured out what was wrong, I had bedtime mode turned on which desaturated the screen, making the light yellow impossible to see. Suggestion: make the highlight more visible/accessible

Wow, someone just sent me this post because I also made a golf game inspired by Gladden Design's this week! :D I made my own twist on it a bit, making it use a hex grid because I didn't like how diagonal moves were treated the same distance as orthogonal moves and I added bonuses and skill shots to give the player a reason to take a non-straight line path to the hole and made it a daily game but having a wordle style share score button. I'm surprised how many people saw that video and also all had the same idea that "this would make a great digital game idea" https://golf.jbat.ch/

Is the roll determined by your position on the board at all? I just ran into a seemingly endless chain of 3 rolls where I was bouncing back and forth between two positions for 15+ rolls.

edit: I kept going for another 10 rolls before bailing out of the loop for one iteration and got back into the cycle again immediately on returning to the start point. ie: I went A-B-A-B...A-C-A-B... where C was also 3 steps away from A and I rolled a 3 on C too). Definitely seems like it's a partially deterministic stroke roll.

Ah! I spent an hour today trying to recreate the golf course from gladdendesign too (I ordered one of each of their games when I saw it on youtube)! But I got sidetracked trying to fit perlin noise into the solution, still not sure what algorithm to use to generate similar terrains. Also I kind of assumed copying the game exactly wouldn't be super fair or even legal so I planned on keeping it private.

Anyone, if you like this game and you wanna improve it, please consider giving your feedback here -> https://huntlie.com/product/mini-golf?tab=feedback

I should do the following things first:

1) Give credit to Paper's app in next update 2) Convert it to mobile app

Hah! I've been emailing the creator of Paper Golf to ask if he would be ok with me creating something like this! Looks like you beat me to the punch :P

This is fun. Strategy is to get in line with the hole so there's a chance to hole out next shot. Would be more realistic if you could hit any number of spaces up to the die roll. Maybe have different clubs - driver = die roll +3, iron = die roll, putter that can hole out at any distance up to 6 not necessarily in a straight line if you roll that distance or more. So e.g. putter can hole out with knights move if you roll 3 or higher.

Interesting that there's no need to have greens around the hole. In real golf, construction and maintenance of the greens is a primary cost. I play a simplified form of golf in public parks (or any semi-open space) using one club and foam practice balls that won't hurt anyone and only go about 40 yards max. I use lightpoles and trees as targets and chip the ball to hit the pole or tree as holing out. Most parks you can arrange various holes through and around the vegetation and structures.

Hole in 420 strokes! The only path to the target was through a corner of width 1, so I had to get a very specific set of 1s or 2s. But I kept rolling back & forth on 5s & 6s :D

The specificity of the result after such a long time gambling without real reward is oddly satisfying.

This is super sweet!

My only gripe is that it doesn't seem to be very desktop friendly. I'm on FF 192.0.2 (64bit) and I can't figure out how to pan or zoom around the play field.

It would also be nice to see a "par" or statistical breakdown of levels compared with other people. The randomness might make this a bit tricky but things like Crypt of the Necrodancer use seeded levels and, presumably, seeded RNGs for other elements of the randomness in levels to make it consistent across players.

Super simple and super effective. Very nice.

If the ball is at 3 squares from the hole and the dices get's a 4, I'd allow to end the game. It's more fun to navigate the obstacles than to try to get the exact number to finish.

It's neat but I soft locked because my roll had no valid moves.

Please credit https://gladdendesign.com/products/paper-apps-golf for the original game concept.

I got generated hole in a tree.

I'd prefer if I had several moves to make after a single roll of the dice.

Also I block html5 auto playback by default which you appear to use for some animation stuff. It'd be great if the game could work without it.

I would suggest 2d6 so that there is some strategy in which direction you need to hit the ball. D6 can be swapped to something else for other clubs

You absolutely need a clearer way of telling us how to play. It was very confusing and it's only because I saw this on HN that I bothered trying more.

Awesome! I watched Gladden Design's video too and loved it. It's great that you've made it accessible! Please consider giving attribution to Gladden Design.

Very cool thanks for building. Would echo some of the other comments about how to play but I figured it out. Is a hole in 1 possible on any holes?

How come after you roll but before you move, the Strokes value at the top shows the current roll value instead of the stroke count? Is this a bug?

Highlighting the valid squares to shoot to would be nice

Just a quick bug report: the "Strokes" counter resets to the rolled number before you click a destination

Random flight lengths and double digit stroke counts for one hole? Finally a realistic game that matches my experience on the golf course.

Not being able to shoot over water is lame.

I can't hit over the water??

https://ibb.co/TRbGgVx

Great stuff! Thanks for making this. Would love the ability to turn off the sound, but that's a minor nitpick.

PSA: I needed to disable my "Disable HTML Autoplay" Chrome extension in order for the game to work.

Nice but I got stuck near the end. I kept rolling 3 and then the button shakes and that is it.

I just got 13 rolls of 3 in a row. I think there may be an issue with the RNG

A bit intuitive - the instructions should be on the screen next to the map

The strokes does not get updated properly. It needs to be fixed

This is cool! Well done. Where did you get the sound from?

This is a lot of fun. Thank you for making this.

Very nifty idea! And cute, simple visuals

funny enough

Lame.

Hole in 48!