HandiGolf User's Manual

Introduction

HandiGolf is a Palm Pilot program which allows you to play golf on your Palm III or better handheld. You play from an overhead view on the fairways and a view from the green when putting. The program has fairways, greens, sand traps, water, and trees. HandiGolf keeps track of your score and up to 3 other players, and saves any games which are interrupted. HandiGolf comes with a separate program to build the courses called HandiEdit.

This program is shareware, until you register the program you will be nagged when you start up to register. Also, when you register the program you will get notified of any updates or new courses. You will also have access to other courses that we have made, or that other registered users have made. Finally, this program will time out eventually, and then only all you to play 3 holes.

Installation

Follow the standard PalmPilot installation procedure for HandiGolf:

First, unzip HANDI.ZIP somewhere on your PC or Mac. Then from Windows, run the PALMPILOT INSTALL TOOL program which will be in the same group as your PalmPilot Desktop application. When the install dialog comes up, click on the BROWSE button and navigate to the directory where you unzipped the PRC files. Select HANDI.PRC, TheLinks.PDB, StNasty.PDB, Duffers.PDB, and HEDIT.PRC by double-clicking it in the FILE OPEN dialog and then click on the INSTALL button. On the next HotSync, the HandiGolf application will appear in your list of applications.

The 5 files you installed are: HANDI.PRC - the actual golf program, TheLinks.PDB - a 9 hole course, Duffers.PDB - an 18 hole course, StNasty.PDB - a difficult 18 hole course, and HEDIT.PRC which is the course editor. HandiGolf uses databases of type PGlf (I was going to call the program a different name and registered PGlf) as courses, which is what HEDIT will make, so over time you will have databases of this type on your Palm device for each course that you have installed or created. HandiGolf also creates a small database on your Palm Pilot with registration information, and the status of the last game played.

WARNING: This game occasionally does not work with HackMaster installed. It runs in a timing loop to do the golf club swings, and HackMaster slows down the loop to the point of where the program dies. Uninstall hackmaster or turn it off before running HandiGolf. Or, if you feel daring, please try it out and let me know if it works now. I made a fix that might have fixed the problem.

Shareware Registration

There are several ways to register this shareware program:

1) Go to www.palmgear.com and register on-line, where they can take the usual credit cards and such. They also handle phone orders at 800 741-9070 or fax at 817 640-6614. They can handle getting you the registration code.

2) Send a check or money order for $15 US to:

Rick Eesley
1804 Middle Road
Martinsville, NJ 08836 (USA)

Include an email address or return address so I can mail you the code to enter in the shareware screen. If there are problems contact me via Email at: reesley@eclipse.net.

Operation

The program operates similarly to most Palm applications, most of the major dialogs are described in some detail below.

Starting

When you bring up HandiGolf you will be presented with a screen which asks if you would like to start a new game, load a previous game, or practice your drives or putting. Normally you will select New Game to start a new match. If you choose to practice drives or putts you will moved to a screen where you can work on your timing and test the lengths that different clubs will hit on the fairway. To reload a previous game click Reload Game and the last game that you were playing will come up.

Players Form

Once you have selected to start a new game you must enter the names of the players, or the program will cleverly choose names for you like Plyr1 and Plyr2. You also must select the number of players, by default there is only 1 player. If you enter more than one name but forget to set the number of players to more than one, the other names are ignored and the first name is used as the one players name. When you are finished entering the players names click done. Keep the players names short as they must be displayed on the Swinging form in the control area which is fairly small. Names much longer than about 6 characters will be brutally truncated.

Course Form

The names of all the courses installed on your Palm device will be listed here, pick one of them to play. If there are none listed then you must install at least one course from the Palm Desktop. To create other courses you use the HEDIT program which is documented somewhere else, and only available to registered users. If you want to play a course someone else has written just download their course.PDB file to your Palm device using the Palm Desktop. If it was created by HEDIT it will magically show up in your list of courses.

The Swing Form

This brings us to the actual play of the game, the Swing Form indicates whose turn it is, the current hole, the distance from the ball to the hole, and the number of strokes the indicated player has spent trying to complete this hole. The ball generally start on the tee and the idea is to hit it into the hole in as few strokes as possible. The different shading indicates the type of playing surface, the light shading is used for greens and fairways, medium shading is the rough, dark shading is used for trees and water, and no shading is used for the ball and for sand traps. The hole is indicated by the flag sticking up, and the ball flashes black and white.

The scale of the hole varies depending on how long the hole is, the longest holes are scaled so the screen covers 600 yards, medium length holes cover just shy of 300 yards, and short holes somewhat less than 150 yards. You must pay attention to this when determining how hard to hit a shot.

The Swinging screen is divided into two areas, the control area on the left and the overhead view on the right. The control area has status information, along with the current club selection, the direction the ball is going to be hit, and the hitting meter.

To hit a shot, first determine where you want to aim and what club to use. The box in the lower right corner of the control indicates the direction the shot will travel. When this form comes up it points directly at the hole, this will often be the direction you want to hit, but other times you will need to change it so as not to hit into the rough or some other obstacle. To change the direction tap on the screen with your pen, the arrow in the direction box will change to follow it. Next pick the club you want to use from the club pulldown form. You must be aware of what surface you are hitting the ball from when selecting a club. For example, when you are in the rough clubs hit with approximately 20% less power, when in the trees it is 40% less power. If you are in a sand trap you hit with 20% less power, and if you do not use a pitching wedge you will hit with 80% less power on top of that. Once that is set, hold down any of the four buttons along the bottom of your Palm device. A bar will come up the left side of the driving meter to determine the swing power, try and stop it at the bar across the meter by releasing the button. After that the bar will come up the right side of the meter to determine slice and hook, again try and stop it at the bar across the meter. There will be times when you don't want to hit full power, and times when you want to hit with some hook or slice, just experiment until you get the hang of it.

Once the swing is completed the path of the ball is traced out until it comes to rest, then information about your drive is displayed on the screen for about 5 seconds. This information includes what surface you landed on, such as sand, trees, water, the rough, the green, or on the fairway. If you land in water you will be penalized a stroke and have to hit from the same location you did last time. If there is more than one person playing this goes on in order until all players complete the hole.

Just a couple of technical notes on this form, if you hit the ball so hard that it goes off the screen it stops at the edge of the screen. You can cheat with this sometimes by whacking a ball with a 1 wood and get right to the top of the screen on shorter holes. Someday I may do something better with this, but for now HandiGolf acts like you hit the end of the world when you go off the drawn course. Additionally, you may notice that holes are scaled differently to fit on the screen. There are 3 scale factors; 1, 2, and 4. Holes drawn on a scale of 1 have one pixel to the yard, so the maximum lenght of a hole is 160 yards if the pin is right at the top, and the tee right at the bottom. Realistically this results in holes of about 130 yards maximum. At scale factor two you can have holes up to 260 yards, and scale 4 goes up to about 520 yard holes. You can usually figure out the scale by the length of the hole, so be careful to choose the right club based on the distance to the hole HandiGolf says, and not by the size of the screen.

Putting Form

Once you make it onto the green HandiGolf switches from the overhead view to the putting view. In the putting view you can only using the putter, and you cannot putt off the screen, it will just stop at the edge. Additionally, you cannot putt off of the green, no matter how hard you whack the ball. Putting also undergoes some scaling so you must carefully watch the distance to the pin when determining how hard to putt the ball. The direction arrow works the same for putting as for driving, and is normally set pointing right at the pin. Hitting works the same too except for that instead of hook and slice, the putt is just skewed to the left or right to make it harder to putt.

Score

After all the players complete the hole the scoreboard is displayed, when you are finished reading it tap on the Done button and you will go to the next hole. If you have completed the course then you will return to the course form where you can pick another course to play.

HandiEdit

HandiEdit creates golf courses for HandiGolf, it is still a little raw, if you try to break it you will probably be able to. To run HandiEdit, leave HandiGolf and go to the Applications list by tapping on the applciations button. Tap on HandiEdit. When you start HandiEdit you will be in a form which allows you to create a new course or delete any old ones. To create a new course enter a name for it and click the New button. To go to the course deleting form click on the Dele button.

Deleting Courses

The course deleting form puts up a list box with all the courses installed on your Palm device, select one and click the Del button to remove it. When you are finished click Done to return to the previous form.

Describing a Hole

After naming your course and clicking on New from the main form, you go to this form to describe the hole. Make sure and set all the fields you are interested in before going to the Next screen, you cannot come back. The fields are: Hole, Par, Scale, Green Lean, Lean Amt, Wind, and Wind Amt. Do not set Hole, that is automatic. Set Par to the par for the current hole. Set Scale to 1, 2 or 4, where 1 is for holes in a 100 X 160 yard area, 2 is for holes in a 200 X 320 yard area, and 4 is for holes in a 400 X 640 yard area. Green Lean is a direction such as N for North, or NW for north west, this is the direction that the green leans. The Lean Amt is how sharp the green leans, it can be 0 for no lean up to 4. Wind is the direction of the wind, North is the top of the screen. Wind Amt is a value from 0 to 4 to specify how strong the wind is. Once these values are entered click the Next button.

Entering the Hole Layout

On the next screen you will do the actual hole layout. You MUST enter a Hole location and a Tee location, if you enter more than one, only the last one is remembered. In order to be uniform, the tee should be on the bottom of the screen, and the hole somewhere on the top of the screen. Then click one of Fairway, Green, Sand, Tree, or Water to enter those things. Trees are single points on the screen, just tap the pen where you want them. The other things are polygons, enter a series of points and then click EndPgn to end the polygon and close it. Make sure NOT to enter any points twice. When you are finished putting up obstacles click Done to go to the overhead page which draws the final version of the hole.

There are a few restrictions on data you can enter into the course. First, there are limits to how much data a course can have. It is safe to have a few fairways, a green, 3 or 4 sand traps and 3 or 4 water traps, along with 20 or so trees. Much more than that and you will run into data limitations which will now allow you to continue the current hole. It is hard to give exact limits for the amount of data because the space limitation is really the number of scan line events (math goop). The program will warn you and require you to re-enter the hole. There are severe restrictions on the polygons you enter for course topography. FIrst, polygons cannot cross themselves or other polygons. No figure 8 type polygons are allowed. You cannot have a sand trap intersect water, or a fairway, instead you must leave room on the fairway for the sand trap. There are no holes allowed in the polygons, because you cannot make a hole without self crossing. Although these restrictions may sound severe, in practice they rarely come up.

Accepting the Hole Layout

Click Okay to accept the hole, Redo to do it again, and Finish to complete the entire course. When entering the polygon data make every effort not to cross lines, or draw figure 8's, or repeat points. If you do they should be trapped and you will have to redo the entire hole.

Next time you start up HandiGolf you will see this new course in the list of courses

Release Notes

Release 1.6

- Fixed a bug that gave the wrong distance to the hole when you resumed a game that was interrupted during putting.

Release 1.5

- Added par to the scoreboard if you have less than 4 players. With 4 players it wont fit. No need to reinstall courses, they are the same.

Release 1.4

- Fixed a loophole in the program, if you let hook run off the bar (ie: full hook) the power was HUGE, so you could get to the top of the screen in one shot even on 600 yard holes.

Release 1.3

Fixed a number of bugs:

- Finally got the elusive huge par number bug, some holes showed a par value like 163. It turned out the courses had the wrong par's in them due to a bug in Hedit. The courses have been fixed, and the bug in Hedit is also fixed.

- There were places that referred to a 2 wood and 4 wood, now the only woods are a 1 and 3 wood consistently. The clubs are 1W, 3W, 2I, 3I, 4I, 5I, 6I, 7I, 8I, PW, and PT (putter).

- Changed the sayings around after shots just for some variety.

- Added the Par for the current hole to the swinging form.

- Allowing a player to sink the ball from other than the greens, it used to be you could only get the ball in the hole by putting, now if you are close enough on your drive you can sink it too.

- Added the distance that a putt travelled on the after putting form.

- Changed registration to time out, maybe some more people will register now.

Release 1.2

Added St Nasty course, a much more difficult course

Release 1.1

Ported to Palm OS3.5 (not as easy as it sounds). I expect this to clear up a number of problems that I have had on newer platforms. In particular, this game now works with Palm Vx's and Color Palms.

Fixed a number of bugs reported by users, mostly to do with restarting a saved game.

Last Updated: Apr, 2000
reesley@eclipse.net