Modren

So apparently this game uses generative AI for grass and leaf textures.

Because there's just no possible way they could make grass or leaves without AI.

God, I hate this shit, man.

heyadol

I could be wrong, but haven't game devs been using tools to automate the creation of vegetation for decades? Pick an object from a library, place it on the map, adjust sliders (or other control points) until you get the results you like; it's SOP by now. I seem to remember this being a topic of praise and contempt around the time Oblivion launched on console/PC.

Dev tools being modernized to use gen AI shouldn't matter. Like any tool, it will come down to how it is used.

Steelmaker

AI or no AI, this game is a day one cop for me!

Zivouhr

Artificially intelligent lawn grass. Cool.

Hot Shots Golf is a fun series though. I still have the first game on PS1 and can play it on PS3 too.
I really do wish sports games offered more freedom. I wouldn't mind being able to freely walk to the ball, like in real golf. Or drive around in the cart to the next shot. Like real golf. You don't just magically transport to the ball like in these supposedly realistic golf games like PGA Golf or 4K Golf.
On your way to the ball, you experience the beauty of the scenery, animals running across the field, the wind flowing through the leaves and the time to decide what kind of club you'll try for this next shot. All of that magic is being taken away by just warping the player to the next shot... Give us an option at least to walk/drive or warp to it.



Good point. Unreal Engine has a lot of adjustable pre-made parameters like Trees, lawn grass, plant life, roads, cars, buildings, etc. to play with. One reason we see some games from indie developers look so good graphically. They didn't actually make most of the game's graphics in other words.

heyadol

Exactly. There are plenty of games that are basically asset-flips or otherwise rely upon the built-in tools and it's not exactly great (garbage in, garbage out). Then you have more professional teams who create their own tools or modify existing ones, create their own textures via photogrammetry...artisans at the top of their craft. It's not realistic to reduce it to those two situations, but it is the same concept.

Diesel

This type of application is exactly what generative AI or whatever you want to call it should be used for. Anything reasonable to make modern game development faster and less expensive is fine by me. Budgets and timelines can’t continue ballooning, we are already beyond reasonable on many games causing studios to release one game per console generation.

Talal86

are you talking about pre-made assets? isn't that the benefit of using Unreal or Unity?

AI gets used on remasters to upscale textures and the result is unsurprisingly inconstant at best

Steelmaker

Exactly! Used strictly as a tool to reduce the time-consuming mundanity of game development, I think AI is invaluable.

Zivouhr

Hot Shots Golf. I hope this isn't just a nicer graphics version. It looks like they add seasons of weather as something new. I'll need to watch the videos.

The green lawn grass in that trailer at the bottom of page one looks flat in the actual gameplay. Like something I'd see in a PS3 game. I thought they were adding AI grass to the game?


It's a nice benefit to the gamer too if they're hoping for more realistic looking games. I think the Matrix Awakens demo is a good example of the assets available to developers with Unreal 5.

Good point that saving time saves money for these massive teams from the big publishers, if they can use pre-made assets (whether designed or AI created) instead of having to reinvent the wheel every time.

AI in videos that I've seen as movie trailers as of now, look really inconsistent with lots of strange morphing, so if that same issue exists in gaming, then I can see your point.

I haven't seen any actual AI games yet on PS5 besides all of those AI rendered Pixar-like characters in Simulation games as the game's cover art, and then the game looks horrible in comparison to that image. Reminds me of the good old days when box art looked a million times better than the actual 4-Bit or 8-Bit game it represented.

emailking

They could have drawn every blade of grass individually.

Modren

The thing is, there are already tons of stock assets that developers can license to speed up development. If you want a grass texture, you can get a grass texture. If you want a tree, you can get a tree. SpeedTree, the middleware that the game is probably already using for LOD on its tree assets, sells packs of pre-modeled and pre-textured trees for $50 a pop. Utilizing stock libraries is a well-worn shortcut that has been used by everyone from no-name indies to AAA publishers. Capcom, for example, has been doing it since the PS2 era.

And to be frank, the AI-generated textures look like stock assets anyway. So what is even the point of using AI other than saving, most likely, a couple thousand bucks at most?

dyne

Line.....must......go......up.

Zivouhr

While saving money helps, the strange thing is that I'm not seeing any blades of green grass in any of the gameplay in the prior page video of Hot Shots PS5. Looking at the ground, it's all flat, which makes it seem like a PS3 era ground (PS3 couldn't handle lots of grassblades like 360 could in a game like Mafia 2 for example). I'm surprised by that as it was the pre-order Pac Man player video.

This has to be some kind of remaster of an old PS3 game. Even the trees look barren and the hill edges are hard edged polygons. Am I missing something with those videos?

Talal86

Looks kind of worse than the ps4 version, maybe this is made primarily for the Switch, and ported to the other systems

as for the “AI grass” that’s probably not in the trailers, the grass looks like an old low res texture

Zivouhr

Here's some footage of a Hot Shots PS4 game, which looks like for online mode you can run around wherever you want.

39.99 for PS5 for PS2 PS3 style graphics seems a little high priced.
But the original Hot Shots game remastered for PS4 is only 9.99 on PS Store.
Hot Shots Golf 2 also 9.99. Those seem like better deals.


Hot Shots 2

Hot Shots Golf Open T on PSP

Everybody's Golf (from Clap Handz) on PS4. This looks like the best version graphically. 19.99 currently on PS Store. I played the PSVR demo but this looks much better.
Okay, it says servers are closed permanently, so no more online option.

I guess the online mode was free roam, as developers tend to make single player just the basic modes of regular golf. I would've liked to see the free roam. A rumor that there is an offline 4 player mode so maybe that's something at least.


I did read Clap Handz isn't the developer anymore, but Hyde with Namco Bandai took over the series now, if true. "Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots" indicates that it's a new series and not the same one under Sony's Hot Shots Golf.

But yeah, this looks similar to a port of an old PS2 or PS3 video game. The character models look good but they should price it as a remaster with the basic looking graphics as this could've looked amazing with tiny blades of grass everywhere with full trees that don't look like billboard flat textures, and rounded hills instead of flatter edged ones I'm seeing in the trailer. Unless they're intentionally going for old-school graphics.

Gameplay is still most important, but I would think they'd want to take advantage of some of PS5's abilities with a new game. Maybe the snow and weather effects help.

Talal86

Clap Handz made a game for Apple, later ported to the Switch.

Zivouhr

That looks so much better IMO. Really nice and their style shines through with the character designs and landscape. I hope that ports to PS5 by some miracle, but if Apple's in charge, probably not.

I think I'll try their PS4 game, from Clap Handz, 19.99 soon. Everybody's Golf PS4, which I think is different than the PS4 PSVR version.

Talal86

It’s $10 now btw

Zivouhr

Thanks.
Yes, I tried it out earlier for that Everybody's Golf PS4 9.99 deal (till July 17 2025 in the US PS Store) and it's kind of what I was hoping for.

Before hitting the ball at the Tee, the game lets you back out with circle and you can freely walk, run or jump and even swim in the water, exploring the whole course. I only got one course started so far, but that's cool.

Only problem is you can't actually freely hit the ball, then freely walk to the next hole like in GTAV's golf course game. The game warps the player there quickly and then you hit it again till completing the hole, and then you can free roam at the next tee again. Weird they didn't just let you free roam at any time. But it's offline so that's nice. The 3 button method to hit the ball is as expected.

You can design your own character. The art design is very much like something I'd expect in a Wii Mii game. Very cartoony but not like the classic games, so I can see why people felt it was missing that charm of the 2nd game.

Still good though and the courses look much nicer than what I'm seeing in the new one. The new one does have nice anime character designs but the courses look like they're right out of a PS2 game. In PS4's Everybody's Golf by Clap Handz, 1080p resolution looks really nice on PS5.