Shot-Online’s Kevin Kim tees up a tour of this entry into the MMO market

By Michael Lafferty

“… the biggest challenge was to make this game as real as possible.”

The weather is dreadful, but then that is to be expected for winter in the colder parts of the world. Snow piles up on the ground, not a trace of green is anywhere and golfers sit, watch and wait for the first clearing patches – sure signs that golf season is around the corner.

For die-hard golfers and duffers alike, the game of golf is highly dependent on the weather conditions. Well, that is unless they supplement with online play. The folks at Shot-Online have elevated the online role of golf markedly. Shot-Online is a new idea for the massively multiplayer genre, developed in Korea, and with the plans laid out for the game, it has the flight path to score a hole-in-one.

Game features include:

• RPG based full 3D sports simulation game

• Level up one's own character through training in games

• Perform real time items exchange and quests with players around the world

• A large scale gallery mode available to let you watch the other people play and to learn from their techniques

• Various camera views and angles make you feel like watching a real PGA game in TV

• Enjoy the real time chatting with other players

• Ball movements are influenced by all kinds of natural factors like it would in real world such as ground condition, physical and motional factors, and environmental factors (e.g., wind, weather, and temperature)

• Real PGA game rules are applied

• Periodic competitions are hosted to offer more exciting winning opportunities and enjoyment

Kevin Kim, Chief Technology Officer of Shot-Online, talked with GameZone about the title.

Q: How will Shot-Online differ from people playing Tiger Woods in multiplayer mode or online?

Kevin: The most significant difference of Shot-Online from any other golf games is the RPG features added to a golf game, giving it an additional feature of potential growth of player’s own game characters. The characters in Shot-Online can purchase new clubs or other items including outfit, shoes etc., as the characters grow in the game. They can also receive a quest, exchange items in the game as well.

Q: What are you using for a graphics engine and how will it render ball physics? How many avatar representations are there? Will players be able to have multiple avatars or is this one per account?

Kevin: All game engines for Shot-Online, including a graphic engine, were internally developed with the company’s own technology. Physics engine is one of them, and optimized to show the most realistic movement of a ball. In other words, the trajectory of a ball reflects the environmental factors, such as length/weight of a club, weather, temperature, and game character’s skill level.

Generally, an avatar used in games is the object that substitutes the user and that expresses the player’s emotions. The avatar also distinguishes itself from others by acquiring and using items.

However, avatars developed by Shot-Online are designed to have separate parts of hair, top part of body, bottom part of body, hand, and foot, and to enable items to be attached to the body. Also, Facial Animation is supported for facial expressions of avatars.

We apply it to player’s character system.

Four types of characters are available in our global service. (Additional character with left-handed features is scheduled to be included in the future.)

Each character can be customized by buying various items, and more than 10,000 combinations of the items are possible for each character. A left-handed character is scheduled to be added in the near future. A player can create up to 3 characters.

Q: How will players be handicapped? What if a player is having a particularly sterling round and disconnects to avoid lowering their handicap for tourney play, or a player sandbags for a higher handicap? Will there be repercussions for this kind of behavior?

Kevin: Handicap point of a player is calculated based on 18-hole scores. When a player leaves or disconnects in the middle of a round, the player’s handicap is not updated and the player is punished by the increase of Etiquette score, while the other players’ handicaps are not affected.

Q: How many courses will be available? Are they patterned after real courses, or are they products of the developers' imaginations? Are there any unusual or fun courses to play on?

Kevin: We are currently servicing in global service with a total of 7 courses including 2 real golf courses. These 2 real courses are the very well known golf courses in Korea and we are planning to add more real courses around the world. Five virtual courses were developed based on our developer’s knowledge on real course design theory.

For instance, Shot-Online provides virtual Forneus course that is not likely to exist in reality since the course consists of islands only.

Q: Will there be tournaments available for players to participate in and how will they qualify to enter them if there is?

Kevin: Another unique feature of Shot-Online is its Tournament system.

Tournaments were already held 5 times in Korea and 3 times in Japan.

There was also a national competition tournament between Korea and Japan in the last Tokyo games show 2004.

Shot-Online US open tournament is scheduled to be held from 29^th.Nov.2004 to 11^th. Dec.2004. And offline final rounding is to be held in New York and LA. All members of Shot-Online can participate with the highest-level character per each ID only. Please visit our Web site (www.shot-online.com) for more details. We hope you enjoy this event.

In 2005, additional tour system similar to PGA tour will be added in order to open more tours and tournaments.

Q: Will players be able to belong to country clubs, and if so, how do they become members?

Kevin: In the future, some selected guilds will have right to own a certain country clubs.

Those guilds will be eligible for various prestigious advantages in the game. If a player wishes to become a member of a country club, he/she can join a guild that owns one. The owner guild of a country club must open a tournament in order to keep its ownership of the country club. If the owner guild loses in the tournament, the ownership is transferred to a winning guild.

This feature will be added in 1^st or 2^nd quarter of 2005.

Q: Tell us about the equipment. Is there any difference in what players wear or the clubs, or balls, they can acquire? How do you get that better set of clubs?

Kevin: In addition to the club items that are modeled from the real golf clubs, other game items such as hair, outfit, gloves, shoes, snacks, and drinks are available in the game.

Each item can be used only by the eligible players, where the eligibility is decided by the level of the players assigned to each item. In other words, as a player’s level goes higher, better items can be obtained and used.

Q: Will there be tee times on weekends?

Kevin: Of course, Shot-Online is open for your rounding during weekends, in winter, dark nights or anytime you want to go for a rounding.

We do have some game players who actually go for a real rounding on a green in Korea and Japan.

Q” Can players level up skills or is this all just a "go out and do your best" game where the only way to make it easier is purely reflexive?

Kevin: Shot-Online adopted the concept of a player’s level as used in other RPG games. If a player keeps on playing, his/her level increases and the player can distribute accumulated points to power, impact, stamina and skill categories respectively.

Allocating more points on skill will enable a player to use various techniques such as draw, fade and backspin. Stamina means the strength of a game character; it makes player’s fatigue go up slower. Power and impact will let a player be able to send the ball farther. This is one of the unique features of Shot-Online and cannot be found in any other golf games in the market.

We also have “Title” system that allows players to change his/her title from Amateur to Honor-Pro via Semi-Pro, Pro and Tour-Pro after passing a qualifying test. A player, of course, needs to reach a certain level to be qualified for the test.

Q: What was the biggest challenge in bringing a game of this scope to life?

Kevin: Since this game is a golf game which is one of the oldest and the most popular sports game in the sports game market, the biggest challenge was to make this game as real as possible.

The motion capture of a professional golf player was used to create swing motions, and our own physics engine was developed to create the most realistic ball movement. Shot-Online’s reputation of “A true reality golf game” is the result of such development effort and design approach. Therefore, we can gladly recommend you Shot-Online.

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