Bobby Heckeroth
Published:
Updated:
If you’re new to golf simulation software you may have heard about “ GSPro patreon courses” or “patreon course designers”. I’ve actually heard several misconceptions about this Patreon stuff so I wanted to clarify how Patreon works with GSPro in this article.
What are Patreon course designers for GSPro?
They are individuals who are licensed by OPCD (Open Platform Course Design) to charge for golf course design services in GSPro that have chosen to use Patreon to provide their built courses for a monthly subscription.
Not all individuals who are commercially licensed by OPCD are on Patreon and not all of them choose to build courses for commercial purposes. At the time of writing this article, there are only 5 course designers that use Patreon.
Below I will cover how to subscribe to these Patreon designers, how to load their courses into GSPro and more about how course design in GSPro works.
Table of Contents
- Where to find these GSPro Patreon Courses
- How to Access Their Courses
- How to Hire a Designer to Create Your Local Course in GSPro
- FAQ
Where to find these GSPro Patreon Courses
Go to Patreon.com and search “GSPro”. The course designers will all come up in the search results.
At this time the course designers on Patreon are:
- Tekbud
- Pakman
- Runpuddrun
- The Golf Boy
- TheGreatBanjini
They use the same “handle” or usernames here that they use in GSPro and the Simulator Golf Tour Discord.
Click on any of them and you can see the different membership plans they offer and what’s included.
Most of them include the courses available to “Patrons” (subscribers) on their About page where you can also find out more about them and their services.
How to Access Their Courses
After you choose a subscription you enter your credit card info and check out. You will be charged your subscription fee monthly.
Once complete you will be given member access to their page and can see all of their posts which may have been blurred out before.
The main thing is to look for the link to their course server. In the case of Tekbud, he has pinned a post at the top that contains his course server link.
- Copy the link to the course server because you will paste it into GSPro.
A note about the course server links:
DO NOT share these links with anyone or post them anywhere they can be seen publicly on the internet. Most of these designers are doing this as a full-time job and rely on their Patreon subscribers as part of their income.
- Open GSPro and go into Local Match. Click the far right icon above the courses. Here is where you will paste the course server link.
- Now go to GSPro Settings and click Reload Courses.
Head back to Local Match. Make sure to check the Show All Courses box and all of their Patreon courses should be there available to download.
How to Hire a Designer to Create Your Local Course in GSPro
As mentioned earlier, individuals must be licensed by OPCD to charge for course design.
At this time there are around 20 but I would recommend using one of the 5 that are on Patreon as they are the ones that are typically “for hire”.
You can contact them through Patreon but a few of them like Tekbud and Runpuddrun have their own websites with quote request forms.
They will need some basic information like the name and address of the golf course to provide a quote.
Not every golf course can be created in GSPro. The designer will need LiDAR data which allows them to get the real topography of the course that they then build around.
If your course is in a region without LiDAR data available they can’t help you. The course designer will let you know if your course is feasible or not.
How Much Does Golf Course Design for GSPro Cost?
It’s going to range from just under $1000 to $2500+ depending on the level of detail.
Things like clubhouses, homes and other structures will increase the cost. You can also choose to include the driving range and/or other practice facilities from the course.
This will all need to be discussed with your course designer.
FAQ
No, not necessarily. They will likely be the same mix of quality you get from the other courses in GSPro. In fact, these designers often release their best work to all of GSPro.
Not at all. At the time of writing this article there are 694 golf courses included within GSPro. Most of the Patreon designers have something like 20-40 courses in their Patreon course library.
No, not necessarily. This is referring to the tools the designer used to build the course with which are mostly time-saving improvements. A course built with previous tools might be just as good as one built with v4 tools, it would just take the designer longer.
To access their full course library and support your favorite designer. They typically have created a significant amount of the most popular courses in GSPro for free. Some offer discounts on builds to their subscribers.
Absolutely. But be prepared to spend a significant amount of time learning and building. Unless you genuinely want to learn it’s probably better to hire someone. To learn how you should join the Zeros and Ones Discord forum for course designers. There are complete tutorials available. https://discord.com/invite/4ZhJzwx
If you’re not familiar with Discord you can read more about how GSPro works with Discord.
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