Rollercoaster Renaissance - Planet Coaster, Rollercoaster Tycoon World & Parkitect

Really appreciated this video about coaster building. I think I'm probably one of the people he references who've been building "death coasters" without quite knowing what I was doing.

So... Planet Coaster has absorbed my childhood love of the Roller Coaster Tycoon series, and building titles. Also for some reason I decided to record my building of my own personal park and narrating over timelapses of just building this park. I really find this game to be of an addicting sort, much like Euro Truck Simulator 2 and City: Skylines.

Here's a playlist of my own personal parks if you'd like to see, I really can't wait to see what they add or do next. More patches with free content, or large expansion pack style addon's? Only time can tell with Frontier.

This is making me want to dive back into Planet Coaster:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/...

Of course...I'd probably never manage something that complex.

the_poison_king wrote:

This is making me want to dive back into Planet Coaster:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/...

Of course...I'd probably never manage something that complex.

Disney needs to take notes from this. First billion dollar coaster....

It's videos like this that make me actually not go back to Planet Coaster. I spend hours and end up with a coaster that has a blob of morphed ground around it, and I consider it a success. I've never been able to get the hang of moving around in the world well enough to place anything with accuracy. I might place an item where I want 1 out of 10 times I try. Seeing this just increases my feelings of inadequacy.

Huh. I played with the camera controls; the free camera mode might be what you need? The stumbling block for me was the system of adjusting the position of the object in three dimensions, but after about two hours, that became a lot less complicated. I used some tutorial videos, too.

Stick with it. You solve those two issues, you'll be set.

I just started Planet Coaster recently. I am currently on the "toddler erratically pushing a walker" level of competency, but I'm sure I'll be up with that Usain Bolt soon!

Spoiler:

No... no I won't

My issue is intimidation, both by the sheer amount of work that can be involved, and the semi-pro outcomes I see from others. Although both of those will go away with time.

How do you create and import structures/items that are not in the database? Is there a tool for that?

You mean blueprints?

Basically, you can create your own 'building blocks' made out of individual parts, save them as a blueprint for your own use, and then use them in multiple builds in future.

Unless I'm mistaken in what you were asking.

I, admittedly, haven't played since the first week of launch, which tends to be what happens when I play a whole load of something in Early Access/Alpha. But I do always go back and give it a proper 'full release' go a while after the actual event.

Maybe it's a personal thing, but I tend to just be happy with what I create and try to better it for my tastes, rather than comparing to the videos etc you see from other people. Maybe they're more artistic, naturally than I am, or maybe the just don't work/commute for ~60 hours a week and can spend 6 hours a day perfecting their build, when I can't

As long as I'm happy with the outcome of a building/area/park, then I don't bother comparing to what others are doing Sure, I get ideas from how they've perhaps used an in-game item for something it wasn't designed for, in an interesting way to create a new/different look, but that's about where it ends, for me.

I mean 3d objects. New "building blocks".

Robear wrote:

I mean 3d objects. New "building blocks".

So far there is no way to my knowledge to add new 3D models to the game, mainly because the game has so many primitives and singular pieces you can create nearly anything you want with them. There's an entire menu dedicated to recolor-able shapes.

Though new models do appear sometimes, it's usually because the developers added something new, like the gingerbread and snow theme in winter, or the recent additions of another ride and new supports for coasters to render automatically.

That's what I needed to know... make objects with parts available in the game.

Robear the tools are so good (aside from navigation that has two modes that are both a tad awkward but functional) that some of the features rival or surpass features of industry standard applications.
For example 3d coat has the voxel based primitive stacking but Planet Coaster's is so much more accessible. Other programs like Maya, modo and 3dsmax have separate plugins for the primitive stacking but they are third party so the quality and accessibility vary along with the added expense.
Many of these programs also have more feature rich digital sculpting but PC gets the job done and sort of does what you want it to do without endless setting and UI tweaking. (in addition to the more robust features requiring much beefier system requirements)

But just look at the screen shots and judge for yourself. I guarantee you that the top end stuff is done by the artistically inclined but not professional. Plus I guarantee the work has taken less time and obviously has a drastically lower learning curve.

Also unlike professional tools, PC seems to reward persistence more than artistic training.

See, I thought it was people using Maya or something to import custom stuff. I guess I should play sandbox if I want to do that stuff.

Sorry, I meant to come back to this and ask you to post a screenshot of the custom items you were talking about. But as mentioned, you can't import from 3rd party applications yet, everything is just created by layering in-game objects.

That's not entirely true, if you want to create prop-ish sort of things your tools won't get you enough granularity, and unless I am missing something (please let me know if I am!) you can't attach things to animatronics, so you can't create anything that moves.

You can't create, change or interact with animatronics, no. (yet).

That's okay. This tells me to focus on the in-game tools.

I think the game where I most indulged in Video Game Cruelty Potential was Theme Park World.

Planet Coaster just got Go-Carts - I may never come back to another game.

Flintheart Glomgold wrote:

Planet Coaster just got Go-Carts - I may never come back to another game.

Whoa. Can you play with the Go-Carts?!

You can't drive them, if that's what you mean.

omni wrote:

You can't drive them, if that's what you mean.

Poooops

While it would indeed be fun, I don't think it really fits with any other part of the game You can of course view the ride from the POV of someone riding it.

I'm just excited because I started building a park with all the F1 tracks, attempting to make them something like 10% scale.

Planet Coaster is releasing their free Spring Update.

Amusingly a big part of it is Security Guards to dissuade and catch pickpockets and vandals. You can also have them eject customers that you "suspect" of being pickpockets or vandals. While I assume the idea is to not have you fuming and frustrated after watching a pickpocket that none of your Security Guards saw, this will also let you "re-accommodate" paying "volunteers". Topical!

omni wrote:

and we have the greatest idle thumbs podcast ever coming up.

Maybe coming Summer 2018. If they get even close to that level of detail, that will be an insanely ambitious sim.

And just because why not pollute this thread with JG awesomeness:

IMAGE(http://images.hellogiggles.com/uploads/2016/04/15033920/jurass-park-4-world-jeff-goldblum.jpg)

Ars Technica points out that Summer 2018 is coinciding with the next Jurassic Park movie. Ergo, I presume that the chance of this game being late is pretty much nil.

However, that doesn't mean it will be ready yet.