6 replies to this topic

[marinersfan59]

Coaster Making
Website Version

What's an amusement park without the great coasters? Follow some of these tips, along with your own style, in order to make the best rides that you can.

Build the elements (loops, twists, corkscrews) before you make the entire track. This way, you can have your special features exactly where you would like them, and have them interact with their surroundings exactly how you planned for them to work. When you're done with special features, connect the special elements in a way that looks and rides appealing. Example Screen - Just connect after this.

Unless the ride is going slow, always use banked turns. They cut down on the intensity level a lot, and add to the excitement.

Try to have basic landscaping done before you make your ride. This way you can use the land around it to make the ride more visually appealing. This helps with adding tunnels, and makes it easier for a coaster to go through valleys.

Don't use too many inversions. According to the RollerCoaster DataBase, the coaster with the most inversions in the world is Colossus (Thorpe Park) with 10. This is even excessive for a real coaster. There are 1125 inversions on 1618 steel coasters in the world (.695 per coaster). Inversions aren't as common as most people expect, so for realism, don't have that many in one park! (record for park is 31 on 16 coasters - SFMM).

This applies mostly for wooden coasters, but don't have the track too high off of the ground without adding adequate support. The result of just building the track very high is a very unattractive coaster, and just this can sometimes ruin the apperance.

At non-inversion coasters(such as Giga, Strata(rct3 only), Hyper, etc.), try making it high and use steep-to-flat camelbacks.This takes off intensity and adds a lot of excitement. Also, don't drop too much(12-19 should be okay)

Always try to incorporate paths, scenery, and architecture around the coaster. This boosts the coaster's excitement and is a lot nicer to look at than a blank landcape around the ride. Even if you're going for realism, like a Six Flags park, there's still a lot you can do to theme the ride. You can add custom supports, etc. Don't forget that even though most real coasters are just above sand, fenced off from the rest of the park, there are footers for the supports, there are concrete trucks, and a lot of other stuff going on. Basically, there's always something you can do to theme a coaster. Landscaping and architecture are key.

Landscaping, in addition to all of the other tips mentioned, is key. The best coasters use the surrounding landscape, whether it be waterfalls, cliffs, hills, or valleys, to their advantage. Anyone can build a decent coaster on a huge block of flat land, because it's easy and get's done faster. But what separates the good to average parkmakers from the best (VP winners, NE parkmakers) is their use of the landscape. Just some of the many possibilities are drops down mountains, turnarounds past waterfalls, and tunnels. Good landscaping makes coasters (and parks) more interesting and attractive.

Landscape around turns to make it look better and go undergroudn make sure to slope everything to make it look all nice and pretty unless you are trying to have a jaggedy feel like a rocky mountain or something.

Based on a tutorial made in 2000! by Jo (mommadragon) from RCT Fun and my own experience.

Keep in mind these are general tips. Every coaster type will react different and some coasters are more forgiving than others. The hardest to build in my opinion are the woodies and suspended coasters.

Save, Save, Save !
If you have a ride that has started off really well and you don't save, your computer will have a snit and lose everything you have done so far. It is much easier to get rid of 25 extra saves to clear space than berate yourself for failing to save that beautiful coaster.

Build one element at a time then go back to the station with simple track and test first. It drives you mad to lose a really good looking section of a ride because it tests poorly and there is no way to correct the problem without losing whole sections of the ride.

There is not such thing as too much testing. You may have blinked at a critical time and missed a speed that was way too slow. Don't bother to watch the train on the track, watch the little box that shows the speed of the train.

Never use brakes or boosters in the middle of the ride. If it won’t run without them then there is a major design flaw. (I know, there are exceptions to this but leave those to the very experienced coaster builders for now!)

Top of loops: 20 – 25 mph max
Top of corkscrews: 16 – 22 mph max
Be careful with barrel roles: They can really boost your intensity! So test first before you design the rest of the ride.
With speeds over 20 mph use banked turns!

Except for at the top of an inversion or shortly before arriving at the station, don’t let the speed drop below 20 mph. (This does not go for some of the smaller coasters like mousies and such)

Usually, (slightly depending on the coaster type and the length of the train!) the highest point before a loop should be at least 3 to 4 sections higher than the top of your loop. This also goes for simple camel backs but there you’ll find even more differences with each different coaster type or train length. Simply because there are more coaster- and train types available for them.

Keep the intensity below 10 or your guests will not ride your beautiful creation. Keep in mind that the use of scenery and going underground can have influence on the intensity so try to stay on the safe side.

For suspended coasters: Be careful with going up after a drop with curved track pieces! They can really boost your intensity.

Mousies and Virginia Reel:

Never let speed drop below 10 mph!
With small turns keep speed under 20 mph!
Keep in mind that steep drops do boost the intensity enormously.
Make a small drop (one level/track piece is enough) directly when the car is leaving the station (so, before the lift hill!) to avoid your cars are getting stuck.

Well, this is it for now. If I come up with more I’ll edit it in.

Oh, one last thing! Don’t forget to have a good time while building!

And………TEST! (All of that by Mama Bear and Jo)

This tutorial continues to part two, which can be read HERE


More tips to come. If you would like to have some of your tips published in this tutorial, make a post below. You'll get proper credit for each tip given. Questions and comments are also welcome in this topic.

Edited by marinersfan59, 05 January 2006 - 01:36 AM.

[skyvanman]

How do you do that making the special features first. Don't you have to connect everything when making it?

Answer: There are two ways:

• Build the features using multiple rides of the same track type, then when they're all made, delete the old one and rebuild the same element, or
• After each feature that you make, use straight track to connect the piece to where you want it, and then delete only the straight track, which will be between special elements.

Edited by marinersfan59, 22 January 2005 - 10:10 PM.

[marinersfan59]

When building a coaster underground, don't just have the coaster going into a big dirt hole in the ground. Theme it. Add a rock wall or something similar around it that matches the theme of the ride, and try to cover the hole from being seen, while still making it look nice. Also, unless it is a dark ride, try to keep the cpaster above ground as much as possible. It's much more realistic and, in most cases, looks much better.

Keep in mind that dipping in and out of the ground a lot, while it boosts excitement ratings, it also increases intesity. Try to go underground at a slowish speed, say 40 and under. Besides, if your crusing through the ground at 60, 80, 100+ mph the tunnel is over before you realize it started. Sort of kills the fun of being in pitch black and not seeing what the track ahead is going to do.

There is a trick you can use to lower intensity without hacking. (only do it if you have an awesome ride that's intensity is inbetween 10-12, other wise it'd be silly (if lower) or won't cut it down under 9 (if higher)). I used this "way around the ratings" in my Ozymandias design that can be downloaded here.

You have to make sure you have some flat pieces throughout the track. After you find them, take a few out and replace them with brakes. The speeds set for the brakes should be just high enough that it barely gets over the next hill or through the next element.

Once you test it and the train makes it all the way to the station, these will be your final stats (or if you want the intesity to be a bit higher, just go back and make some of the brake speeds a bit higher). If you did this and the intensity is not under ten, you'll have to either scratch the ride, or redo part of it.

After the ride's been tested and you have the stats where you want them, what's left to do is hit the close button of the ride once, edit all of the brake speeds to 67 mph or whatever that is in kmph, then open the ride. And viola, the stats will be the same as what they were with the slower brake speeds. This works with hacked rides aswell.

Edited by marinersfan59, 08 August 2005 - 03:00 AM.

[marinersfan59]

Thanks to pBOB, this tutorial cannot fit into one post any longer, so it has been expanded into a 2nd post. It's great to see these tutorials still growing. Thanks again to all those who have given input for this, and all tutorials here, and congrats pBOB on getting into the PT2.

[Woodpecker]

Download a workbench from RCTStation, pick a coaster type you like the look of and start playing around with it. Find out what works and what doesn't, and keep building until you get a feel for the kinds of layouts people like; you can always check by opening it to the park guests.

Download Steve Franks' Track Packs: they are recreations of real-life coasters and should give you plenty of ideas for your own designs.

When you decide to theme your Coaster, make sure your ride is as good as it can be before you add scenery. Scenery will not always cover for a bad design, and it's expensive too, so don't waste your money!

A Coaster will be most attractive if the excitement value is higher than, or equal to, the intensity value, but remember that as soon as intensity reaches 10, excitement plummets.

The more often the guests see a Coaster working, the more attracted they will be to ride it. Check there are opportunities for people to see the trains in action.

Make sure you don't have any 'dead spots' in your ride where the train goes very slowly. The ride should be exciting from the moment it leaves the lift hill to the moment it reaches the station brakes. By all means have sections where the guests can recover but they must not feel the ride has dulled-out half-way through. If you can, have a last-minute surprise in store so they come off on a high.

On wooden coasters, making the track dive through its supports is a good way of adding excitement: guests think they are about to bang their heads on a beam and are whisked away at the last second!

The final brakes before the station should be graduated to bring the train to a smooth stop: don't have a 45 mph train hitting 18 mph brakes! Instead, set the first brake at 45 mph, then each successive brake square one setting lower than the previous. This will also help prevent the dreaded 'Station Brakes Failure'. There are excellent articles on RCTStation covering brakes, crashes and other important things.

To create a raised station, build a hill to the height you require. Then press the 'Special' button, select 'Station Platform' and build it. Demolish the previous hill. Bingo!

As some of the best films were made on a budget, so some of the best roller coasters were built in cramped spaces. Small plots of land offer you good opportunities to test your ride-making skills, and force the coaster's excitement up by squeezing the track layers together. Small, tight Coasters are very useful for tiny parks like piers over the sea.

On hills where the train crests slowly, build an anti-rollback by placing a lift chain on the final gentle-to-flat piece at the top. If a wheel bearing failure (vehicle malfunction) occurs, the train will roll back and crash into the one behind. Adding anti-rollbacks stops this, and shouldn't affect the speed of the train during normal operations. This was a problem with early wooden coasters, so adding them to RCT wooden rides makes them that much more realistic.

In the 1920's, Coaster builders designed their rides to be fast and rough (see Steve Franks' recreation of the Airplane Coaster) so don't be afraid of pounding your riders; just be careful you don't overdo it.

Finally, have fun and don't be discouraged if your first few designs are rubbish. Even the professionals around here had to start somewhere!

Edited by Woodpecker, 30 January 2009 - 02:18 PM.

[rcthelp]

To learn how to build some of the classic coaster track elements in RCT2 go the RCT Station Archive KnowledgeBase and watch the Track Element animations.

[allyopper1]

A lot of good tips - some of which I wish I would have known when I first started building coasters for RTC1.

One of my methods for building a custom designed track over a specific land scape is to work backward . . . this works best when you are familiar with the performance charactoristics of a particular type of coaster (i.e. knowing how fast a train will bleed velocity over sucessive hills and around curves).

Usually, I start with the station and the lift hill (at times, I drop the coaster down into a tunnel for a bit of an under ground ride to a lift hill somewhat removed from the station. Next are the first two or three drops off the lift hill. Then I return to the station and work backward through the brake sections, the last part of the run (usually smaller rabbit hills for a relatively high speed end of track experience) building up to higher and higher hills until it is time to connect to the first series of hills. Most of the time, I do need to reposition the first drops I built, and it may take a bit of effort to make the ends meet - but it works well for me for both wooden and especially for high speed tracks (the giga coaster with the triangle shaped track) are my favorites.

Thanks for the tips - you are never too old to learn from those with more experience.