246 replies to this topic

[lucas92]

I'm very glad that you don't give up Emergo. Your park will be surely the best that you made. (I'm not sure about that , your previous park seem to be hard to beat ) Anyway, that competition will be very tightned.

Edited by lucas92, 24 January 2006 - 01:57 AM.

[coastercrew]

Becky,

Thanks for the little bit of extra time 'cause I think I need it. I should have something submited by like Jan 30 at 2 am CST.

So many tweeks and some of them take so long to do. Well, I had some plans last night to do some minor tweeks and I wound up trashing my PA coaster (cell 1) and a few hours later still had nothing up and running. I have built at least 15 different version of this coaster and I'm on my 5th coaster type. If only I had gone with the 4 cells.

[RCTtom]

I'm sorry about my terrible behaviour in my previous post, but I had to say it to make myself feel better. I'm really not like that on message boards I've always been a nice person but because Emergo was the first person to insult me on a message board (calling me a kid I find that strongly offensive to me and I'm sure you didn't mean it Emergo) I just couldn't leave it and let you get away with it. I want to stay on here to be happy not insulted that's my school's job but not on here I won't accept that. I'm still interested to see what parks are made in this contest and I'm going to say good luck to everyone who is taking part in it. Let's all respect each other and get along on here shall we?.

[Emergo]

I'm very glad that you don't give up Emergo. Your park will be surely the best that you made. (I'm not sure about that , your previous park seem to be hard to beat. Anyway, that competition will be very tightned.

@Lucas92: Merci beaucoup Lucas I feel really flattered by your comment

Only: for this park it is not the main goal to make a beautiful park.
It has to work (good) within the weird and complicated rules for this one, and that is quite a job!!

But, as I understood, "theming" and a nice looking park are also taken into account, so , within the limited time I had available, I did (still doing) the utmost I could to make it a very nice park also!!!!

And... I will not be able to make this park as nice as I want it before the deadline. Although there are quite some spots with which I am really content.
But still so many ideas that would fit in nicely here, but for which ones I don't have the time anymore. No problem, I can always finish that after the contest.

@RCTtom: Did not think your behaviour was "terrible", as you called it.
By all means, I absolutely did not want/intend to offend you.
If I did so, I am sincerely sorry.
Only wanted to say that it perhaps is better not to comment on certain features of a program/utility if you have not tried out that one yourself and you don't have any real experience with it.
So....ehhh.....OK Guy? (if not, please pm me about it so that we have don't clutter up this topic )


@ Coastercrew: that is a lousy problem, with having to redo your coaster! Really hope you still can find a good one/good layout or else go back to the former one.
Some time ago I also decided I had to redo a coaster/do another coastertype (in my third cell), but all that I could come up with, did not improve the situation as I wanted it, so finally (running out of time as there were/are still so many other things to do) I just went back to the savedgame with the original one and still try to make the best out of it.

In the meantime I've learned so many more things about how to "beat" the special rules for this park/contest, that I really regret it I did not go for more cells than the minimum 4.!!
With what I know by now I could have made 6 , or 9, cells out of it, with just a tiny bit more work and just a tiny bit less beauty (so perhaps that equals each other in time-investment ) But more cells would certainly have been more impressive.

But: luckily one is never too old to learn!?

Hey, good luck, cannot wait to see your your park, and of all others that send in!

[coastercrew]

@ Coastercrew: that is a lousy problem, with having to redo your coaster! Really hope you still can find a good one/good layout or else go back to the former one.
Some time ago I also decided I had to redo a coaster/do another coastertype (in my third cell), but all that I could come up with, did not improve the situation as I wanted it, so finally (running out of time as there were/are still so many other things to do) I just went back to the savedgame with the original one and still try to make the best out of it.

Yes, I did save before going after this latest renovation project, so I have one more try at it tonight and if I can't get what I want then I scrap it and go back. It's just that I started out planning for nine cells, did not fully understand the peep reaction to these weird rules, then could not go back and fully re-work cell 1 (move the entrance and make bigger). And as you might imagine with 7 cells, cell 1 is even more important to keep the peeps in order than a 4 cell park. Oh well, the fun of this contest!

[Emergo]

. And as you might imagine with 7 cells, cell 1 is even more important to keep the peeps in order than a 4 cell park. Oh well, the fun of this contest!

Nope.

As I said in my post of which you just quoted a part: by now, once I know all/most of the RCT-workings for these particular queer/funny contest- rules, cell 1 is exactly as important for a 4-cell-park as for a 7-9-14 Cell- park to keep the peeps in order.!

Nevertheless, you are quite right.... the fun of this contest!! ( I still enjoy it!)

[coastercrew]

Opps, you're right, let me re-phase that.......

In my research/experience, I have found that no matter how many cells a park has it is indeed just as important in each park to keep the peeps "in order" (i.e. busy and not complaining), especially so in cell 1.

What I meant to say is that, as the number of cells increases, it becomes even more important to, as a Hatfield might say, "get them thar peeps on that coaster and the heck out of here". Why, you might ask, is it even more important as the number of cells increases?

As the number of cells increases, the size of each cell tends to decrease. For a 4 cell park, each cell is roughly 64x64 (or 4096 tiles). For 7 and 9 cell parks, each cell is roughly 48x48 (2340 tiles) and 43x43 (1849 tiles), respectively (given that all cells have roughly the same portions). That's 1756 and 1849 less tiles, respectively, or roughly half the size (43% and 55% smaller). Given that a flat ride can comfortably fit into an 8x8 (64 tiles) and a water/go karts/transport ride in 8x32 (256 tiles), that's a lot of extra real estate to keep them busy.

I guess if I had done enough experimenting early on, I would have realized how difficult it would be to move peeps along. I initiallly figured that it wouldn't take them that long to decide and ride the cell's coaster given that I had enough flats (gentle, exciting, and water rides) to make them happy. With this in mind, I would have made the first few cells larger than the later cells. But even then, there's a limit to how big you can make the first cells, otherwise the park layout tends to suffer.

I also started out by not building any kioskes (thus no park map) so I thought they wouldn't know about the more exciting coasters. But NO; word of mouth got around and my theory was doomed.

OK, so given a 4 cell park and a 7 cell park, and let's say both have the same coaster stats for a given cell, the park with more cells will have less room to make other rides and paths to keep them busy. Thus, to prevent overcrowding, a smaller first cell has more of a need to get the peeps onto the coaster faster than a larger first cell.

When I had 9 cells, this task was even that much more difficult, since I had even less room.

The other factor that I've noticed affecting the importance of getting peeps on cell 1's coaster that directly relates to the number of cells, is that the more cells there are, the more escape paths back to cell 1 that are necessary, well that is, if you want to maintain a high park rating for more than 5 years. With more paths leading back to cell 1, there is a higher probability that more peeps NOT wanting to go home accidently make their way back to cell 1, thus adding to the crowds.

Now the real challenging part that I found was building a coaster in the first cell that had the highest possible excitement rating, yet keeping the intensity and nauseating ratings no higher than medium (see my experiment regarding peep tolerances (post #109)) AND having an excitement rating lower than all other cells. Oops, I should have said "peeps preferences", since their tolerances directly relate to their preferences.

Now given that both a 4 cell park and a 7 cell park can get there top four coasters to be equal in terms of excitement rating, that leaves the 7 cell park with 3 more less exciting coasters to build and get peeps on. Almost as many coasters in the entire 4 cell park.

So even though I had close to 2400 guests and a park rating near 900 after year 10, I knew that I could up my coaster's excitement rating in the first cell to help alleviate crowding due to a small sized cell.

After nearly 9 hours, I pulled it off. I raised the coaster's excitement by 1.51 points and still maintained medium intensity and nauseating ratings. Upping the excitement rating was really the easier part for me; the real challenge and why it took so long was keeping the intensity rating at a medium.

So after like my 5th or 6th version, I finally got the intensity to a medium, but the excitement rating was now higher than cell 2 by 0.26 points. This doesn't seem like much, but when you're pushing the threshold, it is. So I spent a few hours upping coaster 2's excitement rating while keeping its intensity a medium and at the same time lowering coaster 1's excitement rating a bit. I some how managed to up coaster 2's excitement by 0.21 and lowered coaster's 1's by 0.15.

Tonight I get to see if my peeps really do appreciate all the hard work I've done for them.

Edited by coastercrew, 25 January 2006 - 11:17 PM.

[coastercrew]

By golly, my peeps actually appreciated my hard work

My riders per hour for the coaster in cell 1 went up from around 600/hour to over 900/hour!

I also added a little trick to help boost the numbers , too.

My riders per hour for the coaster in cell 2 also improved a little.

Now I have noticably more peeps in cells 3, 4, and 5, and noticably less crowding in the first cell.

After ten years, my park rating is hovering around the 996-999 mark with over 2500 guest.

It's too bad I at archy.

Well, it's better now than my beginner mode, but as I said previously, it doesn't 'stack' up to a VP.

Oh well, I have a few more days to see if I can conjure up anything.

Yeah, that's what I need, something to make buildings magically appear.

[coastercrew]

Emergo, I tried to use 8-cars to 'renew' and 'make reliable' my rides. There's a pulldown that has ride numbers, I selected the default which was blank, hoping that it would do all of them, but it doesn't appear to have done anything.

Do I have to select each ride one at a time? If so, is there any pattern to the ride numbering or do I have to go through each and every 250+ of them?

[Emergo]

Emergo, I tried to use 8-cars to 'renew' and 'make reliable' my rides. There's a pulldown that has ride numbers, I selected the default which was blank, hoping that it would do all of them, but it doesn't appear to have done anything.

Do I have to select each ride one at a time? If so, is there any pattern to the ride numbering or do I have to go through each and every 250+ of them?

Coastercrew, either you do have a version of 8-cars that I don't know , or you clicked a wrong button. (think you selected the "rides-" button", which is not for the option you want!)

Normally when you want to "renew'/'make reliable" there does not appear a dropdown menu, and 'renew'/'make reliable' just applies to all rides in the park that you have opened at the moment that you also have opened the trainer.

To make sure:

In 8-cars:

- click "staff"

- click "mechanic"

- click "renew rides", or click "make rids reliable"

Emergo

Edited by Emergo, 27 January 2006 - 09:55 PM.