29 replies to this topic

[coastercrew]

Congratulations Emergo on such a wonderful and amazing park.

Your structures, colors and layout blow me away everytime I see your work. It's like, "how did she do that this time". I struggle with creating a few decent buildings and you seem to crank them out like there's no tomorrow.

Let's see, there are way too many to comment on, so I'll just pick out a few.

- Your simple, yet elegant entrance leading to the Red Roof Town Hall and the first coaster. Just a really nice feel and welcoming.

- I now know how to do invisible paths, but the way you integrated them into the feel of cell 1 was so nice.

- Just the little touches like the theming around Pirate's Pleasure and Majical Mystery are so well done, yet not over-done. And it's like done thoughout the entire park, wow.

- Loved the landscaping; The trees complemented the feel to the cells really nice.

- The Golden Globe Theatre was my favorite of these little touches.

- Blue Bojou Residence gave your second cell a very relaxing feel.

- Loved the 'golden' cell and those colors.

- Grand Castle Hotel was just amazing and my favorite. It looked so real that I had to take a second look to make sure it wasn't some pre-built game piece.

Here's a few things you might want to improve on that I noticed while running your park and a few questions.....

- Your park made it though the first 3 yrs, but starting on year 4, your park rating started its death spiral down to 589 by year 6 and a mere 134 by July year 9. I was really surprised since you were the first one to point out this potential park affect way back in the beginning of the contest. But, then again, I know first hand what happens when a single path tile is changed.

- I think that maybe too many of the wide paths might have confussed the guests too much. There seemed to be a higher percentage than normal of peeps wanting to go to the bathroom, being thirsty, being hungry, and complaining about being too crowded somewhere around like year 5 or 6. Actually, I thought you did an outstanding job of having wide paths yet not having peeps totally confussed, but there was something still missing.

- You made the same flaw as I did with having too many boats on your water rides. Your log flume clogged up before the end of year 1 and your river rapids got stuck somewhere in year 4.

- I noticed that you received "Most confussing park layout award" several times when I tested your park, but I think this goes with the contest.

- Your underground pathing seemed a bit much for only having 4 cells. My park originally had less underground until I inadvertantly deleted the deadly 'no entry' sign and try frantically to get my numbers back up in cells 6 & 7.

- I thought your coasters needed improvements, but then again, I find that coaster design is a very personal thing.

- The one thing that might not be personal about your first three coasters is the amount time spent sitting on the coaster either waiting to return to the station (coasters 1 & 2) or moving from the platform to the lift hill (coaster 3). It took Golden Girl like 1:25 just to get to the base of the lift. Red Roof Rotary and Blue Bijou, each took close to 1 min to reach the platform after the ride completed.

- I also noticed around year 5, before your rating dropped too much, a hugh line for your first coaster. Maybe you found having less rides in cell 1 was better to get peeps on that first coasters? I never did try this experiment. It seemed for me that I needed to build more rides in cell 1 to keep them happy.

- The long walks the peeps had from exiting a coaster to reaching the entrance to the next cell seemed a bit too long. I guess it was a trade off to keep the park feel right. I did enjoyed watching and laughing at the hugh rowdy crowd of peeps march on to the next cell.

- I noticed in the front of the Grand Castle Hotel the use of invisible paths on top of block scenery. Did you do this trick in other wide path areas that I did not notice?

All in all, Great Job!

Seems we should change this contest name to 'Survivor'. We started out with like 8-10 contestants and slowly one by one we lost all but the BEST!

[RCTtom]

Wow! I love this park!. I really like the architecture in your park Emergo!. It's very colourful and it looks really proffesional. Are you the only one who didn't get disqualified in the contest?. No wonder why your the winner!. I think you could have made the rollercoasters much better though, they are pretty good but I think most of them are too short. It must of took you ages to make that park, at least 100 game years I would say. Well done for winning the contest Emergo, you really put alot of effort in it!.

[Emergo]

Thanks you all again so much for the nice comments!

@Skyvanman: Thanks for the compliments!
If you don't want the extra scenery, then after viewing the park go to your ObjDatafolder, sort on "date added" and throw out all the scenery that was imported by the park. In that way you never have to keep more stuff in your folder than you want, and can still view all parks you want.

@Coastercrew: also thanks!.
Well, although in major things parks will develop the same when running them again, they seem to also differ a bit from time to time. A friend of mine and myself had the park running during more than 4 years, before we got any influence from the "wanters to go home", in the last cell. Very funny to view them, as they are all walking very depressed around the beautiful Grand Hotel (yes, I like that Hotel also very much!).
If you remove them from there, the rating goes up to 999 again for quite some time.
Another, more endurable and within the contest-solution of course is to make an "escape-path" from the last cell to the first cell again. Doing that (had that first), makes the park going steady with 999 for at least some 10 more years or so.(probably much longer even, but I really did not test it for any more ages!) But, as I had just 4 cells, with escape paths from cell 2 and 3 already, I thought it a bit childish to also make an escape path from cell 4. Moreover as in reality no park would stay alife if not at least once in 3 years some changes are made, I think "anyone who wants can just build that escape path in year 4 if he/she wants that, now we all know how the contest works". So, have fun with that one if you want that!.

Never noticed that guests were much confused, I just got the message once later on, but all in all the peeps had a great flow and nobody got really lost or stuck (read also the comment of Coaster King in this thread), just like in other parks where I use double and triple wide paths. Neither did they seem extremely thirsty/hungry or whatever. (no reason for that either, as they could find what they needed on every corner)
But again, there may be slight differences every time you run the same park and of course different people also look with different eyes to the same park.

My coasters can do with improvement anyway(!), but apart from that, in this park I had to execute weird "emergency-solutions" upon them as the park developed and as with each testing more and more people were attracted. So the first coaster does have block brakes where the trains just "hang" midway (awfull!!!). This now worked fine -without the unnessecary hanging with only 2 trains and good timing -, in the beginning, but when I needed more trains than anticipated I had no other good places to still fit in block brakes. And so for each coaster there have been "inserted" silly solutions later on that one would only think of in a contest with these "unique" rules. ( see also the answer below to FK+Coastermind on the cell 2 coaster).

The coaster in cell 1 is a very popular one and many peeps wanted to ride that one right away, as well as a lot of peeps that made the whole circuit wanted to ride it again once they came back into the first cell. Fine with me!! (especially for this contest !) I could easily have made the q-line for it still longer and get it full also. But I limited it to 8 (or 10, don't know exactly) minutes waiting time, which is more than I normally do, for even if RCT peeps don't seem to mind very much, I don't like it myself to have very long waiting times.
As the peeps were so happy anyway and the coaster such a succes (for the RCT-peeps), I did not see any reason to make more rides in the first cell than the 8 (?) that there are.

No, I did not use the invisible path in any wide-path areas. (so the term "other wide path areas" does not apply here).
I used it in the "tea-garden" cafe on building blocks, to be able to place benches on it and in some other cafes, to place benches on grass, things like that. And in some spots I used the "invisible q-line", where I found the normal q-line ugly and it was not built in into a structure or underground.
But you can see all that easily if you follow the peeps, or if you click on "set height on paths", for then you see which parts of grass etc. have "invisible path", for they get an height-mark on it, where "normal" grass or whatever does not get that height-matk.

Oh, and if you have a popular coaster, or flat-ride, from which a bunch of people exit at the same moment, the game always lets them say "it's too crowded here".The complaint just vanishes once they have spread out again, but in a good park by that time of course there are others that exit a ride in a bunch and start the same complaint untill etc....etc.......

I don't think the paths between cells were too long , for the RCT-peeps at least, as it did not seem to have any influence on their happiness. Besides that: path between cell 3 and 4 is very short, paths between 1-2 and 4-back-to-one do have a special "exclusive" restaurant where the "marchers" can rest/eat/drink etc to make their stroll pleasant, and the last route also has an extra restroom and some shops on it's way.
In the only long path between cell 2 and 3 without a break for the peeps, I inserted a picknick place and a hut where you can buy freshly smoked salmon, not RCT-peep-accessible, but at least something for the real ones to look at (LoL!).
But yes, I also had great fun watching them marching in a row to the next cell!!!! I fully agree: Lovely funny view!

Alas: however good an idea the name "survivor" seems to be for it ("surviving" the rules in the first place turned out to be an accomplishment as such (!LoL!) , let alone making a nice park out of that!!!), but the name "survivor" is already in use for a very popular contest on RCTFusion.

Thanks again for all your great compliments and comments, very flattered you took the time and investment to let it run for such a long time (WoW!) and very happy you enjoyed the park so much !!


@FK+Coastermind: Thanks for the compliments and for the feedback !.
Yes I like and appreciate that! and certainly helpfull.
Now you say it, I can imagine the first coaster is somewhat difficult to "follow" and I think you are right that some extra scenery could have helped there!. (I had overlooked that, but will remember that next time! )
And though you are quite right in what you say about it, the Giga is another story: it used to have quite another layout, but starting to theme it, it's excitement rating boosted to somewhere above 10. I already had themed the woody in the third cell and could not get that one's excitement up to more than around 8.9 without making it's intensity higher (and that intensity was too high already for my likings as well as for the peep's flow), and having no time to redo everything I had but one choice: making a part/ the second part of the giga boring, to make it's excitement lower! That's also why it has a long stretch underground, so that there was no influence from surrounding scenery.
I agree, not a very elegant solution, but the best I had. (changing the order of the cells was no option either, as the intensity of the woody was too high to make that one the second cell).

Many thanks also to all others who replied! biggrin.gif

Emergo.

[FK+coastermind]

happy to give feedback emergo. and as for the giga coaster now that you mention it that does makes a lot of since. i was thinking from a park point of view instead of a contest point of view. now if this was just a park not a contest park i would put some drops and stuff in there but im sure you would if it was not a contest park too. congrats again amazing park.


FK+Coastermind

[Trainman 2000]

There is no way i could do that
Those coasters and that scenery is beyond amazing!!

[Domino]

I'm having trouble downloading this park from the paFileDB. It gets to 99% and then stops... could you please fix it (that is, if the problem is on your end), or perhaps direct me to an alternative link, the screens look absolutely amazing.

EDIT: Nevermind... finally got it to work.

Edited by Clockwork, 16 October 2006 - 12:30 AM.

[Emergo]

@ Trainman 200: thanks for the compliments!!
Nearly a year ago now, but I like this park still very much, especially as the complicated rules made it such a challenge to make a good park out of it!

@ Clockwork: hope you enjoy it (don't forget to read the Readme, as to understand why it is like it is...)

Emergo

[mwalimu]

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but...

I downloaded this park and loaded it in RCT2. It loads up and looks nice and all, but the park is closed, and when I click on the main entrance to open the Park Information window, the Open/Close button is missing (as are the Buy Land and Buy Construction Rights buttons, though I don't care about those; the Snap To/Locate and Rename buttons are present. Tried all seven tabs of the information window. Tried clicking the blank space where the Open/Close button is supposed to be. Tried exiting and restarting. Nothing worked. How the heck do I open the park?

Edit: I tried converting the save game into a scenario and loading it, and the park started out open. Seems like a pretty roundabout way to do it, though, and the buttons are still missing from the Park Information window (now I don't have any way to close the park. Not that I'd want to, mind you...)

2nd edit: Another oddity I just discovered - the cash on hand is missing from the lower right window so there's nothing to click on to open the Finances window (so I can't do any marketing to boost attendance). Tried the 'F' keyboard shortcut and it didn't work either.

Edited by mwalimu, 19 December 2006 - 07:01 AM.

[Emergo]

Welcome Mwalimu to the Forums!

Like in many contests, you have to send in this park while it is closed.
This is to make sure there are no peeps in the park when it is sent in, for that only increases the filesize.
The workbench one had to use for it, comes without any use of money.

RCT2 itself does not give you the chance to open or close the park.

To open this park you either need a trainer (the TRG-trainer and the 8-cars trainer both can open and close the park at your wish) or go around it the way you did, by making it a scenario.
With the 8-cars trainer you can also choose to play with or without money.
RCT2 only lets you decide if you want to use money when you are making a new scenario from scratch.

As for this one the bench did not use money, the park is designed to play without any money however. But if you like to play around with it and make nice incomes, you'll have to use a trainer to change it to using money.

Hope you have fun with it anyway, and a very nice time here.

Emergo

[Buckeye Becky]

You can find the 8cars trainer information HERE

and the TRG trainer HERE