380 replies to this topic

[Boomer]

Good to hear from all you old-timers out there! Boomer here, I too am still around... my wife says TOO round!

I've been putting together a little piece on the history of the RCT phenomena. From when it first came out, the birth of the RCT community and on through its timeline as I saw it and even a little speculation on the future. I'm going to include Dakinle’s great read on RCT and there will be room somewhere for anyone else who wants to add there 2 cents on the history, and future of RCT and the RCT community.

We'll let you know when its done and you might want to take the time to read it as your name or someone you know could be in it, I go clear back to the beginning, as do some of you and I know and have interviewed many of the RCT community members. With the help of my e-view notes, Goggle and a few remaining brain cells I'll try to span the RCT era as simply and interestingly as possible. Along with Dakinle’s read and the addition of a few others it should be very interesting to take a look back AND a look ahead at the future of the RCT phenomena.

Meanwhile I hope this thread keeps going as it’s really great to hear from some of the old "RCT ghost" from the past.

---Boomer---

[Leonardofury]

Several people myself included came from the Atari forums in 2004. Myself, Ekimmel, Rlindsey, Mousing, Orlandude and Neeltje are people I remember. Most of us joined the Mart after Mousing started running his competitions there, rather than on the Atari Forums. From there we branched out and joined other sites as well.

[RNRMontuX]

Several people myself included came from the Atari forums in 2004. Myself, Ekimmel, Rlindsey, Mousing, Orlandude and Neeltje are people I remember. Most of us joined the Mart after Mousing started running his competitions there, rather than on the Atari Forums. From there we branched out and joined other sites as well.

Yep I remember you Leonardo, you were at the Mart with me, but this was my very first site that I visited, and I never left.

and Dingo 65 just finished his soph year as an illustration at the Hartford Arts School.

Oh cool I wonder what happened to Dingo, he made some pretty sweet objects when he was here.

[rcthelp]

Although I don't remember the order of things, or what the first RCT site I visited was, I think that TycoonPlanet deserves a more prominent mention in the scheme of things.

It had a pretty active board for a while, but a great contribution it made I think, was that it hosted other RCT sites. If you wanted to create a site dedicated to RCT, TycconPlanet would give you some web space and bandwidth. I seem to remember that Chocobogo's site ended up there when the planet owners helped out after all the previous bandwidth problems.

I ended up part of this community quite a different way to most I think. I wanted to learn about how to build and run web sites, and chose RCT as my subject matter because it was very popular and I would be likely to get lots of hits and so learn about what was involved in running a busy site.

At that time, I was (and still am!) a games junkie. I *loved* Theme Park, and a game by a certain Chris Sawyer called Transport Tycoon. So when, one month, PC Gamer reviewed Rollercoaster Tycoon and gave it a good rating, I bought it on release day in the UK. At that time, I had never been to a Theme Park in my life, and to quote several thousands of peeps "Just looking at a Rollercoaster made me feel sick". I just loved the game, and it has directly caused me to visit parks and conquer my fear of coasters. The first coaster I ever rode was Oblivion at Alton Towers. I was over 40 at the time.

Around the same time that RCT came out in the UK, internet connections finally became affordable. We no longer had to 'pay as you go'. For a reasonable flat fee we could connect for as long as we liked. I decided I needed to learn a lot more about the internet (I work in IT) and was looking for a hobby project that would do that. I decided that something to do with RCT might get some visitors because it was a top selling game.

Only at that time, did I start Googling and discover that the game had such a large community. I think I lurked at RCTOA just as it came crashing down, was quite active at TycoonPlanet and RCTUK but eventually made RCT Station my site of choice.

A post at the Station by Henry Winkelstein explained how to restore scenario progress on RCT 1 when moving the game from one PC to another. With his permission, I made a web page out of his instructions and launched my first web site at http://website.lineone.net/~rcthelp

I began noticing that people asked the same questions over and over on RCT boards all over the place, so my next project was to build a FAQ knowledgebase. This can still be found at http://pub18.bravene...rnum=1533911705

All the time, I found myself getting more and more interested in how the game worked rather actually playing it. I never got tired of reading the analysis of the game by Greg Wolking, and Doctor J's Technical Information Depot started me hacking into the file formats. As a scenario player, the thing that frustrated me most about the game was ending up with lost Handymen or Mechanics, and I decided I wanted to write a trainer that would tell me if any of my staff's patrol areas had gaps in them, and if patrol areas overlapped, and if mechanics patrol areas 'missed' ride exits. Doctor J had not managed to figure out how patrol areas were stored in the saved game files, so I had to figure it for myself, and gave it to Doctor J to add to his site. [I never wrote the trainer!]

Around the same sort of time, I became interested in how the game decided what the next 'invention' would be when you research things in scenarios. I think it was because I kept losing a scenario where all the peeps needed the toilet/bathroom but I couldn't build one because it hadn't been invented yet! Up to that point I had never thought that there was some sort of pre-defined order in when things were invented, and how it could be influenced by switch research groups on and off. So I wrote a small program in Visual Basic that would unpack the scenario file, and print out all the ride types, scenery types, shop types available at the start of a scenario, then the 'researchable' objects, in the order they would be invented. The results can still be found at http://website.lineo...rchFrameSet.htm

All the while I had been posting at the Station, with the focus on helping people with some of the concepts and the scenarios, and in particular how to transfer from one PC to another and not lose stuff. I was never interested in competitions or recreations, just 'beating' the game, winning scenarios, etc.

I decided the next thing I needed to learn about on the internet was how to manage a bulletin board, and I successfully applied to join the staff at RCT Station and moderated some forums. I figured it was best to learn on a busy board than create my own and hope that people might visit.

I kept nagging Jim "Red" Phoenix to implement a fully searchable Ride Exchange at the Station. My idea was to integrate it with the bulletin board and base it on RCTUK but make it more automatic and flexible. I thought it would be a great addition to the site, and would give me chance to learn about web programming technologies and databases. But he wasn't to be persuaded.

Whilst moderating, I transferred all my own site's content to the Station, into the excellent KnowledgeBase there, and kept myself technically involved by writing RCT PiNGer and RCT aCceSS.

I hated having hundreds of saved tracks in RCT, and no picture of them displaying in the game, that's how PiNGer came about. There was another progamme around that did this, but my idea was to be able to use the PiNGer to save pictures of rides that could be used in the game AND displayed on the net as part of a, you guessed it, Ride Exchange! I don't remember why I wrote RCT aCceSS, I think it was mostly because people were having to download huge numbers of saved games (made just before scenarios were won) to open all the scenarios up and get the Mega Park. I decided to make it easier for people.

But the idea of a web-based Ride Exchange that automatically calculated all the stats was still eating at me, and it became obvious that if I wanted to do it, I was going to have to get my own web site. The main reason for not breaking away was that I couldn't see any way that people would ever want to come to another site when they had the Station. I'd seen loads of people try and do it, there were dozens and dozens of RCT fansites that had boards running with less than 20 members, and maybe less than a hundred posts, all with pages that were just the same information presented a slightly different way.

Then Hasbro announced RCT2. Within 72 hours of the announcement I was the owner of the rct2.com domain. Having such a great domain meant that I didn't have to work too hard at getting visitors, and I finally got to deliver my Ride Exchange project. Twice! It was a great project, working closely with Henry Winkelstein and Doctor J, both of whom wrote the really clever code, while I focused on the presentation, and reading/writing the database. rct2.com membership grew steadily and it was all manageable, but when the Station closed, it went ballistic! The site had to move servers several times, even though we were always a bit mean about what people could and could not upload/download. And as each move has happened, I've got closer and closer to the "back office", further away from the day to day running of the boards, and even further away from playing the game. If I ever play RCT, it's always Loopy Landscapes, there's still some scenarios I need to win, even though I can acCeSS them all!

One spin-off of the Ride Exchange was that I had to really learn exactly how the board software worked. I became a real expert, posting at the board's own community forums. At one time, I was the author of the official skinning guide, and as a thank-you was awarded a perpetual free license, which is what we use here at rctspace.

[Todd Lee]

rcthelp, you've just highlighted a few of the ways that you have had a very positive influence on the community.

[Christian Benvenuto]

That's great - I can't believe you guys are halfway through college now. Tell Rob and Dingo I said hello.

Same thing from me too Drum. This is HPBOY from RCTS.
Great to see your halfway done with College. Tell the Lacrosse team @ Johns Hopkins congratulations. They deserved the win this year!

[DrumUltimA]

Same thing from me too Drum. This is HPBOY from RCTS.
Great to see your halfway done with College. Tell the Lacrosse team @ Johns Hopkins congratulations. They deserved the win this year!

hahah will do, thanks

I forgot to mention-- I just got a job at Six Flags New England I'm in the entertainment dept, playing drums for their drum corps show

[tom25489]

anyone remember me?

My profile tells me i signed up on 18th April 2003. I remember my time here well - mostly while creating my object theme packs and getting lots of feedback from people.

I've just reinstalled RCT2 after not playing it for a VERY long time - which is what led me back here.

School and college is what brought me to leave, as well as me starting to lose interest. I was also moving onto web design and photography so had little time/motivation to make things for RCT2. Also RCT3's release played a role, as people starting to shift over to that resulting in less people playing RCT2.

With GCSEs over 2 years ago and A Levels near done i've got loads more time now for things. (until i get a job that is!) As i'm 18 now i'm more interested in socialising, driving, Myspace/Facebook etc ..all the usual things. So its very unlikely that i would get back into RCT2 now.

[wabigbear]

Of course you are remembered Tom...great to hear from you again!

[RNRMontuX]

I remember you too Tom. You made lots of objects last I remember.