All of these new games.....my take

I've played with No Limits a lot, and I think its fantastic, but I tend to lose focus pretty quick, and I'll tell you why.

With something like RCT, there is a real challenge. You have to fit a coaster into a certain space. You have to budget the new coaster. You have to make it fit into the existing terrain. On the other hand though, the simulation and building process in something like No Limits is just utterly fantastic. The thing is, with No Limits, its hard for me to find inspiration just building whatever I want in a flat plane.

I doubt that we'll ever see a coaster builder such as No Limits ever integrated into something like RCT, because it would just be WAY too difficult of the average game buyer, but at the same time, that is what I would ideally want.

So, are there any plans to release some sort of terrain feature plug in for No Limits? What do you think the editor for the rumored RCT 2 should be like? Of course, it would have to be something a bit more advaned then the builder of RCT 1. Basically, what does the future hold for rollercoaster gaming?

Discuss.

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Idle hands were orient to her.

It's funny that you mention the strategy aspects of RCT, because people made it their mission to get around that with trainers and sandboxes and such. I for one thought that was RCT's appeal in the first place and offered lots of replay value.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

I could never get the trainers and such to work for me, so I just play the game the way it was meant to be played.
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Beer, My Baby, and Coasters. Is this a great country or what? ;)

I think that if someone took RCT and 3d-ized it, something like a much more realistic Sim Theme Park, it could be absolutely incredible...

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Loopscrew.com: (While changes are made, check out the humble collection of NL recreations!)
11/29/01

When did RCT 1 get released? The same time that Star Trek 1 was released? ;) Just joking around.

I doubt that an editor like No Limits, or even simpler, Scream Macines would be implemented in this rumored RCT 2. The average gamer would get fustrated with it, I have a few friends who get fustrated with RCT's plug-in style building method, and they'd be lost with a control point system.

And about 3d-izing it... no way, not until it would be feizible (sp?) to make the game's graphics look as good as nvidia's wolfman animation. Sim Theme Park's graphics are just plain pathetic compared to those (and 1999 FPS games, too... well, most 1999 games.) I don't think that will be for a couple years (wolfman animation quality) to have that quality and maintain a high framerate while in a world with as many complex animations as an amusment park... and need I mention that 3d animation isn't Chris Sawyer's style? (Well, yes, people can change, but making a 3D engine is a lot more work than 2D)

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I have no signature.

Wow, I finally found someone who likes the game they way it was meant to be played! Nice to hear someone say that Jeff. I never saw the point of trainers and such. I've downloaded a few but all they did was make the game get real boring real fast. Building coasters in RCT was easy enough already - why simplify it further?

More to the point of this thread - I agree that this is one of the major downfalls of No Limits. There's no challenge really (unless you count figuring out the editor ;) ) PLus part of the fun of RCT was the themeing and other rides; the idea of creating a whole park was exactly what appealed to me. I'm also somewhat of a sim geek so the running the park side of the game was just as appealing. Don't get me wrong, No Limits is a fabulous game and truly a breakthough for hardcore enthusiasts to live out their fantasies of being a coaster designer for a day, but the lack of a focus makes it less than thrilling for me.

Optimally for me a coaster/park sim would be RCT with some of the freedom of No Limits. Lost the grid system and make it freeform 3D. Use a simple drag and drop system to control turn radius and drop angles. Pick your piece, click the map, drag the size you want and let go. Voila! The simplicity of RCT with Most of the freedom of No LImits. Maybe even apply it to flat rides. It'd be like inserting elements into No Limits - just pick the ride, choose a size (25% through 200%) and drop it in. Want a small ferris wheel? No problem. Want to spend buck on a huge crowd drawing ferris wheel? No problem just build it a 200%!

Lose the handfull of pieces to build with and drop the grid system and you have the next generation. Not much else needs changed. Add some updated graphics, more rides and themes and items and it's a whole new experience of the familiar. Easy enough for casual gamers, flexible enough for hardcore enthusiasts. Just to cater to every last customer, just add a button that toggles "sim mode". You can play any scenario freeform or "by the rules".

Damn, I'm smooth! ;)

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www.coasterimage.com

RCT is a 2D game, and most of your computer's time is spent moving sprites around the screen. Ever notice how if you have a lot of rides, coasters, and peeps on the screen at the same time that the game slows down?

NoLimits has never tried to be anything but a really realistic coaster simulator. Most of your computer's time is spent rendering the 3D world of NoLimits. The advantage? Amazing detail and the ability to do almost anything to your coaster, and view it from any angle. RCT has fixed graphics that really aren't all that detailed when shrunk down and presented in sprite form.

So, is RCT possible in full free 3D like NoLimits? Not now it isn't. A high end computer can have a hard time with a really complicated NoLimits coaster (try that Euro Mir recreation that came with the patch and you'll see what I mean). And that's only 1 coaster. Now take a loaded RCT park that is already experiencing loss of framerates due to the sheer amount of sprites moving around, and think about if those were translated into the same detail level that NoLimits is presented in. No computer is capable of that given current technology.

So, if you'd like given scenarios to build/run an amusement park, play RCT. If you really want to make the coaster of your dreams from scratch and make it as realistic as possible and control almost every aspect of it, play NoLimits. If you'd like a challenge for NoLimits there are contests being run for it all the time that offer difficult scenarios and restrictions to build in.

-Ride_Op

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NoLimits Tournament of Champions now underway at Ride_Op Coaster Productions! http://rideop.twistedrails.com

I disagree totally that it's not possible.

RCT did indeed slow down on my old PC (it was a 233mhz) my new PC (1.33Ghz) has never showed me slowdown on RCT no matter how much I get on there.

Just checked out the Euro Mir too. I ran it while simultaneously streaming mp3's from the net. Got a solid 20 to 30 frames for most of it. Just fine being as Film and TV run at 24fps and 30fps.

Granted, you couldn't do everything No Limits does in an RCT environment. Just add some of the freedom in choosing angles (maybe offer banked turns in 10 degree increments), do the same with elevation angles. Right now RCT offers 45 and 90 degree turns in large and small sizes. Add addition turn angles (again 10 degree increments sounds nice) and some additional sizes (very small, small, medium, large, very large)

I admit to having little understanding of exactly how these games are programmed, but it seems like you could easily meet in the middle.

Actually there really is no comparison between RCT and NL. RCT is a fun little game with mass market appeal and NL was designed for an extremely small niche market. It would be totally against the philosphies behind each game to try to copy the other. The coaster enthusiast in me would like to see both RCT get more like NL and vice versa and has a high liking of NL as it is. The gamer in me has very little interest in NL but could spend hours plugging away at a game that's 3 years old (and shows it at times).

Depends on what I feel like today, but usally I'm more of a gaming enthusiast in front of my PC and a coaster enthusiast at the parks...

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www.coasterimage.com

After playing Halo I'm convinced anything is possible in a 3D world, but the biggest hang-up on a 3D RCT would be making pre-fabricated track sections seem natural in 3D. That's no small task.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

Working as a game developer I know that AI eats up a lot of the computer's time. In some of the biggest levels we'll get a 10-20 fps boost if we delete all of the monsters from the level, but that would make the game quite boring if you had nothing to fight. RCT can easily get away with this because it is not very intesnse graphically.

Euro Mir does keep a decent frame rate, but say you built another one exactly as detailed in the same area? Then add a few flat rides around it, and some shops, a path, and about a hundred peeps walking around. You won't have a framerate left. To be able to handle that you either need a computer much more powerful than what is currently availible, or you have to lose much of the detailed geometry that makes NoLimits so great.

One comprimise is of course to use the prefabbed peices, but as Jeff mentioned it would be tough to make sure that they all lined up. The downside of that is that you lose the freedom that NoLimits has. So you have the 2 extremes right now of RCT and NL. RCT can't do the detail and offer the freedom of design that NL can, and NL can't offer the gameplay and sheer amount of stuff on the screen at the same time as RCT.

-Ride_Op

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NoLimits Tournament of Champions now underway at Ride_Op Coaster Productions! http://rideop.twistedrails.com

Perhaps the solution you're looking for is scenarios/challenges in NL. Like "Create a 120', 5 inversion floorless that fits in this footprint and doesn't exceed these force levels..."

Of course, you don't need the game to issue these challenges to you, you can do it yourself or challenge each other.

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The legend lives!

That EuroMir ride isn't exactly what I'd call efficient use of polygons, either. Instead of a few solid "walls" you've got hundreds and hundreds of tubes that each consist of several polygons. I don't think it's fair to compare that to 3D structures with six or seven sides.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

That's true Jeff. I was merely picking a coaster that I knew off the top of my head that causes a big framerate hit.

-Ride_Op

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NoLimits Tournament of Champions now underway at Ride_Op Coaster Productions! http://rideop.twistedrails.com

What about this....Being able to design your parks and rides in RCT...play the scenarios and what not...but be able to run the track files within no limits, or a program like no limits..that way you can get the best of both worlds...

Dont you meant it the other way around? And Jeff BTW i am the Master of Halo, i make 7-90 yr olds cry. MUWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA FEAR MY WARTHOG.

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The Scream Site
http://www.screamsite.cjb.net

Scenarios and or challenges in No Limits would be great. Like a couple of you mentioned there are already sites offering competitions or at the least we can make up our own "challeneges". True, but here's my problem with those ideas - no reward.

In RCT when I meet a challenge I'm rewarded with new scenarios, more rides, themes, etc. With NL, you complete the "challenge" and that's pretty much that. Also there's not much variety in what you can challenge yourself to do. In RCT there's money challenges, guest challenges, ride challenges and on and on - variety is the key here. In NL the variety consists of choosing which type of coaster I want to build. This basically does little more than change the graphics. Then after I've built my coaster I can either ride it or watch it go around. That's pretty much the entire game. In RCT your parks come alive. Once you build a park you can sit and watch it thrive.

There's no denying NL is the coaster sim to have if you even remotely consider yourself an enthusiast, but in terms of "blow a few hours having fun" gameplay - it doesn't even come close to what I look for.

Still hoping for a game that meets on middle ground...

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www.coasterimage.com

Ride_Op said:

You won't have a framerate left. To be able to handle that you either need a computer much more powerful than what is currently availible, or you have to lose much of the detailed geometry that makes NoLimits so great.

*cough* *cough* Anyone got a NL/RCT mix for a 64-way MIPS processor powered SGI workstation? ;) ;) :)
I am also very surprised that no one has done a serious roller coaster game for Macintosh. I suspect that a big game developer wouldn't have any big issues to port NoLimits to Mac OS especially since Mac OS has OpenGL support. However, I'm not an OpenGL programmer, nor a serious programmer in general (except for ASP/ASP.NET for my websites, of course ;))--so I can't really tell.
Pretty soon, I'll be stuck with pretty much Win2k under Virtual PC running NL at 10 fps... ouch... oh well--guess I'll have to dish out $300 for a cheap WinAMD/Intel box mostly for Windows-only gaming, most likely a Pentium 3 cuz I've got a P3 mobo lying around begging to be used.
It'd be very sweet if NL was also SMP-capable, but I don't really see an advantage for but maybe 2% of the coaster enthusiast community--wouldn't be worth my time.
NoLimits is the best coaster simulator out there, period. Scream Machines is a good, amateur, and quickie game; but NoLimits is serious and man, the graphics are so awesome!

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The Jet Coaster ROARS!
Will Johansson, Webmaster of Xtreme Paramount Parks
http://xpp.coasterbuzz.com/