Demo Released

Grant, regarding the setting of the rides, it seems to me that the rides will wait until the queue line is empty. Apparently RCT3 employees only nice (invisible) ride ops who will hold the ride if they see there are people still coming in the queue. :)

The rides load entirely too slow, especially the coasters. Little bastards need to get to their seats faster!

I agree Jeff. It takes hours to load one ride!

No one figured a way to import RCT2 designs yet?

Probably not as simple as it seems. RCT3's TRK files are 150k (the included woodie) and the old RCT2 TD6 files are 1k or 2k without scenery.

A simple renaming of the file will make it show up in the prebuilt rides list, but if you attempt to load it, it fails.

I really like that you can import just about any music file for your rides. I know you could do this with the old RCT but there's much more to this version. Does anybody know why the hell a hot dog stand would break down? I had my weenie stand to actually break down, and a mechanic came over and fixed it! There's so much detail to this game it's unreal. You can select how much toppings go on the weenies you sell too! (you can get cheese, ketchup, and onions) You can also regulate the amount of ice in cups given at the drink stalls!

This game, without a doubt, will be the best thing to happen to an offseason ever!

Yes you get Ketchup, but no mustard, what's the deal witht that! (Nor do you get some of my favorite dog toppings: chili, relish, and sauerkraut, not all at once, obviously) YOu can also go to your menu board and sell a few varieties. Don't have a hamburger stand in the demo, just name one of your menu choices a Roller-Bite.

Anyway, I played game 2 of Demo RCT3. I actually managed to get a full park built (sans theming), and complete 5 of the 6 objectives. Hey, I was busy playing with OnRideCam some of the time :))

Paths are still gving me the most fits, but then I havent touched scenery elements yet. I did find the path builder, who would have guessed the push pin icon to open the paths toolkit?

I suppose I'll be getting myself one of these when it comes out, so the demo did its job.

The Oil Derrick is cool, and it gives you another fun task, figuring out exctly where on the coaster track to put the prox sensor that sets off the effects for maximum benefit.

I did take the three tutorials that are unlocked, and I appreciate that they are hands on training instead of just watch-and-observe like RCT1 and 2 were.

More later...

Hey, the dev team is British. They call fries "chips" you know!

My demo seems to work fine, quite impressed so far, although many of the options seem needlessly over-complicated- I guess it's just a matter of me getting used to it.

One problem I've had is that when I build a flat ride, for example 'the Revolution' the Ride's Entrance and Exit platforms seem to hover a little above the level of a pathway so I can't connect them to the main path? Anyone know how to solve this, or why it happens?

Likewise, how do you raise a coaster station, so that it doesn't start on the ground?

Same way you did in the old game... hold shift and push the mouse up to raise the starting point of the piece you're about to drop.

I have a feeling full parks are going to be much more popular this time around.

Coaster building hasn't changed enough (at least with the woodies and inverteds as my only example) to make it totally interesting again. It's all the same pieces. The designs were getting very stale towards the end of RCT2's lifespan and there's nothing too different here. For what it's worth I'm more interested in seeing the best of the RCT2 designs in RCT3 than seeing new RCT3 designs because they're probably not going to be too different.

When I sit down with the demo, I'm not inspired by the coaster possibilities, I'm more inspired by the thoughts of huge parks with creative layouts, theme and landscape. Seems to be much more new potential there than in 'one-off' coasters.

Glad to have the chance at some new scenario play, but they don't appear to have gotten any more difficult. The long term appeal to me (at this point based on three days with the demo) is certainly in fantasy parks.

Just a thought.

Well, it's still going to be difficult to create the best current coaster designs by B&M & Intamin, Gravity Group & GCI because of the limited pieces you have to play with. In a way, it's good because simple is good...

...but in a way, it's bad. There should have been a small option to choose between "simple design" and "advanced design" which included a couple pieces inbetween the 45 degree & 90 degree bank. Same goes with the angle of decent. 45, 60, 90... they used that before, and it really limits what you can and cannot build. A choice for "advanced design" would help those more fimilar with the RCT interface re-create the most complicated of coaster layouts.

With what we have now... it's limited, but it's still going to be a fun game regardless.

I see the game as having a more organic feel, offering a more holistic approach to building a park. Building entire parks in RCT1/2 was never as interesting as building individual rides. This game makes me want to build something beautiful because I think you can see so much more of how people interact with it, and you can look at it yourself in virtually any way. I guess we won't know for sure until retail.

Still working through the demo.

I implemented the Sandbox hack with no fuss, then I got daring and went into options and set all video settings up as high as they will go, and turned on all the options. Remember the game recommended I run in "Medium", well I ran the game all-out with no degradation in performance. :)

I'm starting to get the hang of it more and more, and I'm finding more small touches. Etc: building a path, you CAN move that inverted support structure as needed, and you can select what color tiles for queues, and I figured out how to paint indidivual sections of track. I'm, slowly starting to find things.

I did build the infamous Dunk The Riders Inverted, neat with the BloodGore trains going into the reflection pool.

Speaking of the reflection pool, I kinda like the way terraforming works here.

Oh, and nobody mentioned it, but when you do the Sandbox Trick, not only do you get more land, you also get unlimited cash. I, however am not having any luck playing with the system clock to extend my play.

Oh, and for those interested: proof of Dunk The Riders working:

http://www.coasterville.com/willgetwet.jpg

guesses on length of time before add-on pack 1 comes along?

With only 4 themes surely won't be too long. :)

I just imported about 20 coaster tracks from RCT2, and guess what? 15 of them didn't complete the circuit and stalled, 1 of them couldn't be built as it said the track wasn't joined (well it worked in RCT2!), and out of the 4 that worked, 3 of them had ultra extreme intensity, despite having great stats in RCT2. So 1/20, not bad eh?

The one I imported from RCT2 had the same stats as before. That's weird that it would change as much as yours did.

After playing it for a bit, I'm a bit concerned. Coasters seem to have some rather strange physics going on. Rides that would have gotten great stats on RCT1/2 are getting low fun with ultra intensity. Seems rather off to me.

The new coaster tools aren't much more than 1/2 were with what seemed a more difficult way of determining whether an option was possible or not. There also seems to be a "smart" assistant chosing whether your helix is an up or down spiral (maybe I need to do the mouse trick like on paths, didn't try that). The options seem limited for what is now a 3d game. The excuse of having to pre-render track pieces is gone. Where's the advanced coaster building? I also noticed that putting stations in for coasters wasn't too intuitive. How about automatically asking us to do that once the circuit is done or we've close the build tool?

Paths seem awful so far. No way to rapidly slam through a quick path. Click, wait for path to update, click, rinse, repeat. To elevate, you have to hold down the mouse and raise up. Just seems to end up taking more time than a simple click on the path window. I prefered the old method. It was quick to get an elevated path using the path window or just a quick click & drag if you wanted to follow the ground.

It's likely that I'll still pick this guy up. It'll give me something to do while waiting for Guild Wars or a new multi-player FPS.

After playing the initial demo, I wasn't that impressed. Based on a couple of 45 minute session with the provided demo, I could take it or leave it. But after I hacked the scenario, and set up a batch file in a DOS window to reset the clock every half hour, I managed to get in a solid 5 hours of play last night in sandbox mode. What a difference! Atari are out of their minds trying to shut down people from posting how to perform this hack - it makes the demo much better. I'll be getting the game for sure now.

A few things I like:

The 3d view (doh!), and the ability to really see your park and ride the rides. It adds a fantastic element to the park. It also adds a lot of impetus to make you beautify your park. I also noticed when I needed to add details (like fences around coaster perimeters) because it just didn't look "right" without them.

The extra options with staff - training them and trying to keep them happy and motivated - hey, you can even train the Lemon-Chill guy ;)

The (few) extra pieces of track in the Inverted Coaster.

Some things I really hate:

The really clunky interface. It can get really tedious laying out a long path, or scrolling through a list of items to select one. The scrolling thing really drives me crazy. But it's amazing that they have the interface working like this in an OpenGL Environment anyway - a remarkable programming feat for sure.

The fact that they still have a plug'n'play coaster editor (this got to me so badly in RCT1 that I never even bought RCT2). C'mon guys, the pre-fab pieces are really frustrating ...you're in a different world now. Anybody have an inside track on when the "Import No-Limits Track" feature becomes available ;)?

The fact that the zoom-in zoom-out is centered around the screen center, and not the mouse pointer position. This is really bad when you're adding detail to paths, for example, and you need to get a closer look. You zoom in, then you have to reposition the mouse, move the screen a bit, and then continue what you're doing.

There are a couple of bugs that I am really surprised made it this far. For example, if you have a rail-road track, and then you raise the land around it to make a "through the canyon" section, the track gets covered up by the fallout from raising the land. My lurking worry is that if they haven't caught this kind of elementary bug by now, what others are hiding away in there? I suspect we are going to see a rushed product with numerous patches.

But all said, I will definitely be getting this.

I'll try to help out a bit here:

---

There also seems to be a "smart" assistant chosing whether your helix is an up or down spiral (maybe I need to do the mouse trick like on paths, didn't try that).

---

You know how when you do a large half loop or a corkscrew there's the little double ended arrow above the piece you're putting in and you click the side of the arrow in the direction you want the piece to go? Well the arrow seems to be missing from the helix square. Imagine a double ended up/down arrow to the left of the helix piece in the square. Clicking the top left corner of the helix box gets you an up helix and clicking the bottom left gets you a down helix.

---

The fact that the zoom-in zoom-out is centered around the screen center, and not the mouse pointer position. This is really bad when you're adding detail to paths, for example, and you need to get a closer look. You zoom in, then you have to reposition the mouse, move the screen a bit, and then continue what you're doing.

---

There are so many options/ways to use the camera controls that I suggest experimenting quite a bit. Mess with the camera control options and see if that helps at all. Secondly, try a different approach. If you're using Q & E buttons to rotate, then switch to using W/S/A/D buttons to navigate while holding both mouse buttons and moving the mouse to control the camera view. This offers seriously precise control.

Also, I haven't seen the same problems as you guys with coasters either. The physics do seem a bit different, but out of 14 coasters I've imported only 1 failed to complete the circuit. A few stack on block brakes but completed the run and the rest worked fine. Stats seem comparable:

My Verdrehen coaster:

In RCT2 with stats 'enhanced' by theme/scenery

In RCT3, bare

The stats are pretty damn close.

---

It was quick to get an elevated path using the path window or just a quick click & drag if you wanted to follow the ground.

---

You can still click and drag along the ground for a flat path acorss the land. I think the path building is just barely slower (if at all) than the old way. It's still one or two mouse clicks at most to do any path option. (in fact if you really stop and think about it, it's less mouse clicks now than in RCT2 in many cases) The main difference is clicking directly on the path in RCT3 vs clicking buttons in a window in RCT2.

I still think most complaints (including my own early ones) stem from unfamiliarity with the new interface.

Always here to help with any questions :)

*** Edited 10/1/2004 1:23:32 PM UTC by Lord Gonchar***

I'm finding it more difficult to gauge whether a coaster piece will fit on rct3. There seems to be plenty of space from looking at it but it won't let the piece go.