Demo Released

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Jeff said:
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.

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Jeff, thanks for posting this! I have been trying all week to do this and never could. My shift key while working on walls, never worked for coasters. I only use my right shift key, so I never even thought to try the other one. But after you said shift worked, I tried both shift keys and found that only the left one works on coasters. Strange.

I like the way it holds the ride in place for you ever after you release the shift. Very cool. Too bad the walls don't do that too.

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Coasterbuf said:
I like the way it holds the ride in place for you ever after you release the shift. Very cool. Too bad the walls don't do that too.

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Hold down ctrl for scenery to stay in the air

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panman said:

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 ;)?

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I could be wrong, but I suspect that the plug and play as you call it still exist out of necessity. Unlike No Limits, this game is keeping track of a lot of additional stuff besides just a coaster. Peeps, many rides, food stands, new extras like fireworks, triggered effect animations, the rising/setting sun with nighttime lighting, and MP3s all over the place, all come into play. I think if we had a game that had to calculate all the infinite number of angles, sizes and inversions for all the many coasters you might have in a park, it would be too much overhead and the game would come to a crawl. Just a thought.

It has to be plug-and-play pieces. If the general public was OK with limitless possibilities, NoLimits would be distributed by Atari, not someone called "Mad Data."

"I'm data. I'm pissed! :)"

I think we have plug n play as well because they have kept the same "engine" as in RCT1/2, where each piece of track fits exactly in one or two tiles on the terrain, thus limiting the number of options available. To have more angles on drops and turns, they would have to make larger pieces so that it filled a certain number of tiles, these in themselves would be quite limiting as they too would be fixed.

If I was on the development team I would have designed the system so that it could build reasonably accurate recreations of popular coasters (such as the Cyclone pattern), then based the g's, speed, etc on that. Simply watching a few POVs would allow them to at least get the coastercam to run realistically.

I would imagine that most (if not all) of the development team have no interest in theme parks and roller coasters at all (except Chris sawyer who was a consultant,) and apart from a few field trips to Alton Towers, have never even been to a park before. This is only speculation of course, but I've been a games programmer for over 5 years, and most of our software engineers have no interest in the products they produce, those that do have an interest generally tend to produce better software.

I know it's only a demo, but I am amazed in the amount of bugs, but I wouldn't put the blame down to the programmers as they do have a test department which should have picked up on most of the bugs. *** Edited 10/1/2004 9:58:36 PM UTC by Grant***

Why would they be interested in theme parks? The only thing they should be interested in doing is making the game fun. Who cares if you can create a perfect replica of an existing coasters? 99% of the people that play the game are not enthusiasts.

If someone on the team had an interest in theme parks then they would be able to add more input to the game, and we wouldn't be seeing as many bugs as we are. For example, who ever programmed/tested the block brakes would know that they don't work correctly, and it would have been fixed for the demo, instead they now have to rely on the end user to report bugs or things that don't work properly. It's all right to assume everything will be fixed for the release, but they have had far more problems with the demo not running than they anticipated, and will be spending the majority of their time fixing those errors.

I don't expect the coasters to be perfect replicas, but the technology hasn't advanced since RCT1 back in 1999 (or whenever it was released) which is quite sad. Agreed 99% of people playing the game won't be enthusiasts, but I've shown the coaster cam to non enthusiats and they all said the coasters go way too fast, and considering I was using Chris Sawyer's Six Flags coaster recreations, it's not through my bad design. The max positive g's on Texas Giant were 9.74, which is not only unrealistic but it would probably kill most people.

Grant, No Limits has the market for making 100% perfect recreations.

RCT is a completely different game, I don't know anyone who plays RCT that really cares what G's are pulled on a ride compared to the rest of the game.

It's like saying that the statue in Sim City wouldn't only get 4 pigeons a day. Now if they got a pigeon consultant in, who knew everything about pigeons and how often they frequent statues that the game would be far more realistic and correct.

And besides, if parks and games pandered to enthusiasts, we'd lose all of our whine traffic on this site. :P

I think it's a case of sweating the details.

I can't imagine being so tied up in the demo that I'm worried about something as insignificant as the G's being off.

The demo gives you an idea of how the game plays.

You'll either buy the game when it comes out or you won't - what's the point in complaining about things that will obviously be running better in the retail version?

Someone's been listening to the moron majority on the official forums for too long...

I went back last night and began building new coasters in RCT2 (only for test purposes as I've gotten rather spoiled by some of RCT3's new features). Well, the two I built actually came through accurately (stats wise) in RCT3. Visually, they looked a bit too fast in RCT2, but in 3, they ran at a nice, normal speed which I was pleased with. The import tool looks to be pretty good if you plan in advance.

just a note on those block breaks ^^, i got mine to work fine, you have to adjust the speed on it i think, and it has sometihng to do with how fast your train is going when it hits it.

will look into it more tonight, i think i got lucky with it lol

I can download the file, but when i go to open it on my desktop nothing happens. Could someone help me out?

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Grant said:
If someone on the team had an interest in theme parks then they would be able to add more input to the game, and we wouldn't be seeing as many bugs as we are.

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Having interest in the project has nothing to do with bugs. I can't even imagine what the QA process is for something of this magnitude.

It has been said time and time again that this demo represent a beta, probably showing the state of the game weeks ago. No one was lazy or uninterested, it was just the place things were at the time. The retail release will likely be in much better shape.

Now why you'd release something from that stage of development, that I would question.

I'm sure if there are bugs in the final release word will get back and it'll be download patch time anyway :>

Does anyone have a problem making ride queues? When I place the first piece next to the entrance, the cursor jumps about 15 or 20 squares away, then I'm able to continue normally. More than anything, it's just annoying.

queues are a bit differant in the game, i've been playing with the game, make sure to utilize the camera controls the zoom and turning features. I've noticed the mouse and features can be sensitive at times, so zoom in and attach a peice of path to it, then there is a thumnail click on it it brings up path building options, building up and building down. I will be posting pics on my site for those who need a bit of help. What i can suggest most is to play with the game often to learn the features, flaws, ect.

I do like the fact that the queue doesn't attatch to the first piece of pavement that it sees. You can actually build a line next to a midway without having to cheat by removing and adding squares or building and removing fences.

I hope they allow for you to invert the controlls when rotating since I'm used to that in first person games.

I finally built my first coaster on last Friday since I havn't had that much time to play. The transitions are still rough, but the overbanked turns are AWSOME!

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kpjb said:
I do like the fact that the queue doesn't attatch to the first piece of pavement that it sees. You can actually build a line next to a midway without having to cheat by removing and adding squares or building and removing fences.

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You could do that before. You just had to reclick on the attached piece of queue after you continue building it