Is Soaked worth it?

This has probably been said, like an hundered times. But is it Soaked worth the money? I mean. I don't play RCT3 like I use to RCT2 mainly b/c it just slows up way too much.

Soaked does nothing to help with the slowing of the game.

I personaly think it made it slower.

I like the features that i see... even though not everything is as seems from the posts i read about...but I don't think performance will ever be made right...the engine was crap to begin with. I'm going to buy it when money isn't an issue.

Just to throw my 2 cents worth in- other than it taking longer to load I have not had any troubles with game speed at all- also with some of the cheats I have found have made for some kewl stuff.

On a side note: I like reading these forums for ideas and such for RCT- does anyone know if there are sites like this for other games like TheSims2 or SimCity4?

Soaked is, by far, the best RCT expansion. It's a ton of fun creating your own water parks. I think Soaked helped a little bit with speed, however, not enough to rave about. But, it runs fairly well regardless on my computer (a Compaq laptop.)

Don't buy it if you're just looking to speed up RCT3, because it probably won't help much. Buy it if you're looking for a little more variety to RCT3. It's actually a worthy expansion for a good series.

Just want to note that 'running well' is in the eye of the beholder. Some people are fine with 10 or 20 FPS while others aren't.

One man's 'running fine' is another man's 'running like crap' - so your mileage may vary.

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It's actually a worthy expansion for a good series.

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Hey! Next time you're going to make a joke - add the winky face. ;)

Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 and Soaked! are the best of the best in the RCT Franchise. I eagerly await Wild!

;)

(just for Gonch's sake, so that he doesn't have a massive MI)

...brain...hurts...must...see...winky...face...

Havn't picked up soaked yet,still playing just the main game for now....my problem is with guest sounds particularly screams because it sounds really choppy when running in a full park,could it have something to do with my video card?

I'm running a modified Dell dimension desktop but with the standard intel video card(try as he could my brother couldn't get the radeon card to work in this thing) but what would that have to do with audio problems anyhow?

There should be a site for SC4 somewhere,try doing a search & if you find it please post because I'm having trouble just trying to install that darn thing myself.

The only thing I notice with screams is that they do it constanstantly in the same exact way throughout the whole ride whereas in RCT2 you occassionally heard different kinds of screams

^That's not what I meant.

The sound kinda wants to cut out & is more of a squeal then a scream,all the other audio functions in the game are normal & this even happens when I don't have the camera pointed in the direction facing alot of the other rides which of course causes a drop in frame rates in a crowded park.

I bought it when it came out, but got frustrated rather quickly. I just gave it another try, and now that I've figured out the whole pool/slide system, I think it has a lot of potential. I don't really have any of the speed problems, but I still have issues with the 3-D nature of the game in general. An expansion pack like Soaked with those nice and simple sprites in RCT2 would have been the ultimate.

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Lord Gonchar said:
Soaked does nothing to help with the slowing of the game.

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That's not true. Some have had better performance, some have had worse. Just depends and unfortunately, there is no way to really know until you try.

I do think it is worth it. To me, the game without Soaked is not nearly as fun. Soaked really adds something to the game.

BATWING: Soaked will most likely improve that issue for you. The screams are different in Soaked. It seems like they went through and redid a lot of the audio for the expansion. I had the same issues you have with RCT3 and Soaked fixed them all up and now have no sound issues at all. *** Edited 8/7/2005 6:22:54 PM UTC by Coasterbuf***

Well, I suppose that depends on what you choose to believe. I've seen very few reports of actual improved or reduced framerates and performance with Soaked - most say it stayed the same.

I'm also thinking the people who are saying their performance is better are comparing apples and oranges. The only way to determine if it truly helped is to open an older RCT3 park after installing soaked and comparing.

I feel pretty confident is saying Soaked will not help the game performance at all.

To save frustration, (yeah, I know, is that possible w/this game?) when buying Soaked.
1. Check the specs on the box. My old 'puter ran rct3 okay after i upgraded to a Geforce 4000mx. However, this card either does not work w/soaked or will have serious errors when running soaked. The Geforces are not recomended for Soaked.
2. Make sure you have downloaded the lastest Atari patch for RCT3 before loading Soaked. The nearest thing Atari could tell me was because I missed a Patch, when I loaded Soaked, that was the reason I rcv'd : Bad version 4 error msg's when trying to run the game after installing Soaked.
3. Good luck.

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Lord Gonchar said:
I feel pretty confident is saying Soaked will not help the game performance at all.

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And I am JUST as confident saying that you are wrong and that is DOES help some people (as well as hurt some other's performance too). I have seen plenty of post all over, that would indicate this is the case. With more post leaning towards the improvement side. I myself have also noticed an improvement. I used to have a park that got to the point where it was unplayable. Now it works pretty good and is quite usable.

Sorry that you didn't notice a difference but please don't discount and try to explain away other people's experiences!! I did just what you said..opened an older park, and I am sure many of the other people who reported an increase did the same thing too. I'm scratching my head on why you assume that no one did this and that people are too incapable of making an accurate assement on their own. As you know, RCT3 is a very finicky program and there are as many different experiences with it as there are people using it. Never have the words "your mileage may vary" rung more true on a game.

Honestly, it makes no sense to me that some would see an increase, while others see no difference or a decrease.

They either tweaked the engine or they didn't.

But everyone is free to pay $30 to gamble at the supposed performance increase - at the risk of decreased or unchanged performance.

I stand by my previous comments - with the exception of some that I would probably categorize as 'fanboys', you won't see too many people posting that they're happy that adding the items in soaked somehow improved performance.

If you're buying the game just for the supposed increase, you'll most likely be disappointed.

Sue me. I prefer to play the odds. :)

*** Edited 8/12/2005 10:41:33 PM UTC by Lord Gonchar***

But Gonchar, the entire way this game has been programed all along makes no sense. You know that! It's not programed in assembly, machine code, or whatever. It's programed with VOODOO. LOL

Clearly it's easy to see they tweaked certain things and some of those things react good with a person's rig, and some do not. Or they have addressed certain hardware specific issues while leaving others unaddressed. Not all PC's are running the same hardware. And Frontier's programing, as we all know, leaves something to be desired. Hence the different experiences.

I definitely agree with you that if someone is buying for a speed increase, they could likely be disappointed. There is no guarentee of that and like others have posted, many times there is not.

And I am sure when Wild comes out it will be more of the same...some things will work better, and some even worse. It seems to be a cycle that they are unwilling or unable to break. But at least they finally threw a tilt-a-whirl in there. :)