Neat screens and scenery

If you have the patience to look through the entire thread, I saw this posted on the Atari forum. Kinda cool with the buildings and such.

Look here

Those are nice - shows how just basic building techniques will still look really nice in the 3D environment.

I personally can't invest even that much time in the demo - it feels too much like a total waste of effort if I can't keep what I can do. I've used the demo mostly to get the interface and technique of the game down.

I'll start playing for real when the retail version comes out :)

Holy sh*t....that was some amazing work...

I like the name. Thunderf**k

That definitely gets me more excited for the game... all the screenshots from Atari still made the game seem more like a carnival the way the parks were created and the paths layed out in my opinion, but seeing this with the custom buildings and trees is way cool.

all that work but still the peeps wouldn't ride his coaster! lol j/k looks good.

Towards the end of that thread is the reason I haven't really played the game much, other than flying around and getting a feel for the controls. It just isn't worth it to start something up time after time you when you aren't able to save your progress.

I also want to know just how big you will be able to make the maps. I want people's recreations to be so big that the rides in the back of the parks aren't even visible from the front of the parks! :)

ahahahaha lol, guttered, i just read that :p

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Badnitrus said:
That definitely gets me more excited for the game... all the screenshots from Atari still made the game seem more like a carnival

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A carnival and a cartoon.

That is why I was almost ready to give up on RCT3 and just stick to RCT2. HOWEVER... After seeing these shots... I am very impressed... absolutely amazing shots.

I especially love that "over head view" and that view looking out the window of the "restaurant".

Just a couple of things. I'm not discounting the work in those screens in any way. They look amazing, but:

What about the coaster? What were the stats? How did it run? Would the peeps even get on it? Who knows?

The buildings look great, but how useful are they beyond scenery? They weren't designed for peeps to go in and out of. How crappy would it look to add a big hot dog building in that area...or a big lemon shaped lemonade stand. It's cute and all to call something a cafe or restaraunt or whatever, but if you want the park to function those actual elements still need to be there. I'm starting to fear the crap I saw a lot of in RCT1 - pretty parks that don't actually run. No doubt those screens were amazing to look at, but if you fired up that game and let peeps roam it would have been a fabulous disaster.

I'm more intested in parks that actaully run and work.

Remember all the custom scenery in rct2, maybe we can get generic Coffee shop etc. scenery for the rides and stalls. Someone mentioned it in an earlier thread, not everyone wants a giant lemon to serve lemonade, sometimes a simple building is more than enough.

I don't know why Atari have aimed this game at young children by using pretty graphics when they aren't able to build a park that will run. And the older generation (or the really old like Gonch ;)) want to build a park that looks and runs like a proper theme park.

Sadly the scenarios don't seem any more challenging than rct2.

Gonchar brings up some good points.

One of the most frustrating things about RCT and RCT2 are parks that look good but are not very functional.

Personally, I am "interested in parks that actually run and work" and look good. Worst things about the RCT/RCT2 was that you had no choice what your stands looked like. Your IceCream stand had a big scoop of ice cream on top of it, your cotton candy stand looked like a big ball of cotton candy, your drink stand looked like 4 soda cans, etc. In the views that the first two versions of the game gave, these "cute" looking stands were "passable" (I usually placed some sort of decorative wall around them to at least hide them... bad thing is that if you wanted to enclose them in a building, you had to go two levels high to clear them.

That is one of the things with RCT3 screens that concerns me. While the earlier versions looked a little "odd", the new versions look absolutely ridiculous... one person sitting in a giant lemon or what ever. Like I stated above... very cartoonish.

I'll say the thing with RCT3 as I said with the first two versions... just the same as you could choose different themes for your entrances and exits to rides, why couldn't you be able to choose different "themes" for your "stalls" and "kiosks" (food / souvineer / Info / etc). Not so much even different themes as much as an "on / off" switch for themes... On = Giant Lemon... Off = Simple square "stall / kiosk" that is easy to place INSIDE of a custom made building or at the very least put two side walls and a back wall around it and a roof over top of it.

My thoughts on this new version of the game has been like a roller coaster ride itself... climbing the lift hill with my growing anticipation, then seeing the first screen shots and going down the first drop (cartoons!)... then cresting the next hill (the build up to the demo)... then another drop (hearing all of the problems... even though I realized it was the demo)... then cresting the next hill (seeing those great shots in the thread above)... and then plummeting down yet another hill when I realized that what Gonchar said was right (Great looking parks that don't run for s***)

I swear I am going to stick with the Junior Coaster (RCT2) before climbing onto the Hyper (RCT3).

(EDIT: Didn't mean to parrot alot of what the last post said. I started typing this post... got called away to a meeting... finished this post and hit "submit"... and Ross beat me to some of my points)

*** Edited 10/6/2004 4:09:38 PM UTC by SLFAKE***

Well, I was kind of pointing out the flaws with the screens Jeff linked to moreso than the game. :)

The answer is obviously to create custom buildings with stalls and such inside. However, those buildings in the linked screens would not accomodate such things.

Which leads to an earlier complaint I made in another thread - the problems with scenery placement.

With the new limits on what can be put where, a simple restaurant building holding a couple of stalls (drink, food, restroom, maybe a shop) now has to be 6 squares wide and 4 squares deep to fit everything in and still have the walls, roofs and such line up with no gaps. In RCT's of past, you could pull this off in a 4x2 footprint.

So now you're forced to build these huge-ass obnixious buildings if you want to play functional or you can design tight little buildings like the linked screens which do nothing, but "sure look purty."

Add that to the million other little things that seem to be popping up (like the block brake debacle) and this becomes more of a generic park layout tool to show off your scenery and landscaping skills.

It's gone from Roller Coaster Tycoon to Theme Park Planner.

The main problem is that they actually listened to too many of those silly 'wish lists' that people posted - but that's a whole different topic.

*** Edited 10/6/2004 4:29:03 PM UTC by Lord Gonchar***

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Lord Gonchar said:

The main problem is that they actually listened to too many of those silly 'wish lists' that people posted - but that's a whole different topic.

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I was thinking the same thing the other day. It almost makes me sick to think that "they" may have taken the opinions of some whiny enthusiasts to "ruin" a game that had so much hype. I really hope that the final release is better than this demo.

In those pics are there really transfer tracks or is that for looks. Also are the stations really used or are they just blocks from senery from RCT2.

The transfer track and station were created, not included. Both for looks.

I have to admit, I'm one of those who use it more like a "Theme Park Planner." I tend to look at the park as a whole, rather than just the coasters.

On some of my RCT and RCT2 parks I have spend as mush, if not more, time designing river rapids, mini golf courses, gardens, etc than on actual coasters (in some cases placing one or more dreaded "clones" in a park).

I guess that is why I could care less about accurate transfertracks, or the exact style of lap bar or what ever (though I do agree that block breaks that stop a train no matter what does not sound good), and more about Lemonade stands that look like giant lemons rather than actual buildings you can easily build scenery around.

How long before pretty graphics and the thrill of building all teh flats and watching them becomes a bore?

The coaster building hasn't changed enough to be entertaining.

The Walls and roof and similar to WW scenery pieces and can't be used to create the same effects and usage as before.

Everything seems just, bigger and cartoony and pretty.

As I said before it looks like it's there to please the eyes of little children rather than being a game.

You think they'll build an ascii theme park, where the graphics are poo but the gameplay is perfect? :)

Ross... are you asking me that last question?

I think I agree with you... "The Walls and roof and similar to WW scenery pieces and can't be used to create the same effects and usage as before." Is that implying what I am thinking... that in some cases it is a step back?

"Everything seems just, bigger and cartoony and pretty." Agreed to. That is why I liked the scenery screens that opened this thread... they looked GOOD... really good. Unfortunately, as some of the previous threads stated... Those may look great, but play bad.

Don't get me wrong... I am not saying I care less about realistic operations on a coaster... quite the opposite. However, I also care that the rest of the "world" looks good too. While the old RCT and RCT2 did not have the most state of art graphics... they did a good over all job that looked "quaint" with out looking cartoonish. Looking at the new screen shots... I liked the heavily detailed scenery earlier in this thread... but every shot I see of a game that is actually in progress, actually has peeps walking around, actually being played... well, not too impressive. Okay... great, you can ride your coasters now. Howerver I would like to see them be ridden through a realistic looking world rather than something out of a Hanna-Barberra cartoon.

Like pointed out before... the game isn't even out yet... so I guess I should just shut up and wait for the finished product. However, isn't the point of a demo to generate some excitement for a new product? Well... with graphics that seem to be designed to entertain the kiddies, I am not getting too jazzed up about this one. *** Edited 10/6/2004 9:05:52 PM UTC by SLFAKE***

After seeing the first screen released back earlier in the year I knew I wouldn't want this game.

In fact, I don't think I've ever played a PC game that was in 3-D for more than three hours.

Oh well, I guess that's just another one of my oddities.