Parkitect early build available

Got another one. (and I swear, I've put less than two hours into this game at this point)

You guys can click the photo for a larger version to see the detail better if it helps. Check this pic:

I initally built the swinging ship and the stuff around it (paths, flowers, toilets, etc). I put in the flowers last and then ran an iron fence that only went in front of the flowers (7 squares). After that I did the little pond and the path around it. Next, I dropped the Enterprise ride and pathways for it. I put the trees between the Swinging Ship and the Enterprise. Then when I dropped a piece of iron fence to block the area between the Enterprise and the Swinging Ship entrance path in front of the tree (one piece, one click), it automagically filled in the entire fence as far as it could all the way to the main entrance of the park. It's going right through pathways, but guests walk through as if the fence pieces aren't even there.

And here I was able to replicate the 'phantom piece' issue with the wing coaster. What it shows in this shot is just random pieces left after I deleted the entire coaster. The initial problem was at the top of that half loop on the left. You can see how there's two different pices there at slightly different angles. I used the shallower angle, then hit the bulldozer to delete it and the build cursor went back but the piece remained. I then built the steeper piece and it acted as if the 'phantom' piece wasn't there.

Then I went to delete the entire ride with the other bulldozer icon and it left what you see here. Haven't had this issue with wooden coasters yet, just the steel and wing coasters.

When building scenery, in RCT2 just holding shift automatically raised the current piece to the level on top of whatever might be there. In Parkitect you have to drag it manually. It's a bit of a chore.

For example, if you're building a station or other structure, you place a wall piece at ground level. Now you want to add a wall piece on top of the existing wall piece to build up. In RCT2 all you had to do was put the build cursor on the same line as the wall piece and press shift and it automatically raised the current wall piece to the top of the existing one. You could build up by simply holding shift and clicking. 5 quick clicks and you have a 5-level high wall piece.

With parkitect, you have to manually put the build cursor in place, hold shift and drag it up to the appropriate level above the existing wall piece. Not only time comsuming and overly intensive, but once you get to building and real structure with walls and roofs and such, it's going to frustratingly difficult and time consuming.

Here's some more entrance path weirdness:

In this case, I placed the drop tower. Then I added the exit and entrance. I attached the exit to the main path with a standard path piece. I then tried to build backwards (which Parkitect seems to hate on all counts) with the entrance path. I started to the left of the path coming off the exit. Then I went up towards the tower and then left again. When I came forward (trying to do the back and forth cattle queue thing) it attached to the first piece and made a big closed square.

I decided to keep going to see what would happen so I went left again and then back, back, back towards the entrance for the drop tower. I went around and connected it to the tower entrance (not shown here) and it connected to the tower correctly, but treated the closed square as something else and the new 'end' of the queue is just waiting to be attached to a main pathway where presumable the queue sign will appear. (like on the monorail queue to the right)

Lots of entrance path weirdness.

In this one, on the entrance to the coaster, I can't figure out how to start the path at the actual ride entrance point when it is above the ground. Nothing seems to work. Which force you to work backwards (which, again, I actually prefer) but starting on the ground, building steps up and then going along the station results in this mess.

Working backwards on things with a defined end point (like coaster track or entrance path) seems to make things go haywire.

Also, I just realized there is no helix pieces for the coasters.

Last one for now. Not an issue, just a shot of what you can toss together in a half hour/hour.

Just a very unfinished game at ths point. I'm not a software professional by any stretch of the imagination, but this still looks to have a L-O-N-G way to go. There's some really neat new ideas stacked on top of what is essentially the old RCT2 game. Again, it feels like there's tons of potential and it's a little frustrating to be messing with a shell of what could be at this point. Looking forward to future builds.

EDIT - Oh, I fixed that coaster queue by deleting everything except the piece connected to the entrance then building in the 'correct' direction and it worked just fine. Just needs to be reworked to understand not everyone goes from Point A to Point B. Some of us go from Point B to Point A.

For the record, an updated version (1.1) has been released. Won't get a chance to mess with it until later. Looks like a lot of my issues have been addressed:

Version 1.1:
- added confirmation dialog when removing rides
- added: saving/restoring the sizes of resizable windows
- added confirmation dialog when trying to save over a different existing savegame
- added employee status to staff list entries
- made trash bags automatically disappear after a while (for now)
- improved building paths from raised station entrances/exits, simply click on the entrance/exit tile and start dragging (worked before, but requires less precision now)
- fixed coaster segments sometimes not being properly deleted, Wing Coaster seemed to be particularly prone to this
- fixed: sometimes stuff got deleted that shouldn't be deleted (when auto-deleting something overlapping, such as trees)
- fixed doubled finance view entries for January, Year 0
- fixed missing collisions on Chinese Food stall
- fixed Ferris Wheel using too much CPU time
- fixed guests sometimes using employee paths as shortcuts
- fixed problem with calculation of drop height rating of tracked rides that lead to all kinds of weird side-effects
- fixed a case where guests would get stuck, most commonly on station platforms
- fixed fence build previews not disappearing if canceling build with Escape
- fixed excessive amounts of bloom on lower quality settings
- fixed Enterprise not rotating in splash screen logo
- fixed some cases where staff would stop working
- fixed "Continue" button in splash screen not working
- a couple of fixes for savegame loading problems
- rewrote build preview shader, hopefully this fixes problems some were experiencing with build previews not being rendered properly

The broken previews were a problem on my Surface. Glad that's fixed.

It seems like they're iterating pretty quickly and reacting to feedback, so it should be interesting to see how it goes.

Well, still having two issues with 1.1, so I figured I'd repeat myself.

Entrance paths still want to connect to each other. This prevents side-by-side queues. In this one, I built the Swinging ship and it's entrance. Then the Top Spin and when I reached the end (or beginning, I suppose) of the path where it should have connected to the main midway, it grabbed the Swinging Ship entrance path instead. See the blue & green entrance paths here:

So then I fixed it by pulling the ends apart (it only happens when two end pieces meet) and put the cool little pavillion pieces in. I place a scenic rock in the grass under the front pavillion piece. I clicked on iron fence and then simply clicked to place a solitary piece of fence in front of the rock and got the weird running-to-infinity fence thing:

And, more than anything, that fence thing is SO annoying.

On the plus side, 1.1 loads quicker for me and is a bit more responsive in terms of clicks and such.

That fence bug is pretty wacky. It's obviously pretty easy to repro, I'm sure they'll get it.

They did get the 'phantom piece' thing fixed on the Wing Coaster, but now I ran into something else with that ride that, if my guess is correct, is a pretty hilariously bad oversight.

I built a pretty cool Wing Coaster and when I went to place the station entrance and exit, I got the "location is already occupied" message. The problem is I got that message for every single spot that it's possible to place the entrance and exit - all 12 squares in this case. The Wing Coaster needs an insanely wide area to not create conflict (it IS a wing coaster) as even banking the track too far, too close to the ground causes tunneling. My first instinct was that the collision area for the Wing Coaster train is so wide that it won't allow the entrance and exit to be built:

Giving the benefit of the doubt that I was missing something or that some glitch popped up during the building process, I started a new game and built just six Wing Coaster station pieces and nothing else - literally that's all that's on a brand new map. and I got the same 'occupied' message for all 12 squares. At this point all I can figure is that the train collision area is so wide, it makes adding the entrance and exit impossible. And if so, how does that get past everyone?

Here's another one and it's an audio issue so I can't really screenshot it. Also, there seems to be no rhyme or reason about when it happens. I can't figure out a common cause. Anyway...

When you click on terraforming and then choose terrain to change the grass to sand or dirt or whatever. Using that feature triggers an audio cue (I call it the crackly noise) - whatever it is, the sound of changing the terrain, will get stuck in a loop and just play endlessly.

It doesn't happen all the time. It seems to happen when I do larger areas thoughnot always...or even often. It's happened three times total. Just happened to me in the 1.1 build, so I thought I'd point it out.

Hey,

this is Sebastian, I'm the programmer on this project and thus the one to blame for these bugs I guess... :)

Mainly posting because of the fence bug, as I've not been able to reproduce that yet - is it happening randomly for you, or did you notice some way to trigger it?

At this point all I can figure is that the train collision area is so wide, it makes adding the entrance and exit impossible. And if so, how does that get past everyone?

I actually know how :) We didn't have collision detection on the entrance for the longest time (probably for this exact reason), then one day wondered why it's missing and added it. Pretty embarrassing, but even though there's not too much content yet there's enough combinations of different elements already that these ripple effects can be hard to predict and catch. Plus you guys in the pre-alpha group already did more testing in the last couple days than we could do within 2-3 months of doing nothing but that fulltime (which is why we're sending out these early builds in the first place, after all).
Not an excuse, but an explanation.

Will try to get a 3-tile-wide wing coaster station in for the next update, or at least disable the entrance collision again. Also gonna take a look at these queue issues. Taking a bit more time for this update though, so it probably won't be ready before at least end of next week.

Sorry for the frustrations caused, but thanks so much for going through it and for documenting it this nicely. That really helps us a ton.

You don't have to apologize, even to Gonch. :) I think we all understand the game isn't "done." I suppose the pressure is on though, because there are a great many people who loved the simplicity of RCT2 and the satisfaction of making stuff that it brought. In some ways, it's neat to watch you guys build this out because Atari (or whatever they're called now) couldn't do it with an army of people on RCT3. You're bringing back the Chris Sawyer vibe. We're cheering for you...

Yeah, like Jeff said, no apology needed. I hope I'm helping. I having a lot of fun with the game already.

The fence thing seems to be wildly random...and not common. I wish I could pin down whatever it is that triggers it for you, but I'm not seeing a common factor at this point. Sometimes it happens with a single click/one piece build sometimes it happens when I drag a long row. Sometimes it even happens to connect fencing in other parts of the map that I'm not messing with when I'm putting in fence pieces somewhere else entirely.

I always build fence along path and build it on the edge of the same square the path piece is on rather than on the square next to it - it's an old habit from RCT2 that keeps those squares next to the path open for building. Other than that I haven't spotted the common element.

I'll definitely post it here if I notice something.

Keep up the great work - all of you! Thanks for doing this, man.

Sebioff said:

Hey,

this is Sebastian, I'm the programmer on this project and thus the one to blame for these bugs I guess... :)

(snip)

Sorry for the frustrations caused, but thanks so much for going through it and for documenting it this nicely. That really helps us a ton.

Hi Sebastian - we used to have a saying around the shop. "If you write complex programming and it's bug-free the first time around, then it really wasn't all that complex" - (this obviously is).

There are more than a few of us here at 'Buzz who either write code, debug code, beta-test, document programs, do user support, etc. We're aware of the process...your responsiveness and interest in the user experience are evident...and appreciated.

Oh, and building pathways starting from a raised entrance or exit is MUCH easier in 1.1 - might be my favorite change so far.

I have another question/comment.

Is the scale/physics finalized or a work in progress? If feels very 'off' to me - both visually and in numbers. It seems like a coaster just goes on forever with little slowdown when watching, and then when you pull up statistics, everything seems even more confusing. Take this woodie for example:

That thing is humoungous...or at least it seems like it visually. It took two screenshot to get it all included. That's 19 hills including the midcourse, turnaround and ending and the train is still moving along at a good clip if you don't trim at the midcourse. So visually, it feels like this is a giant coaster moving at a huge rate of speed that never seems to lose that velocity along it's course of 19 hills.

But look closer at the stats (click the pic for a large version).

Drop: 23.84m
Length: 945.75m
Max Speed: 75.88 km/h
Avg Speed: 41.54 km/h

Let me translate that to imperial measurement for my American friends:

Drop: 78 feet
Length: 3103 feet
Max Speed: 47 mph
Avg Speed:26 mph

There's no way an 80 foot tall coaster traveling at a max of 47 mph is going to cover 19 hills. There's no way 19 hills like that are going to fit into 3100 feet.

It feels 'off' on a couple levels.

1. The visual of how (or rather how far while maintaining velocity) the coaster goes.

2. The visual of the coaster vs the reported stats.

So is this something anyone else has noticed? Is it something that isn't finalized and it's more about working out other things right now?

Yeah, I have to agree with that. I think the friction is too low for sure. I've built a few rides that seemed typical to me and they just went flying into the final brakes.

Yup, noticed that as well (and it's something we can still change easily).

Conversion from in-game units to "real" lengths/heights/speeds is based on the height of our people, so it should be fairly accurate in relation to that...on the other hand the scales aren't really realistic (bit better than RCT1/2 maybe? But still pretty whacky).

For friction I used some real values that I found somewhere (hard to find good data on that though :/), so not sure if there's a bug or the scales are the problem, or maybe it's that I neglected air resistance (which probably plays a bigger role than friction actually?).

Definitely should be higher for gameplay purposes, so lacking proper real world data I think I'll just fudge it until it feels good.