Parkitect early build available

Hey! In RCT I always charged to use the restrooms.

Absolutely. "People gotta pee".

Just a little work-in-progress excercise to try to build tight.

Similar to the above idea, but also thinking vertically:

I hope this game comes to Steam soon.

It looks really cool, like a 2015 version of RCT2 that is almost exactly the same as the game from over 10 years ago. And I'll probably play it. But those new screencaps from RCT World are so much more impressive.

Excited about what I am seeing here. This makes me seriously regret not getting in on the Kickstarter campaign. I would love to be able to play around with this. Until then I will live vicariously through posts on this thread.

bjames said:

But those new screencaps from RCT World are so much more impressive.

But we have no idea if gameplay is still going to suck.

They burned us once with the whole "look how great this all looks" routine with RCT3 and that game was an excercise in misery to play. They don't get the benefit of the doubt this time.

Plus, I don't need bleeding edge tech to play Parkitect. In fact, I'm playing it on a six year old Dell el-cheapo that cost $400 in 2009.

Hell, the lastest screenshots from RCT World even admit "screenshots taken today on a powerhouse computer with a high-end graphics card at 4K resolution" in the description.

Parkitect is a lot like RCT2. All the fun of 2002, updated for 2015. Just enough different and extra in there to make it feel fun.

I would love to know the differences between Parkitect and RCT. What makes this different? The biggest selling point to me is that I will be able to play it on my Mac, but I've already played RCT2 to death. What else is there?

It looks great, but that's because it looks so similar to my favorite PC game of all time.

Mostly, at this point, the coaster building is entirely different. Endless options - every piece is modifiable both in size and angle. It's a whole different beast. And being as that's a focal point of the game, that's pretty huge.

Down the road, we'll get scenarios and such. I love scenarios/challenges.

Guests are much more aware of their surroundings...and it matters. From the Parkitect site on the subject of Scenery Visibility Checking:

"Every white line here connects a path tile with the scenery items that are visible from that spot, taking occlusions into account. Of course it’s just a rough approximation, and it has only been done for the rock objects here for testing purposes, but as you can see that’s still a slightly crazy amount of calculations that need to be done."

That's pretty awesome stuff if you ask me. Which leads me to:

The business side is more in depth. Workers stock shops, there are options for pricing and even things like how much ice goes in drink or salt on a pretzel that affect costs and profits and guest satisfaction. There are employee-specific paths for back of house. You get to consider both sides, like a real park, keep the inner workings functional an efficient, but hidden from the guest. There more business sim involved if you want it - and I do. Anyone can build a pretty park. Build one that's pretty and completely functional and now we're talking.

Scenery isn't locked to squares. Your park can have a more organic feel when needed (natural forests and growth) or you can alt+click to snap and create more structured areas (landscaping). And already there's different scenery to play with. As these guys finish this up we'll get tons more.

Little graphical things too. Obviously, peeps are different. Water has depth and an effect when rain hits it. The little things.

For me, I believe it's the direction the RCT series would have gone if they kept with the "god mode" or "model" style of play instead of trying to stick you in the park and on the rides and stuff like RCT3 did.

Nothing outside of the coaster building is too different on it's own, but a lot of little differences add up.

Might as well just add me to the payroll now, Sebastian. ;-)

Some years ago, my boss where I was working gave me an RCT game as a Christmas present -- I don't remember which version. I installed it and played with it for a while, but grew annoyed with how tedious it was to create coasters and attractions, and the payoff for that work seemed underwhelming.

Lord Gonchar: reading your posts here I'm actually interested in checking this out. I'm intrigued by the depth of detail one can dive down to.

Well, things are done pretty much the same way - there's just more buttons, sliders and options to mess with to create variations. The interface is familiar, the process is the same, the options are essentially limitless with the simple addition of size and angle features.

Perhaps that's a more accurate wording.

It's the detail that appeals to me. It's been -- six? seven? -- years since I played with RCT. I could plop things down, and that seemed to be about it.

I've been drawing maps of fictional amusement parks for decades, I enjoy the whole process of putting things together, thinking about what needs to be where relative to other things in the park, crowd flow, etc. That RCT game didn't satisfy the itch.

Not sure this will get you there depending on how obsessive you are (and what gets added as they finish the game), but it's definitely looking to be closer than RCT was.

As far as the simplicity of doing different things with the coasters, here's the simplest example I could conjure (click through for the full size shot):

That's just two pieces of track. The first is the flat-to-steep-up piece. I sized it up to a "size 8" and added a 180 degree twist. The second piece is a steep-to-flat. I left the size the same and simply put the angle back to 0. I created a totally unique uphill twist sort of thing with a couple of mouse clicks. That's something that simply couldn't be built in RCT2 - the fact that it can be done so effortlessly is wonderful.

And just because, here's a pier-style setup I threw together in the last hour or so:

And their innovation continues to impress me.

Just announced - you'll share rides by simply sharing an image of the ride. The data is contained in the image. I'm already loving the idea of offering a gallery of creations that when you download the image to your game folder, you're downloading the blueprint of the ride to use in your game too.

Genius, really.

I want Gonch's job.

Sorry.

The All Around Bad Ass position is taken. Feel free to leave your resume and we'll contact you if something opens up.

That's a bummer. You have a sweet gig and a sweet company car.

slithernoggin said:

I've been drawing maps of fictional amusement parks for decades...

I spent a lot of time as a kid drawing parks; like several hours a day. The last park I created took me about a year, erasing and redrawing part until I got everything just right. I was about 16. When that one was finished, everything I attempted to draw afterwards wasn't as good, so I quit.

And that's why I enjoyed RCT so much. I could somewhat create parks like I used to do on paper. They were alive. I just wish there were more options creating paths. I always wanted 45° angles and curves sections.