RCT3 Coaster Building Questions

I thought I would start a thread on Coaster Building questions as well as hints and tricks you may have found to work. I will start off with three comments...

The heights for the coasters are all in odd numbers using Imperial measurements when you do show heights. Me thinks the game was designed with metric measurements in mind...

Has anyone figured out the braking for coasters? If the ride gets braked too much before the station, it wont make it into the station. Furthermore, if it gets stoped at a block in a flat section, it has no way of moving off the block. Anyone find a workaround for that?

I have not seen the "coveted" overbanked turn option while building either type of coasters. Any direction on this?

The overbanks are part of the "elements" on the right side of the construction panel.

I have not figured out how to fix the brake issue either.

1. The height thing hasn't bothered me. RCT3 uses the same pieces taking up the same space as the previous RCT games. I think you're like me and have probably built enough coasters that you could probably do it with the height turned off. I find myself picturing the pieces in RCT2 view in my head as I build. (not really help as much as my POV)

2. I've had trains stop on the block on a flat and they come off. Not sure what's up with that. I always make the block brake the last piece of the flat and the piece immediately after it slants down. More importantly to me, is that the braking isn't working correctly in the demo. The speeds seem to be "off" and no matter what speed I set the block to, my trains always come to a grinding halt on the block.

3. No overbank for the woodies. On the inverts, it's over to the side in the 'special pieces' area. It's available off of a straight flat (like the corkscrew pieces) not on the upward slant (Like loops and half loops)

How about those 40 mph lifts? :)

You can't use lift hill pieces as easy blocks either. So it's proper MCBR or nothing now.

Though i suppose the 40mph lift hills could be used as boosters for the trains. Hope I don't see much of that in the coming months of designs.

Can't make fake fast-trak entrances like before, or at least I couldn't get it to work.

I like the overbanks and the giant corkscrews, though i don't like having to left click on a track to select it instead of right clicking, i've nearly deleted the whole coaster a couple of times!

Also with the nice new look of the stations I don't think there will be such a big focus on doing fancy wall n roof stations. I quiet like watching the peeps getting on and off the ride and going through the turnstiles.

What's different about the stations?

I messed with scenery building and I don't find it to be any different than before. It'll be interesting in the final game to see what happens when you can save blocks of scenery.

See, I'm still not totally sold on the scenery.

Seems too fickle in what can be placed alongside what. Closer to the add-on scenery than the original scenery. Some of the WW & TT scenery was very nice, but it couldn't be placed next to paths or took up a full square for a one side theme (like a wall) or took up 4 squares, but sat funny in that space making it look like you needed to put something nearby.

I still reserve final judgement on that one until the final release, but I'm not real happy with what's in the demo and how it's handled. The scenery feels more like WW3D or TT3D than RCT3D...and there was a reason you rarely saw RCT2 uploads with those add-on scenery items included.

The whole game just seems like they gave up and were satisfied with it being "awkward" at best.

I do like how you can change lift hill speed without altering the excitement of the ride, tho. Little things like that help the game re-bound from some of its quirks.

BTW Jeff thanks for the link to fraps.com in another post. It's a great little program for taking movies of games, and works much better than the built-in RCT movie taker thing... imagine that.

Can you give some specific examples, Gonch? I still don't see how building stuff is different.

Not sure if this has been answered yet, but has anyone figured out how to make a helix yet? Can you even make one?

I couldn't get an helices.

Here's my biggest gripe, Jeff - building near paths.

I prefer to put fencing along the edge of the squre that the path sits. This buys you a full square beside the path for whatever.

In RCT3, you can't lay fence on the same square as a path. Sure, it looks the same if you lay it on the adjacent square, but now depending on what's going behind that fence, it may be in the way again. (example 1 - example 2) I like to think I can run a fence along a pathway and not have it end in front of a scenery piece and then start again after it. Just a minor detail, but one that becomes very noticable in a 3D environment. Another thing I like to do is stack pieces horizontally to 'complete' the look or run a fence to a building door. The front piece should occupy the edge of the path square and the wall piece sits on the same line, but on the square beside the path piece. (I hope that made sense) - Now that's not possible. A third prblem would be fencing off coasters. The wooden coaster's supports disappear when you lay a fence or wall along the edge of one of its squares. The trick was to lay them along the path. Now you either deal with invisible supports on the outside of the coaster or live without fencing coasters off. Minor touches, but exactly the little things that make good theme into great theme.

But an even bigger gripe is making large structures up against the path. I perfer tighter fitting setups and a lot of my parks put buildings right up against midways. We've already established I can't 'double stack' but I also can't complete a flush wall if I have a ride exit or entrance tight against the midway.

First you can't build that wall piece on the path square (just like the fence) - which is fine I actually prefer to build the wall on the next square over, but once I stack up to the raised pathway, the 'can't build on the same square as a path' thing takes over and after three wall pieces, the fourth piece jumps high above the raised path. Now the only way to complete the wall is move back to the path square (you're high enough now for it to work). This was a mildly sloppy trick in RCT2, but in RCT3 it leaves a huge ugly gap in the wall.

Basically, I lose the ability to do tight fitting designs. Now custom structures have to sit at least one square off of a path.

Maybe it's just a personal style thing, but this kills two things I do in great abundance.

Now that I'm really thinking about it, it's not so much the scenery as the paths. Add the ability to add flat scenery along the edge of a path square and pretty much all of the problem is solved.

Helix pieces are to the right of the building interface. Bank a straight piece and it become an option in the 'elements' area.

I noticed the scenery being like the set pieces in WW too. Though we haven't really been given a lot of pieces to play with in the demo. Given the size of this feature in all the online sites/track exchanges i'm a little upset that they've overlooked this.

Obviously it's still possible to create buildings as shown in the demo but we are going to need extra spaces either side of paths and queues to do it. Can't be as tight to them as before if you understand.

But from someone who didn't like the whole buildings and fancy stations thing to start with you've changed your tune Gonch :)

Another thing, is there going to be themed station segments? I've seen themed entrance "ticket buying" parts of the station but are the actual pieces going to be themed?

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But from someone who didn't like the whole buildings and fancy stations thing to start with you've changed your tune Gonch

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Like we're kind of mentioning in the other thread, I think the focus of the game has changed a bit with this one.

You'll also note that towards the end of the RCT2 thing, I swtiched over from 'one-off' coasters, to those mini-parks and finally bigger parks.

It stemmed from getting bored with the coaster building and RCT3 hasn't added much to that. I see myself spending WAY more time with parks than one-off rides this time around. Who knows?

I see what you mean. Yeah, that would be a pain. Hopefully it's something they'll correct.

Fireworks mixmaster should be entertaining.

The atmosphere aspect in this game seems to be it's biggest appeal (to me anyway) so building a a park with pretty lights and music and following peeps round is more than enough to keep me happy.

I don't think i'll be coaster building for most of it. But who knows.

My question is how does one achieve multiple train operation. I've designed numerous wooden coasters. All of them had at least 3 blocks. It would allow me to select 2 trains, but only 1 appears on the track.

Click the coaster to bring up the little coaster interface controls in the bottom right corner.

Click the 'operating mode' button (the one with the gears.

Click the box marked 'block section'

Go back and select 2 or 3 trains (or whatever your layout will handle)

You're good to go.

Speaking of Block Brakes - anyone having problems with them? I can get multiple trains running, but even at the highest speed block setting (where the block brakes shouldn't even slow a train down), the train literally stop/jolt for a split second, then slow down way too much. I thought block brakes can be set to either slow down the train (gracefully) or simply have trains pass over them (without brake pressure) and be used to seperate zones for multiple trains. These are acting very strange.