US Upgrade Rating

As you know the Official Update was release, based upon your gameplay what would you rate the game with official patch? does your rating improve from previous release? Please Post! :)

My Rating, pevious rating was really poor about 7 (given it was still fun) but since atari and frontier got their act together and came out with a patch (although, i expected to be released earlier) my rating improves to 8.9 (improved features, and fixes)

8.9... wow, how precise!

the official patch has fixed every problem *i've* had, love the game. (noticeable fixes beyond the beta patch).

It bumped the game up from a solid 6 before any patches to a 7.5. I still got some issues how the game just starts to CHUG when you start adding a crap load of stuff even on a high-end computer...

...among a few remaining bugs & missing goodies that make me sorely miss RCT2 & 1... including the unique sound effects for each type of coaster, the winter-theme, and some of the physics of the rides (namely: bobsled coasters).

...if they can address those issues among other quirks, I'd give it a high recommendation. Either way, however, I'm still glued to the game when I'm not glued to Half Life 2 or Halo 2.

Well..the game has gone up in points for me, but not enough to make me happy with it. There are still a number of problems I have found even with the patch. This is what I posted on the Atari forum:

CHAIRLIFT (SHOWSTOPPER)- Numerous odd problems with it. First, I still cannot get a mechanic to fix the one I have in one park as I mentioned earlier. I have built another in a second park but it has not broke yet. But someone else said the same thing, so it's replicatable.

The next thing is harder to explain. Some of my chairlift stations work correctly but others don't it seems. With the ones that don't, the peeps will get on the charilift at two different locations within the same station. After a chair comes in and it's riders have gotten out, peeps in line will get on here where the chairs first stop. That is correct and fine but if the chairs backup and stop in the station for any reason they will get off. So they ride, oh..about 10 feet and exit!! Meanwhile, the peeps board at a second boarding spot right before it dispatches. They get to ride, but the others who actually get on behind them, don't.

Also in this second spot, even in stations that seem to work fine, the bars will open here with riders who just got on. The riders don't get out in this case and the bars then close a second time before dispatching with the riders. Not a major problem, but just wrong. And may be related to Chairlift problem #2.

RAPIDS RIDE (SHOWSTOPPER) - I have a rapids ride with three boats. The ride will run fine for awhile but then one boat will arrive at the station and just disappear! The boats behind will stack up behind this invisible boat and peeps cannot get on the ride and just stay standing in line. I thought maybe it was due to an odd number of boats or maybe just this particular park or ride. So I build a new sandbox park with a brand new custom rapids ride and this time used four boats. Same problem. Makes this ride totally unusable.

Virginia Reel (showstopper)- Has been reported by others as having the same problem as the Rapids ride.

CRASHES - Have experienced new types of crashes since the patch. Like all my others, always a CTD without warning or an error report. CTD while painting queue line color on a carousel. Somewhat repeatable. It happened. Then I restarted the game and tried it again. It immediately crashed a second time just like before. When I attempted to replicate a third time though, it would not do it. So I don’t know what the issue is, but I have never crashed two times in a row in the same place before so there must be something going on here.

I also had a situation where I tried to revert back to a previous saved game. Closed and answered no to save park question. It said clearing data and never recovered from that. Mouse still worked but could not Cntl Alt Delete nor Shift Tab.

COSMETIC BUGS - These are less serious, but still affect how the game looks especially the flower problem. If you place a flower bed using the shift key and it goes below ground, it will still show, but you will not be able to delete it. Perhaps there is a trick, but I haven't found it yet.

Splashes - Splashdown boats have random splash that goes off even when no boats present. Water coaster splashes the entire time boat is in water sections after a hill and does not slow down. Has no water physics at all. Totally unrealistic.

I'm also starting to experience a framerate issue in one of my parks. 30 rides is an average sized real life amusement park. Yet in this game, it brings your system to it's knees. Not too impressed with that. 2.53 Ghz machine ought to be able to do more then that. I'd put in a faster processor if I thought it would help, but sounds like those guys are no better off either.

*** Edited 11/21/2004 10:11:02 PM UTC by Coasterbuf***

showstopper?

Means that a particular error/bug is tremendously frustrating, and more or less makes a particular component of the game unplayable.

I was unaware of these flaws, I don't seem to of ever seen these posted anywhere, thanks for listing them extensivly! I hope these things doesn't frustrate me too much, mostly i've been building coasters....I think we can see another update from Frontier ( i can see it now....COMING LATE DEC 2004 PATCH #2) i'm guessing thats how long it would take since they will update #2 beta first or something close to thereof.

I agree with the crashes and odd bugs, al lof them I can replicate myself.

Did want to mention just havign a faster processor won't help the speed of the game. You also need a load of RAM and a good video card, otherwise you will continue to have trouble. You didn't mention whether you have upgraded the video card in your post.

agreed, Dan: the RAM made all the differance in my case. vid-card didn't hurt either. i learned a lot about my 'puter from this game
Rating: solid 9. *** Edited 11/22/2004 2:20:05 PM UTC by FLYINGSCOOTER***

so far, I like what they have fixed with the patch. There's still more that they need to fix (no need for me to re-elabote what other have already said.)

One "big" problem is still how easy some of the scenarios are. I finished one tycoon level (forgot the name - I am at work) by the end of June in year 1.

One that I can personally say is easy is the scenario "Box Office" sure you clean up the park, the beta only fixed what i needed, but the my pc crippled, had way too much for it to handle (the first time it doing that) Maybe its my skill for parks, or is it just easy, not sure what they thought "hard" was, lol! :)

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Dan D McD said:
Did want to mention just havign a faster processor won't help the speed of the game. You also need a load of RAM and a good video card, otherwise you will continue to have trouble. You didn't mention whether you have upgraded the video card in your post.

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Yes...I actually did upgrade the video card. I went from one of the worst, to one of the best. ATI 7200 to a Geforce 6800OC. Really hasn't had an impact on the game at all, other then give me reflective water.

And that's the strangest thing of all about this game. Others have noticed this too. For most people, it does not seem to matter what you put your settings to. Whether no AA or 4X AA, bloom on or off, draw distance high, or low, bigger screen resolution or smaller, etc etc. No matter what you change, the FPS seems to stay virtually the same. Even the relective water on or off keeps it unchanged. It's WEIRD. Never seen a game behave like this before.

Ram may be an issue as well, but my opinion still is that this game is processor dependent. The larger the park, the faster you need to keep up with everything. And at some point, everyone will hit a ceiling. It's unfortunate, but true...this game is a bit ahead of it's time. Perhaps it will run well in 5 years with equipment in the future. But on today's hardware? Not if you want to make anything close to a real world amusement park with 30-50 rides and lots of buildings. It's just ahead of the hardware I think.

The one thing I hate about the patch is the new info under the park rating. They gave the friggin forumla away! Some things should just remain a mystery.

And yes, the patch made the already ridiculously easy scenarios even easier.

*** Edited 11/23/2004 8:35:40 AM UTC by Lord Gonchar***

I have a 6800 as well, and settings have little impact on the game. I can play Doom 3 at 1280x1024 though, and I can't even begin to explain what a cool experience that was.

Doom 3 at 1280 x 720 on a 50" widescreen TV, now THAT'S am immersive (and frightening if you turn off the lights!) experience.

I'm going to have to break down and buy RCT3 for myself someday.

Bah. Don't bother. What a piece of crap.

That's what I wanted to hear, a good solid unmitigated honest opinion. Looks like I'm going to wait on this one. Maybe I'll pick up RCT2.....

I tried and tried to be a patient fan, but I gave up. What a disappointment. All pretty, not at all functional.

You all are right, seems way to easy, it plays relativly good on the duron and can handle few high graphics games pushed to full limit, but even so, its easy, and it gets boring easily because so, maybe it could be fun somehow, Somehow i should of known its not all its cracked up to be.