News / NEDC2 results

- New Element Design Challenge -

- The Results -

After recieving a lovely 12 entries, this year's christmas edition of the NEDC is over, the entries have been voted on by our acolade panelists and the results are in! Over the next week the entries will be released and thus the results will be published. But first, i'm sure everyone is dying to know exactly what our competitors can win! Well as many know, we've teamed up with Roomie's Annual Winter Contest Giveaway Spectacular and have a small, but wonderful list of prizes, each prize as good as the last! Our top entrants can get their hands on:

A, now rare, copy of Loopy Landscapes, we have 3 to give away!
An exciting guest spot in any of your projects by Liampie or Louis!
A fabulous coaster layout designed to your specification by Louis!
An exclusive preview of projects by Liampie or Louis, fantastic!
An OMG unbelievable, I want one of those, New Element T-Shirt!
A secret sneak peak into what NE5 will look like, how fabulous!

So without further ado, we start today with the release of entries placed 12th to 6th. None of these were of a strong enough quality to gain our elusive design, but they are still worth checking out, many containing sparks of genius and solid RCT craftmanship. Tune in tomorrow for our 5th place entry!

12th - Christmas Village by 6crazy6king6 (23.85%)

11th - Disney's Kind-of Scary Very Merry Christmas Party by In:Cities (41.54%)

10th - The Grinch by Corkscrewy (43.08%)

9th - Ring A Ding Dong! by RCTER2 (52.31%)

8th - The Legend of Zelda Snowhead by muuuh (58.46%)

7th - Christmas in Rovaniemi - Santa Claus Village by Arjan van L (61.15%)

6th - Frostbite by Maverix (61.92%)

Ughh I wish I could have finished my entry:/ Real life work takes priority though. Holiday season at Disney is pretty brutal!

Great job guys:] Really impressed by several of these.

RCTER2's design is so cool! You definetly had much fun building that.

I know that you'll say that it weeds out the people that aren't passionate or whatever but I'm bummed the prize list wasn't announced until now. I would have worked a lot harder to get an entry in if this list had been posted earlier because I'm excited about it and I'm not even participating (particularly that NE5 sneak peek).

I just feel the whole "prizes to be announced later" aspect was a mistake and killed some hype I, and others, could have had for this. It's my own mistake I admit but I was under the impression that it would be like years past with copies of LL and rct boardgames and whatever other rct themed collectibles exist. No offense (to Roomie especially ) but I neither need nor get excited about those kinds of things. This prize list you've come up with is really great though and I just would have liked to have heard about it before now. The only one that was even hinted at was the T-shirt and there was no confirmation about that until now.

Just some food for thought for next time something like this is done.

@ the prizes... can we get a picture of this NE T-Shirt, or a teaser SS of NE5 for everybody?

I would have Muuuh and Mav 1 and 2 right now. Looking forward to the upcoming entries. Sorry to see Josh did not finish, but at least we got to see a lot from him in H2H6

In regards to the prizes, Roomie could only get his hands on LL copies, which is still fantastic and so we were undecided on what other prizes to offer so couldn't confirm at the start of the contest what they would be.

Kumba, unfortunately we can't confirm what the T-Shirt will look like but I believe it will be a light blue colour with the Orb on the front breast and something on the back lol. And no we wont be posting a teaser of NE5

I assume you have more than one T-Shirt tho? For unrelated reasons I recently called a T-shirt shop and asked if they could make me a shirt and they said they only do mass orders.

No NE5 teaser... fine with me, I have seen more than a SS of it

^Who said the preview was only going to be a screen shot

For unrelated reasons I recently called a T-shirt shop and asked if they could make me a shirt and they said they only do mass orders.

There are several online companies that would make you a one-off if you wanted. Here's one.

I agree that none of these were design worthy, but I can see Mav's winning. Anyways nice job to the makers, be proud of your shit and don't let a silly little number let you down.

Any reason why these releases aren't occurring individually (say once per day) on the main page so that each park can get some comments? I know the entries weren't the greatest things ever but I know that when I was a n00bie one of the greatest benefits of entering a contest was that you got your moment on the front page and all the constructive criticism and encouragement that goes with it.

Besides that I'll try to comment on each park in it's respective release page for the sake of the 'makers.

Ride6

^I understand your concern, but we wanted to wrap the contest up quicker than 12 days and felt that people would be wanting to see everything quicker. The top 5 are being posted individually.

Making the new people happy an giving them a lot of feedback and comments is really important for sure.

Given the current entries I would rank them as such:

12th - Disney's Kind-of Scary Very Merry Christmas Party by In:Cities
Awkward coaster layout, incompleteness, and the contrast in theme between the Nightmare Before Christmas area and the main street without a nice transition really bring this down for me. Lots of promise, but little materialization.

11th - Christmas Village by 6crazy6king6
Atmosphere created by the color and texture selection brings this one up a notch for me. The coasters and lack of overall refinement keep it down.

10th (tie) - The Grinch by Corkscrewy
Some very cool ideas (sled ride, keyhold inversion, Christmas tree), but execution falls short.

10th (tie) - The Legend of Zelda Snowhead by muuuh
The lagging frame rate, blinding snow/ice and, awkward coaster layout negate the well-made architecture, queue line and station design. Overall I just couldn't really get into it.

8th - Christmas in Rovaniemi - Santa Claus Village by Arjan van L
Best architecture of this bunch and a solid park-layout. Ice skating peeps are pretty great too, though the Christmas trees might've been better left as non-animated objects as the frame rate hurts the refined feeling of the park. The coaster layouts, though supported well and with solid station buildings, are a bit disjointed and awkward as well.

7th - Ring A Ding Dong! by RCTER2
A really fun entry! Vomits sunshine and candy canes all over the screen! The coaster, frame rate (what it is with "Christmas" themes that make people use so many animated objects?) and lack of direction hold it back.

6th - Frostbite by Maverix
A brilliant layout with solid supports and architecture that's held back back somewhat barren surroundings and a lack of scale. Finishing the map off more completely (more black tiles!), some careful foliage additions and a slight expansion of the surrounding "park environment" would easily push this into design territory and a probably top-5 finish.

Ride6

I agree with Milo. I want that t-shirt.

Ring A Ding Dong is superior by far.. It may not seem like award-worthy material, due to it's nonchalant and playful character. But exactly that is what makes it (and most of RCTER2's work) so unique. It's a perfect way of playing this game. He really creates another world, without the forced notion of it having to represent reality, because frankly the game does not feel in any way representative of reality, and more like another universe on itself. He has found an artistic, original vocabulary that fits the world and quirky look of RCT2 perfectly and seamlessly. And although it may seem random to some people, the character and expression of the world that is crafted is absolutely spot on. Without having to show the theme through various obvious cliche's, he is able to do it purely through color, shape and composition, making me feel terrible clumsy, for not being able to myself. Somehow when looking at RCTER2's work, most other 'realist' or 'virtuoso' projects start looking very fake, forced, bragging and pretentious.. Especially my own. Like someone made the mona lisa with LEGO - I'd rather see an original, fresh LEGO creation, which effectively responds to the look and effect of LEGO itself.

So yeah.. I liked Ring A Ding Dong a lot.

Edit: My bad, ignore this post.

- New Element Design Challenge -

- 5th Place -

We now delve into our Top 5, giving you one entry a day until our contest winner is announced! In 5th place brings a twist on our christmas theme, Casimir brings us a peek into christmas in Gotham City.

5th - Gotham Christmas Story by Casimir (62.69%)

Wait, the prizes include guest spots from Liam or Louis, or a layout by Louis? I thought that prizes were supposed to be things people would actually want.

I wish I had known about these prizes before the contest was over. I would have actually submitted something -.-
edit: and I also wish I actually read what other people post before posting.
@Milo ditto.