Custom Scenery Exchange / Splashes on the dive machine?

I'm almost done with my dive machine trains, but I'm still unable to come to a decision on enabling splashes, so I thought I'd see what other people think. Essentially, the method for enabling splashes is the same one used on the water coaster. The splashes aren't going to look great - the game's splash sprites look nothing like dive coaster splashes, and they will appear between the first and second cars rather than at the back. Given these limitations, is this something anybody would use? I have three options here:

1) Leave all splashes disabled. If this is the case, should I remove the waterbrakes from the train model, or leave it as is?

2) Check "trains slow down in water" but leave the actual splash sprites disable. You'd still have to merge onto water coaster track to make this work, but at least you wouldn't need brakes. However, brakes give you more control over how much the train slows down, and I think this option would slow the trains too much as it's designed to model the case where the cars are fully immersed in the water.

3) Enable water coaster splashes as I did on the raft ride, despite the fact they won't look right.

Enabling splashes doesn't affect the normal operation of the train, but I don't want to enable them if nobody wants them, as it makes testing difficult (for the raft ride I had someone else test the splashes). The other issue is consistency: I'm planning to do a B&M hyper with the staggered seats at some point, and that will most likely have fully functional custom splash sprites (albeit with some hacking required). I don't really like the idea of having one ride without splashes and one with when both ought to have them, but the method that I'm planning to use on the hyper won't work on the dive coaster.

If you enabled water coaster splashes would they appear whenever the trains were on non-diagonal track? If that's the case then I wouldn't add them. The "trains slow down in water" would be nice I guess, but I never really understood the specific logistics as to how much the train is slowed down. Such important control over speed isn't that much of a concern but I imagine [I don't know] that IRL it's more of a splash-effect rather an actual mechanism for slowing the trains down.

I would personally leave the splashes disabled. It's such a minor point in my opinion and the 'fake' splash by using scenery objects is sufficient for the effect that people go for.

If I enable water coaster splashes, they only appear when the trains are merged onto water coaster track (the water sections, not the coaster sections). If you don't do that nothing happens. Same for "trains slow down in water" - both options are only used on the water coaster in game (the log flume and splash boats use different splashes that do appear everywhere). There are also the wooden coaster splashes - they'd look a bit nicer than the dive machine splashes but they only show on the water splash track section which is only found on wooden coaster track, so they're not really an option here.

I think I will leave splashes disabled unless someone says they want them before the ride is finished later today. Do you think I should remove the waterbrakes from the model, or leave the sprites as they are?

Nothing wrong with leaving the sprites as-is I don't think. It acknowledges that splashes are possible, and people are likely to utilise 'fake' ones anyway so probably worth keeping there.

OK. I'll leave splashes disabled, but the water brakes will remain on the sprites. I've just finished making the preview image, so I just have the final tweaks to do and then I'll upload the ride to my page.

Stupid question, but would it be difficult to make a custom ride for splashes? Basically the water coaster but with the boat itself being invisible and only the splashes visible? That would make something like what I did here look amazing with these new cars.

Splashes are not part of the .DAT file, they're hardcoded. I can put splash sprites in the DAT file, but the difficulty then becomes making it so they only show on the splashdown section. True custom splashes might be something that OpenRCT2 could implement eventually.

The method I'm planning to use when I do the B&M hyper is to put them in the inline twist sprites (which the hyper coaster doesn't need).

Then you can create a splash animation by merging onto an inline twist and then making it invisible, leaving just the splash animation. This doesn't work for the dive machine because it needs the inline twist sprites for heartline rolls.

The 8 car dive coaster has now been uploaded to my webpage - splashes were left disabled, but the waterbrakes remain on the sprites.

Oh my god, if you re-made the B&M hyper and sit-down to look more like the real thing... it would be like getting RCT2 all over again. That would be amazing.

My intention was to make the B&M hyper with staggered seats, like on Diamondback or Shambahla, not to remake the rides already in the game. It's not that they wouldn't benefit from being remade, but I prefer to do new stuff, especially with how long it takes to model these things. In the long term it's something I might do, but the main reason for remaking the dive machine is that the default car's aren't just insufficiently detailed, they're actually wrong.

If you're looking at other projects, can I suggest making a steep drop log flume?

All you have to do is clone the normal log flume, keep the existing sprites, and add in new sprites and animtion for the log for the steep drop part. It's still work but I'm sure, far less than the amount of sprite and animations you did for this drop coaster. This would add a lot of value to RCT considering how many people hack in a steep drop for a log flume.

It's much easier for me to render all new sprites than it is to try and match the look of the in game sprites - especially as my ride generator doesn't have support for reusing existing sprites and I have no plans to add that sort of functionality any time soon as I don't really need it. The number of sprites rendered has no impact on the time taken to create the ride because my ride generator handles all the rendering for me (the dive coaster has more than 12000 sprites)

While a steep drop log flume isn't a difficult project, I have several other projects planned so I probably won't do it anytime soon. I've collected the necessary reference images for a B&M wing coaster, and I have a half finished RMC train model. I also need to start on my planned rework of the animation system before my codebase becomes too much of a mess.

In addition, you'd need to merge tracks to get the steep drop and I'm not sure I can think of a suitable track to merge onto - splash boats track has steep sections but it's wider than log flume track.

There are already steep log flume cars. I don't have the file on me at the moment, but I DO know they exist. 

OK, then there's no need to do them again then.

There are already steep log flume cars. I don't have the file on me at the moment, but I DO know they exist. 

I've never seen any, and if they do exist, why aren't they used more in NE parks? There are a lot of steep log flume rides in NE parks but I haven't seen one with the steep cars.

I would love to see them if they do exist though.

^Maybe Amazing Earl's log flume can do steep drops?

Never tried it, though because the ride is a bit ugly IMO.

"MFG"