Park / Isole Calabria
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22-July 05
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90.63%(required: none) Spotlight
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As an aside, it occurs to me that this is what it'll be like when I get older. I can already see it happening now actually. The young are worshipped in this culture. They're more attractive, more athletic, and filled with "potential". Everyone wants to get in on the next big thing. The next Michael Jordan. The next Tiger Woods. Nevermind that the first one is still alive and well. You have your time and then people move on and you learn to accept the fact that it's the next generation's turn to have their 15 minutes. That's what's happening to LL. There isn't much point fighting it, it's just the way things happen in this society.
Corkscrewed Offline
But what seems to slip the mind of so many people here is that the above statement has a converse. If LL is less well equipped for carrying out a lot of tasks than RCT2, then by God it is more impressive when someone achieves a complex look and atmosphere in LL than in RCT2. That you have to be so much more imaginative and experimental with game options in the former game, using station platforms, coaster track, entrances and exits, and hacks that often boggle the mind yet achieve their purpose perfectly, makes it so much more remarkable when such tools are used tastefully and fluidly to achieve the look that a parkmaker was going for. I look at the screens of the Amazonia area in Busch Gardens San Simeon and I am stunned. Fatha' has created nearly perfectly the rotting, run-down, and overgrown jungle village environment in a way that is immersive and atmospheric. He has used coaster track, coaster stations, raised plants and shrubs, and other out-there tools to achieve what he was going for. Now, given a few days or hours I bet Turtle or Steve or Chapel or many others could pull off the same atmospheric jungle look in RCT2 using only scenery. But it would not be as remarkable. Sure, you would be impressed by the parkmaker's taste in putting different scenery items at different levels. But they would probably not have had to open a trainer once during the entire construction. All they would probably be doing was dragging scenery items out of the tabs and tastefully placing them across the environment. In LL one has to make do with a lot less freedom. If you want to make a piece of scenery hang from a building, you have to put it on the ground, probably deleting path beforehand, and then raise it a certain number of times. You have to be able to envision the item looking good at its final destination before you have even placed it on the ground, or else you have wasted your time. In RCT2 you can just place it and see if it looks good. The game is more accommodating in that regard. But that conversely means that a series of hanging plants in LL that look great required a lot more work, and a lot more trial and error. And then when you think about doing that across an entire theme, it is so much more impressive to achieve exactly what you are going for in LL because the paths to get there are more convoluted require so much more imagination. Now, Fatha' has gotten his fair share of praise for his work. I don't think that people's taste for what looks like it took acres of skill to pull off has dimmed. But what has happened is that people are thinking it is OK to take the easy path to get what they want, that is putting scenery items together in RCT2, rather than the hard path, grappling with more inventive avenues in LL, simply because the end result looks about the same. It's not that people have lost their taste for LL, it's that they don't want to try this harder path or something. Well, the end does not justify the means. You can make excellent looking buildings in RCT2 by putting scenery together, but will you come away from it thinking that you really accomplished much other than becoming better at putting scenery together? Either too many people do or "how good are you at putting scenery together with a bit of trainer use mixed in sparsely" has become the evaluative bar for people. Well, let me tell you, there ought to be another evaluative bar. "How imaginative are you with using game tools that at first glance wouldn't look useful, but with precision come out exactly right? How patient are you and how willing are you to accept that you might spend 10 minutes trying to place a shrub in the air and then have to delete it because it doesn't look like what you wanted?" Real RCT work takes a lot more than skill in organizing scenery. It takes patience. It takes imagination. And more importantly, it takes a will to make do with what you have and still achieve what you are going for. I'm personally just getting my first taste at why it's so worth it. In a design I'm working on in LL currently, I'm planning to raise some bushes far up the sides of high buildings to achieve the look of ivy. It's going to be an absolute bitch to do. I know that I'm probably going to have to have six trials and redos for every piece I put up there, and many more for the entire thing. In RCT2 I could just place the scenery on the sides using a little shift-key action and be done with it. I could finish the whole thing in about 20 minutes. It's instead probably going to take me four hours or more. But you know what, I'm doing the damn thing in LL, because at the end of it all I know that I will be able to sit back and smile that I have achieved what I want with a much more formidable game engine. If the design were RCT2 I would sit back and think "cool, I can do a good job of placing bushes there too even though I didn't have to do anything other than hold the shift key to do so." The satisfaction of achieving what I wanted in its exact form would last about 1/15 as long. In RCT2 you don't have to make do with anything. You can always invent another piece of custom scenery to suit a certain need. In RCT2 you don't have to hack endlessly using coaster stations and track to build the Tower of Terror. You can just clap a bunch of scenery pieces together and be done with it. Now, I'm glad that the best parkmakers around NE choose not to load up their parks with custom scenery, instead using it tastefully. But the game options are still so much wider that the term "budging room" never even comes up. There's so little adversity to master compared to LL. And after you pull off something well, you have climbed such a smaller hill than you would have were you to have done it in LL. It's both less impressive and less rewarding.
I own a film called Himalaya which was up for Best Foreign Film a few years back, about a village of Tibetan monks. On a long journey on foot to a sacred prayer site, a fork emerges in the road, and a character tells the group leader: "My master told me, when two paths emerge before you, take the harder one." Take the harder one. At first glance this seems rather counterproductive. Why waste your effort and time and put yourself in danger just to get to the same place? Because at the end of it you are more resilient and have conquered more. If it is a hiking trail up a mountain, you have become that much more fit, and have taken away from it the lesson that even the most imposing mountain can be conquered. You get none of that by taking the easy path. Playing LL is like hiking a mile up a mountain to have lunch to an amazing view of the land all around. Playing RCT2 is like taking a gondola up to the same spot. It's much easier to take the gondola up, but at the end of that hard hike you are more fit, you have learned perserverance, and you feel that you have earned the view. You've got the trail behind you and you have the great feeling of having conquered it. With RCT2 you have trudged through so much less to get there. The limitations of LL should almost be interpreted as a blessing. As a chance to improve many times over what you would in RCT2 when trying to accomplish the same goal. As an opportunity to gain that much more patience and perserverance that you wouldn't get in the wider path that RCT2 is, and to become that much more skilled in the meantime. That's why people should play LL if they want to become truly good at RCT. Because it is, in fact, a less advanced game.
i agree with you about iris. his bias and valuations in news posts have struck me negatively before. i've learned though that criticising him does no good.
about ll and rct2; i don't think finding out which game is more "difficult" matters at all. also do i not find more detail, more effort, more time-consuming hacks and gimmicks automatically more impressive. neither is it very nice how you implent that people who play rct2 and hence "take the easy way out" are in one way or another less skilled or won't see the bright of day because they can't get into the game properly.
On the one hand, I don't like how you've basically said that i've taken the easy way out by playing RCT2. I hope you're not aiming this at me and specifically this park, because there is no way this park was "thrown together with the hope of finding something cool". I had specific views on everything that was built, and I know firsthand exactly how much thought was put into every single tree and bush. Posix hit the nail on the head with the fact that time-consuming hacks should not be automatically more impressive. If they were, Kumba would be God.
On the other hand, I recognise a lot of what you're saying, the fact that it is so much easier to see whether a floating bush looks good in RCT2 is indeed helpful. I can see how this would make you feel. I'd like to speak to you more on AIM about it, if you wouldn't mind... I also like what you've done with the coaster, I hadn't noticed that...
Phatage -
I don't agree with that opinion either, I think RoB is streets ahead. RoB could easily be a real park, and I would love to visit it. This park on the other hand, isn't as accurate.
Not to sound rude, but who I choose to build in my park is my business. Also, Steve had built his area before I built Neuchâtel. I remember you saying in the construction topic that you respect people more if they build their own coasters (regarding the Timothy Cross issue), why not here? I'm sorry not to have let you build a coaster as I originally said, but I then built a layout I was happy with. I've no doubt that you could have built a vastly better one, but I wanted the majority of the coasters in the park to be mine, if I could. I explained all this to you at the time, it should still be in your PM inbox.
MachChunk -
Sorry, were you expecting Mala? I happen to think this is very different to Bijou, but that's your opinion, I guess.
Thankyou for the comments everybody, I especially love reading the in depth reviews...
however in this park, it's obvious how you didn't strive for accuracy much. and i know you don't on purpose, which is perfectly fine but somewhat controversial. made me go "huh?!".
Posix, I wasn't really aiming that as much at Iris in particular. If there has been any example of him seeming to lean towards RCT2, it has been inadvertent and unfortunate, such as the line on this spotlight page. He didn't really mean to convey an RCT2 bias at all, I don't think; that just might have been inadvertently implied. I applaud him for in the past even trying to balance the field, such as when he let Micool and darkfire in as bonus spots for the first Pro Tour. So it's really a combination of factors rather than anybody in particular.
I really enjoyed your post, and I agree with you. It's really hard to create a unique look in LL. It involves a lot of trial and error, a lot of saving and resaving. And once you've spent hours making one little scenic area, if you see some way you could improve it, it's very hard to delete what you already built and start over (which you have to do if you want to stack something). But the thing is, people like finished parks. There was basically one building in those screens I showed of Aquatica, and I spent a weekend working on that. There's zero clearances to worry about (which you have to do a ton because you can't select anything when clearances are restored) and there's also the problem with support height limits. There's solutions to those problems of course, but they're tedious. I can barely put up with the tedium myself, so I don't really expect anyone else to. Egyptopia was fun to make, it had just the right amount of hacking. Most of the stuff I did in Cataclysm was pretty simple too. But starting with Blood Island (where I started using rides as buildings almost exclusively), it's been a long fight to the end for me to maintain my sanity and get the thing finished. I like the idea of taking the harder path too, but I'm tempted to tell people to find a different path because there's a fine line between difficult and impossible and the path I've taken is treading right on that line. If anyone else manages to get something done with this style, I'm duly impressed, but I don't expect most people to even try. I'm not even sure I would recommend people try. It takes a superhuman feat of patience to spend a whole day stacking and restacking and merging only to find out that it still doesn't look right and you need to start over or you'll never be satisfied with it. Especially while others are pumping out park after park with relative ease.
I prefer going to a park like one from the SF chain or Cedar Fair chain than going to a park that focuses on good details of atmosphere which truly immerse a guest like a park from the Busch chain or a Disney park.
Hmm...SF patches of nothing theming that can quite often slip into messines, or Busch Gardens with atmosphere so perfect, I almost forget I'm not in the US. How do Disney or Busch parks accomplish this atmosphere? They create facades to their numerous shops, restaurants, and various other facilities. I think you're taking somewhat of a cynical view to the manner in which one creates atmosphere. The 'relaxing' atmosphere, as you call it, for me gives me a small respite from the excitement. It's like pacing one's self when running a long distance, don't use up all your energy at once, but spread it out so you can truly enjoy one experience apart from the last. I personally find atmospheric parks more enjoyable than SF parks that focus on cramming as many rides in a tiny space as possible. The atmosphere gives the park personality, and 'excitement' isn't something that should be forced onto the guests, it should be created by their reactions to their surroundings. In a sense, that's why I think that sometimes, Spotlight parks should have an alternate, living version in which peeps have spread throughout and given the coasters life. Then, you might find that the 'excitement' you so desire is there, yet it was difficult for you to see without those moving, semi-living peeps.
NOTE: Before I move on, I'd just like to say that despite what I have said above and may have implied, I don't hate SF or CF at all. I just find them less appealing than the chains (BG, Disney, etc.) that give me the impression that they've really taken the time to create a complete experience for their guests.
Moving on, I found the park quite enjoyable and especially appreciated the little details on some of the most seemingly mundane things (i.e. bridges). I really felt like there was an atmosphere that I could really immerse myself in and really enjoy to the fullest extent. My only complaint after a fairly relaxed run-through of the park was that I felt the use of interlocking corkscrews for two of your rollercoasters was a bit redundant...especially for having so few other coasters. What I mean is that when I go on one coaster, I want every major element to be unique from any other ride in the park (aside from loops b/c they aren't as flexible as other major elements). I don't want to go on one ride and think, "I did this same exact thing on another ride, and now, the experience isn't quite as exciting...it's now a bit cliche." Aside from that, great job. Congrats on yet another Spotlight!
Fatha' Offline
Its kind of funny actually....back when Foozy first released those screens of his park....I drooled. I thought to myself..."how on earth could he make something that amazingly detailed." Release those same screens now and you wont get good comments out of me....building this new LL park kind of did open my eyes. Playing RCT2 and actually constructing stuff in it also opened my eyes a bit. When I finish BGSS, it would probably be MUCH MUCH easier for me to transition to the second installment because I have a better understanding of how to create atmosphere and how to get exactly what I want....and as crazy as it sounds....the limits of LL helped me do that. Had I built BGSS in RCT2, I would have taken the normal jumble the scenery in, cram it in as packed as it can it, make the foilage so dense that you cant see through it....hell i probably would have never even thought of the stacked barrels because RCT2 offers poles, which in hindsight would probably look worse then the barrels themselves. In other words, Panic has a good point and people should really listen....playing LL will seriously prepare you to make amazing stuff in RCT2....the biggest case in point is SA, because ROB is a reflection of LL, not a relfection of RCT2 and custom scenery.
One more thing, people need to stop focusing on making "great" theming and pay attention to coasters. The only RCT2 park that has a stellar coaster lineup is ROB, and whats funny is the theming in ROB isnt nearly as detailed as this new spotlight but it still does the job better overall....sometimes cramming in scenery objects int the way....but back to coasters. In the early days of LL, coasters were tremendous, and I think it was due to the easiness of making buildings back then....of course making buildings has become harder in LL but the coaster skill remains. Theme parks are NOTHING without good rides. IOA has great theming, but it has brilliant rides as well....same for the Busch parks. People should pay more attention to coasters instead of making overthemed buildings.
My oppinion is this park is absolubtly wonderful, the atmosphere is awesome, the architecture, tree placement, landscaping, basicly all the technical jargon, is all there. What I feel is missing, is any sort of conviction, or if you like, "Aura".
By this, I mean walking through the park I would feel safe and comfortable. I would be excited by some of the rides, and I would have a good day.
However.... (why is there always a however?)
I would like to look at a ride and think; "Shit, that looks scary". The rides in this park fit wonderfully into the surroundings, but they are not daring, nor are they particularly long/intense/outrageous/wacky. To emphasise what I mean by this, open up Euroscape (main map) or RoB. Euroscape has absolubtly imense rides in that huge spanish themed woodie, the greek-ish coaster with the dive-loop first drop. RoB obviously has a selection of rides from Lemuria to the Woodie to Flood. People should and are still talking about these coasters. I feel with this park, people will not be talking about the coasters individually. Unfortunatly they just dont have that 'something'.
Like I said, I dont want to take anything away from the park because IMO it shits on anything I could produce and is much better than the majority of earlier RCT2 parks. But I understand what Phatage was getting at.
Good luck with the next park. You prolly wouldnt accept, but Id love a spot in any future work, I have started building again you see.
Fatha' Offline
If a coaster is truly great, people wont notice its theming....theyll just notice how great the ride is. When I looked at Eversio Lemuria or Nevis's Giga in Atlantis, I didnt notice their theming because I was far to busy marveling at the great rides they were.
Part of the whole RoB appeal is simply legend at this point I think, because in many ways this is a better park. The rides are just as good, the level of detail is better. The only thing really holding this park back is the size. If this was as big as RoB with maybe one more solid theme and ride, you'd have it beat I think. But then I don't think RoB is the gold standard of RCTing either. It's a great example of one style of parkmaking. Most of my frustration towards parks like this is not because they aren't good, but because less people seem to be willing to take a chance and make something other than a nice semi-realistic fantasy park like this. This park and Artist's last park (Islands of Enchantment) are excellent examples of this style of parkmaking done well and well deserved Spotlights. Every now and then it would be nice to see something different though. Something that changes the way we think about parkmaking. But that's a much more difficult task to accomplish.
I guess I'll just lay down the gauntlet then. Turtle (and Artist too, because I didn't reply to your spotlight
get me on msn messenger! we need to chat!
Corkscrewed Offline
But as I've discussed with Fatha often... I think LL is harder in that way... to get the same level of detail, you have to invent something from nothing. For all the reasons Panic stated, BGSS will be my favorite park of all time when it's released. Because Fatha's gotten RCT 2-like detail in LL work... something that only CoasterEd has approached IMO. This is elite elite stuff we're talking about... to have that sort of vision and motivation and effort.
It's easier to make something look nice in RCT 2 as opposed to LL. You don't have to work as hard. It's kinda like how in RCT 3, you can make a simple building and the graphics engine will make it look amazing. This "easierness" that RCT 2 possesses over LL is another reason for RCT 2's popularity. However, the very thing that gives RCT 2 a weakness is also a hidden strength.
If you do manage to transcend typical "nice looking" parkmaking and truly make something that is AWEsome, you've written yourself into history. What I mean by that is that if someone, one day, puts the same effort, creativity, and skill into a RCT 2 that, say, Fatha has invested into his LL Busch Gardens park, that RCT 2 park will blow all other parks out of the water. Once you get past RCT 2's version of the glass ceiling, you will be incredible.
Part of RoB's legendary status comes from the fact that SA's LL roots enabled him to put the same sort of all-encompassing thought and effort into a RCT 2 park. He built it using LL principles of extended extra effort and detail. He wasn't simply putting a kit of parts together, he was doing that same experimenting, tweaking, revising, demolishing and rebuilding that extremely good LL players have to do to make their parks look impressive.
I feel that an elite RCT 2 park will be more amazing than an elite LL park... whenever that happens one day. It's sort of like the saying that great defense beats great offense. The problem is that we haven't really had an elite RCT 2 park... save RoB... perhaps. And even that park lacks the technical skill of IC. The only reason most still regard it as better is because he retains that almost unspoken larger than life feel... and that's something that cannot be taught. It can only be found.
The bottom line is that for most people, RCT 2 is easier than LL because it lets you make the same quality with less effort and time. However, RCT 2 is harder than LL when you realize that to truly impress those who really know what they're looking at (the Iris's, posix's, natelox's, fatha's, CoasterEd's, and a select others--we can prolly add Panic to the list now), you will have to invest even more effort into it. Basically, it's easier to impress the masses with RCT 2, but it's harder to impress the critics because you can't just make something aesthetically detailed... you need to integrate landscaping, coasters, atmosphere, theming, architecture, and that extra "it factor" into one synergetic masterpiece.
^ Kinda dense to understand, and it takes a certain sort of inversion of logic, but hopefully you get what I mean. RCT is both easier and harder than LL, depending on how you look at it.
That said, I would put Isole Calabria on the same tier as RoB, because it's technical skill makes up for RoB's performance effect.
I think there is something, though, between the fact that RoB, an LL-inspired park, is still probably the best RCT2 park ever made and the fact that in RCT2 you can achieve more visually with similar challenges along the way. Where did SAC acquire the aesthetic skill and refinement to pull RoB off? Where does one get the means to overcome, in RCT2, challenges equal to those presented in the best of LL parks? Unless one is an architectural virtuoso e.g. Kevin, I believe that the answer to that question is generally from playing LL itself. In other words, if someone were to create a park in RCT2 which visually put all LL parks to shame, it would be best if they had skills acquired from, ironically, LL. You need that kind of sense of the game, the patience to pull off what you want through difficult and tedious means, and the ability to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find a tool that works, in order to pull off such a work. I believe that these are generally better acquired in LL than in RCT2, unless one happens to be virtuosic with the latter game, which is a rare case. So for the case of this incredible RCT2 park that you're theorizing, Cork, I believe that he who has a background in LL is best suited to pull it off. Case in point: SAC.
And so Fatha' might be right. In terms of a sheer parkmaking tool, the usefulness and innovation of LL may be beginning to run dry. There are infinite parks left to create with LL, but how much originality and never-before-seen innovation one can present in any one may soon be limited by the restrictions of the game itself. I personally will be playing LL for years to come, but that is because I am still rather new to parkmaking. My first project, as you will see, is not some genius super-innovative work; it doesn't even live up to the bar I seem to set for myself in parkmaking in these long posts. The buildings are mostly raised land and windows. In a sense I am glad for that, because I know that there is a long road ahead of me and that I can still have fun all the way down. I hope that there are those that will keep playing LL for a while to come as well. Perhaps originality will be generally found in small doses from here on out, such as a new way to use a station to represent something, or like how Micool hacked green path in that project of his to look like rooves. Little things like that.
But what I was getting to is that LL may have a very important use even long after all the innovation in the game is exhausted, if there are those who are willing to exploit it. Because it's been proven that it is advantageous to have an LL background if you want to create something extraordinary in RCT2, I think that LL ought to be used as a sort of practice ground for learning to utilize different game tools, and for scraping the bottom of the barrel. This use of the game would be governed solely by parkmaker's choice, of course, but I would bet that those who do choose to practice parkmaking skills using the more limited pallette will have greater success once they return to RCT2, and will inspire others to do the same. It could become a practice of sorts, the underlying message being "You want to be as good as SAC or so-and-so? Play LL for a couple of years." As we've already seen in Rivers of Babylon and in other works, the practice of LL does not have to be contained in an .sv4 file to be present. This might be the final way in which LL proves its worth - as an influential device to those making great RCT2 parks. LL would not only be expressed in parks made with the game (though I sure hope that practice continues as well), but sprinkled throughout the greatest of RCT2 parks. You'd see LL in some trick someone did in a great RCT2 park, as a sort of incarnation of the game. It would be like an old martial arts master who knows that he has reached his limit but gives his knowledge, practices and tricks to his disciples in the hope that they may one day surpass him. And thus it wouldn't be a question of LL or RCT2, but a question of both games moving towards a common end. If Rivers of Babylon is any indication, and if the greatest RCT2 parks are created only after lessons and practice in LL, then such parks in the future may indeed be a happy medium between the games.
1. Panic - 1,597 words
2. Panic's Second post on this page - 912 words
3. Cork - 678 words
4. Fatha' - 508 Words
5. Coasterfrk - 494 words
Overall words on this page - 8,115*
* = Estamated
edit: Hey cool, last post on this page. VICTORY SEALED.