New Element - Park - Isole Calabria

Emergo Offline

Having next-to-none-experience in LL and still being a NooB at Ne, I think it's rather 'risky' and 'arrogant' to react on this. Nevertheless I cannot refrain myself from thinking/saying that what is discussed so much in this topic (the 'controversion' between RCt2 and LL) is a very old song in this world:
the 'older' handycraft-men in the 'metier' look down on the newer, younger ones that get appreciation for their work that they could only accomplish by means of/thanks to the newer, easier-to-handle modern techniques. And many of them cannot accept that the newer ones have not gone through their own struggle to learn to master the handycraft, and still get appreciation.

Nevertheless, Panic, I agree with you, that the basics of the 'old' craftsmenship can be, and are, of invaluable worth, also to the newer generation. But I am also sure that the really talented of this newer generation will, by one way or the other, acquire insight/practice in how the former handicraft was built up, and use that, together with the new techniques that are available now, to make amazing 'products' (RCT2/3 in this sense)that combine the best things of the old handymanship and the best things of the now, newer, available techniques. Even if they have never gone through the effort of making a nice-looking park in LL, the real talented ones will have the understanding of how things like that work, and combined with real talent and feeling for the newer techniques they will make wonderful things.
Not that there will be so many of these, but from the real talented in only LL there are/were not so many either I think?.
I don't value the one above the other (LL/RCt2-3 or v.v.). I just appreciate everyone who creates something nice, thought out, detailed, dedicated. That the results are not always to my personal likings, is my problem, and not theirs or anyone else's.

Panic Offline

Well I didn't mean to siphon the entire reasoning for playing LL anymore into a single purpose, that being to bolster one's RCT2 performance later on. That was my mistake for coming across that way. Emergo, you put forth a very insightful argument and I have one qualm about it: If the lessons of LL are supposedly learned through use in RCT2 parks, you still have the problem of it being much easier to do things in RCT2 than in LL. People won't learn much patience, or the ability to scrape the bottom of the barrel. They won't know what it's like to have to search for unexpected means to pull things off, because so much is there at their fingertips already. They'll just learn that you can use a station platform in some context, if they're lucky. You can learn lessons of LL-like scenery application even if the guy who you were inspired by has never played LL in his life. But that's not the important thing. Unless you have played LL yourself, it is less likely that you'll have the sort of inventiveness that stems from time spent with a limited artist's pallette, or the patience to pull off unexpected wonders in very convoluted ways. If you've never played LL, all you'll take away from it are certain how-tos, not the real lessons that come from experience with it. Anyway, I know people are getting tired of my rants so that's probably it. I hope that some aspect of this topic has caused someone to think about why it's worth it to play LL, and that we're not just back where we started with 3,000 extra words added to the forums.

Corkscrewed Offline

That's a really nifty analogy, Emergo. Thanks for that input.

Panic, you bring up a good point in that the "newer generation" doesn't go through the same patience and stuff, but you can take it a step further. The truly great (of the new generation) will thus take the game even further than before, creating new innovations through the "technology" that they have. They will find things that you couldn't do in LL but are equally amazing. Stacking is easier, but then, maybe someone will couple this with zeroed clearances to make extremely intricate structures full of articulated detail. Our (RCT 2 players') pallette is custom scenery, and our challenge is to find new way to combine these things into something new and exciting, just as LL players' pallete is what's in LL and the Beast Trainer, and their challenge is to find new ways to articulate detail with their bulkier tools.

To put it in another, slightly exaggerated way, the first people built carts out of wood and wheels, and that was quite an amazing feat. And as they advanced, horse-pulled carriages became more intricate and ornate. Lets say that's like LL players, since both sort of have to hand make their own things. Along comes machination, which makes these old arts obsolete. Well, fine, we can build things more quickly, but now, we're challenged to come up with better combinations and looks. Now, you need to come up with a car that runs well, looks sleek, is quiet, and is safe, has a sturdy body, etc... etc... In the same way, RCT 2 players have more tools and can put things together more easily, but the challenge then becomes to make something even greater.

Before cars, people could make a carriage by hand and that'd be amazing, but after the dawn of the machine age, simply making something like that with a machine was no longer special. So people had to stretch the limits again and create newer, better things. I see LL vs RCT 2 in a similar light... I can make BGSS in RCT and it wouldn't really be amazing, since I can stack stuff and I have the scenery to articulate that detail. So to make something in RCT 2 that awes, I have to make it even more detailed than LL, and use more creative ideas and themes. All the while, I still must retaining the masterful landscaping and awesome coasters that BGSS, a LL park, has.

So in that way, RCT 2 is harder, because you must do more to be considered elite.

Phatage Offline

Aside from the exaggeration of percentages, I see your comment this way:

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.

Or maybe, just maybe, you interpreted my words entirely differently than what I meant by them. Maybe, just maybe, I meant how sick of how so many people are trying to achieve a relaxed atmosphere that they succeed too much and it just becomes boring. Over-repetitive buildings that don't look different from the next or the one two stores down is a very large contributer to this. Yes, technically this is accurate theming as the real world is built up in a repetitive pattern, yet it isn't by any means accurate theme park theming, where the good ones choose only certain components of that theme in order to keep things fresh and alive. Honestly, imagine walking around a large, say 50 acre park in which every other building in a section is the same and there are like 5 times as many buildings as there are rides and each section follows a specific format that only allows one major coaster or main attraction that are the same types of attractions found in other similar parks such as an arrow looper, B&M looper, woodie, and a water coaster, and welcome to ne 2005.

I'm not saying every section in every park should be top notch thrills everywhere and whatnot, what I'm saying is that all parks shouldn't be entirely the opposite. Busch does a reasonably good job theming their parks, and they all have their nice sections and then they have their medium and exciting parts; variation is the key. Disney and Universal both have this as well, and minus the theming so do CF and SF and Paramount and practically every park that hasn't gone out of business within its first couple of years. People don't think when they're building parks that parks exist for the sole commercial purpose of pleasing the public, and like all things to make money of course. Parks on ne are made to achieve a spotlight in which the last three or four released parks at ne have all gotten because of the slow times, and now comes my broken record phrase: We need to build parks for the peeps that would be riding the rides, seeing the shows, paying the cash, eating the food, and being dragged into these parks because their kid likes a particular cartoon character. Parks do not make a dime when a bird flys over and takes a ten minute glance at the scenery below and think its spotlight worthy. Rob was built for its guest, this park didn't.

Turtle the thing I'm most mad about is I guess I had hope. When you came to me and told me you didn't want to build another mountain woodie, I guess I was being wishful and thought maybe that spirit would apply to other categories in your parkmaking. Except for the asian section, which I did take another look at and have to say it was very good, the fact that the woodie was yet another mountain woodie pretty much summed up the rest of the park for me, and it was a big let down. And now I guess I'm suppossed to say "sorry" to justify this entire post or something like that.

Corkscrewed Offline

We need to build parks for the peeps that would be riding the rides, seeing the shows, paying the cash, eating the food, and being dragged into these parks because their kid likes a particular cartoon character.

But I am.... :'(

<-- shhhhh

Panic Offline

Cork, I think you have a great point. I think, though, that I've been looking at one side of the comparison between games and you have been looking at the other. On the one hand, it's harder to achieve what you're looking for in LL because you have to use a wider range of tools to do so and have more focus and patience. On the other hand, as you said, with the greater freedoms of RCT2 comes a sort of task to truly realize those possibilities as no one before has, to ponder original avenues. So with LL the means are more convoluted and with RCT2 the tasks can be harder.

Where does that leave us? Personally I think that the games are about equal in difficulty and task if you put these above two facets together. But, as I will get to, I'm not sure that really matters. I think LL is a more efficient device for honing skills and technical abilities, while RCT2 is better for setting high goals and accomplishing them. I still would advocate LL as both a parkmaking device and as a practice device for those who do want to move onto difficult and great things in RCT2 later on. As I said before, a possible happy medium is that the skills you acquire and hone playing LL can help you overcome the greater tasks at hand in RCT2. I wish that people would take advantage of this possible medium but I can't make anyone do so. But I think you are right, if I interpreted you correctly, in that there's sort of a glass ceiling in RCT2 which most people, with the possible exception of SAC, have yet to break through, and you know what, I wouldn't hesitate to attribute this to the fact that so many great RCT2ers today have never played 5 minutes of LL in their lives, or not in three years. They need more experience, in my opinion, in being able to master the small technical challenges before they move onto the big challenge that defines a truly great RCT2 park that you are alluding to. So I think that where we disagree, Cork, is actually where we agree most. I don't think that we need to compare games anymore, but rather think about how the ways in which each game is more difficult than the other can help a parkmaker move towards a common end. You're probably right in that the overall tasks at hand in RCT2 are bigger bites than in LL. And I believe the best way for someone to be able to master those is to play LL, in which the overall parkmaking tasks are less daunting but the technical challenges throughout are greater. Because they know how to handle the small stuff in LL, they will be able to handle the big stuff in RCT2 (which can often be comprised of the small stuff). That is a medium in which both games can serve their purposes equally owing to their respective challenges.

cBass Offline

Honestly, imagine walking around a large, say 50 acre park in which every other building in a section is the same and there are like 5 times as many buildings as there are rides and each section follows a specific format that only allows one major coaster or main attraction that are the same types of attractions found in other similar parks such as an arrow looper, B&M looper, woodie, and a water coaster, and welcome to ne 2005.

I don't always agree with Phatage but I think here he's spot on.

Then again, I'm not making any full-size parks so I can't really talk.

Corkscrewed Offline

Panic, I'll drink to that. :mantis:

See what happens when you have a civil, well thought out discussion kids?

Also, one of these days, we'll have a Spotlight where the good majority of the replies are actually about the park and not some philosophical discussion or critique of something inspired by the park! :lol:

CoasterForce Offline

I just got back from my 10-day trip and I come back to see a Spotlight! What a nice surprise. On a whole the park was impressive. The archy was great, and every coaster was decent at least.

Entrance area: Kind of a weak area IMO, the pathing seemed too random and the whole area was kind of "misguided." Sorry I can't think of a better term for it but that's all I can think of. The coaster was interesting but that was about it. Not enough force to really make it stand out. The colors in the area all blended wonderfully, though.

Chinese area: Haha, I never expected this. There looked to be so many details here, and with the wonderful blend of colors this area is the most memorable in the park. The water coaster had some cool interactions, especially the beginning with the waterfall. I'm sure I'll find lots more to see in this area when I look at it all again later.

Medieval-like area: Believe it or not, this had my favorite coaster in the park, that woodie. The pacing was excellent and it was very visually pleasing, with some good diagonals and banked turns to create a very appealing look. Also this is a case where the straight track pieces worked well, which is hard to pull off. The archy in the area was nice but not memorable.

Molas area: Didn't have much to do with the rest of the park IMO, no matter what way you look at it, but it was still decent. The coaster was interesting to say the least with some good pacing and good flow throughout. However the theming in the area was weak and this was probaly my least favorite area in the park.

Overall it was a very nice park, and I hope to find more to like about this when I look at it a few more times later. You really have a good eye for beauty and atmosphere, man. I can't wait to see what you do in the future, but until then, work on making your areas more memorable (more like that Chinese area) and you'll be the best in the business. Right now, you're up with the elite, though.

8.5/10

JKay Offline

In a nutshell, a stunningly beautiful park imo. That Chinese area is easily the best in RCT2 thus far. In fact, all the areas were WAY above par. Loved every bit of it. Congrats on #2 spotlight jem.

Fatha' Offline

Before cars, people could make a carriage by hand and that'd be amazing, but after the dawn of the machine age, simply making something like that with a machine was no longer special. So people had to stretch the limits again and create newer, better things. I see LL vs RCT 2 in a similar light... I can make BGSS in RCT and it wouldn't really be amazing, since I can stack stuff and I have the scenery to articulate that detail. So to make something in RCT 2 that awes, I have to make it even more detailed than LL, and use more creative ideas and themes. All the while, I still must retaining the masterful landscaping and awesome coasters that BGSS, a LL park, has.

So in that way, RCT 2 is harder, because you must do more to be considered elite.

Well, I would tend to sort of disagree.
RCT2 isnt hard to make something look good....the custom scenery does that for you. Ive always stated that most buildings in RCT2 arent great looking because of the designer, its because of the tools he has to work with. In LL, you are FORCED to utilize YOUR skill, not someones elses, to make a good building. I would argue that custom scenery tends to ruin peoples ideas for areas....

For instance, had I built BGSS in RCT2 with all of the custom scenery in hand, I would have possibly made a poorer park due to all the detail that i thought I would have needed to make what should be a simplistic area too complex. El Dorado would have ended up consisting of buildings crammed with gold pillars and foilage pots, custom scenery stacked on every inch of the buildings, and overall would have looked cluttered and disastrous. Same goes for Amazonia....which probably would have ended up so dense you wouldnt see through it. LL forced me to look at the overall picture....which was not seeing how detailed and pretty you can make a building look but how the overall setup helped to fulfill the initial purpose...which is making a THEMED area (not a bunch of overthemed buildings) with the proper atmosphere. Did you notice why the asian area in this new spotlight was loved so much? Was it really the custom scenery? What did people look at first and say "woow, thats is sweet?" Its the roofing, the LL background behind the area. Most of the best areas in RCT2 are LL based with a slight hint of detail (FOr examples see the asian area in IC, Lemuria in ROB). The parts where the asian area did the worst was where the over-theming took place and the emphasis on atmosphere ended.

In my opinion, themed areas arent made by the individual buildings, they are made by what the sum of everything created adds up to....When I look at a themed area and approach it, I want to create the best atmosphere possible and make it seem like you are experiencing something while viewing it. Thats the basis of BGSS and everything I am doing with it, and I think that is what every other parkmaker should in fact do. Dont let the custom scenery dictate the looks of an area, you dictate how the custom scenery fits in and you dictate how the area looks.

Corkscrewed Offline

Bah!

Ruin my parade why don't you!!!!

It's cuz you've never seen my obviously unarguably superior stuff....

Nah, I'd say you're right. My point was similar.... that you have to go beyond just putting the scenery pieces together to make it look truly good in RCT 2... you have to add that extra oomph.

Panic Offline

Cork, can we still keep our earlier agreement as a safety point in case all hell breaks loose...while I tiptoe back over into Biasland and rejoice that for once, evidence has been offered that suggests that, without any shred of doubt, LL IS BETTER.

But actually, a lot of what Fatha' said fits perfectly with what we concluded earlier, particularly the last bit. The ability to decide and discriminate as to what will look good where is a skill best honed when one does not have a lot of tools in one's grasp. There is evidence to support this. There have been several cases of n00bs coming into the Advertising District and advertising RCT2 stuff that is made entirely of custom scenery and looks like absolute shit because they have no idea, no sense, of where to put what. I always think to myself, "These people need LL." They need some restriction at first so that they can hone organizational skills, and only after that is it appropriate for them to become accustomed to using a wider range of scenery. The point that LL also encourages tasteful use of scenery, rather than cramming it in, is also one that makes sense. You've got less to choose from, so you're likely to choose carefully where you put it lest an entire area begin to resemble a vastly overgrown plant specimen or something. I had an experience similar to that recently while beginning an area and that is one that I will be careful not to repeat.

Fatha' does miss the point that custom scenery does not an amazingly inventive park make - case in point Ghost Cell Crisis; the scenery wasn't calling out to be used as floating islands in space, it took the imaginations of Blitz and DJ to come up with that one. But how much that point applies depends on the situation. Some of the Disney parks that I've seen basically could not have gotten past the first square without custom scenery. On the other hand, your own park, WDE, is a brilliant antithesis to that statement. I'm encouraged by the examples that Turtle and artist and slob and others put forward of refined uses of scenery. As Turtle himself said, no tile in IC was built without exquisite attention to detail. It's these folks that would probably be best suited right now to make a great LL park, because they would still be able to carry across a lot of style practices. I wonder what the result of parkmakers such as them taking up LL would be, and I hope that they do too.

P.S. TURTLE WHERE ARE YOU ON AIM?!?!?!??!?!?111

GigaForce Offline

Fucking christ Cork...every time i see this park's logo on the main page, it looks like a weed leaf.

Im like Woah SWEE- wait, nevermind.

Corkscrewed Offline

LOL... just fullfilling my "new logo that looks like pot every two years" quota.

(see Meadowbrooke Falls)

Kumba Offline

lmao

FYI you know what tuesday marked for NE spotlights?

It makes it over a year since someone from the US has won a spotlight, Meretrix being the last.

Panic Offline

All the U.K. people stay inside and play RCT because of the crappy weather, so they have better RCT work ethic.

Kumba Offline

I think X250 could keep the trend going... wait, then him, Turtle, Twisted and Artist could all get soup bowl hair cuts, say they are bigger then jesus and overtake NE in a yellow submarine!

Corkscrewed Offline

Kumba with a cultural reference NOT related to rap?

Panic Offline

I think I'm the only person in this entire forum who cherishes Bijou more than this one. Perhaps it's just taking a while to settle in and will eventually rise above that work. The main thing that I loved about Bijou more than this park was that the themes seemed to be executed more freshly and cleanly. While there was undoubtable skill and tireless effort poured into every tile here, I felt at times that the themes became just a tad too liberal in choice of texture and started resembling many things at once. This was also apparent in the screens shown prior to release. When looking at your screen of Neuchatel, Turtle, I remember not being exactly able to decide where to place it geographically - whether it was more rough-hewn timbers that one might imagine in the Swiss Alps or more of a plains-based town with a greater emphasis on brick. I also might have a bit of trouble telling whether something was from the entrance area or Neuchatel if you zoomed in on it very close, as those areas used similar textures. I think there's a simple reason for this. Throughout most of Bijou I noticed that you tended to focus on a maximum of about two major textures throughout an area, with a few minor textures added for touch. In the entrance area and possibly Neuchatel, I forget there, I believe you expanded it to three. I think that I just tend to remember the looks of areas better when there are two, but that's just me. The second thing that I liked better about Bijou was that its larger size allowed it to avoid the problem of areas encroaching on each other. And perhaps its around-a-lake layout also assisted in that. Whatever the reason, I just remember not being able to look at too many spots in this one (the speedboat hangout place being a wonderful exception) without kind of sensing that there was another area close by, and I think that worked against the park for me. I also felt that in Bijou you kind of let the natural feel ooze out of places, for example the entrance being a lesson in wonderful foliage and the area with the dueling inverts being very calm and natural, whereas here the emphasis seemed more to be on buildings. Perhaps the perfect compromise between buildings and natural looks is right between these two parks, but I tend, very generally, to prefer more natural to less. Nevertheless, this still remains one of the best I have seen and is a park that I expect will grow on me even more in coming weeks and months.

My favorite RCT2 full sizers:
1. RoB
2. Bijou
3. IC

Jonny93	95%	no
Poke	95%	no
robbie92	95%	no
Cocoa	90%	no
csw	90%	no
inthemanual	90%	no
MCI	90%	no
Xeccah	90%	no
Liampie	85%	no
][ntamin22	80%	no
90.63%		0.00%

Park / Isole Calabria

111 Comments

Emergo Offline

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Phatage Offline

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Panic Offline

cBass Offline

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