Park / Sea of Sagas
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09-May 12
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83.13%(required: 70%) Gold
5dave 95% no inthemanual 90% no MCI 90% yes SSSammy 90% no Liampie 85% no BelgianGuy 80% no Xeccah 80% no geewhzz 75% no Kumba 75% no robbie92 70% no 83.13% 10.00% -
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I thought that Zombieland was very good theme choice but it lacked something to tie it all together.
Sea of Sagas
The good;
Awesome architecture, and nice integration with the coaster. This is so hard to do right, but you managed to pull it off amazingly. Best part of the park for me for sure and best piece of RCT in round 1 imo.
Again, nice architecture and integration with the coaster. Love the texture and color choices and the atmosphere is just phenomenal.
Ridiculously well themed show/pirate ship. I can't imagine how much time this has cost but it really looks great!
Love the giant squid and its integration with the splash boats. Love how it breaks down the ship and how the ship is made looking broken down. I can imagine it will be quite an experience as a rider!
Love the shields on the ship and that little bridge the splash boats are going under.
Awesome burning down village and nice integration with the coaster! Such a large amount of atmosphere.
Love the architecture and the skeleton used as coaster station.
Nice fort.
Love the theming of this carousel! Nice architecture and queue line integration.
Nice looking building with a lovely stairs, tackle (?) and ship.
The bad;
I think this doesn't fit the overall architecture style of the whole park. The quarter tile buildings just don't work and seem forced.
Just bad foliage. Don't like the hedges on the edge of the tiles and the flowers don't make sense on the edge of the map. Don't like the terraforming as well, too many jagged edges and it just doesn't flow.
What is it? I just don't think it fits there and looks totally out of style with the rest of the park..
Don't like the flowers scattered throughout the landscape and the tiny cave thing looks weird.
Don't like this custom ride. Looks very un-rct-ish and the minimal theming doesn't help either.
Zombieland
The good;
Love this ride. Nice supporting, color choices and zombie peeps climbing the thing. Really reminds me of the movie scene.
Would be scary exiting that ride and seeing all these zombies trying to get over the fence!
Love the architecture and general idea of the film set. So many details and the sign above the thriller sign looks so good.
Nice sign, and love the scene with the piano falling on a zombie. That was so funny in the movie!
Awesome details on this movie set! The sound engineer, camera, directors chair and shop set add so much atmosphere.
Gotta love this make-up building, there's so much to see.
Nicely crafted gas station. The filming details, such as the rain making device, the guy on the stairs and the green screen add so much realism.
Lovely transfer system on the coaster.
I like this scare-zone idea, nice sign too.
The bad; (can't really say anything really eh
Too much tarmac throughout the park.
Always said I think this building looks too plain and needs more details/variation..
Sea of Sagas was better imo, although Zombieland was a great piece of work and would've beaten any of the other round 1 parks I think. Just a pity it faces one of the best H2H parks of all time..
On a last note, I must say I'm REALLY impressed by Fisch's progress as a parkmaker. In the past I've always been critical of the monotonous "mainstreet" style he always used in his parks by putting as many details on a 2x2 building you can imagine. He now seems to balance both macro and micro features of architecture design and his work just oozes atmosphere. This is really Spotlight level stuff and if he somehow manages to finish of a solo of this quality level I really see him grabbing that Spotlight accolade.
Good job both teams and a great way to kick off H2H6!
In hollywood they wouldn't care at all if their studios look good. It's the sets that make the movie not the exterior of the studio where they're shot.
Great reviews otherwise.
Zombieland from the overview looked great and I was really looking forward to looking at a great realistic park. But when I opened it, I really didn't like the layout of the park or the layouts of the coasters. The architecture was nice and I absolutely loved the Studio Tour, that was incredible, but the rest of the park just didn't do anything for me. I'd still say this was the 2nd best park of Round 1, but it just didn't quite hit me as much as SoS did.
Sea of Sagas was brilliant, the park oozed atmosphere, and even though it seemed like i'd seen the entrance area several times before, the other areas were really refreshing. The layouts were brilliant, the architecture and landscape were fantastic, the foliage wasn't perfect, but it wasn't bad, the shape of the map was also interesting. I thought it was a pretty flawless park, and the three of you (yes including you trav) should be proud at creating an incredible Round 1 park, definately the best Round 1 park of any H2H, except for Vampyre of course
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Alright, so sorry I still haven't managed to review your park, Canes, but let me emphasize once again that once I saw the match up, I was extremely nervous because I loved your park a lot. I thought after the amount of typical "realistic" amusement parks in the last H2H we wouldn't be seeing any for the first couple of weeks but you guys took that cliché and made it like 10 times better. I love the idea you had, the objects were extremely cool, I liked the park layout a lot and was stunned by all the different things that were to be found in the park. I'm really sad for you guys that you didn't get the victory you would've deserved for your amazing work and think that you should've received a lot more praise. After all it was probably a marginal decision that led to the victory of SoS...the only reason why the vote score is like this is the type of voting that's in place. If we'd be giving grades to the parks instead of voting for the better one yours would've easily gotten an A.
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Now I felt like I should address some of the questions regarding Sea of Sagas.
I really enjoyed reading all the analyses and wanna thank everybody who took the time to write their detailed thoughts!
Here are my responses to some of the questions and thoughts that you guys had:
#1 "Sea of Sagas was a 2 halves park." I think it was Airtime who said that and a lot of you also talked about the different quality of the front and the back.
-> Actually you guys are very much right. It was infact intended to be a 2 halves park when the park layout was made.
Think of it like this: The guests start out with their journey through the mythical world that Norse sagas are in the port of entry. No matter on what journey you are going in life, you always go from a place you are used to to a place that holds many surprises for you. Theme Parks often take this very same concept as for example when you go to a theme park in the USA, or Germany, or other countries, you will often find yourself entering the park in an area themed to the country you are in. A familiar place from which you can reach all the fantastical adventures that are left to see out there.
Norse mythology has a lot to do with nature, animals, ..., and you'll find whatever crazy things you can think of really. So we wanted to have an entry that's themed to a more civilized place. A hanseatic sea port was perfect for that as it really is as civilized as possible in comparison to the other Scandinavian themes that could've been used.
Everything else in the park is based on myths, sagas, and tries to get the park's guests to discover natural beauty.
So the 2 MAIN areas in the park basically are:
Civilization <-> Wilderness
Now obviously the castle and the fishing village also seem civilized but if you think about it Valhalla really is a mythical place and to be fair some aspects of our plannings were changed the more the park progressed.
#2 "Sea of Sagas pays more attention to the theme than to the rides."
-> Now while this really isn't true, I don't see what would be wrong with that. There are parks on this planet (like Phantasialand for example...my main inspiration for everything I build
But now to my actual response.
The rides actually did get a lot of thought. All of them, the coasters, the flat rides, the minigolf, the show.
Infact Fafnir's layout is actually just how I envisioned the flight of a dragon to be...
- gets out of its cave
- rises up on a plateau
- seeks some thrill by going over the edge of the plateau (first drop)
- avoids rock formations
- flies over canyons (after 1st corkscrew)
- flies extremely close to the cliffs and basically grinds on the rocks (the part after the canyon)
- circles a mountain top
THEN
- from up there it sees its prey in the canyon (be it for the guests getting closer to its cave or just because dragons would be predators
- it suddenly out of nowhere like a raptor dives down into the canyon and flies very close over the ground to snatch its prey (interaction with the queue)
- flies through the canyon (s-bend)
- struggles a little with its prey (loop)
- before it then rises up again to a place only it can reach to be secure with the prey (turn next to the stranded ship restaurant)
thats the part with the prey...then basically another chapter in the book that is this ride is the dragons interaction with the countryside
- for the zero g again it dodges rock formations
- till (as explained in the readme) it flies from the mountains to the valley
- rises back up on the mountains close to the sea
- flies through caves by the sea
- then its almost back to its cave but before finally settling inside its cave again...
(what would a dragon be without terrorizing a human town)
- ...it gets back out of its cave and sets the town on fire and causes trouble and terror everywhere
-> flies back into it's cave...end of the ride
Now this seriously was not an afterthought...this was my thought process that I put into the ride design.
While I do agree with Roomie who said that the return run on the invert does feel kind of forced, I STRONGLY disagree with the statements that say we didn't put thought into the rides.
For everyone who thinks that about any of the other rides, feel free to read the readmes. All of the rides are tied to Norse Mythology or Hanseatic stuff and are themed accordingly so I think they all make sense.
-> Another answer to this question would be though that infact Fafnir's layout for example is tied to its themeing and the landscaping. Someone said that the layout of Fafnir looks weird without the themeing and the landscaping. Well how do the layouts for Black Mamba or Nemesis look without their respective landscaping?
#3 "The castle feels weaker than the rest of the park."
-> This one is actually not that bad of a point because infact the whole Valhalla Castle was an afterthought and wasn't featured in the original civilization/wilderness park layout.
Also we were cutting it quite close to the deadline so I have to admit that I did rush the castle a little bit. It didn't turn out bad in my opinion but it could still have been better because to be honest for this one I didn't put any thought into the layout of the castle which otherwise I would've. The only thought for this I had was to integrate the Valkyries ride and to have a steep path leading up to Valhalla on the one side while on the other side there are imposing stairs that look quite ostentatious.
#4 "One can tell where one builder picked it up and where he left of"
-> This one is pretty easy to answer as it simply can't be true because we built all over the place.
#5 The Geyser free fall tower doesn't fit the park
-> I can understand this kind of because it really doesn't fit in the time of the rest of the park but I think it would've been a lot better had the paths outside of its indoor part just been dark brown. I sadly did this in the night before we sent it in I think and I was too tired to try different things that night. That's one thing I remember for sure. I think if we had had more time, this could've been a lot better
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If you guys have any other questions regarding this park, feel free to post them, as I will gladly respond!
I love themes, and always struggle to think of them when building, i tried a Norse theme my self in Cyder Hill but obviously it just doesn't compare to Sagas. I've looked at the park for over 10 years, it is easily one of my top 5 parks, up there with Canthose and EPWS for example, but after looking on Google for just about every ride name, I still have no idea where you get the ideas.
My only thought was from a band, there German and their called Equilibrium, and they have an album called Sagas, One of my favourite albums to date. I d'ont know if you guys know em but thats all i know of sagas.
(Heres a link to one of their songs btw: http://www.youtube.c...feature=related )
Another question is how do you build your architecture Fisch? Every building has basically the same scaffold but has different features that separates it from the next. Do you build one at a time or kind of all over the place? For example, build a building move on, or place some walls, add a bit of detail to one building etc... Because I know that if i build one at a time they become repetitive and everything looks the same. And taking a guess here, is that you built the archy around the front, and the entrance area to Fafnir, as in the Nordish buildings on the river front? Those buildings in those areas are some of my favourite archy ever.
And also Dimi, after looking again through your work in the Ad district i am even now more excited for your next release! Your work in that looks fantastic mate.
For a quick review also, i simply love the park. I cant get enough of it! Beautiful archy, great landscaping, little details (Queue line for Vinland for example), the Ride layouts, especially Fafnir's dive through the Queue and just simple building like the boats, the Dwarfen mine, the Station for Fafnir. It all just comes together to create a fantastic park. Hopefully Fisch, and Dimi you 2 can finish all the parks you start in the future cos i know personally i can't wait for them!
Well, first of all it helped me a lot for this theme that I'm German so I knew or had heard of most of these sagas before I dug deeper into the theme. It's also not the first time I've worked on a Nordic theme but this time I took a different approach.
One of my biggest problems is that I can't think of new themes before having finished old themes that I had started before. Add to that my other big problem: I can't ever finish anything.
So I took some of the ideas I had before and put them into something new.
In the past I've always tried to create something similar to the Scandinavian area at Europa Park which has a very warm atmosphere to it.
Like 2 months ago I had to do a sculpture of some historic facade for college and I picked the Holsten Tor for the sculpture. The Holsten Tor is the most famous city gate in Lübeck, the former capital of the hanseatic league. I figured it'd work well as an entrance for a park in RCT. Also it just so happens that there is a park that actually rebuilt the Holsten Tor and took it as their park entrance as well. This park, Hansa Park, also greatly influenced my ideas for SoS as Hansa Park, different to Europa Park, has some darker themes and rides that have to do with sea creatures.
Now, seeing as I have never been to Hansa Park, I had every option basically to interpret the theme and just tried to go for something mystical. I looked up Nordic history on the web and searched for stories that I thought would fit to a theme park, and then did the park layout according to those stories.
Actually there are still a lot of Nordic myths out there so the theme isn't completely dead yet.
But I think with
- dwarves
- a dragon
- a lindworm
- the voyage to America
- Störtebeker's beheading
- Valhalla
- the Kraken
- Valkyries
- a magic ring (Andvaranaut)
- Sigurd
- ...
we really did manage to incorporate a lot of historical features into the park.
Add to that Norse/Hanseatic things like
- a longboat
- Hanse ships
- a fishing town
- a modern medieval sea port
- a Geyser
- a skeleton of a dragon
- caves
- a glacier
- ice bears
- cranes
- a dungeon
- a (burning) Nordic church
- mutiny
- cliffs
- mountains
(- the encounter with the Indians (campfire, teepee, 2 scouts, a chief/sherman
- ...
I think we basically did a lot of good research and then managed to get most of the things we wanted onto a very small map.
The ride choice and stuff like that then was just us trying to really bring the myths to life in the best possible way. For example the inverter resembles the flight of a dragon, the mine train goes through the dwarf kingdom, the mountains, and Otr's fishing village trying to find the magic ring, and Störtebeker's crew goes from the dungeon past the market plaza where Störtebeker had been beheaded and also has the aspect of Störtebeker having been a buccaneer covered by having that turn around by the show ship.
Haven't heard of them yet to be honest.
Yeah I did most of the stuff by the entrance and did the fishing village and the buildings by the waterfront next to Fafnir. Dimi did the burning buildings and the station for Störtebeker though and a few in the hanseatic city as well. I thought and still think our styles did blend incredibly well.
I basically have a simple formular for my buildings that are just facades alongside the path. I try to figure out some of the main features of that architectural style and then depending if it makes sense or not add details inbetween the different floors. I give myself a set range beforehand how tall I can make the different floors and the details in between so all the buildings have the same scale. Then I decide the general shape/layout of the buildings in that area, mostly by setting the roofs first and placing blocks under them. The height variation depends on what I think looks best and I decide it always keeping in mind the details in between the floors - again if they make sense. That's also what my range for the height of the different floors is for...if I need one of the buildings to be taller to make the whole composition look better, I can then just make the/one floor(s) taller/smaller.
Only then, once I have the shape of the composition done and got a mark where I want the details in between the floors to be, I start adding windows -> stucco/framework stuff -> flowers/shutters/other details.
Also, forgot to say this...but it's really important for me. I always mark down the general outline of the buildings when I make the park layout and already actually mark the different buildings with differently colored grid textures on the ground first. So in my marked areas for my park layout you wont just see one type of grid for where I want facades to be but actually all types of grid to mark the actual different buildings.
Dimi, I also wanna thank you again. This park would've never been what it is without your input! Just to give you guys an idea of some of the amazing things Dimi did:
- the dragon
- the boat for the show
- the burning buildings
- ...
Such amazing work, it was so much fun to create this with you!
While I basically did the normal stuff I think you were really the one who did the unique stuff that made this park shine!
Thank you so much man! I appreciate it a lot!
Again if anyone else has any questions, feel free to ask them.
http://bloody-disgus...t-with-zombies/
Zombieland – I really enjoyed the two main coasters with Undead perhaps my favorite of the two. In particular was the dive under the que. As for Zombie Hunt, it was nice to see a Cheetah Run type coaster and liked the look of the first tower. All the other details in the park were well executed just not my thing. That said, I would rate this as 8.0 on a scale of 1-10
Sea of Sagas – This was my preferred park of the two. Although I preferred the coasters in Zombieland, the overall feel f the park really pulled this for me. The ships in particular were done very well. That said, I would rate this as 8.25 on a scale of 1-10.
Well done to both.
I’m still amazed at how you all can do this micro detail.
James
dafuq, I missclicked on the spotlight voting... -.-
But not damage done I suppose.
Can I just have my 1% removed from this now lol
Gold? Kinda expected silver to go with all the tarmac
Thanks guys, nice to see it get gold. It was a tough season for me with this facing SoS and then I get ran over by a truck with DAW in the playoffs. This season should be much better for my Hurricanes tho...
that's understandable though liam, not everybody can put in the effort for a spotlight, yet it's safe to say IMO that a lot of us are now atleast capable of gold level stuff. personally i voted this 70% because it's on the edge of gold/silver to me, there's not a lot in terms of quantity (H2H obviously) but it brings everything really nicely, especially the layouts
Yes, unfortunately.