Screenshot / #fbf: Cataclysm
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29-January 16
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Cataclysm
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This area isn't as good as I remembered it being - some of the buildings look a bit rushed I think? The lab area with the mutant fish is fantastic though.
#LL
what do you mean?
A lot of building in old LL parks look rushed, because they probably were.
RCTER2 Offline
LL iS better than RCT2!
This was a pretty unique project in that I was asked to put the finishing touches on someone's else's park. A lot of the simpler buildings employ a style I used to refer to as '2x2'ism which I think is self-explanatory.
I had used that style more in some earlier parks and some of that was because I liked a simpler look at that point in time and part of it was laziness. Or euphemistically speaking, 'expedience'. In this case I'd moved on from that style already (egypTopia was a big turning point for me in committing to the ideology that each building should be unique) but I felt out of respect for Blind Guardian (who made the bulk of Cataclysm and was very complimentary of those early parks I'd made that actually pre-date this website and I'm just realizing aren't even posted here) I felt like I should do my best to stay consistent with his approach while also putting enough of my own touches to keep it interesting for me. I would have never used cacti like this in one of my own parks for instance, but it was a constant throughout the park so I thought that would help tie things together.
Looking at this now (oh my god has it been almost 14 years? I'm old!) the color palette is a bit bland for my taste even if it is meant to be an industrial zone. The crane and criss-crossing trolley tracks still look cool. Hacking that building scaffold with one of the old trainers must have taken a long time! That trolley actually runs doesn't it? It's been so long I don't even remember but I hated having static rides in my parks so I don't think I would have put that trolley car there and not had it run on the tracks. I built the water ride and the Sandstorm Rally spinoff car ride on the other side of the park after this Harbor section and I feel like those are what most people remember about this park. I would have gone back over this section and fixed up some things but I was eager to get it released. Had I known people were still going to be looking at screenshots over a decade later though, I probably would have given it that last touchup.
Anyway, I'm a little surprised this place is still here! Flashback Fridays are a cool idea. If I can find my copies of RCT/RCT2 I'll try to catch up on the last few seasons of H2H or something. Cheers!
well thats cool
Great to read your own thoughts about this so many years on, Coaster Ed. I was never a presence on the forums in those days but I worshipped Egyptopia.
It's always great to see you pop in, Ed. Hope everything is going well.
This park was a major inspiration for me, especially early on. Particularly because of what it showed the Beast trainer was capable of.
Cataclysm <3
Ed! How have you been?
For those of you who don't know Ed, DL and view his stuff, mainly from H2H. He's a creative genius and was the #1 inspiration for my parkmaking when I was getting started.
Wow, thanks guys.
It's cool to see some familiar names, and also the new ones. I don't know what the community is like now, but we were all sortof pushing each other along in those early days trying to one up each other so I would be remiss to claim too much credit for my ideas. I can't even remember now who was the first person to use ghost train windows or build sculptures out of coaster track. I do think I was one of the first to make buildings entirely out of golf platforms. But a lot of my ideas were evolutions of things that I liked about the parkmakers who came before me. Guys like SACoasterFreak and Joe Holland and Greg Reese in particular who have all but faded into history.
That's interesting to hear SA's opinion on this park. My stuff has almost always been characterized as messy, which was by design most of the time. I like overkill levels of detail. I also have an almost pathological obsession with being different. SACoasterFreak and Schuessler had already pretty much done everything I could see myself doing with elegant simplicity. Others got excited about trying to match their level of aesthetic perfection which is cool. posix, you're one of the best at that. It's far from easy. I just got more energized by trying to invent things I hadn't seen before. It's really Nevis who started it all though. We were all so blown away by Universal Island Extreme that it changed the way we made parks. There is a distinct difference between what was happening before and after that park. I had seen all the early attempts at 'trakitecture' before that and was unimpressed. Mostly I was trying to make realistic recreations of parks back then which were up to the quality of Greg Reese's version of Busch Gardens Tampa Bay and Joe Holland's Islands of Adventure. But when I got the bug I got it in a big way until eventually the whole map was like one big coaster sculpture.
Incidentally, I got a chance to visit Busch Gardens Tampa and Universal's Islands of Adventure for the first time recently and it was surreal stepping into parks in real life that I had experienced for so many years only through RCT. I loved Busch Gardens Tampa -- perhaps more than any other park I've been to. (Kumba I got to ride your namesake coaster!) IoA felt disappointingly empty despite it's surface level details. And that's a pretty good summation of what I always wanted to get away from in my RCT parks. I didn't just want empty blocks adorned with surface level details, I wanted little worlds that you could poke around in and meet the people and peer around corners and imagine yourself walking through the forest hearing the crickets and luxuriating in the patches of shade.
This is fun checking in. I'd be happy to answer any questions if anybody has some for me. About whatever. I haven't thought about RCT in a long time but I still get the bug a little bit when I see screenshots. What's going on lately around here? What are all the peeps talking about?
I sent you a PM that you might want to read.
Just saw that Liampie, thanks
I'm notorious for my short attention span, but I might have enough patience left in me to squeeze out a simple Design or something. Lord knows I have a big enough pile of unfinished projects collecting dust somewhere.
It's a joy to read one of your long posts again - I sure have missed them. All very true about Nevis changing the game. These trends back then were very short lived. Trackitecture and hacking, simplistic elegance. A couple of weeks or months, at best a year. But for us die hard fans, they're lifted into sacredness and we overcherish them forever.
Would be nice to see you build some again. OpenRCT2 is fantastic, you should check it out. Liam will supply you with benches.