RCT Discussion / Coasters

Psshtt. Ratings don't matter. Perhaps stats do to some extent, but you have to look at the graphs, not the highest speed mess.

If anything of mine reaches past 10 intensity, the coaster always seems really jerky. I hate jerky coasters.

Stats are simi importint, I personly hate seeing them bust out in Red so I make sure mine pass, but on inverts and flyers I get pretty annoyed.

for whatever reason, i'm totally pre-occupied with coaster stats. when i'm building a coaster, i constantly look at the stats in hope that the excitement will have risen one point. i guess it has just carried over from my early days with the game when all i cared about were coaster ratings.

Mantis/Natelox- I don't quite understand why you would want to force limits upon yourself (don't we already get enough just following our daily routines?) but I understand it is a personal preference, just as it is my personal preference to disregard stats. I occasionally have a desire to go realistic as well (Avalon Pier), however, as stated previously, I wouldn't necissarily consider the stats to be particularly realistic.

Blitz- I kind of see what you are saying, but then again, I kind of don't. RCT, as most on this board view it, is an art. The goal of art, as I understand, is to have your point or vision clearly illustrated on the canvas. "Control" then, IMO is a meaningless term to the topic at hand. Art requires no control, it is only expression.
Furthermore, Is it really fair to compare the stradegy for coaster building to the stradegy required in a combat game? When building a coaster, you are given a choice between many stragedies, depending on what you want to accomplish (which could also be a variety of things). Control and proper stragety in a fighting game are essential. There is only one goal (live), and one stragety (kill).
You also compared forsaking stats to copying another artist. How is that, exactly? No one forsakes stats anymore, so who could I possibly be emulating by disregarding them myself? I suppose am taking that statement a bit too literally, although I still have trouble imagining what you could possibly be alluding to in a figurative sense.

One last thing. When I make a zany fantasy coaster, I have a well thought out plan and vision for my ride. Mashing buttons implies making something completely random, so that comparison I disargee with as well.

I feel hopelessly disconnected tonight, so I hope all that made some sense. My appologies if it comes out as just another pointless platypus rambling.


I understand that the choice to abide by the stats or not comes down to nothing more personal preference. There is no "right" or "wrong" to it at all, so I would just like to say that it is not my intention in any way to force my preference on anyone else. Or something. I'm tired.

for whatever reason, i'm totally pre-occupied with coaster stats. when i'm building a coaster, i constantly look at the stats in hope that the excitement will have risen one point. i guess it has just carried over from my early days with the game when all i cared about were coaster ratings.

Same here.
While they don't care as much as the once did, I always check my stats. After I theme it a bit, I always re-test it to see how much my excitement rating went up.

I don't quite understand why you would want to force limits upon yourself (don't we already get enough just following our daily routines?)

I choose to impose limits upon myself/the game because it adds realism. I'm not saying the statistics are anywhere near correct, but let's say in this fantasy RCT 128x128 map where the world becomes infinite outside of the park boundries, they are. If they are correct for that world, then it makes me feel as though I am an engineer or roller coaster designer; I have a request from a client (the theme park) to build a great roller coaster that will drop jaws, increase attendance and make the whole 'day at the park' experiance more enjoyable. Makes me sound like a little kid with a gigantic imagination and some lego bricks, but that's who I am. Just as some kids pretend to be Batman or a Doctor or a musician (air-guitar?), I pretend to be a roller coaster designer.

I don't play RCT to achieve a sense of escapism; the game does have major boundaries, just like everything else in life. If ignoring statistics removes some of these boundaries, so be it, but I still see many other limits. Strict peice by peice construction, hight limits (RCTLL it's 260ft I think), 128x128, object limit, banner limit etc... The point I'm getting at is that you like to believe that by ignoring statistics it opens the game up and provides escapism from your day to day routine. I think we all need some way to transcend that blandness which is inevitable in our lives, and RCT is your method.

The stats can be weird tho, like i'll make a coaster layout and make sure its set befor I start themeing coz editing the track once the themeing is there can make it intense for some reason, just see that happens in BP if you edit Hurrricane, Coral Creature or Big Cypress. Lucky you can trick the game by changeing brake speed and shit, or even better useing track merged on it. I don't mind "passing" the rateing that way at all, tho I have never used a trainer on the stats.

oh, there's quite a few little "tricks" you can do on a coaster even without hacking it.

Sync a station with another dummy station will net you 0.4 extra excitement. Things like that though are really not needed nor very honest in practice =P

Those are the kind of things I did when a few of us back in the day were concentrating on getting the highest excitement ratings possible. And then buster got some ridiculous numbers with no hacks and we all just gave up

butter: the answer is right in front of your nose.

Does a painter just pick up a brush on his first day and paint the mona lisa? No. He LEARNS to CONTROL his medium. That's the control I'm talking about. The best explanation I thought up after that post is music. Classically trained artisans of any craft are usually more skillful than someone who has never been classically trained.

For most guitarists, they start off emulating people better than them. They gain some facility and enough skill to play their favorite artists songs. But if you don't have an understanding of music theory and never listen to anything but your favorite artists guitar riffs, then you aren't getting any better at guitar and you won't have any flexibility. Learning music theory and how to apply classical technique, it's no longer a matter of "what can I play?" It's now "what do I want to play?". Instead of blindly expressing yourself and splashing paint on a canvas with only an idea of what you want, you seek to understand how that form of expression works and functions, and then use that as a tool when you build. It's called having a foundation. Any medium in which an increase in skill is a precursor to increase the clarity of that form of expression, has a base of knowledge from which to build your foundation upon. This is true for DDR as well as singing, guitar, writing, painting, anything where more skill leads to a better product or outcome.

Part of understanding coasters in rct is understanding the engine and why it works the way it works. When you understand the engine, you can build in any style more readily. Sure, you could just stick to one style, but why become the victim of your own monotony? Aren't you trying to escape?

Bah, I'm not making sense again...

I'd say that I concentrate on stats too much a bit though - I've NEVER released a park, or design for that matter, due to the fact that I seem to be a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to coaster ratings - maybe I shouldn't care THAT much...

^^ I think I understand what you mean now. I never said that learning the basics of coaster-making shouldn't come before forming your own technique, although I understand how you would see that to be implied. I too started off using ratings, until recently where I have become to find them useless. I interpreted your previous post to mean that EVERYONE who forsakes stats lacks the control needed to make a good coaster. I find that to be an over-generalization. Having played the game “normally” for years would probably grant me the right to say that I have gained sufficient control over the game, and leaves me free to pursue a personal technique (in this case, my zany statless parody coaster style), right?

Your argument did not directly address or coincide the main point I am trying to get across (that coasters should not be judged on stats). Perhaps that is what threw me off guard. I do agree with you however, for the most part.

Nate, I completely understand what you mean, having felt the same way myself numerous times, as I said before. I tried to go back to my roots once by making a peep friendly park. It can be fun to play manager.

Last Thursday I lost all trust in even the remote accuracy of statistics. I was making a wooden coaster in a small project, and I decided to put a small brake near the end before a series of turns that acted as the finale.
I make the brake 45 mph.
Excitement: 1.70
Intensity: 17.00
Nausea: 10.60

I make the brake 40 mph.
Excitement: 5.90
Intensity: 10.16
Nausea: 5.40

(\/ Yeah.)

You probably have a nasty lat after the brake run...not unusual

Part of understanding coasters in rct is understanding the engine and why it works the way it works.  When you understand the engine, you can build in any style more readily.

Bah, I'm not making sense again...

You made plenty of good sense there man. In fact I love how you're compairing rct to other activities which technically are limitless in an of themselfs as well.

Personally I find that layout & pacing are more important than ratings however ratings will help force you to further refine and improve the other elements of the ride, such as flow. As a result I often spend an hour building a layout then I spend another hour or even two tweaking certain parts of the layout to better get the results I strive for. BTW I think that cheater breaks are just that, cheater breaks, the only place where I don't mind trims being used is in the MCBR (and of course and the end to nearly stop the train before the station).

It is true that the stats should not take dominince over the way we build coasters, so build what you want first then fix it to the games standards 2nd, most of the time repeating this process many times carefully over the course of building a ride will result in a greatly improved final result.

ride6

^ you quoted my profile in your sig, hilarious XD

that's my usual block of info i just throw on every account I've ever made. If ther's a bio, i usually put: Words fail to describe me.


Ontopic:

butter finally understand me

yes, essentially, YOU(butter) have gotten to a point where you have foundation from which to build that was formed through your experience with the actual game FIRST. I'm saying a lot of new people who were on NE days after they got rct and saw a KM park... don't understand what it is that makes a KM park. Then people like panic lose faith in stats simply because you and all the people that DID go through all the motions now say "man, stats don't matter at all". The truth is, the manipulation of stats early on has left you with a far greater understanding of the game which has permanently effected the way to you build coasters, whether you consciously realize it or not.

What you are doing is vandalizing the potential for more creativity and skill in coasters from people who are new. A solid foundation in anatomy is not a requirement for creating works of art, but it improves your ability to understand shape, weight, and volume and THROUGH this, your level of skill at illustration will improve far better than without knowledge of anatomy. In animation, a point that is stressed over and over is that exaggeration is based on reality. Otherwise, what are you exaggerating? Same for coasters, you can't let loose. You must learn the rules BEFORE you break them, and you telling new blood that the rules don't matter to begin with isn't helping the staleness of coaster design at NE.

It's true, I was more under the impression that I was only addressing established builders, which might not have been an accurate assumption.

HOWEVER, I would not necissarily consider what you say a foolproof equation, so to speak. RCT is in fact very different than music, painting, or other games, and while they can be compared on some level, the circumstances in many cases might prove to be quite different. I dare say, there are probably many people out there that could pick up the game and start making extraordinary fantasy rides right away, without any prior experience. Either that, or they could pick up on the games mechanics by looking at what others have made.

It's true, I was more under the impression that I was only addressing established builders, which might not have been an accurate assumption.

HOWEVER, I would not necissarily consider what you say a foolproof equation, so to speak. RCT is in fact very different than music, painting, or other games, and while they can be compared on some level, the circumstances in many cases might prove to be quite different. I dare say, there are probably many people out there that could pick up the game and start making extraordinary fantasy rides right away, without any prior experience. Either that, or they could pick up on the games mechanics by looking at what others have made.

all these ventures ARE the same. It's even true in what you just mentioned. Sometimes, people will simply understand from looking at how you build, and "get" it. Some people will even just build great even if they've never touched rct before or seen a park at NE. These exist in music and writing as well, it's called being a prodigy.

But, the world (and coincidentally, NE) is not composed of prodigies. And, I'm sorry if I never assumed you were talking to the more experienced crowd, but in my opinion that is preaching to the choir. I simply dismissed it as a possibility. When you get more people interested in something, more "prodigies" come out of the woodwork, especially with niche things like rct, where someone has to really question the value of involvement before partaking in it.

If less people care about fundamentals, that lack of foundation for expansion and improvement with kill diversity, as it has with rct (lots of coasters out there look the same). Since rct is so small, some fractures(different schools of thought/practices) in how the community works eventually dissapear from lack of support, which is why the state of parkmaking is so one-dimensional right now... the focus is nearly the same from park to park. This is really having to do with a sort of cause and effect.

Because the community lacks diversity in goals and in practice of achieving those goals, onlookers that might bring something new to the table are few and far between because they have no active support for their seperate ideologies and practices. It's, in essence, conservative. No one is taking a risk. In economy, it's best when people spend lots of money, but spending money is a risk. A conversative time is a time when people aren't will to invest as much or take as much risk, and the economy suffers. This is the state of RCT as I see it here at NE.

Now, because those onlookers have no support, then the lack of diversity perpetuates itself because it lacks a diverse cabinet of people that the community at large can model after.

It's vicious cycle... people stay conservative because there is nothing (or atleast, not enough) to warrant a risk, and those that might add something are put off by the lack of support.

This all assumes that a significant portion of people here are not willing to show support for different ideologies. It also assumes that a sgnificant portion of talented individuals are not willing to put time into something that might no be appreciated.

...wow, that rant came out of nowhere. I'm probably over-analyzing =(

Blitz I think you're getting a little carried away there. You made a good point about stats helping to build your coaster building 'fundamentals'. I tend to agree with Butter that the stats are abitrary nonsense and that building a good coaster shouldn't require you to please the game's coaster stat generating engine whatever it is. But then I did learn how to make coasters by obeying those stats. Banking turns to limit the lateral Gs, slowing the train to enter corkscrews. The kind of stuff we take for granted as common knowledge that really just comes from playing the game a lot. But that becomes the basis in reality, not the stats. The stats represent a very real-life limitation - the human body cannot handle a certain level of forces. The coasters are meant to be ridden. We forget that sometimes when there's no peeps anymore but it's really the most important quality of any coaster. How good the ride experience is. If you don't have that, all you have is a sculpture. I like sculptures, but I like coasters more.

But then you're saying conservatism in design is a bad thing but we should solve that by paying more attention to stats? Personally I think the devotion to good stats is part of the reason there's no much conservatism in coaster design. The typical designs work. The game doesn't really encourage creative design when it sticks you with 11 excitement ratings. I run into that all the time. I try to build the coaster I'm imagining. I try not to take the easy ways out. I try to be as unconventional as possible and then the game sucks out all of my enthusiasm because I've got to spend hours trying to get the intenisty down. Sometimes that ultimately results in a better coaster but sometimes it doesn't.

And I guess your fighting game analysis is telling. You're right that creating a great RCT coaster requires maximizing the game's capabilites and working within it's limits. Learning the system and how to control it. But not everyone wants to build a good RCT coaster. Some of us just want to make a good coaster period and RCT is a pretty convenient tool for doing that if you're not skilled with 3D software and can't draw all that well. I imagine coasters as if they existed in real life not just in the game. So a good coaster for me has flow and pacing and something memorable and unique about it's layout or how it functions. And sometimes you have to throw in some of those unbanked curved drops to get the idea across even when it screws up the stats. Sure a banked one would be better but LL doesn't have those. So you can compromise to what the game has in one of two ways. To fit the stats or to fit the visuals. I prefer one or the other in different contexts but do you see how the stats don't always help to make a 'better' coaster? There's a lot of different ways to evaluate a coaster and I think it's unfair to judge a coaster on stats when the creator deliberately chose to leave the stats bad because it more closely approximates the coaster they want to build.

I like what Nate said earlier about imagining yourself as a coaster designer. Those reallife challanges don't really exist in RCT but you can force yourself to follow them anyway. Like designing the landscape first and then trying to fit your ride to it. Or giving yourself a height limit or a length limit. You impose limitations based on what you want the ride to be. Mostly what I object to is saying coaster A is a better coaster than coaster B when the only significant difference between them is the stats. When it comes down to that, I think the game's stats are really too arbitrary to be used as a measure of coaster quality. People used to do that all of the time - who can make the highest excitement. Blitz, I think you yourself even admitted that was a silly venture. Like having the dummy linked station there. It makes sense in terms of pushing the game to it's limits but it doesn't make any sense as far as making yourself a coaster designer.

It always pissed me off how LL didn't have banked curved drops - I guess when it comes to playing LL, sometimes it's better to have a good coaster based on looks, rather than stats. RCT2 however, is a little bit different, BECAUSE you're able to have a wider range of track elements. I'd like to see coasters with better stats in RCT2.

Oh yeah, and once you start merging tracks you can throw the stats right out the window because they no longer mean anything.