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I dig the experimenting. Yeah, it may seem unnecessary to us, but i bet people felt the same way about other hacks in years past (Posix still does /> ) This sort of stuff leads to new ideas leads to the park of tomorrow!

edit: I also love that Ivo used the word Grand. Makes this feel like a post in the 1950s, which im all about.

Golly, imma be late ta work honey, have a swell day!



FK

seems very impressive. also unnecessary.. well.. like a lot of hacks haha either way. very cool.

-Josh

Thanks! It's of course easily possible to make the unnecessary track invisible. Or as in the design I started, it can be hidden underground.

Same here ,it's interesting ,but what's the point?

Well, I started working on it, because I'm working (very slowly) on a large recreation. In order to get everything ideally layed out for the recreation, one or two of the coasters might need a diagonal station/brake run, to be most accurate to the surroundings.

Then, I realized that working diagonals might lead to more interesting layouts in general, so I started experimenting with a design. There's some drawbacks to this system, like I said, but it's something different. And with the community as old as it is, trying new things always seems attractive to me.

Nice to see someone else attempting this. It's a shame the game automatically rotates the cars.

Did you manage to get the timings right for the shoestring? I started an air recreation in LL a little while ago with a duel diagonal station and it was an absolute nightmare to get it to stop in the same place every time.

I did manage to get the timing nearly perfect! It just required tinkering with the length of the "dummy track" that the first car of the train rides on. Now it will do circuits and stop at nearly the exact same place, maybe noticeably moving after around 6 circuits or so? It's pretty damn close to perfect.

The first set up I had wasn't as easy though. I think the timing trick is based upon how you set up the shoestring. Might be wrong though, I only experimented for 3 or 4 hours.

do the trains rotate weirdly on the brake run too? because I'm sure everyone has wanted diagonal brake runs at some point.

No, they do not! The cars only rotate when docked at the station, because the game doesn't have the graphics to open the restraints at an angle. As soon as the peeps sit down and the restraints close, the train turns diagonal again right before leving the station.

When the train goes over a diagonal brake run, it just visibly slows down. The cars do not rotate.

Parkitecht could fix the car turning problem by creating an animation for restraints opening at an angle (either for one of his own train designs, or the game's ones). I don't know much about coaster data editing though, so I wouldn't be able to.

^They rotate weirdly at any point where the train stops on diagonal, they also do it on the widest turns. Ashcombe has a working curved station in the next year's release and unfortunately one car is rotated on the curve.

Really looking forward to seeing this curved station, Louis! Ashcombe's first release was great as well!

Grand!

Thanks, ivo! I thought so too

I dig the experimenting. Yeah, it may seem unnecessary to us, but i bet people felt the same way about other hacks in years past (Posix still does />/> ) This sort of stuff leads to new ideas leads to the park of tomorrow!

edit: I also love that Ivo used the word Grand. Makes this feel like a post in the 1950s, which im all about.

Golly, imma be late ta work honey, have a swell day!

/>

FK

Thanks FK!

Like I mentioned, I only spent a couple hours. I think some really unique/interesting/perhaps even game changing things could result from enough experimentation with this idea. Despite the drawbacks (some of which might be able to be corrected), this system is pretty sweet. I did have multiple ideas about how to set this up, ( including one that keeps the front car of the train, maintaining accuracy, and uses the rear car as the dummy.) Another issue is that as of right now, due to boat hire mode there's only one train.

But nevertheless, I was really happy when this thing started working, and it gave me some great ideas and inspiration.


So if anyone wants to delve into this more, I can post up a tutorial, or try to explain how it works. I'd love to see some ideas that other come up with.

Thanks for the great responses, NE!

^^ You're definately taking it seriously then ,i'll be looking forward to see more.

RRP had a diagonal station in one of his unfinished parks. Very impressive, I've tried shoestrings but I can never get them to synchronize properly.
Shotguns, the second screen is really nice and I hope to see that on the front page soon.

Try to make some custom items today... too bad

^^ You're definately taking it seriously then ,i'll be looking forward to see more.

Definitely! I think with the increase in diagonal custom scenery (which wasn't really around when I played 3 years ago), I'll be able to put together a peepable diagonal station and brake run that's aesthetically pleasing, and fits the amazing realism work that this site has produced in the past couple years.

RRP had a diagonal station in one of his unfinished parks. Very impressive, I've tried shoestrings but I can never get them to synchronize properly.
Shotguns, the second screen is really nice and I hope to see that on the front page soon.

I looked at his database page just now, I couldn't see which one it was from the overviews. Any idea which unfinished park it is?

Thanks!

Try to make some custom items today... too bad />/>

Not terrible at all! It's sort of hard to tell what all those things are though. Those tiny long things look like penguins, haha

Pleasure Island, it's the blue coaster to the right of the overview.

Pleasure Island, it's the blue coaster to the right of the overview.

Awesome, Thanks X97! Will check it out after work today.

P.S. Thanks for your workbench, it's what I've been using to work on this diagonal station stuff.

I did manage to get the timing nearly perfect! It just required tinkering with the length of the "dummy track" that the first car of the train rides on. Now it will do circuits and stop at nearly the exact same place, maybe noticeably moving after around 6 circuits or so? It's pretty damn close to perfect.

The first set up I had wasn't as easy though. I think the timing trick is based upon how you set up the shoestring. Might be wrong though, I only experimented for 3 or 4 hours.

You're correct about the length of the shoestring track affecting the ride on multiple circuits. It's easy enough to get a shoestring hack up and running but perfecting it is always the most difficult part.

Diagonal brakes should be possible... actual working ones even without shoestring, I mean me and cena actually thought of looking into it but seeing toggle chain in 8cars came from the progress made in winhack and finding that code that there should be a code for brake type track and actually making a toggle "brakes" function with winhack, we never actually go to looking it up with h2h time constraints but the idea still stands... dunno if it's actually feasable though

You're correct about the length of the shoestring track affecting the ride on multiple circuits. It's easy enough to get a shoestring hack up and running but perfecting it is always the most difficult part.

Yeah, exactly. Perhaps I just got lucky, it only took about 10 minutes to get it right. After that I couldn't notice a difference in where it stopped.

I'm always down to help anyone who'd like help though!

Diagonal brakes should be possible... actual working ones even without shoestring, I mean me and cena actually thought of looking into it but seeing toggle chain in 8cars came from the progress made in winhack and finding that code that there should be a code for brake type track and actually making a toggle "brakes" function with winhack, we never actually go to looking it up with h2h time constraints but the idea still stands... dunno if it's actually feasable though

It sounds totally feasible to me, and obviously ideal to a shoestring setup. I'd love to try and help figure it out, if you or anyone else is interested. From what I can gather from the game's programming, brakes should be no problem if located in the code, since they are just modifying the train speed. Stations on the other hand are clearly more complex.

One interesting result was sending the rear shoestring of the train to the 2nd station. The weird part was that the rear of the train couldn't sense where the station stopped when it got there, and just kept "Arriving at Station" down the entire track (lol).

Either way, it seems like there's tons of stuff to be discovered still in this game. I love NE, it gave me so much joy when I was younger, more than any other roller coaster related website. I'd just really love to see this site keep going (it's looking a little more active these past couple of months!), and I thought some ideas like these would inspire motivation in others as it did in me.

Now, I know Levis hasn't posted in a while, but are there any other hack-oriented folks out there who are interested in doing some more stuff with the game? I know hacking turns off quite a few people, but I think hacking can be used to add quite a bit to the game, and if executed aesthetically, can truly be a fascinating, wonderful thing for our purposes. Hacking can actually be better for realism than fantasy, depending on its execution.

As has been said in other topics, we play this game differently than it was designed to be played. There are so many limitations, yet still so much possibility. We've already added hacked flat rides that the game doesn't include, merged roller coasters to add realistic elements that the game limits, etc. This diagonal station took me 3 hours (and I hadn't played the game in 3 years). I can build one in 45 minutes now. (I will gladly build one for anyone on the site, as well). Point being, I think the limits of this game not necessarily close to being reached.

Sorry for the wall of text everyone (and in the dump, of course, lol), but this game drove my childhood aspirations, and I'm a bit (maybe overly) nostalgic right now. Just wanted to share these thoughts. Cheers!

I'd say the only people I know able to crack this other than levis are either geewhzz or Cena, the one isn't around much and the other is banned so good luck hunting...

Built a little...

Re-imagined...

I don't think it looks ugly enough to be a Giovanolia.

I'd say the only people I know able to crack this other than levis are either geewhzz or Cena, the one isn't around much and the other is banned so good luck hunting...

I'm sure JJ would be capable. RCT-Modified was basically just finding and replacing/changing parts of the game's code. People always underestimate just how skilled/knowledgable JJ actually is.

Just thought i would jump on the ncso wagon.

Need some handymen
It's not to bad, just feels a bit lacking. Throw in some terrain change or maybe a water feature. Or maybe some coaster track.

I'm sure JJ would be capable. RCT-Modified was basically just finding and replacing/changing parts of the game's code. People always underestimate just how skilled/knowledgable JJ actually is.

While it's nice of you to think that, all that piece of crap was, was mostly editing of graphics, and a couple bits of editing the exe, nothing complicated xD.

well
Following may be applicable to LL only.

I've been doing some messing around with diagonal brakes for my NEDC, and it seems like diagonal hex values don't matter for much.
If my theory holds, the outside two tiles don't have any impact on the train whatsoever; only the interior two tiles of a diagonal track piece (the tiles that are shared with the previous/next track pieces) affect it.

Maybe this is old news to some people, but I figure it can't hurt to bring up the mechanics of it again.

I'm sure most of you know that every tile has 8 hex values as follows- xx|xx|xx|xx - xx|xx|xx|xx The brake speed is determined by the 6th hex value (italicized for reference), and the track element is determined by the 5th hex value (underlined for reference.) "Brakes" is a 63 in the 5th slot, and diagonal flat is 8D. Since they take up the same slot you can't have both at the same time. Tweaking the 6th slot doesn't seem to do anything unless the 5th slot is a 63, so you can't just set a brake speed on a piece of non-brake track and have it react. I'll keep messing around to see if the lift value can come into play, but I think that's controlled by the first digit of the first hex slot and won't be able to affect brake speed.

One other possible solution would be to attempt merging a brake piece onto the target diagonal piece such that the train hits the diagonal transfer and the brakes at the same time, in which case the build order would determine which track it actually used. That might mean the brakes just get ignored though.

that would be really nice if it was LL. it just seems so... effortless? in rct2