Related Games / Theme Parkitect, new RCT-based game

I imagine that is massively low down on their current to do list. Not really that important compared to adding in a good selection of coaster types and flat rides, Adding more scenery and a working economy are all much higher priority. But perhaps one day

The Pre-Alpha build has just gone live for everyone who has paid for a copy of the game. Downloading mine now and CP6 has bought a copy. Hopefully we can share our experiences here. 

 

Anyone else who fancies a copy its only $15. Got to be be worth a punt for less than the price of a cinema ticket and supporting the developer  

http://www.themeparkitect.com/

hmmm... I'm extremely tempted. time to find some money...

So both me and CP6 got to play around with this a fair bit last night. 

We both think the same. Plenty of potential here but its a bit rough and ready right now. But theres a growing list of excellent suggestions and the developer is listening so i have high hopes.

 

Here's some notes from my play through. 

- Coaster builder is quite powerful but missing a few useful transitions at the moment.

- Coasters look great

- Alpha has very few sounds sound

- Great flat ride selection already including Air Race and Topple Tower.

- Wave swinger looks really good while operating.

- Strange decision on a short maximum height for the wing coaster at the moment.

- Ui is ok but needs smartening up. 

- Maximum zoom level is in really close. could do with a way to zoom out further.

- Path placement is really easy. click and drag.

- the way rides are saved as blueprints in a .png file is really clever. No need to attach a screenshot. The ride file is a screenshot of itself.

- Lack of a large loop which has a bit of lateral movement too like the ones in RCT would be really handy.

 

While a lot of these sound negative i did enjoy my time with the Alpha.

You'll easily get a few hours messing around with this early version and get all updates as they come out. Worth a punt I'd say. 

you should say which transitions are missing, they occasionally check these forums so they might listen

I wish I had the money for this. I love the look of it so much. The coasters look so beautiful but so effortless.

 

you should say which transitions are missing, they occasionally check these forums so they might listen

 

 

I've posted my bug reports and suggestions on the appropriate threads on their sub-Reddit. 

 

Going to give it another play later.

Had another mess around last night and tried to create some recreations of famous rides.

 

I tried making a Drachen Fire copy which went pretty well but a couple of issues with the game it's present state made it more frustrating than it should have been. 

 

The long slowly rising curves were great for making the rise into the brakes and the long curve after the corkscrew but issues with those curves in the current Alpha mean that track heights ended at 1/8th of a square too high and made the ride impossible to complete. I believe this has already been fixed for the next release.

 

There are currently no helix's in game so the helix under the cobra roll was a mess.

 

However the corkscrews on the 45 degree track and the ability to change corkscrew/loop sizes made the angles of the ride much better than they ever could be in RCT. 

 

As i've said before the potential is massive but in its current form its a little fiddly. 

 

I also tried to make a Viper (SFMM) clone but you currently run into a loop from a hill like RCT, The track has to be flat. Which makes the run into the first loop look a little odd. The long swooping drop is easy to do though and the variable size of curves makes it look a lot less awkward than RCT.

 

I'm trying to think of another Arrow looper i could try tonight (no B&M looper in game yet) but Arrow were never one for many custom rides. I may have a pop at Loch ness monster though. 

show us your boobs!

sorry I mean screens, show us your screens

I'm going to give it a go tonight. May stream the thing via hangout.

Seeing videos of this online gets me really excited. The coaster builder is incredibly intuitive (compared to RCT at least). The potential here is unreal.

So as Louis requested here are my boobies... i mean screenshots.

 

My first attempt at anything was building a B&M style looper (Even though the B&M looper isn't in game yet, so i used the Arrow track) This one is clearly loosely based on Led Zeppelin, well at least to start. 

 

 

 

I was mainly messing around with the track editor at this point. I think this demonstrates why I think the game currently needs steeper drops. The main drop looks too shallow although it works quite well for the zero G. The Zero-G is made just by rotating the banking on each piece of track rather than a specific element like RCT. This allows quite a lot of flexibility in size and shape of the roll. I definitely made my corkscrews too big but i learnt for later on. 

 

Next up i tried a recreation. And since the arrow track is in game why not go for one of their most infamous coasters.

 

 

 

The 45 degree corkscrew was great here. A really handy addition for recreations. Especially ones as simple as Loop-screws. A more customizable half loop would be useful for the first inversion and the games lack of a simple shallow helix's is annoying at the moment. I actually made a much better rising and falling curve after the cutback in a later version but I didn't save it.

 

Continuing a general theme i tried making an aproximation of Loch Ness Monster. Not an exact clone but something very similar.

 

 

 

I'm slowly getting more used to the controls so this was easier than expected. You'll have to excuse the rubbish foliage. The in game options are a bit crap right now and combined with me generally being crap at them anyway it doesn't looks great. 2nd screen shows the rain effect. If you look at the 2nd pic it kind of shows how varying the the size of track pieces affects the number of supports placed.

 

Next up I tried playing with the B&M wing coaster. For some reason its limited to 90ft at the moment which is crazy because rides like Parrot Coaster and Gatekeeper are around 170ft. Anyway I went for a small custom X-Flight style design and messed around with the track options. 

 

 

 

I was pleasantly surprised to find that diagonal zero-g-rolls work pretty well and as you can tell i discovered you can vary the size of lots of the scenery as well as change some of the tree colours.  The wing coaster is a bit limited at the moment due to its oddly short height restriction and the current lack of a half loop that steps to the side slightly making recreations of rides like Stealth, X-Flight and Gatekeeper pretty tough. 

 

Finally last night i messed with the wild mouse. The wild mouse makes pretty good standard mice but i noticed the ability for swooping drops might make a nice Gerstlauer Bobsled coaster approximation.

 

 

 

 

The turns can only be banked to about 15 degrees but I think it works pretty well. The in game block brake system is currently broken (and being fixed for next release) but the ride runs pretty well. 

 

Anyway I hope you enjoyed my boobies...

That wing coaster looks so sexy. Very nice tits, thanks for sharing

I download this too and started screwing around with it.  Nothing major so far.  

 

 

 

 

(Disclaimer is that yes I am still building on SeaWorld-- it's just going really slowly.  Look for that next decade.)

 

 

Nice woodie and wild mouse layout

Yeah, these screens are definitely making me want to put down the $15 for this.

Everything except the supports looks really nice.

Everything except the supports looks really nice.

Got a bee in your bonnet about supports haven't you

Spent some more time messing around last night. Tried building a Morgan style hyper coaster.

It worked pretty well but it shows off why i think their should be steeper drops. The first screen especially looks like the drop is almost the same angle as the lift when its the next steepness up.

 

 

Had some fun with the end helix's. Not perfect by any means but you can create some great swooping turns with the coaster builder. It takes some time to make the banking look good but its pretty powerful. I'm not happy with the flat bit at the top of the final dive out into the brakes but it will do for now

 

 

You can create quite twisted track. It will take a while to get things looking perfect but eventually i think it will become second nature. The variable banking adds a whole new level of customisation that RCT never really had.

 

 

After knocking around with that i looked at the Suspended coaster. but in it's current form its pretty much useless. The maximum height is far too low to make anything but a kiddie coaster really. So i moved onto the woodie.

 

The woodie allows banks up to 90 degrees which is nice as it should allow good recreations of some Gravity Group coasters. No corkscrews yet but that alright for now.

 

 

Here's an example of a heavily banked turn. 

 

 

The long swooping curves can look really nice. Again it's going to take some time to make this become second nature. (I don't like the outer curve on this screen but i do like the inner) This screen also shows off the bankable S bends. Which are a nice quick and easy.

 

 

I messed around again with the wing coaster. The 2 corkscrew inversions here were done differently. The larger one is a rising turn which was banked to 180 degrees at the top. The smaller one is a standard corkscrew. Both look pretty good but the corkscrew looks better on smaller radius inversions. 

 

 

The camera is pretty versatile although it doesn't zoom out enough yet. it does zoom in to scarily close. (even further than this image)

 

 

And you can pan up to directly overhead if you really want. It doesn't pan any lower than the screens up top of this post. This screen show off one of the graphical bugs I've noticed on my PC with a faint white outline around parts of the coaster when its above water.

 

 

I  think I'm coming to the end of what I can test with coasters on this pre alpha version. I have discovered you can do Vertical loops on diag track this morning so i might mess with that later. 

Might do some messing with the current scenery options too but they are a little sparse right now. 

everything looks amazing, except for the steepness of the drops. it makes the morgan look stubby and weird

The large corkscrews and wooden 90* turns look fantastic.

 

The steep track is so weird, it looks great as part of those bunny hills, and as zero-g's but as first drops it just doesnt look right lol