RCT Discussion / NCSO and its viability

It's true what posix says - you have so many years of prior RCT history influencing everything you do. It can be overwhelming sometimes. Having people like Shotguns pushing the envelope with regards to NCSO is great but will fundamentally change how everyone perceives other NCSO work going forward.

An instance: I can remember being buoyed up, as a youth, by reading about Jackson

Pollock in a magazine and seeing photographs of him painting. I was heartened by the stupid little

rule through which Pollock civilized his violence. It's okay to drip paint, Jackson said. The

magazine seemed to acquiesce: Yeah, Jackson's right, it seemed to say, grudgingly, Drippingpaint is now within the rules. Discovering this, I was a little bit more free than I was before, and I

know that it was a "boy thing," about privileging prowess at the edge of control and having the

confidence to let things go all strange—and I know, as well, that, in my adolescent

Weltanschauung, the fact that Jackson Pollock dripped paint somehow justified my not clearing

the debris from the floor of my room (which usually, presciently, resembled a Rauschenberg

combine). Even so, I had a right to be shocked a few years later when I enrolled in a university

and discovered that Pollock's joyous permission had been translated into a prohibitive,

institutional edict: It's bad not to drip! the art coaches said. It means you got no soul! Yikes!

An excerpt from a reading I had in class today, which I felt echoes what Ling has said. The way one person makes things has an influence on the future, and specific changes can become permanently embedded in a specific style. Of course, we have different styles here at NE, from FK's surrealism to AvC's fantasy worlds to pac's hyper-realism, from Liam and Paul's old-school quick-building style to Faas' small scale to Rob's crazy detailing, from Shotguns' NCSO to Kumba's custom object creations to Geewhzz's hacking prowess. We all build differently, but we all take influence from each other in different ways, and take on these ticks that give our own work it's own character.  

I think it'd be interesting to see which styles the masses preferred, and how those styles evolved, if the community were 10, 20, 100 times it's size. 

Having people like Shotguns pushing the envelope with regards to NCSO is great but will fundamentally change how everyone perceives other NCSO work going forward.

This is exactly it. I look back at Rampage and that is what I want to build when I build NCSO (not that I ever do). What Shogo and others is great, its pushing the envelope which is exactly what LL has been doing recently, but whats disappointing about it is that people won't ever appreciate the older style of NCSO, you build like that, it's just not as good as this new NCSO style, its not complex enough to be considered great work.

It's different with LL, because LL has the history. It doesn't matter which way you build in LL because there are 2 clear distinct styles, the old style, and the new codex style. Both are appreciated because with one, you are throwing back to the history of the game, with the other you are building in the newer, fresher style. With NCSO there isn't this. There isn't enough history of NCSO and its always been so frowned upon with CSO available, so now, when there is a resurgence and people are finally playing NCSO and it is being accepted, there isn't the history there for people to throw back to, so whenever someone does, it isn't appreciated like LL's is.

It doesn't matter which way you build in LL because there are 2 clear distinct styles, the old style, and the new codex style. Both are appreciated because with one, you are throwing back to the history of the game, with the other you are building in the newer, fresher style.

However, my generation of NE1 and NE2, especially with LL and its lack of CSO, was much more excited by building visually pleasant "parks" that lived in RCT's own aesthetic world and were only quite loosely based on real life parks. It didn't matter that much. You just wanted to create visuals and atmospheres. Or let's say, that's the extreme where I was at. But an example would be what people used to call "NE Style" that had very little to do with accurate recreation, but was still immensely popular. And great!

What LL had to parallel CSO was codex. And you can see what pierrot and Loopy have done with it. pierrot being especially interesting because he often completely lost the park aspect without losing the recreation aspect.

You are up the codex end of things, definitely. But I understand where you are coming from.

I mentioned 2 clear distinct styles, but mainly in terms of that's where most people go if they want to build LL, or want to appreciate it most, they go to the two ends of what is an LL scale lol

You have Posix and people up one end, Milo & Pierrot up the other. And then people like yourself, Loopy in between. LL is pretty broad, but when you think of it, there are those 2 clear ideals (maybe not styles).

But on a scale of Posix to Pierrot, you are ][ntamin22.

I find this discussion particularly interesting as i bought RCT:LL a couple of days ago and thought: "let's not overthink this and just have fun with what's there."

I remember the old days i had with RCT2 CSO parks and i had fun with that too - no doubt. But sometimes it was quite grindy to get something done with 1000s of 1/8th of a quarter trim pieces and stuff.

That's why now it's about the grindy bits. All of the themes you can think of have been executed in a hundred different ways already, so usually the only way forward is more meticulous detail. The only way I think it can go from there is a complete start-over from the classic NE LL style of "big ideas, simple execution". Or maybe the competitive scene is just never the same again and releases dwindle until they stop happening altogether.

I'm not sure there has been enough NCSO parks this year to justify an award, but we'll see when it comes to compiling the nominations.

I think it was a pretty good year for NCSO actually. Kidron Park won gold, Mystic Mountain, Märchen Paradies and Lucky Lake won silvers, Clearfield Woods and Whispering Pines (cheap plug) won bronze and Rougarou won design. Not bad at all...

All of the themes you can think of have been executed in a hundred different ways already

I wouldn't say that. There's always new themes to invent. I've been trying for ages to complete a "Gardens of Consequence" theme, and I'd say the "fiesta de los muertos" theme (as posted by tyandor) was pretty novel. Granted, the common themes have been done, so the only way to go from there would be to add more detail, but I think sometimes just having some originality and not being drawn to the predefined theme sets can lead to effective results without the need for hyper-detail.

Steampunk Mushroom Cave, Chess, Floating Teacups. Fantasy has a plethora of untapped themes.

intamin, you never really happened before the "post"-era, did you?

I think it's quite clear you're more in the recreational category. You've explained lengthily how closely you look at real life references. I agree with Louis though that you're in between both, with 3/4 on recreation.

Ling, very good post.

On new themes: I think when you want to have a certain amount of real life inspiration your theme choices are actually limited. Because overly individual themes tend to be a bit random and almost abstruse in my opinion. Too far fetched to catch the serious interest of any park management.

A shitty analogy here but I lump NCSO in with LL in terms of the mindset playing it over CSO. It's like, why paint with thin watercolor when you can use oil and almost photorealisticly capture light and expression and recreate a scene from real life? But similar to water color, there is a pleasure derived from giving an impression of something out of a limited toolset that isn't the same as creating something as realistically as possible. The negative space looks like a tree so the painting is of a tree = The coaster track is built to look like a tree so it represents a tree. That's where my satisfaction comes from by playing LL over CSO and it seems similar with NCSO. I think NCSO hasn't fully caught on yet and we're starting to see some really creative uses of the limited options available.

Edit- somehow my whole post was in italics and it looked pretentious

personally i think it would be very viable! we just need people like shotguns and rct2day to keep playing it. and when they have switched to either CSO, LL or aren't playing anymore other players will surely take the spot. however to a lesser extend ofcourse. 

Do I think its viable?  Currently, no.  We only have a handful of solid NCSO players around whereas there are plenty of CS and LL guys.  Realistically, some of us will leave the game in a few years.  However, I think the few of us who play NCSO really well can enable more people to experiment with it.  Like Louis said, reddit can offer a lot to this community here so I think expanding to there with NCSO would be hugely beneficial.  I am optimistic for the future and I think, with the core NCSO guys continuing to produce good parks, we can make it into its own genre of RCT like LL or CS.

Wow, looking back at my own statement is pretty cool because I feel like we accomplished a goal.  Namely, there are established players out here who do NCSO, and some young guys who are learning a lot by doing it too.  I think these days, it's definitely on par with LL, if not past it already.