Custom Scenery Exchange / Custom Rides by X7123M3-256

Thanks. I was slightly worried about this because when I first started making rides, I kept getting checksum mismatches with packed objects. Then I stopped experiencing the problem so I assumed that it was a bug in OpenRCT2 that has since been fixed - but if there was a bug in OpenRCT2 then it might have been present in the original game as well.

 

I'd been meaning to ask someone to check this for a while, since the original game doesn't seem to work for me anymore, but at least I know now that these rides are packing correctly - I still don't know what was going wrong before.

This wing coaster is going to take a very long time to finish - I've just discovered I have to redo the seats again. I think in future I'll avoid doing any ride for which I can't find at least two schematics.- photographs are proving extremely tricky to model from.

Would anybody be interested in improved versions of some of the rides that are already in the game? While looking for images of the wing coaster, I've found schematics for the B&M invert, B&M floorless, and some lower quality ones of the B&M flyer and hyper. I've also found some exceptionally detailed schematics of the Arrow 4th dimension, which could do with animated rack and pinions as they aren't covered on the S&S version like they were on the Arrow.

 

Is it worth redoing these? I thought some of the in game models weren't as detailed as I'd like (especially the 4th dimension and the invert) but these are all ride types that the game already has.

If they have the same qualiy of your other rides I would certanly use them

I wouldn't use them. It's a hassle to include them in downloadable parks and they don't add anything other than a couple of pixels here and there. Probably in worse graphics, because admit it: your models look texturally different from the 'native' sprites.

I'm aiming to have all my rides to the same standard - the Intamin wing coaster is due an update because it's not up to the standard of my newer rides.

 

It's really about whether it's worth modelling new rides just for some small improvements. The B&M wing coaster is missing wheel covers, and the 4th dimension is missing a zero car, so these would probably be the two I'd be aiming to redo. With the other two, you'd be looking at small details like bumpers wheel assemblies - the sort of stuff you only notice if you know where to look.

 

The other question is whether they should be done as replacements for the default rides (i.e same filename and checksum) or as new rides altogether. If I did them as replacements, it would make them work with all existing parks automatically, which would be nice, but I suspect people would probably want the option of having both installed.

 

My models do look different from the standard rides - it's partly because I render directly in indexed color with a custom renderer, and partly because it's just really difficult to match the style of the original game without having the original models to work from - I have no idea what material settings were used, what shading model was used, whether texture mapping was used (I doubt it). I've tried my best to get things to match, I can't do any better. Sorry.

 

I might do the 4th dimension anyway; I have such detailed schematics it seems ashame not to use them when I seem to be spending half my time looking for schematics; and of all the rides in the game the 4th dimension is the most egregiously wrong; it should have a zero car; and the game models the Arrow trains rather than the new S&S ones.

 

Liampie: you should not have to include the rides in downloads - they should export as packed objects. I've tested this locally - to check it works on your machine, download this test park. If it does not work please tell me as that means there is likely a bug in my ride generator.

Yeah, that works for me somehow. Weird because before all tracked rides were non-exporting.

AE's rides all have the wrong checksum. I think anything made with Buggy's ridemaker does. They do pack (I think), but you get a checksum mismatch when trying to load it, and the game discards the packed object. If anyone encounters any issues with exporting my rides, please tell me about it -  having to include the rides with the download is inconvenient, and if the ride gets updated it results in lots of outdated download links floating around.

I finally finished my wing rider models:

 

I fucking love you. That's sick.

There may be slight changes yet - I normally end up having to oversize the restraints slightly in order to avoid aliasing - it looks really bad when the restraints don't show up in some frames because they're smaller than a pixel. The foot guards are already oversized for this reason.

 

I'm also unsure of the shading - though I'm still using the same renderer I used for all the other rides, it suddenly looks too bright. I suspect that this might be because bright restraints on dark seats highlights all the aliasing problems the restraints are having - hopefully things will improve once I've had a chance to tweak them.

Looks great man.

I've now rendered the completed models. While there's still things that need adjusting, these are the final models and they'll probably be the final sprites as well.

Looking good, too bad nothing can be done about the connector between the cars. It looks a bit too thick and the animation is off on the loop as seen in the pic, they aren't connecting anymore between cars. But I guess that is the trade off.

Keep up with the amazing work with all the custom cars you're doing! Don't stop!

I can and will fix the connector - it's because the pivot point is in the wrong place. The front car pivots about the wheels, and I'd copied that to the other cars - but those should pivot about the midpoint, not the wheels. I had the same issue on the dive machine - here I'm really just rendering the sprites to see what they look like - tweaking tbem for optimal appearence is the next step.

The connector isn't too thick - I've made all measurements from photographs of the real ride, and the connector lines up with the real images very well. However, there's not much contrast between the connector and adjacent brake fins - so maybe it's looking like one component. I might make the connector recolorable to allieviate this issue.

Glad to hear that it can be fixed! I'm sure the measurement is spot on, but sometimes trade off got to be made just as your restraints, they were spot on but in game they are too thin so you had to make it thicker. I'm sure all the rides in RCT aren't to scale anyways too so you should be fine if it isn't exactly right, looking right is better than being exactly right. Nobody would know otherwise beside you.

I make the restraints thicker because they were too thin to show up - I don't artificially alter the sizes of things that are displaying correctly. The connector looks fine to me. It doesn't really matter to me whether the existing sprites are to scale (They're not quite, but they're not far off. The peeps are way off though). One day, I'd like to replace the base sprites with my own versions that are to scale, but I'd like to get my current project done first.

I've fixed the connectors (as best I can) and posted updated screenshots. I've finally figured out how the spacing actually works, and what units it's in (!) so I can stop using trial and error to find it. Unfortunately, I can't adjust pivot point independent of spacing, so optimizing the pivot point and then setting the spacing right results in a very small gap between trains. This problem was solved on the dive machine with the addition of an invisible "dummy" car. I don't like to do that, but it's not like Chris Sawyer didn't do it himself ... several times, for no apparent reason.

Wow, those look much better. Absolutely incredible, definitely going to try to use them as soon as possible.

At the moment, the upstop wheels, if visible, render on top of the track. This is the case on all my rides so far. Since RCT2 doesn't have a depth buffer, this is inevitable.

I've been thinking about rendering a track piece into the depth buffer wheb the sprites are rendered. This would have the effect of removing those parts of the image that should be hidden by track.

It's not a perfect fix because the location of the criss ties changes from frame to frame, as does the angle of the track to the wheelbase. There also isn't an exact match between the games track sprites, and the real track.

Is this something that would be worth doing? Or should I leave it as it is? I've never noticed the misplaced upstops while the train is in motion, but they're irritating where they are visible.