H2H7 / [H2H7 Finals] - Barons vs Canes vs Atlas vs Laborers

just curious, when is the poll closing?

In the end I voted for asteroid fields. It just kept my attention much longer and made me actually smile while browsing it. Really, as beautiful and perfected as Paradise Pier is, asteroid fields just had an X factor that PP didn't.

Still, all three parks are outstanding and definitely top notch work.

just curious, when is the poll closing?

 

Fantasy Park with Strong Narrative
First of all, fantastic ironic name. A shame the team fell apart and the park didn't got finished. What's there looks pretty damn awesome. Some say there are too many spires, but it works. Daring! Love the colours on the castle too, and the glass domes. Very original and fantastical. Fantastic! The desert landscaping was very cool too. I don't know if it was smart to include it in this contest (it's ridiculously similar to Morow World), but it's hard to deny it looks good. I especially like how small scaled it is. When I opened the map and immediately saw the landscape, I tried zooming in and wondered why it didn't work. Intentional forced perspective? Overall, I enjoyed what was there. Good job, maybe, in a way?

DisneyPunk
Looks like the park was supposed to be called Disney Steampunk, but the Laborers lost steam towards the end... I think someone else said it as well, there's not enough actual steampunk in this park. The urban area looks like a normal urban area, the boardwalk looks like a normal boardwalk, the castle doesn't look like anything but a windowless castle, there's a wharf thing that would be a normal wharf if it wasn't for three or four cogs, and then there's some generic space stuff. The only thing that live up to the promise of a steampunk park are the 20.000 leagues ride and the spiral coaster. It's an ugly thing, but in a good way. Wish there was more stuff like that in the park. Not to say the non-steampunk areas weren't good, because there was definitely a lot of good content. The American looking area was good, but my favourite area might be the wharf. Favourite detail is the toilet interior. Very good. Another flaw I found was that the areas had no clear boundaries. Everything just blends together into one area of non-steampunk genericness. Disney would've done this very differently. Apart from the design flaws, good effort. I enjoyed it!

Paradise Pier
I don't think I got around to reviewing Lotte World, did I? This park suffered from the same flaw: a lack of fun and detail. Lotte World had dull colours too, luckily that wasn't the case here. Everything else was top-notch. The terraces, the buildings around the (awesome) swinger, the other custom flats, the curved paths that are actually effective in this park (that U-turn over the launch is fantastic!) the overdetailed but still great looking Mystic Manor, the coaster supports... And a lot of smaller nameless buildings too. On a purely technical level, this might just be the best park we've seen this H2H. I think you should've put more time into thinking WHAT to build rather than HOW to build something. The park didn't lack execution - it could've done with much less, actually - it lacked imagination and surprise. It was rather predictable. Still good though. A bacon hamburger is predictable and I still buy those. Great job guys!

Asteroid Fields
I adore the ideas here. Inclined freefall, green peeps, portals, pinball, zero gravity coaster... Mindblowing. Maybe it's better the park isn't as complete and refined as we hoped, because it might've been too much to handle. And it seems we're winning anyway. I bow to you, fellow heavenly cartographers.












My reviews are in, you can post the results now Lou.

Poll Closed. Results can be found here.

Who made what?

Fantasy Park with Strong Narrative was made by wheres_walto (50%) and FK+Coastermind (50%)

Paradise Pier was made by Pacificoaster (50%), Shotguns? (30%), RCT2Day (15%) and G Force (5%)

Asteroid Fields was made by Tolsimir (42.5%), bigshootergill (42.5%) and Fisch (15%)

DisneyPunk was made by Cocoa (30%), Austin55 (25%), PizzaWurscht (25%) and disneylandian192 (20%)

he defeated me twice wtf

 Disney would've done this very differently.

 

 

That's not true at all. Disney has done this very similarly with DisneySea. The only things I think weren't "Disney" about this park were that the paths were boring and bland throughout most of the park, without anything lively going on, and that there was some visibility between areas, which disney typically avoids really well. 

The constant "not enough disney films involved" was a bit annoying and untrue too, since disney parks very often develop their own properties and ideas, rather than borrowing from film.

 

Reviews for the other parks coming soon.

That's not true at all. Disney has done this very similarly with DisneySea. The only things I think weren't "Disney" about this park were that the paths were boring and bland throughout most of the park, without anything lively going on, and that there was some visibility between areas, which disney typically avoids really well. 

 

-snip-

 

Just realized DisneyPunk didn't have red/brown path, changing my rating to 0/100. 

Guessed FK, Pac, Shotguns and BSG. Didn't guess any of ManLab's but then I've found your parks hardest to guess each round. Almost like you guys have a 'house style'.

i would love to see a who did what on these parks. They were fantastic all around.

I didn't expect tolsimir and BSG to have done the majority of AF. Some amazing work there, I salute you!

thanks everyone for the replies! It seems that our park was very inconsistent-some people liked one thing, while others hated it. Thats all right, i absolutely concede that the park was choppy, rushed, and inconsistent between areas. this mostly falls on me, when we decided that i was gonna build wild west instead of jumping into this park it meant i couldnt really be a part of the process as much as i should have been. In the end my main contribution is the new york area (map incoming) which i still think is one of my best areas ever. I think our park didnt really make it to how it looked in my head- but its hard to coordinate 4 builders with very different styles i would like to give a shoutout to austin who blew us away coming from an 8th round pick to consistently produce quality work, and, more importantly, was always around helping and being active. Steal of the competition. Maybe ill post more thoughts later when im not on mobile

Thanks everyone for an amazing and mostly graceful h2h. I had a lot of fun, made new friends, and saw some great rct. this website is great, special thanks to the admins (even the ones not on manlab)

Reviews of finals parks incoming, but you may have to wait a bit longer

FK did the desert and landscaping (using building blocks and xcoaster lines, very detailed) and I did the bridge and castle and coaster and weird tree thing

The constant "not enough disney films involved" was a bit annoying and untrue too, since disney parks very often develop their own properties and ideas, rather than borrowing from film.

 

Very glad you said this. If you want a park with just franchises, build Universal.

FK did the desert and landscaping (using building blocks and xcoaster lines, very detailed) and I did the bridge and castle and coaster and weird tree thing

Based on that castle, I think we should work together in the future. Our styles would mesh very well!

Yes please

Here's the map of builders on Disneypunk

 

Essentially

 

Pizza did the castle, coaster, and everything it touches really

 

Disney did the entrance, large glass hall, carousel, and zephyr in Mysterious Island

 

Cocoa did New York, the Haussman by the glass hall, the entrance sculpture, and nearly all of Mysterious Island

 

I did the space area, several of the Haussman facades on the right side, and Nautilus. 

 

 

There was a lot of inspiration on the park from unbuilt or other proposed Disney park attractions, I did a lot of research and what not into imagineers and things, Tony Baxter in particular. If you've ever heard of the Discovery bay proposal, this was very much inspired by it. 

 

The Spark Gap coaster, for instance, was inspired by an unbuilt ride of the same name

 

 

I think the other thing to remember is that there are more types of "Punks" than just Steampunk, think ElectroPunk and what not. Disneypunk is meant to be a new type of Punk more than built up around the ideas of existing ones. 

Like Cocoa said, time was a huge issue. We all found ourselves very busy (I had two vacations after wk 5, Cocoa could'nt build for the last several weeks, etc) so the park is far from what it should or could have been. The scenery is all there really, but some of the smaller and more charming things and further refinement never got the park to where it should have been.

Still though, I love it and think we did an amazing job all things considered. 

Walto and FK was a certainty although someone else could have helpedo n the park as well.

I really thought Paradise Pier was Pac, Shogo, nin and a fourth builder.

I couldn't have guessed who built asteroid fields if I wanted to. Bigshootergill doing over 40% of that park as a last round pick. Nice job!

Cocoa and Disneylandian were obvious, but now Austin and Pizza were named it all makes sense to me.

Haha, awesome feeling to have beaten the Hurricane twice in a season! I'm sorry it's even personally you twice, Shotguns! But I have to thank you for your post on the first page of the thread  about our park. That was such an wholeheartedly honest opinion and I was fulfilled with joy while reading it and clearly moved by what people can see in other's work . You sum up the evolution of the game over the past few years and draw the right conclusion. Even the parks that are considered the best ones of recent time show the lack of 'fun'.

And that was what we had in mind (atleast me) when building Asteroid Fields. We wanted to create a park that doesn't take itself too seriously and focuses on the actual idea and setting behind it - not execution.

 

The park was actually planned as round 5 park in the round robin. Fisch and I were scheduled to work together and we came up with the idea of a park set in an asteroid field. I quickly had a vision in my mind and I guess Fisch did so too. The best thing was: ideas were just coming up and up. The first thing that was done was the colour palette. I mean, the green peeps add a lot to the believabilty. First I thought about changing all the game sprites for peeps somehow. But reading there were about 19k I had to come up with another solution. Changing the skin colour row in the palette was the right way to go - however some parts of it are used in the sprites for the brown land. so I changed some colours to grey and the new land colour was an awesome by-product!

 

So the topic for the park in the team forum was opened on March 5th. Bigshooter was added to the park as he had no other park to contribute to that point. With me working on Tenochtitlan and Fisch on Carreira da India the park was on ice for the next few weeks. Bigshooter, I know you were waiting in the wings and I feel sorry that we put you back several times, but I think you understand that we wanted to get started the park in the right way. You weren't content with the first half of construction but I'm really thankful with the blast you made on the other half. You did an awesome job, always making the stuff in a way that it didn't need any 'improving touches' (besides the logflume maybe ).

 

The park didn't go properly the next months (april and may). Atleast Fisch did somewhat the initial push with the park so we got started atleast. However the deadline for week 5 (June 7th) was approaching faster and faster. Liam decided 1,5 weeks before the deadline to push back Asteroid Fields to the semis and started with The seven wonders. Bigshooter delivered a layout for that park to have his round robin appearence.

 

Fisch was disappeared at that time and I wasn't as active too. But bigshooter and me always found the time to have atleast a steady progress from that time on. With the change in the finals we got another two weeks. I'm convinced we could have made it for the semis but now we had extra time to add extra stuff and finish things in a better way. Thanks to Liam for always backing us up. You know how to lead a team!

 

Long story short, the park was 'on progress' during the whole contest and still it feels unfinished and bland on the edges. I can't say though that it would be any different if we even had more time. I for myself was just losing motivation and ideas to the end (what you can see on the asteroid with the coasters, that was the last one to be finished).  I'm glad that the people still liked what we have, I didn't think we made a winner park when we submitted it.

 

 

 

Fisch did the coaster layouts in the park and the half of the mainstreet. As mentioned above he did kick off the progress actually.

Bigshooter was everywhere where work needed to be done. He did most of the 'dirty work', especially the time consuming landscaping. The powerstation asteroid is his and for me it is the best one in the park.

I did most of the hacking work and the theming in the back of the park.

 

 

 

I'm sorry that the gif is so large. don't know how to decrease the size of it.

 

 

 

What's the story behind the street that was built then removed at the bottom?