Custom Scenery Exchange / Spacek's Custom Rides

Where's the swinging ship!?

Where's the swinging ship!?

I think he only makes tracked rides. 

Like a Huss Frisbee? I talked to him about a swinging ship yesterday.

Like a Huss Frisbee? I talked to him about a swinging ship yesterday.

I'm pretty sure the Frisbee is meant to have an invisible track, like this: https://www.nedesign...t/4140/typhoon/

No shit, sherlock. People use roller coaster trains to make custom swinging ships, so you might as well make a train that looks like a swinging ship.

I don't think RCT2 has a way to make them spin the way they ought to

 

Well, you could animate it. The spinning would be at a constant rate, but personally I would prefer that to no spinning at all.

 

The trains that I posted I think are suffering from the limitations of the current tool. The rides I've released so far have been on the small-ish size with enough features that the limited color palette doesn't disrupt things too much, but with the trains things are really suffering from the limited 39 color options and the lack of diffuse/specular mapping:

 

You've definitely run into the limitations of this tool. I made a serious attempt to upgrade it last week, but I didn't get anywhere. I think if I ever want to finish it then I'll have to ditch the GUI - it's nice for visualizing the animation as you work on it, but I can't see the problems with it ever being fixed and it's holding up development of anything else. I don't use the program much now, so I don't have as much desire to see it finished as I once did, but if you're going to be using it then I'd like to see the known limitations removed.

 

 

The bus is a neat idea but the windows would either have to be completely invisible or matte black - I don't think rides can have translucent glass sprites.

 

Yes and no. No, in the sense that they cannot have transparent sections where the background shows through, like the glass scenery. But yes, in the sense that you can render sprites however you'd like. If you had a bus, would the background actually show through the windows? At typical viewing angles, you'd probably be looking at the interior of the bus - which is part of the same sprite, so you can handle it however you'd like. You could render the interior with a whiteish tint where it shows through the window, for example.

I dont't know of all the animation types that RCT2 has. The ones I know of are linkes to the vehicle's motion - locomotive animation, rowboat animation, swan boat anomation, canoes animation, and pedal copter animation. I tested the pedal copter in reverse using shuttle mode and the animation played in reverse when it reversed, so I don't think that's the answer. Is there an animation type that plays at a consistent rate while the ride is running irrespective of angle and velocity?

As for the bus interiors - would that I could, my only rendering engine is the tool.

What about the spinning Wild Mouse type? I think X7123 used on one of his custom rides, the Maurer Sohne spinning coaster.

I don't know all the animation types either, but when I was mucking around with it I found a few that appeared independent of vehicle speed. Didn't look into it much, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least one that would work.

 

I could make the new renderer do the transparency thing without too much difficulty, but the current one could never do it - it operates directly on palette indices and has no notion of alpha blending. It's really terrible.

 

What about the spinning Wild Mouse type? I think X7123 used on one of his custom rides, the Maurer Sohne spinning coaster.

 

The problem with that is that the spinning is initiated by turns, and neither ride would have any.

Whenever I try modifying the day files the RLE trips me up every time, and I don't know much about writing software - I don't even know where to begin to find the right combination of flags to enable that type of animation and then modify the tool to support it.

As far as alpha blending, I wouldn't even go that far; if I could make the peep and interior models washed out slightly, that would be enough for that. It would be very nice if I could get reflections like the Von Roll monorail has but that wouldn't have so many uses.

Clarification on the last post because I can't edit on my phone:

If I could wash out or select colors in a general way that would be great, likr the diffuse mapping I saw some time ago - I think it was a globe? I don't know the specifics of how you did that but I assume it was via a texture of the globe.

Whenever I try modifying the day files the RLE trips me up every time, and I don't know much about writing software

 

I never try to modify the DAT files directly - I always do it in software, even if that software is a special purpose script that does nothing else. If you really want to edit by hand, decode it first. Trying to do the RLE manually is insane.

 

I don't even know where to begin to find the right combination of flags to enable that type of animation and then modify the tool to support it.

 

It's a bit awkward. The version of the tool you're using was written before OpenRCT2, and I had to guess at the meaning of the fields. I got the flags slightly wrong - I included the animation type in the flags field. So, setting the CAR_STEAM_EFFECT flag is actually setting the animation type, and that's what you'd want to change. On line 653 in project.c, replace CAR_STEAM_EFFECT by the animation index you want to use (0 is no animation, and 1 is the steam animation). As for what you should set it to, you'd have to try different values - I don't know what they all do.

 

As far as alpha blending, I wouldn't even go that far; if I could make the peep and interior models washed out slightly, that would be enough for that. It would be very nice if I could get reflections like the Von Roll monorail has but that wouldn't have so many uses.

 

You could sort of do it, maybe ... but it's awkward. And you'd have to modify the renderer and there isn't really a simple way to make it work. If you want to do something like that, you're way past what that tool will do.

 

likr the diffuse mapping I saw some time ago - I think it was a globe? I don't know the specifics of how you did that but I assume it was via a texture of the globe.

 

This one? That was done with the newer renderer (not even the current one, that was the first time I rewrote it). I did the globe just to test the texture mapping support, it was never part of a ride.

 FIRST GENERATION DROP TOWER

So, I experimented with values 2 through B and I couldn't really figure out what was what. Some animations required 4 frames per angle but only displayed 2 frames per angle, some (0x9 & 0xA) took 4 frames but only displayed 1 frame per angle. 0x3 displayed more frames but I could not figure out how many. All the animation styles (except for 0x9 and 0xA) were linked to the vehicle's speed, though.

 

EDIT: I'm looking through RideObject.ccp and if I'm looking at this right, the animation is in fact a flag and not a number. Difficult enough to do as-is, I don't think I could delve into Open's code to determine how to make an animation that plays regardless of vehicle speed

EDIT 2: I realized that the observation tower has a consistent animation speed, so I will see if I can't look at what makes it tick.

That may well be the case, I didn't look much into it. There's another animation related parameter somewhere that you can adjust, but I never figured out the details. You could make the ride spinning and set the friction really low, but a user would still have to find a way to set it spinning in the first place.

Trying to reverse-engineer the helicopters and observation tower rides to find what makes them animate. I've discovered a lot!

 

For example: I know where to find all the ride flags now. I know what each animation type does (but not necessarily the sprites are required/allowed). I've also learned where to find the location of each vehicle property in the binary .DAT files. I can, for example, remove the tender from that one thomas .DAT no sweat.

 

We live in an era where more is known about RCT2 than ever before.

I would say this is pretty nice:

 

https://gfycat.com/C...imsicalGrayling

 

Also, I am bringing this tool to its knees to bring you the best possible Disk-O I can. 16 riders is a decent number for an RCT-sized DiskO, but unfortunately the number of models required to finish the ride is too much for the tool. Hopefully I can get this sorted out soon!

 

On the topic of animation, I believe I can use the animation used by the observation tower to animate the DiskO and Frisbee properly. The animation will stay constant during the ride cycle, but I think that is only a small concern. X7123M3-256 has been helping me a lot with this ride by figuring out what sprites to use; the DiskO and Frisbee definitely will not be possible without him.

I can increase the limit on the number of models - but the other concern is how big an object the game can handle without clipping. That restriction is harder to remove, so you might still be forced to have the ride smaller than IRL.

I would say this is pretty nice:

 

https://gfycat.com/C...imsicalGrayling

 

Also, I am bringing this tool to its knees to bring you the best possible Disk-O I can. 16 riders is a decent number for an RCT-sized DiskO, but unfortunately the number of models required to finish the ride is too much for the tool. Hopefully I can get this sorted out soon!

 

On the topic of animation, I believe I can use the animation used by the observation tower to animate the DiskO and Frisbee properly. The animation will stay constant during the ride cycle, but I think that is only a small concern. X7123M3-256 has been helping me a lot with this ride by figuring out what sprites to use; the DiskO and Frisbee definitely will not be possible without him.

 

That Disk'O is amazing!

Discussion time. Some DiskOs are themed heavily, some are themed lightly. The DiskO model I made is pretty much done - the peeps are in, the restraints are set, and the lights are on. Currently there is nothing except for a paint scheme reminiscent of the nuclear symbol on the center motor housing. Since I'm making this object for you guys, I thought I would get your feedback.

 

My question to you, the members of the NE forums: what would you like in the center?

 

 

This is what the car looks like currently (lowered for a better view). Is there anything that would look better in the center? A hemisphere? The DiskO sign? A roman bust? Draw (or explain) what you would like to see.

 

The green, pink, and yellow colored areas are mapped to the paint swatches respectively. Depending on how the animation turns out, I may have to split the animation in half, so objects with 180-degree symmetry are preferred. Also, you guys probably know this well, but a reminder that NE does like to use objects for other uses than their intended purposes. Will what you choose look good for other things?