H2H8 / H2H8 Round 3 Match 1 - Heaven's Gallery vs. Team Spacecrab

Winkelheim

Wow, what a long readme. Great idea though, really added an extra layer of depth to the park, even if it is asking a lot to get us to read like 10 pages of newspapers

Firstly, great effect. I took me a good minute or two of dissection to work out how you did it, and its a neat idea. Must have been a pain in the ass! Unless orct2 maybe increased the scenery saving size? I'm especially impressed that the coasters sync up almost perfectly.

The actual park is lovely- lots of neat details and story-related stuff, and you made the seasons pop for the most part, and included sensible details (but those yellow willows looked bad IMO). I loved the pumpkins and all the snow objects especially. Most of the archy is pretty good, some of it is a bit just 'fine' which is a shame considering the small content area of the park. the castle is pretty good, not quite in the same level as the one in erlebnispark raubritter (apologies to all germans...) but still very nice.

I almost think that if the idea necessitates a 30x30 plot to be the main space of the park, with detail and aesthetic changes (that are again, well done) when you rotate, that the 30x30 plot should be really impactful and full of content. I think here that its good, really pleasant and lovely and got lots of daily-life details that make me smile. I don't want to critize the park for not doing something else, because thats silly and the park is what it is- thats the creators vision and I respect that. But if I have to rate two h2h parks, even despite this neat effect, the one with a lot more awesome and fundamentally different stuff to look at is going to be at an advantage. That said, this park is awesome and you should be proud. Taking risks makes h2h great and not stale and I really applaud you guys for being bold with this park, even if it may not get my vote.

btw, your parks consistently break my computer in a way others don't, that I feel have similar levels of scenery. Is there something wrong with fisch's bench maybe?

Roman Vice Captain

Budapleasure 70 AD? Firstly, love the park, off the bat get that out of the way. I have no way to tell if the architecture is realistic or not, but it seems like a sort of comical take on the whole thing and it works well. I love all the details and life on the roman street. Although I think maybe a small criticism of the whole park is the overuse of that reddish color and that light brown color- it all blends a bit, especially with that path texture. I still don't like that brick texture that was the supports in mictlan too. The park is really where this shines though. I loooove the stairs up with the waterfall down the middle. Beautiful. The water rides with the arching grey supports and waterfalls are lovely, and provide a great splash of different colors in the otherwise overwhelmingly one-shaded park. Great great ship too. All this stuff here is probably my favorite in the park- that little building that hangs over the pond, the saturated brown wood stuff, etc. Both the chariot racing and the gladiator stadiums are pretty awesome too. Lovely details and story here. More details I like- the horses/people powering lifthills, elephants, lion area, poor/blacksmith part, soldiers getting up to shenanigans everywhere (very asterix). In fact I was a bit disappointed to not see them in an easter egg somewhere, or any life of brian references! Thats OK though, not every park has silly easter eggs and thats cool with me.

I know its all tongue-in-cheek but I am curious what the technological capabilities of the romans were. they seemed to be good at concrete and probably metal stuff so I wouldn't be surprised if they would have been able to build a rollercoaster, if they ever would have thought of the idea. 

Overall great stuff- silly, well-executed, and interesting. I wish more of the greys and brighter greens from the water ride area could have worked its way around, but tbh ancient rome was probably dirty and gross IRL so I guess you probably got that right.

Cocoa, I don’t think it has to do with the bench, just that so far our team mantra has apparently been to be very dense. While this park isn’t so dense, I think the graphics trying to differentiate between the lower original level and the upper seasons levels makes it run really slow. Our team did try to figure out how to fix this, but we couldn’t get to the bottom of it.

My viewing ran smooth using OpenGL, but my computer is plenty strong; reviews tonight.

Poll is live!

We're not going to correct your misclicks again, so if you have fat fingers and an inaccurate phone screen, or whatever, wait until you have a computer and a mouse at your disposal. Poll stays open for three full days, so no need to rush and get your votes in asap.

I haven’t decided where to vote yet.

HG’s park is classic RCT shenanigans with a textural makeover. I’m very very close to getting bored of this (assumed builders) brand of cultural/geography inspired parks but there’s no denying its a great formula and makes for parks which balance immersive theming and storytelling with a fun sense of humour and wit whilst never being too cartoonish. This one is no exception. So full of charm and tasteful details. To speak directly to this builder - if you desire to challenge yourself to break out of your comfort zone (and perhaps smash the glass ceiling )I think the next step would be putting coaster layouts and ride design at the core of your parkmaking. Of course, in this specific context the rides work nice enough - some good interactions on Magnum Opus such as the double dip under the bridge. But there’s still not much in the way of defining moments or character in any of the rides. The park looks stunning for the most part. Really loving the new object set. In places the the texturing goes over the top though, such as the burning building and 2 adjacent ones. As soon as I opened this map I knew there would be a bath house. I would’ve gone for a different roof colour as the bright orange is very dominating and isn’t echoed elsewhere on the map. The perforated walls of the courtyard are a really nice touch though. Love the roman fort playground. I could go on listing charming details tbh. This is quintessential Heaven’s brand H2H parkmaking.

Review of Winkelheim coming soon...

I forgot to mention -- congrats on making a palette that didn't make me want to rip my eyeballs out. Nicely done!

I went with Heaven's Gallery.

Spacecrabs

First off; what a unique idea for a park. Really impressive how well everything lines up, and it was fun to try to look for differences between the scenes. I'm going to start out with a big criticism - I thought the coaster had no business being in this park. I can see the logic behind it, but I found it to be a distracting and confusing centerpiece to an otherwise narrative heavy work. I just don't quite get it. The layout isn't bad, and it's fun to watch, but in the end I found it more of a distraction than a highlight. The synchronization across scenes was fairly impressive though, kudos for that. You guys deserve a lot of credit for attempting something like this. It's a big risk. As I mentioned before, it reminds me a lot of games with a sense of time passage like Stardew Valley. It was fun to be able to watch the scenes evolve through the seasons. There's a ton of little details that aren't immediately apparent, so it was a joy to be able to go through a few times and find them. While daring and unique, the concept was a little bit of a letdown upon further viewings in a H2H context compared to the opposing park. Unfortunately, the autumn scene was pretty devoid of peeps for the duration of my viewing compared to other scenes - not sure why. All in all, I think HG's park edged this out a bit in scope and scale - I found myself really wishing I could explore more of each scene individually rather than being limited to one perspective on each season.

It's a really great park, and I think it may have gotten my vote in other match-ups.

Gallery

I genuinely enjoyed this. It somehow feels both believable and distinctly "RCT" at the same time. The architecture and infrastructure were very distinctly Roman in feeling and execution; love the fire brigade and the bathhouse - that entrance though! Perhaps some of the buildings along the main road were a little anachronistic in style? Some of them felt a little too modern for the era, but I don't know European architecture super well. The palette perfectly adds to this feeling and kinda elevated the whole thing for me. The human/horse powered coasters and rides took this to the next level; without the little details in this park, I definitely wouldn't have liked it as much. The varying densities of foliage were really effective in my opinion. The coasters were rather simple, but they fit with the setting. I liked the wooden...mine train...thing probably the most of the rides in the park. Water rides were a bit less impressive. It was a nice splash of color with the ships and the water...but only in the corner. I think it's probably good they're included, but I feel sorry for anyone going sailing on those vessels.

Wonderful work, and I personally found it to be the more enjoyable park of the match.

75% / 65%

You've made some solid points (particularly on Forum) and I still feel glad to be the opposite of your vote with my 90/80 votes.

So far: still the toughest h2h match (this season) for me. Both parks are some of my favorites this season. And both for completely separate reasons.

Forum Caeleste is beautiful. Bravo

Forum Celeste is so, so, so good. Best Roman park ever, for sure, the colours are incredible, the textures are incredible, and I love it. I don't even care that there aren't really any interesting rides, really... I looked at this for ages.

The 4 seasons park is a great concept, and with better execution and a more interesting setting, could have won this match. But apart from the idea there really isn't anything to hold my attention...

Gotta second alex and shogo on the critisims of Forum. Just didn't capture me this time, sorry.

My vote went to Winkelheim. Despite the flaws that also already have been listed above, the concept's execution just charmed me. You went out on a limb here, I can appreciate that.

Thoughts

Unfortunately, I don't have much to say for Winkelheim. The effect was cool for a moment but then I sorta found it frustrating. Too little content for me to get much out of it. Good effort nonetheless!

Forum Celeste is so impressive. Just such an inviting piece of RCT, I wanted to be there so bad. Texturally and architecturally, it's just a dream to view.

So much skill displayed and in an open and spacious environment unlike so many other of the parks shown so far. What a wonderful viewing experience, damn. I have so much praise for this park - I loved it *so* much! Thus, it takes my vote!!

This came down to creativity for me. Both parks felt very good, but not astounding. The atmosphere seemed a bit odd in both, execution was good but not perfect, architecture was strong but not interesting or impressive. Both parks had plenty of little details and fun things to see, but in the end it just felt like there wasn't much in Forum that I hadn't seen already in a handful of other Roman inspired parks. Winkelheim, on the other hand, has never been done before and was by far more creative and innovative. In absence of an overwhelming winner, I went with creativity and voted Winkelheim.

Also, can't help but enjoy the similarities between Winkelheim and The Time Traveler, so that helped.

HG's park is pretty great. I enjoyed exploring it and seeing the little scenes. The custom palette has become a bit of a cliché though, just as much as the smoking employee. I really liked the idea of putting a coaster in a historical scene and imagining how it would've looked back then. Also I admire that you guys thought of how they could be powered using technology from the time, like the horses. Overall a great park with some great ideas. But for some reason not that outstanding IMO. I thought it was a bit run-off-the-mill, a bog-standard H2H park.

The first thing I did with Winkelheim was ploughing through the readme. Quite a lot of work you're asking me to do here, reading so much.... When I first opened I was even a little disappointed. That's it? Psh, small. Maybe they ran out of time. And how the hell is this supposed to represent a year? I don't see any four seasons or anything. But then I turned the park for the first time to look at detail from a different angle. And my god was I surprised. First I thought you modified th game somehow but I quickly learned the trick. Never thought of doing something like this! Kudos to all the builders, this must've been a pain to build correctly. The rest of the park was nice but lacked a bit of context. Why's there a coaster? Why are there rides? It just seemed like an afterthought to give it a link to RCT. I also found it pretty annoying how laggy it was but that's just my computer I guess.

Despite my problems with Winkelheim I voted on it for this round. HG's park is technically of higher quality but the Spacecrabs put such an effort in it to present something unique and different and I can appreciate that.

i appreciate the gimmick of the spacecrabs, however the actual content/30x30 area wasn't that great. so it was kind of look at this changing seasons thing isn't it cool

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nice roman shit. good stuff

I really enjoyed both parks, but I think most of my thoughts about Winkleheim have already been covered! But I'll add my thoughts anyways.

Winkleheim

Really cool concept of the seasons and the trick of rotating the map and revealing the next season was really cool. Also, hovering the mouse over little easter eggs was really cool as well. The guy playing RCT, Posix's volumes.. really enjoyed it. Theres a lot to try and find and explore in such a small plot. I was bummed about how laggy the park was and how the coaster was kinda just there. The biggest negative to me was the coaster. Not sure what would've worked better though. The archy was kinda generic to me as well. I wanted to like this park a lot more.. but just wasn't big enough. Super creative and definitely deserving of praise.

Forum

I agree with Shotguns and Alex about how formulaic the park was.. and viewing it a couple times took some of the initial excitement away. I think the architecture is Ancient Rome, but what period? There should be a gaudy use of color and paint. Too much brown for this to be Imperial Rome.. perhaps this park is set after the Empire began crumbling and people looted the colorful facades off of temples and government buildings? Seems that way considering the area around the water rides.Definitely the highlights to me were the Circus and the Coliseum. Also, the scene about private fire brigades asking for money to put out a fire is super accurate. Nice! Missed opportunity was trap doors and a basement with animal enclosures. Last thought is that the coasters weren't very good.

Ultimately I voted for the HG park. More to see.. refined architecture.. really neat textures and use of Roman era concepts like Aquaducts and stuff. Someone a Classicist on HG?

This is a definitely a case of my favorite park not being the "better" park. 

Forum Caeleste by Heaven's Gallery