H2H8 / H2H8 Round 3 Match 1 - Heaven's Gallery vs. Team Spacecrab
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18-May 18
This topic hosts comments for 2 parks(View Parks)
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Ziscor
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A Year in WinkleheimThe readme must have some of the most interesting presentation for an H2H park. I mention it first like most would but I read it a long time after seeing the park for the first time. That makes me respect the ideas a lot more. Hard to talk about it without rambling too much, but also hard not to. Still, enough people have talked niceties of it for me to not do the same. My only peeve in the end was the typos consistently made everywhere, but with a deadline ticking away there's only so much care that can be taken, I suppose. If this was a competition of setting up parks with readmes without providing the parks themselves, this would take the win pretty easily I think, lmaoComing to the park itself, my first thought was basically "Aw, it's too small." For some, that thought must have vanished when learning about the rotation trick but... I just have a hard time forgetting it's still a small canvas with a small number of ideas just represented 4 times with easter eggs and small stories to follow along the way. Maybe less than 4 since you can't see all those ideas from all angles which is less a problem for the park and more of a conventional standard everyone assumes. We all wanna see everything from all angles! Not being allowed that liberty at first makes the experience seem limiting and probably hurts its impression on me.After the first skim-through of mild disappointment I kinda just closed it and did something else. Took some time but I knew I had to give the park a better chance, and so I did. This time I patiently fixated on one angle at a time (it's hard not to rotate out of habit!). Let's talk about the basic foundation on which the seasons build upon: The architecture is decent for the most part and I can't find issues in it. The foliage irked me a little with the object and texture choices, though. Didn't think the Chinese Cedar looked too good, personally, but I can understand you'd use it just so autumn and winter can look better. Same for the rest of the trees, really. It's hard finding trees that look good in those two seasons, which I understand. The fact that the park is small makes me expect greater composition and balanced detailing: maybe it's just me, but for a park that heavily relies on very specific angles to buildings, this had a lot of potential to be photogenic. That's a pretty abstract value but I hope you know what I mean. Brilliant Art Gallery, though. That castle was well composed and looked very good in all seasons. Neat detailing.Spring. Things I liked:- Ooh, street performer!- Interiors. That library and retaurant/cafe are pure perfection.- Jacob plowing the field. Classic Jacob. I bet he'll accidentally sow sunflower seeds instead of sesame again. How do I know that? Err.. hey, look over there someone's digging underneath the gallery!Summer. Things I liked:- Love the aftermath of the gallery heist. Say cheese!- Poor Jacob, at least that new tourist couple likes looking at the sunflower grove when they come out for a picnic. Aren't they living in that new guest house by our local seasonally decorated slide? Oh wait, that's where the fat chain smoker from America is staying. Anyways, hopefully Jacob can make his money back with the pumpkins he never forgets.- The Gallery interior, oh my god so perfect. Seeing the footsteps object makes me wanna do a black and white noir detective park. Pure perfection once again. Not sure why there are new parody paintings here, I thought I'd see Dryham, Marshmallow and Steaks and Fuego dos Flamingos.- Church interior was neat.- Neat volleyball game of course!Autumn. Things I liked:- I bet that kite tore when it got into the tree, tough luck. Neat idea!- Ayy, my boy Jacob making fat stacks with them huge pumpkins! But wait, if he's making rounds at the town square, is that his cousin handling the pumpkin shop? Haven't seen him around since last Christmas, wow.- The "street artist" vandals these days. As in, I don't like them! I hope one of them gets caught these days.- Mayor Julow is really finicky about how he looks in photos, I bet that photographer is tired taking so many pictures from all these angles.Winter. Things I liked:- The snow changes themselves. This is gonna have to be one of the better snow season executions by far. It certainly required a good object selection to pull this off, and if I'm not mistaken there are several brand new objects in here we've never seen before.- Someone's... standing next to some yellow sn--oh yikes.- Jacob, our friendly neighbourhood Mr Plow. Homer Simpson? Who's that?- The town square. I like it and dislike it at the same time, though. Confusing. For one, I like the lights but also think it's a bit too much and makes for a pretty cluttered scene. Needed cleaning up.- Interiors top notch again!- Woah. Deja vu, I've seen Karlo in this place before. Underneath the streets, and he knows it is his time to go-- I'll stop.I remember seeing the RCT-playing dude last time but can't find him now while writing this. That was also cool, don't know which season it was in.Overall, all the above was neat and all, but from an aesthetically pleasing point, none of it really appealed to me as much as HG's park. I think you guys deserve a lot of credit for making such a bold and ambitious park but it just wasn't for me. It seemed as if the initial idea and how to pull this visual trick off took most of your time and didn't leave room to plan this small plot of land better. Or to have a larger plot. I assume the plot size was determined by the rules, though. The coaster seemed like a distraction making the whole scene messier and didn't blend well. It was a nice hunt for easter eggs and minor things but they can't carry the whole park for me. Coupling that with my lack of being blown away with the visual trick after multiple views, yeah... sorry guys. I tried my best to love this park, and I do, but something doesn't click as it should. I hope I've explained well enough for why that is.In the end, I hope you crabs have some parks ahead that are more easier on the eyes. Having to discipline my jumping eyes to appreciate it better reminded me of how Studio Ghibli was at first.Now that that's out of the way, how does the readme hold up? Let's see.The readme must have some of the most interesting presentation for an H2H park. I mention it first like most would but I read it a long time after seeing the park for the first time. That makes me respect the ideas a lot more. Hard to talk about it without rambling too much, but also hard not to. Still, enough people have talked niceties of it for me to not do the same. My only peeve in the end was the typos consistently made everywhere, but with a deadline ticking away there's only so much care that can be taken, I suppose. If this was a competition of setting up parks with readmes without providing the parks themselves, this would take the win pretty easily I think, lmaoComing to the park itself, my first thought was basically... -
Six Frags
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That's review of the year right there for me, well done ziscor!
I'll post my thoughts after the voting has concluded..
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FredD
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SpaceCrabs
Oh man, this looks small. Did they run out of time? My first thought opening the park. The village looks cool, it sure has that German village vibe to it and somehow it makes me want to back to Germany for a theme park trip. Germany sure is the best country to do a theme park trip to. For some reason I really dig that church building, kudos for whoever built that.
Overall it quite looks nice. Some fun rides and details here and there. The coaster lay-out doesn't really stand out to me but ok. I also wish it had thicker supports... Time to rotate the park and search for more details from other angles heh?!
Strange... this doesn't quite look the same?! Holy shit SpaceCrabs pulled of a 4-angle park with each angle a different season! Hats of to you, I guess Juloow was drafted into the wrong team
Not gonna lie, did thought about this concept too but you guys did it. The gimmick works, it created a really WTF moment for me and I'm sure others will feel the same. Germany is the perfect environment to make a 4-seasons park and you guys did a good job with it. Can imagine rebuilding all the stuff 4 times was a pain the ass, so respect for the builders. The work is worth it however!. 80%
Heavens Gallery
While I had the wow at Winkelheim when I started rotating, HG park had me wow from the moment I opened the park. I'm a sucker for the old Romans and I think you guys possibly created the best old Roman piece of RCT we've ever seen.
The archy is stunning. I once compared a respected builder with Zidane, because his work looks simple when you view it, yet it looks beautiful at the same time and when you try to mimick it... you can't because it's too hard to execute. The same compliment goes up for this park and it's archy. It looks really beautiful yet it has me asking "that doesn't seem so hard to pull off", yet when I should try I will fail miserably.
It's clear that the archy is the main spotlight here. The coasters won't win an award but they do what they should do in the story of possible first coasters ever built. Overall this park is really, really great and along the best parks in the contest so far. 90%
While I rate FC higher than Winkelheim, I'm really torn in chosing who to vote. FC has clearly the better execution but Winkelheim's gimmick also makes it unique an stunning for a H2H match-up. I'm feeling like voting on one park robs the other... Ties however aren't possible and if everyone would null vote it would be a boring competition so I will chose. In the end my vote goes to Heavens Gallery, I'm sorry SpaceCrabs.
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Ziscor
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Forum CaelesteI love the concept of the park in the readme (very silly, felt like a sketch by Monty Python would start right after this intro), but I was mostly just wanting to get to the park as quick as possible to be honestLet's go. Please excuse the lack of coherent structure in this wall of text, I just love this park and want to share that passionately.I love the Roman look itself and only realised much later that you guys did make conscious effort to make it seem comedically realistic-ish as a theme park if it existed back then. A great idea, and a good excuse to detail this park out with authentic detailing instead of phoned-in modern day park theming. I greatly appreciate sticking to the same colours and style everywhere. To help with variety, you guys instead went above and beyond with the archy skills to make sure everything was unique enough but coherent in the larger picture.The first one or two lines of buildings at this map edge needed to make a strong impression and they more than succeeded. Please let me go down there with the peeps. I promise I'll be back before the sun goes down. Please. I feel genuinely happy and relaxed when in this park. This is better than DKS for me just for the better polish and more 'town' to see (and spanish roofing of course). I'm in an early God of War game, or Age of Mythology/Empires, or Rise of Nations, or Planet Earth or even Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (remember the Roman archy in that game, anyone? sg). I can just imagine the green roofed one would be the library or town square from which you advance your research; the one across of it from the "park entrance" with the same green awnings would be the market building you trade your food or timber from in exchange of gold; the thing next to it with the white pillars can be the town hall or senate from which you decide what form of government you take after a certain Age. Projecting my experiences of seeing Roman architecture in other games into this so seamleslly made me truly realise how well done this park is.Also, I just love seeing moment of construction or destruction in this game and the effect looks so neat here, god. The wooden scaffoldings, the missing pieces, this is stuff that makes a city feel real and lived in. As in it didn't just rise out of the mud one day all neat and clean with literally nothing out of place. The huge property on fire reflects this so beautifully, too. Like someone mentioned, love the fireman negotiating price, and also the workers rushing to bring wide-bottomed buckets of water to douse the flames.I notice there is a rooftop recreational spot where people are using hookahs or the equivalent that people used back then. Such neat detail there. And the brothel! So well structured. 100% of the time I can't tell if this city was actually recreated from a time travel to the past or just mad skills.The Pantheon-like temple at one corner of the map blew me away with its simple execution, which then leads to such a cute raised hill of houses all connected by stone stairs. Explore a bit further beyond and you discover the gladitorial tradition of family friendly entertainment. It's like a nice contrast between modern standards of entertainment derived from riding theme park rides to the more brutal kind of entertainment people had back then. "Look, these fighting rings still exist in this what-if world of the first ancient theme parks!"The "tiny peeps" playing in their little playground, the huge checkers game (or Othello?), the army bullying the shop just for shields; the small moments make this more than just a shallow great-only-at-face-value park for me. Then again, I haven't tired of HG's parks or their approach to this competition yet. This was very immersive and ultimately the kind of park I'd go back to again and again just casually without an objective to learn techniques. I look forward to every park of yours in every round.Then there's the fact every peep has yellow teeth in this palette! Not sure if accidental genius or intended accuracy. I can't imagine someone from 1400 years ago having clean teeth, that's for sure! Felt like a "ha!" moment for me when I passingly noticed it.Oh, and the horseback legion of Heaven's Gallery valiantly being led by Liampus Maximus. Strength and honour! Oh wait, wrong Maximus, that one is still a gladiator here. Stevenius in-character as always.The water section, at last, was decent too. I think the boats had enough features to separate them from other generic boats/ships everyone does. Not the area I love the most though definitely in love with the aquaduct.Light-hearted nitpicks so I can justify this wasn't a perfect 100%:- More static staff in place of all the scenery object Roman guards. I know we did the same for Mekong's underground cutaway near the end but I desperately wanna know what some of them would say!- No Biggus Dickus. Or any other Monty Python reference. Or a videogame one either. (I know the examples I gave above were more Greek than Roman but anything RTS related?)- I thought the bathhouse was a little less polished compared to the rest of the park.There are techniques and styles here that I'm sure to steal if no one minds. I greatly look up to the archy in this park.You guys are clearly on a different level with your take on cultural themes. It'd be an honour to someday build with the people who made this, honestly. Please take my offer, I love you guys.In closing, there's no denying I am heavily biased to this park beyond its technical achievements. As I explain above, the style directly speaks to me, the use of objects and the selection of objects itself is quirky and unique enough to lend the park a valuable identity, and the content itself being very non-park focused much like DKS got to me. Despite all that, I think it genuinely does stand up to A Year in Winkleheim by some significant factors. The amount of content and skill I find in this park is significantly higher than Winkelheim, and the fact that it was much more immersive almost sealed the deal, if easier readability wouldn't.
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Liampie
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Voting Closed
Heaven's Gallery beats Team Spacecrab!
Heaven's Gallery vote count: 42 (64.62%)
Team Spacecrab vote count: 23 (35.38%)
Forum Caeleste was made by Sulakke (47%), Six Frags (47%), IonZer0 (3%) and CHE (3%).
A Year in Winkelheim was made by Tolsimir (80%), saxman1089 (12%) and Faas (8%). -
Faas
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Congratulations Heaven's Gallery!
I loved the park, I don't agree with the sentiments against it, if this is formulaic, then everything is. -
Sulakke
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Thanks Faas. I'm glad so many people liked our park and quite surprised with the win actually. Winkelheim was quite spectacular and a lot of people seemed to be wowed by it.
I think both Six Frags and I will come up with a review of Winkelheim and some background on our park later this week. -
Kumba
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One of the harder vote choices this season imo.
Roman Nice as I have jokingly called it, was very easy on the eyes, a lovely park. Just it didn't really do anything very original. The ride layouts were as dull as I have ever seen in H2H, but they did look good. Enjoyed the frozen/slowed staff scenes. 80
A Year in Winkelhiem was annoyingly tiny, but had a great creative gimmick. Using a theme to the four seasons is a great idea... I loved the details related to the epic read me. Barely got my vote due to originality. 80
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Six Frags
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First of all, I was REALLY impressed by your park, should I say Tolsimir?
When the match-up was posted I was fearing we might lose, because heavy concept driven parks could do pretty well in H2H. When I first opened your park, I was like it's good, but was not yet blown away by it. But then I read the read-me and really dived into the park and checked out all the details and atmosphere and was really impressed and even a bit moved by it. Such a wonderful and nostalgic feel the park has, with every scene and detail having a purpose and adding to the story. Like for example the heist of the 'Heaven's Gallery' paintings was such a brilliant find, and the execution was flawless. Was amazing to see how it developed through the seasons. Another standout moment was the crops growing each season and the farmer using his tractor for a different purpose each season. Also loved the Christmas atmosphere during winter and all the differently named books in the library.On multiple viewings a few things started to stick out though, like the coaster (too fast, lagging) and some buildings (mainly because they could've been made a bit more interesting or detailed, especially if you're going to copy it 3 more times). But overall I found the way you executed the 4 seasons concept and the backstory of the town really impressive, and it might be one of my favorite parks this season.
As for our park, it was a real challenge to build it (which I will come to in a moment). Sulakke came up with the idea to have a park set a long time ago, which used other ways to empower the rides. Eventually we chose the Roman period as the most suited. He started the map layout and the coasters, and I started with some of the architecture in the city part. We decided to go with an insula kind of style for the buildings in the city part:
After a bit Liampie came up with his AWESOME new brick texture blocks/arches and the incredible palette, and building became a lot more fun and interesting! Can't thank you enough for it Liam, it truly made this park a lot more appealing. What made it really challenging at this point was the fact that sulakke is stationed in Ethiopia at the moment, and doesn't have access to Open, so construction of the rides was challenging for me as some Open things made the park error trapper for him. So i had to be really careful with constructing the water rides for example, and kinda go back (how ironically) in time. About 2 weeks before the deadline there was a lot still to be done in the park, and with sulakke having limited time because of his fishy (
) business and me being a bit rusty, having not build for like 6 years, I had to really push myself into getting things done. Fortunately with the help of our whole team we got it to like 95% the last day before the deadline. And then the night of the deadline, boy was that hectic Having had a bit of sleep deprivation from the long building sessions I had the previous few days I kinda felt like a zombie building those last few hours and getting it to a finished state. If I look back now I think it's one of the best experiences I had though, with everyone helping out the best they could with little tasks and checks here in there, so in the end I think this truly was a group park!I appreciate all the feedback and reviews of our park. I was annoyed though, with the criticism that it was 'safe', and 'another Heaven's formula park'. I think this is vastly different from previous Heaven parks (for example the heavy/large architecture) and I don't think a concept like this was ever done by in a previous Heaven park. I also found it funny some people reminded it from ziscor's work. I wasn't familiar with his work, but I looked it up after and he indeed used some objects we also used, like the xsector roofs. I think it's just we both were building of pictures and thus decided to use those objects/colors. At the same time it's also pretty different as we built on a much larger scale. As for the scale, I can see why people thought Liampie was on this park, as budapleasure indeed has some similarities, but again, I had not seen that before as well.
As I said, I enjoyed reading all the reviews, but I especially enjoyed Ziscor's, it so hits the nail on it's head, even your critique is on point and I agree with;
-The static staff was something I also wanted to change into actual staff. But the time issue pretty much meant I had to make choices what to prioritize. In the end I decided to really nail the architecture all over the map and let the static staff for what they were and if there was time left change them for actual staff with backstory.
-The references, there was an Asterix reference CHE made, but the building that was purposed for that got demolished during construction as we couldn't get it right. Also we thought not everyone might get the reference(s), so we didn't really prioritize them.
-The bathhouse, again, time issues. Sulakke made it and had a minigolf sitting there during the whole construction. In the end I didn't know what to do with it, sulakke gave some tips, like weightlifting peeps on the little empty square, but I just didn't have time for it anymore the last day and kinda forgot about it in the end.
I'm glad to see you also picked up small details here and there, like the scene with the soldiers buying shields and the fireman negotiating price. I had fun putting those in and glad people noticed them too. The bit about the house burning was something I found on wikipedia:
The first ever Roman fire brigade of which we have any substantial history was created by Marcus Licinius Crassus. Marcus Licinius Crassus was born into a wealthy Roman family around the year 115 BC, and acquired an enormous fortune through (in the words of Plutarch) "fire and rapine." One of his most lucrative schemes took advantage of the fact that Rome had no fire department. Crassus filled this void by creating his own brigade—500 men strong—which rushed to burning buildings at the first cry of alarm. Upon arriving at the scene, however, the fire fighters did nothing while their employer bargained over the price of their services with the distressed property owner. If Crassus could not negotiate a satisfactory price, his men simply let the structure burn to the ground, after which he offered to purchase it for a fraction of its value.
Didn't anyone get the Gladiator references though? There were quite a few and it was a pretty big inspiration for me. The custom .wav contains a bit before they run in a gladiator pit, and the people are shouting Caesar (who is in the elite seats
). The pit fighters also have quotes from the movie (but me telling this is probably a bad sign )For those still reading
Here's a who did what:
Just some additional info;
sulakke: Lead, set up the map/paths/landscaping/foliage selection/both coasters/ferris wheel, boats
Six Frags: Most of the city architecture, finished the park, made the .wav, made the custom chariot ride (which was a pain, because I had to edit 100+ images), made a lot of extra objects, made the water rides/playground
CHE: Did the chariot ride hacks, the powered horse hacks, finishing touches on the stone coaster/circus maximus
IonZero: Concept of the 4 racing chariot teams each with own color, toilets at entrance, entrance station mine train
I want to thank everyone of the team for all their contributions, don't think the park would be what it is without the help of you guys, and all the encouragements/feedback!
Sulakke was a great partner to build with, I think we inspired each other with the stuff we build and kept each other going that way. I think we can safely say we redeemed ourselves for Schweizer Valley now
It was good to build again after being away for about 6 years, and I thank Liam for taking the risk with me.
Glad most of you guys enjoyed it! And thanks if you're still reading this! (sorry
)To end with, an example how time pressed we were, about little of a week to go, the boat area went from this:
to this:
Again, thanks to everyone involved to get this park to the level it ended up with, was a blast to build again!
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Iron Rattler
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Ok. Time for a full review as promised.
A Year in Winklheim
- The first thing I have to say about this park is once again to repeat how much I enjoyed the creativity. The 4 seperate parks for each season would have been unique enough, but taking it a step further with the narrative about the time loop and the robbery just made it even more cool to view. It did have some downsides, the angle thing got annoying when I would want to further explore a season and was unable to. But it also was cool to use cutaway view to tear down the walls and see that most of the blocked views were almost completely finished, one angle building this was not. This is now two weeks in a row where spacekrabs have gone with some crazy concepts that couldn't pull off the win, but I hope it doesn't dissuade you from doing more of this stuff. I love it.
- Some of the architecture was a little weak for me though. Perhaps it had to be, considering how much stuff you had to try to incorporate into such a small place, but with such little view-able content, what little was there had to pop much more in my opinion.
- The coaster was likewise awkward for me, it seemed out of place in its surroundings in the park. I honestly would have liked to see no coaster at all, and a full dedication to the storytelling. I did like the changing names with the seasons though. That was very enjoyable.
- This park shone in the little seasonal details though. There were too many of them for me to name, and I see more every time I look at this park. Winter was definitely my favorite season though, the way the snow hung on the buildings improved the architecture quite a bit.
- Overall a really unique park, and I definitely want to hear a breakdown of the building process and the way you guys went about this. I would overall give this a high silver in terms of accolade voting due to its technical quality, however this is definitely a park I will view again frequently and I was happy to vote for it.
Forum Caeleste
- Despite the builder reveal I still stand by my assertion that this feels a lot like past Heaven's Parks. It really felt like a cross between technoctilan and DKS. The similar palettes didn't help. Is that unfair to the builders? Probably, but it definitely impacted my vote somewhat. But for the rest of this review I'll only talk about this park on its own.
- I loved the manually powered lifts, great fun idea. Though I was a little confused why the log flume didn't have one? A time crunch maybe? Either way still cool. Using numerals to tell the year was funny also. Good touch
- You touched on this in your review, but I was pretty bummed every time I saw a frozen roman staff member and it turned out to be an object. Those always are great storytelling opportunities. When the staff were named like Stompus Grapeus and the firefighting scene I really enjoyed them.
- Steve's horse would be pooping all over the road. What a jerk
- Architecture was definitely this park's strong suit. That new texture is fantastic, and most of the forms and detailing was great.
- The rides themselves were pretty good. Nothing spectacular, but I understand why you chose the rides you did.
- The composition of the park was pretty good for the most part, however the water ride corner felt a little bit shoehorned in to me. The playground was a little awkward as well.
- Chariot racing arena and gladiator pit, Can't have a good roman park without them. Maybe my favorite section of the park.
- I think this is the rare h2h park in that I enjoy it much more outside of the context of the contest. In the contest I just didn't feel inspired to vote for it, but outside of it, I can recognize the large amount of quality, and skill in this park. I probably would rate it an 80 on the accolade scale.
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Cocoa
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Very nicely done everyone. Frags, i think i underestimated you! Nice to see you peeling off the rust. And great work from sulakke sonehow in africa, i called him for this park but am surprised he managed to do so much -
WhosLeon
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Congrats on the win HG. Caeleste has some of the best texture work I have ever seen. I love how the textures contribute to the story and atmosphere so much. My guess for the builders was partly right (sulakke and six frags). Wonderful work and I hope to see much more from you guys this H2H.
Winkelheim had a HUGE wow moment from me when i opened it for the first time. It actually scared me, haha. When i figured out how that is done the rest of the map didnt really impress me too much. It's good, ofcourse, but for the rest it didn't really impress me personally. Tolsimir, generally i love your parkmaking and i wish you just did a bigger map to let your talent shine. Still a solid park though.
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Scoop
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I think it’s more that it’s something that you expect from a heavens park.Congratulations Heaven's Gallery!
I loved the park, I don't agree with the sentiments against it, if this is formulaic, then everything is. -
Scoop
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Good one . No I think HGs park is and isnt formulaic at the same time. It isnt formulaic at all in its approach. Probably the most unique and true to form we have ever seen a theme like this been done. But then very formulaic because the theme isnt anything new and its something you could see the respective team doing. I love the park, its probably more atmospheric than Dks tbh.
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inthemanual
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Heaven's brand has been a tad formulaic. Perhaps starting with Lijiang, then containing all of Atlas' parks, and all the Gallery parks so far, there's been a pretty simple pattern: pick a relatable, atmospheric setting and add roller coasters.
Granted, other teams have done this too. It's arguably the reason behind the success of DS4 and Forgotten Mekong. It's just the way Heaven's brand continuously approaches this concept makes it feel like a kind of trademark. -
Six Frags
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Our park is meant to be set some 2000 years ago and it used other ways to empower rides (basic concept). How is that the same as Ruishi, or any other Heaven's park? Maybe I've missed it but I can't find any. Please point me to a park with the same concept.
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