Ask the Experts / Liam's Super Tutorial: Dos, Don'ts and Fucking Don'ts

As a graphic designer, a lot of these 'rules' have parallels to real world design principles. That said; there are many forms and styles of art. You can always go for something thats generally accepted by most people, or something that is going to be accepted by a fewer amount of people. Both can be absolutely brilliant and both can be true to who you are as a creative individual. 

and perhaps couldn't even explain to someone else if you had to.

Building non-parks already means to break with the game to certain extent. And this is an important element to Kai's work.
 
And I just want to say I love a good discussion here on the forums and not discord.

Regarding these points, first thank you, agreed I am loving the discussion on the forums.

Secondly, you've nailed it. Sometimes they are seemingly parks, sometimes they are environments that have park elements like rides, sometimes they are art disguised as RCT parks. My pixels follow whatever is in my head for the theme, the color, the flow and feel of the area...it may look like a park to an extent, but often it is an area of feeling with rides tailored in and sometimes theme park logic for layout. That doesn't mean it is built to be scrutinized as realistic. If anything, I include things I'd want to see if I were walking the area and be engrossed in fantastical surroundings...especially if IRL it is impossible.

This isn't for many and like Posix said, I can't explain in full what rules I follow other than to have fun with it and see what I can try next. Often outlandish, occasionally dabbling semi-near realism, but not too close.

Now, I could look at the bulk of the community's work thru these rules, but I doubt I'd be consistent or remember them all. Admittedly would be a horrible judge and have more fun just seeing what you guys create.

Sorry for another long go...I am not taking this personally and know this topic is not about me, but other than the bits of fantasy stuff I've seen via MM3, most of the new construction these days seems to be realism, much like the rules. Just offering a view from the other side as a long term player that is still in the minority.

Loving this discussion!

Point 12 needs to be louder for the people in back. Seriously.

 

There's a lot great rct fantasy that I love. There's a lot of great realism that I love. And there's all kinds of parks that fall into a broad spectrum between the two. And I still contend that every single rollercoaster built in rct shouldn't be putting larger radii at the top of hills than at the bottom. Ever. With a capital "E" and a bold size 24 font period for emphasis. I don't care if I'm on the rings of Saturn riding a six-thousand mph Andromeda-sized 20-mile tall space coaster: small radius transitions at the bottom of most drops will snap someone's neck. Even with the "but it's fantasy" card, it's still a roller coaster. And it would still kill you, if not be extremely painful.

 

Of course outside of the obvious small radius of death at the bottom of a drop, I often see the large "flat-to-steep" or "steep-to-flat" transitions at the top of a hill/drop and the default drop transition sequence ("steep-to-shallow" plus "shallow-to-flat") over 2 tiles at the bottom. Aesthetically, this looks completely stupid, imo. Yeah for small hills it probably won't hurt all that bad and certainly wouldn't kill you. But........why. To me it just makes it look like the builder doesn't understand why different radii are used in relation to the train's velocity.

 

Kind of a third point here, semi-realism and transfer track/transfer stations or whatever you'd like to call them. If you're not going to take the time to build the transfer pieces such that they would actually function, I'd say just skip it. Stick with your strengths. I spent a lot of my childhood building transfer tracks in rct and I'll gladly contend that it's ok if they're not in a park. Again, to me it comes off as "I don't know what I'm doing" when I see transfer tracks that don't work. In realism it's just kind of sad and makes me feel bad for the builder. In fantasy I'm irritated because clearly the "it's a fantasy park, things don't have to make sense/work" is just trying to be used as a sleazy free pass to build crap transfer set-ups that literally don't do anything. And in semi-realism..... well imo I've noticed the builder typically tries to play the fantasy card when called out on a transfer track that clearly doesn't work. If you don't want to take the time to learn transfer track basics, then maybe skipping it outright makes the most sense.

 

These three points really boil down to one thing, which is consistency. I see some many builders spending hours and hours working on buildings and park layout, researching on Google to find reference imagery, talking about the functions of various park elements, artistic direction, on and on. Yet, the above three things seem to just not get the same attention from many builders, and it just makes me go "......really? You did all that research and hard work and have all of this artistic vision and you can't be bothered to make your coaster quality up to par of your other work?" Consistency. Liam talks about it a lot and I agree. Be consistent.

 

Ah just thought of dispatch times and trains stopping at block brake sections in ways that kill the ride flow. Another huge pet peeve but maybe CoasterBill will talk about that one haha. Again another "you really can't be bothered to make this not terrible?"

 

Consistency.