H2H9 / H2H9: Round Robin - R3M3 - Scream Queens vs Adventurers Club

MY THERAPIST SAYS I NEED TO BE MORE POSITIVE STEVE

Finally getting around to some slightly more organized thoughts on each park:

Frontier's Keep

+ Your use of CTRs across the map was the highlight for me. The conveyor belt is perfect, lava bucket conveyors, sloped railway, filled and empty carts were all really effective too. Very creative

+ The more I looked, I actually quite liked the architecture throughout the park. It's very industrial, completely utilitarian, maybe a bit simple in places but supported by a really nice elevated pathing throughout

+/- the lava looks really clean as a base layer, but it's too smooth and uniform to be convincing. The rocks on top don't look bad, but lava is molten rock, it's not two separate elements but one semifluid with layers of dark and light colors. You capture the look more effectively in the gray rock sections covered with orange road cracks.

+/- I like the attempt to add movement by having rocks drifting but it looks more like rocks sliding across carpet

- the biggest problem for me was the palette. Even though I immediately recognize them as such, neither the ice nor lava are particularly convincing. This matchup primarily came down to the overall aesthetic for me, and a map dominated by pale blue, two-tone orange, gray, and drab brown complemented by dull reds and greens just didn't work

Stardust Circuit

+ visually stunning. You've managed to successfully capture the nighttime neon glow of a city, my pre-draft practice building sessions were Cyberpunk-inspired pieces of trash, so naturally I was very excited when I saw your park

+ that alleyway with the sidewalk reflection is amazing, I wish there was more content like it around the map

+ Those LED screens are just too good. Those animated squares are an absolute game changer, I have no idea how you managed to make pixel art look so stylish

+ The race is incredibly well done, still have no idea how you pulled that one off

+/- your palette is so cool that it effectively covers up a lot of underdeveloped areas. I'm kinda torn on this one because a lot of buildings are extremely blocky and honestly if this were built on a normal color palette this would be one of the weaker parks of the contest so far. It doesn't really matter because that's not how it was released, but I thought it was worth commenting that  I felt Frontier's Keep was more impressive on a micro-scale

Great job to both teams, I've been really impressed so far

Seriously uncalled for Steve. Especially for a team captain.

As soon as I opened Stardust Circuit, I knew this would be a tough one for us. The neon colours really set the mood, very good use of the palette with the multi-tones. The timing of the soundtrack was great, as was the race. Making that track mess work is absolute masterclass haha! Fantastic custom cars. Nice interiours with the showcars. The track map on the wall was lovely detailed. That clef facade was one of my favourites! The neon jellyfish sculpture <3 Congrats to AC on the win and more importantly on building an incredible park!

A little insight on our park:

Jappy came up with the idea of a mining theme located in a harsh, cold environment with streams of boiling lava between the icy rocks which immediately enthraled me. It should be populated by a ramshackle band of adventurers and smugglers that wanted to make a fortune with the precious crystals held by the mountains. The aesthetics were based largely on this inspiration image that Jappy found and that you may find familiar (yes, our park came with a readme). Based on a dirty sketch, Jappy layed out the rivers and rock placement. We quickly decided to make the lava with objects which was totally worth the effort. Phoenix came up with that gorgeous RMC layout, definitely not an easy challenge to wrap it around the landscape. The townhall, inspired by the picture above, was the first one of the many that Jappy built. I then built the conveyor belt and later the RMC station and the mines. Roomie stepped in at this point and never ceased to amaze us with the abundance of his custom rides (ice fall, barrels, moving rocks, etc.), the industrial and harbour area. Phoenix made the funicular CTR and large parts of the sled area, including the layout as well as the wild mouse layout. Ultimately, it was a great group effort towards the end of the deadline, adding little scenes and details! While we all worked together on the whole map, here is an attempt to break it down with a dot map.

Stardust Circuit:

Was blown away when I first opened this and I'm still finding things new things to love each time I explore. I adore the concept and theme here, but it's the visuals and aesthetic that set it apart so well and make my head spin at times. Love the palette use, very much in service to the style and utilised brilliantly for all the bright neons set against the jet black night. Love the race idea and the way you executed it is so cool, seeing the behind the scenes of getting all the tracks not to merge is wil, big kudos on that. Wasn't really a fan of the big helix but I can see what you were trying to do there, also noticed a few areas where the edge/neon lines didn't line up too nicely with the base but the rest is pretty much perfect in execution. My only other gripe with the park is some of the unfinishedness poking through in spots. So many highlights in here though that sell the atmosphere and universe brilliantly: the aquarium tower, the Bowie scenes, the neon Daft Punk stage, the light up murals, the huge stands. Excellent piece of work guys, congrats.


Frontiers Keep:

Also loved this park a lot, shame it went up against such strong competition because it's quality is definitely not reflected by the poll difference. The contrast between the orangey-red lava and the blue icy tones is wonderful, and balanced very nicely with the mining theme for a great macro. Solid work with the RMC, flows over the landscape and interactions very well, and the little fakeout tracks are awesome. Also really enjoyed the surprise of the falling ice blocks, was taken aback on my first look and reloaded the park for a second look straight away. Only wished that they had been utilised elsewhere because they were a really fun aspect. I liked the central cluster of buildings a lot, very fun colours and style. The custom vehicles were another treat to find, loads of cool ideas and uses such as the moving rocks on the lava, the bucket and crate conveyors, the barrel roller and best of all the new funicular cars! Probably my one complaint would be how the use of the path for the lava makes it look very static, though I do like the layering. But other than that I really enjoyed the park, very unfortunate that you went up against tough competition. Great work all.

Hey everyone. Just back from vacation so I'm a bit late to this, but I'm going to attempt to recap the process of Stardust. 

So I pitched this concept day 0 under the working title "Space Funk Monaco" (which was the title of the save until maybe 4 days before the deadline). I had recently rewatched Speed Racer (2009), a childhood favorite of mine, and was feeling primed and ready to recreate an extremely cinematic and dynamic race combined with an off-the-wall artistic aesthetic. The musical aspect of the project was not actually part of the initial pitch, other than the word Funk in the working title, and that when trying to describe the atmosphere that I wanted to achieve with the park, I found myself referring to songs off of Daft Punk's album Discovery, like Face to Face and Superheroes, rather than first pointing to actual visual references. There was something about the music that to me, captured the essence of the futuristic funky vibe better than any visual reference I could find. 

So this was slated to be our R1. It was a sensational yet digestible concept, I was motivated to dumpster the TIs R1, and as far as anyone (including myself) could tell, I was a fast builder. Me, Scoop, and Ire start on the project. I do some layout sketches. 

Initial sketch. Emphasis on:

a huge dramatic starting area with giant grandstands

Initial turnarounds interacting with rounded buildings 

Strong, dramatic finish with some kind of vertical element (helix) that leads to a straightway for a 1 on 1 photo finish. 

Some pretty ugly growing pains here as for a good week, I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with the middle section. A sketch here where I have the race track going underneath the stadium leading to a vertical ramp with some gonad-like track shape. 

April 3rd. 70 Hours in.

Ok, so this thing sucks.

Something's not clicking. It feels awkward. The track's incorporating too many diagonals, which complicates Iretont's race-making a thousand fold. Scoop's trying his best to build, but I'm struggling to communicate the direction I want to go in. Partly because I'm not very sure either. Nothing's flowing, everything's blocked, and it's all bad.

This night, April 3rd, I went for a drive. Driving and listening to music is actually one of my favorite things to do in the whole world. Being alone, coasting down the long roads by the beaches where I live, listening to my favorite songs on blast, it's hard to describe just how free I feel sometimes during those moments. So I go for this drive, and I'm listening to all of these songs, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Talking Heads, et cetera et cetera, and it's like a lightning bolt hit me in relation to this project. I realize the whole thing needs to be as rhythmic, energized and expressive as these songs that I am fully immersed in. Born Under Punches, Purple Haze, Tusk, yada yada. This night was actually a huge early turning point for what I wanted to do with this map. I was trying to replicate an idea of a city and a race. Maybe an idea that wasn't even mine, but rather what my fellow teammates' idea was of the concept. And in the process, I was ignoring my own intuition. 

So the next day, Scoop drops off the project to work on El dorado. I take the opportunity to scrap the previous 70 hour version entirely, and have another go at the layout.

Done in 2 saves. Not overthought, flows well, and for the most part, compositionally tasteful. I got a lot of heat for the helix, and I knew there would be people who would think it to be out of place on reception as well. To me, the helix, like the rest of the layout, would go on to represent something like the rhythm of a song, and the helix is that grand, magnificent finale that seems to escalate and escalate and feel larger than life. I weathered a lot of doubt just to keep it in, almost like to make a point, to myself, that I could trust my own intuition and deal with the reception, whatever it was. 

So unfortunately, after this, I was dealing with some serious personal issues for a period going forward. Between April 10th and May 1st, Only 10 new saves were uploaded. During this time, I did at least come up with the initial designs for the concert stage and the movie theater, so there was at least a glimmer of hope for both myself and the rest of the team. 

Around the start of May, things had begun to improve for me, the weather was getting nicer, and I was able to start clocking in a bit more progress.

An early look at the stage, theater, and first tries at the reflection effect. 

Save 50, May 9th, Just over 2 weeks before the deadline. 170 hours in with a surprisingly bare map, not even counting the 20 lost in-game hours from the layout reset. 

The map is ripe with potential but still hollow. Progress is flaky. I keep making mistakes that force Iretont to have to do tedious rebuilding (Scenery manager catching invisible track, Disabling vehicle limits, etc.). It seemed every morning, I'd wake up to a discord conversation about the new way I'd found to fuck over Ire. He was awesome through this whole process, doing the racing sorcery while being patient with my whole shit. 

Despite all of this though, I'm starting to feel really good about the map. I really started to dive into David Bowie's discography and his career as an artist, and there was something about listening to his music that was giving me so much inspiration to finish this map. 

I put this little scene up on a whim with over a week to build just as a little reminder for what this project had become for me. A real, genuine attempt at something with all of my expression and creativity I could muster left on the table. I actually had not been a big fan of Heroes for most of my life, but there was something about rediscovering this song during this process that has made it so special to me now, both in making this park and to me on a personal level. 

250 hours in, Save 92, 1 Week til deadline. Long nights listening to Young Americans on repeat, full-on cocaine era Bowie. Not the most elegant part of the process, but moving, nonetheless. I settle on the name Stardust Circuit, with Stardust doubling as a reference to Bowie's alias Ziggy Stardust, and Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter's group before Daft Punk, Stardust. The second part was a coincidence, but it worked out quite nicely considering they were the two main musical inspirations working on the park. More physically Daft Punk in the physical aesthetic and cyber feel, and Bowie in the emotional, dramatic shapes, colors, and flow of the race. 

3 days before deadline. Ire's got the race about finished. All that's left is to finish this sucker.

As you can see, the underbelly is still mostly all empty. 

A lot of it was built making five 2x2/3x3 facades, and then collaging them in various combinations with Scenery Manager to cover a shitton of ground in a day or two. 

Save 126, uploaded by Josh midnight before the deadline. I take the save, rename it Space Funk Monaco 999 (we're still calling it that at this point), and get ready to work on this thing all night, for the next14 hours until the deadline. Perks of being a young adult with no immediate responsibilities. Almost every building in the upper city still needs to be completed. I didn't know it yet, but the underbelly was yet to be colored. And the giant skyscraper facades were unfinished.

A full night of listening to Kamasi Washington's "Change of the Guard" off of his album The Epic, a blazingly intense jazz piece that escalates and escalates in epicness. This piece gave me superpowers, and it really worked out well as the final push to finish the park was so in-sync with this crazy musical support. 

https://www.youtube....h?v=NtQRBzSN9Vw

Me randomly deciding to color the grey underbelly green/blue, realizing it looks amazing, and sending my findings to an empty discord at 3 in the morning.

And we finish.

Ire does his magic while building the back of the entire stadium. Josh finishes up the post-production and perfects the timing to the track that he created to match the race flow. My input there went as far as the song suggestions for the 1st lap; the rest was all him, and what a fucking great job he did there. 

So. All-in-all, I am so damn proud of the map, and what we were able to put together as a team. Yea, it's unfinished in parts, and not as refined as we would've liked. Details like the reflections were some of my favorite parts to build, and it really just came down to time that we weren't able to get that level of quality in as many places as we would've liked. I take all responsibility for that, as with the things going on in my life, combined with the inexperience in leading a H2H map, we were bound to hit some road bumps. But it is what it is, ultimately.

I cannot overstate just how much thanks I owe to Josh and Iretont. First of all, without them, this thing does not get finished at all, nevermind to the level that it did. Josh came up with so many awesome scenes and buildings, and was able to back me up with building in places that I didn't have time to get to. Bouncing off of his style while building on the map was always a great way to find some inspiration and get things moving when I would find myself slowing down. On top of that, the support from the objectmaking, palette making, and soundtrack was the flavor of this whole map. I don't think I need to even say how important those 3 things were to the final product. And finally, just for being an awesome person. I had a lot going on outside of RCT during this process, and throughout the whole thing, his support and encouragement allowed me to get back into the flow of it when I was ready and able to. So thanks to him for making this an awesome first H2H experience. 

Thanks to Ire for doing all of the wizardry with the race. After all, what would Stardust Circuit be without the circuit? Sorry for finding 50 different ways to blissfully destroy your hard work. Throughout it all, we never beefed over it either. He was understanding of my dumbassery and did what needed to be done to make the map work without any unneeded stress. 

It's crazy to think that what started as a pitch for a futuristic race through a cyber city would end up turning into something so much more musical, and important to me in general.This process was really something special for me. Music has always been such an important part of my life, and I think that in building this map, my relationship with it has grown even more. In learning to immerse yourself in the rhythm of a song, and in doing so, flowing with the intuition and emotion that comes with creating a work of art. We went really big with this map. We took a shit ton of risks, and there was a lot of uncertainty during the process. But I really did learn so much during the process, as crazy as it sounds, about myself, music, art, and most importantly, David Bowie. And I'm so grateful for it. So thanks, Josh, for being a great captain, and to Ire as well, for being along for this wild ride, and to the team for their support during the process. And to music, for existing. And art.

Onto the next one!

fuck that was poetic as shit

hoobs mvp

Makes me happy that something on NE has brought you in touch with this hoob. Clearly anything else you would have put your mind to in similar fashion would have done the same, because you're you, but I'm still glad.

Hell of a backstory, Hoob. Music is one of the most powerful forces that we as a species have created and harnessed.

Congrats to everybody for making such beautiful parks. It's always a pleasure to explore them and as someone who doesn't have the time to play RCT anymore it's so cool to follow H2H. I'm still amazed by how much talent this community has. That race park was particularly incredible.

Nice write-up Hoobaroo. Truly shows your passion for this project.

So I haven't commented here yet. Time for my opinion!

So yeah we lost. Big time. Me sad. But I still love what we created, I'm so proud of our team of what we made and how everyone kept adding ideas and suggestions to the simple concept I came up with (mining town in ice, but with LAVA!!). When released, I was kinda bummed out with the lack of attention FK got in favour of Stardust, but this was made up big time. Thanks everyone for the reviews, I'll be walking away from this with my head up high.

We lost yes, but against what park. Holy friggin cow man. Stardust circuit is insane. I LOVE THIS PARK. 80s style futurism, cyberpunk sprinkled with just a touch of vaporwave. Instantly I was transported to the worlds from The Fifth Element and Blade Runner. Also, that soundtrack is hands down the best use of custom music/sound in any rct project in history. If you don't listen to it alongside this park, you're missing out. Big time. 

I'm still getting my head around how you did so many cool stuff and I'll be back to look at this so much. Congratulations Adventurer's Club, I bow and take my hat of to you, you completely deserve this win.

Whoops forgot to drop some reviews here! 

FK: This is a nice little park you got. Love the movement of the everything and lots of nitty gritty mechanical, borderline steampunk, goodness. The RMC is really cool and wouldn't work on any other park which I like. Its a fun one with a unique setting. Its a good park! Just not amazing, or mindblowing.

SC: This park is crazy. Honestly the music kinda made it and I appreciate how well it went with the race. Even if this isn't the most skilled stuff out there, you killed it with concept and having just a fun vibe. Kuddos to using stupid WW TT scenery items and making it work. This park is gonna be one that we remember. Only gripe would be track layout. I wish it was more like some of the concepts yall had with vertical sections and what not. But overall such a sick park. 

Here's my review of both parks.  While I did vote for the Scream Queens and would still defend that, Stardust Circuit continues to grow on me.  Great builds all around.

https://youtu.be/IKeBWz3KbxU