NE 20th Anniversary / History of New Element - 2013
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03-May 22
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Liampie
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The History of NE
2013 started with the climax of the New Element Design Contest 2; a contest in which the aim was to build a Winter themed design. The contest did not manage to surpass its predecessor in terms of quality, but at the time we were still playing with the format. We would permanently return to a 'theme this layout' format later. Yet, we received 12 entries with some memorable work between them: RCTER2’s Ring A Ding Dong, a top tier map in the chaos genre that is much cooler than it sounds. Old school member muuuh finally managed a finished map, themed to Zelda. Ride6 also made a comeback, with Frozen Heights: typical Ride6 work with a dramatic jagged landscape, spectacular coaster and some expressive theming. A miniature Euphoria City! The top three consisted of Louis’ LL entry The Cult of Santis Clausim, Dimi’s postcard-worthy Marrons Chauds, and finally, my own Winter is Coming - my take on the Game of Thrones tv series, which was still a good and exciting show at the time, with only two excellent seasons aired. Only the top three managed to pass the 65% threshold for a Design accolade, but the real design was the RCT we created along the way.
Some more notable designs were releases around the same time. FK+Coastermind’s Matador (a finished version of his UQFTB entry) was the first release of the year, and later he also submitted Necromancer featuring some spectacular cliffs, as well as his follow up to H2H6’s ColorFlood. This time he took the time to make something cool rather than just coming up with something in 48 hours under H2H stress: Swoon. StormRunnerFan gave us one more release before disappearing for nearly a decade: Blue Jay. I decided to explore the boundaries of the Design accolade again by submitting a double design: Python / Vliegende Hollander, a semi-recreation of two neighbouring coasters in De Efteling. It scored around 84%. The stream of designs stopped down in the second half of the year. BelgianGuy’s Ayres was the last to win, in July.
Goliath is another spring design that stood out in 2013, with a score of 84.62%. Goliath is Louis’s take on a Six Flags parking lot coaster, with the coaster itself being based on La Ronde’s namesake. It’s a straightfoward map, but notable for its high level of execution for the parking lot and the realistic details in general. The parking lot is more than a sea of concrete: it’s nicely framed and has interesting details, like a bunch of custom billboards. It helped to popularise detailed custom billboards.
MCI wrote: It´s not possible to stream RcT2.. Had that idea half a year ago. trav wrote: It is, it is just a massive ballache to set it up. Also around this time, the site received two parks by FLUXtrance. Hardly a big name on NE, but a notable youtuber, a pioneer of streaming RCT. Streaming indeed was on the rise, after software innovations made it increasingly feasible to screen capture RCT. The days of Fraps and Unregistered Hypercam were long behind us, OBS Studio and Twitch were now easy tools for anyone to stream the game with.
Pacificoaster became the first face of streaming for NE; it was also Pacificoaster who started the 26-paged Live Streaming Topic. Over the year, many of us would see other people build in real time for the first time ever. Perhaps Ruishi, Pacificoaster’s Chinese themed design, was the first release to be fully built on streams. It was another design to score 84%.
Aside from designs, spring brought a lot of LL to NE. After years of experimentation, I released his first real LL park; The Escapist Experience. The park evidently has escapist and romantic themes. Some escape in alcohol (Ibiza), and some just fantasise about lost worlds (Tenochtitlan - or Techniclitoclan as trav liked to call it). Some people want to live their life on a deserted tropical island (New Eden), and others are satisfied with a stroll through a castle estate covered in autumn colours. It’s the latter area, King Autumn’s Court, featuring a wooden coaster by RMM, that seems to be most fondly remembered. Scoring over 80%, and getting 60% support for spotlight among panelists, The Escapist Experience came close to winning the spotlight accolade. I stand by its gold score, such a reception was humbling enough!
I said there was more LL. There was. Kumba was still hosting his Monthly Micros contest on his website, and at one point a bunch of players thought it’d be funny to flood his March round with boats - Boat Day was born. Some put in more effort than others. ][ntamin22 was definitely one of the most notable LL players in 2013, with a couple of design misses and other small creations characterised by experimentation. Ling, WhosLeon and inthemanual provided more LL design-misses. And for the first time, we got to see LL work by csw - a sign of great things to come. Special mention goes out to pierrot, who released two small but stellar science fiction concept maps: an LL space station, and a big RCT2 robot.
It was me again who rose above the others with Thoughts, another full scale park with some Spotlight shouts surrounding it, though this park was far too experimental, incosistent and divisive to stand a chance. The park is not easy to summarise, for it was built strictly following a stream of consciousness. As a result, the park has a few rather traditional looking LL areas, but also giant naked women sculptures, a castle made of smelly cheese, and a pet sphinx.
Summer brought a new major contest to NE. The community had been consulted through a poll, and with the community’s input it was determined the Pro Tour 4 needed to be a thing. It was a risky decision. The first two Pro Tours as well as the Hi-Rollers contest similar in concept, were quite successful in the earlier days of NE. The Pro Tour 3 from 2007 was a disappointment, with only a handful of high quality parks. Now that the community was struggling to finish large projects, was the Pro Tour really the way to go?
The point of a Pro Tour is that only 'pros' can participate - it’s an elitist contest by definition. Parkmakers were automatically qualified, non-parkmakers would have to qualify through one of eight preliminary rounds, or 'Prelims'. The entries in each Prelim were scored on a 0% - 100% scale by a panel of judges - parkmakers. Scoring over 80% means you’re capable of making parkmaker-quality work, making you a 'pro' in the context of this contest. In other words, qualification.
The Prelims fittingly started with Best Entrance. Out of eight entries, two qualified: Cocoa with Los Sueños Gardens, and Airtime with his Alton Towers entrance recreation. The next round, Best Non-Track Attraction, was a disappointment with only one submission by nin. However, it was well received and nin qualified. No one qualified in the third round (Best Transport Station), despite a few nice entries. Things picked up again inthe fourth round: Best Architecture. From seven entries, Fizzix and Sey qualified. Sey’s stood out especially, showcasing his hyperdetailed style on a finished map - a rare sight. His God's Own Country still holds up in 2022 - Sey definitely awas ahead of the curve. Another notable entry was a luxurious villa by Arjan v l that introduced a lot of new useful objects that are still commonly used in 2022.
From Best Landscaping, Sulakke qualified with a humble entry, beating a massive mountain landscape by FK+Coastermind, among other more spectacular creations. The last two rounds were coaster oriented. We received six entries for Best Wooden Coaster, and three for Best Steel Coaster. From these rounds, only Dimi qualified with Medieval Climate Optimum, though SSSammy came close with an LL woodie. Fisch no doubt would’ve made the cut, had he finished his El Dorado B&M flyer. He would revisit the theme for his park Riverland, many years later.
Wildcard entries were given out to the most consistent and hard working non-parkmakers who had not managed to cross the 80% threshold: SSSammy, Maverix, shogo and Fisch. There were now 35 eligible players for the main round. Enough to yield some parks in the two month building window, right? Nope. Parks were started, none were finished. Was the Pro Tour 4 a failure? In a way, yes. But the real Tour was the Pros we made along the way. For what it’s worth, the Prelims were a lot of fun and it inspired us to do more objective-driven contests in the future.
There were two major events that undoubtedly distracted the community from the Pro Tour 4. With an accompanying spotlight of epic stature, a new version of the website was announced on September 30th: NE5.
NE5 was developed in secret, mostly as a solo effort by geewhzz, though not without input from the other admins. NE5 was aiming to address few issues with NE4. First of all, NE4 was geewhzz’s first coding effort. It was a success, but it was not bug free. The new jobs system made releasing parks a very mechanical procedure. Nice on paper, but the production line had too many unreliable links, causing delays and a big work load. The process was trimmed down for NE5. One big change was that parks were voted on by the accolade panel after release, and not before.
Cocoa wrote: ommmmggggggg this is sooooooo coooooooooooooooool
so many things to click on
i dont know what to do
Another big aspect of NE4 (and NE3) was the Dump Place. Started in 2007, it was the main topic where people posted teasers and screenshots for feedback. With NE5, most of the old forums were archived (and with it the Dump Place), in favour of a brand new screenshots function. Rather than burying screens in a 600 page topic and relying on external hosting, screenshots were now uploaded to the site and featured in a gallery on the front page, with each screenshot getting its own comment section and even a community rating. Though this added a new factor of competitiveness to the site, it also broke the spirit of the Dump Place: a place where you could dump screenshots regardless of finishedness, to get quick feedback. In the future, Discord would fill the Dump Place niche again.
Goliath123 wrote: wow what a fucking shit house website
is there a way if we want we can go back to ne4
NE5 as a whole was received with some mixed feelings. It was a radical change for the site, and you can’t have radical change without alienating a few members in the process. The traditional forums were pushed to the background, the NE4 points system and the Hall of Fame were removed for being too stagnant, but we gained a content filled front page, more site interaction with ratings and ‘favorites’, a tagging system, and a somewhat more minimal looking site. The red design is familiar to those who joined NE during NE2. And even more nostalgic: Parkmakers had returned! In the end: you win some, you lose some. NE5’s longevity and durability is unparalleled, that is undeniable.
With NE5’s changes, Pacificoaster’s Starpointe was the first NE release to be posted without a score. Instantly hailed as one of the greatest parks of all time, after months of advertising through screenshots and streams, it ended a two year spotlight drought, shattering the accolade score record for parks as well, with 94.62%. Starpointe breathed live into a stale Cedar Fair style concept, with warm colours, lively atmosphere, strong coasters that did not lack interaction, a fully functional water park, and architecture and infrastructure both clean and detailed. Its influence is felt even nine years later.
A few more large scale parks rounded out the year. X250 made a surprise comeback with Tussaud’s Magical Kingdom, an almost-ncso park with hints of greatness. Jonny93 and MCI came up with Inselfieber, a true NCSO park that held up for quite a while as the NCSO genre was still developing. Maverix released Hudson Crossings in May, a Cedar Fair park that took quite a few cues from Starpointe, despite the latter not having been released at the time. It was well received though, scoring exactly 75%. The final major accolade to be released in 2013 was Arjan v l’s Oasis of X-citement. This one was completely unlike the others. Massive coasters in an arid landscape, overwhelmingly blue, introducing many new objects, and with architecture that could’ve been cooked up by a 60’s futurist.
Curiously, Coupon released Baker Lake Amusement Park in a 95% finished state, despite wanting to continue building. It wasn’t scored, but it would be a few years later. A good but strange Christmas release and way to end the year, and a strange way to end this write-up with.
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G Force
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Wonderful writeups Liam, quite enjoyable for me having not been involved with NE at all during those years. Always interesting hearing your take on things as well.
Format is fantastic too, looking forward to the rest of the summaries!
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Liampie
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I feel this decade has flown by, and I think NE5's longevity has contributed to that. Getting different versions of NE more clearly creates 'chunks' of time. And from all the parks featured here, somehow I feel like The Blighted Lands feels the most like it was yesterday. Strange.
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ottersalad
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Man, what a year this was. I remember being so out of my league participating in the PT4 prelims. I was awe struck by some of the other creations. Great memories. Spent too many hours watching Pac and Fluxtrance streams.
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Gustav Goblin
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Fluxtrance was a huge influence on me when I first found out there was a RCT community. It's funny looking back at those days in retrospect and thinking that was the pinnacle of what RCT2 could do.
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Cocoa
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best part of this is the extra forum links. so much fun shit to go through in them. maybe los suenos gardens was my peak! lol
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Gustav Goblin
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Magnus Polyspaston listens to feedback was an amazing read, thanks so much.
That first half had me dying but the Diamond Heights flyer was actually sick as hell.
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posix
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Omg I totally do not have any recollection of that Magnus P topic. Not even when reading my own posts. It's divine though.
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Liampie
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I found another fun topic. Austin55 thinks we reached the zenith of RCT realism in 2013.
https://www.nedesign...d-its-pinnacle/
Lesson to draw from this: you can't predict the future, and therefore you can't assume things won't develop further.
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Gustav Goblin
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I found another fun topic. Austin55 thinks we reached the zenith of RCT realism in 2013.
https://www.nedesign...d-its-pinnacle/
Lesson to draw from this: you can't predict the future, and therefore you can't assume things won't develop further.
Reading this thread now, FK was onto something.
Though, overall, i think the next step is to take this "super realism" and apply it to greater styles of park creation. Sure, we can make the perfect archy building, but how can we reconfigure that into innovative new parks. As much as i joke that Pac and Robbie should stay out of fantasy, i feel like their style in a fantasy settin may make on of the greatest parks we have ever seen.
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