NE 20th Anniversary / History of New Element - 2014
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04-May 22
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Kumba
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The History of NE
Steve wrote: This website has been around for 10+ years. It sees different "eras" and you're in one right now where a lot of the older members and not-so-old members have stopped producing work leaving a new wave of members come in. They'll get better the same way the legends did. Coming off 2013, NE remained in something of a historical slump. That's not to say everything was "meh," but in comparison to past years, it did not offer as much. Still, a number of parkmakers managed to rise to the top and some classic parks were produced in 2014.
The top park in 2014 was Thorpe Park by Airtime. Over the course of a few years, Airtime had gone from Louis's roommate who also plays RCT to a top level parkmaker who was well-respected by the community. His semi-recreation of the park was an unanimous NE Spotlight winner which scored an even 90% from the accolade panel to earn Airtime a nice blue label as a Legendary NE Parkmaker. Building an NE Spotlight park is plenty of work on its own, but a month prior to Thorpe, Airtime dropped a highly anticipated NE Design. Indiana Jones et le Temple du Peril had me worried about my recreation's top score for an NE Design as Airtime’s screens of Indy Jones topped the rankings. While the screens crushed it, the design only managed an 84.62%. Maybe a little too much brown? I get how that can happen. Still, a great themed design with some of the best dense landscaping the game has ever seen.
Micro Madness 2 was the big contest in 2014. I started Micro Madness in 2007 and happened to win it too. After a huge sign-up resulted in 71 parkmakers entering, admins Liam and Louis decided to go with a group pools format similar to the World Cup more than the NCAA basketball tournament I based it on. A bracket was created and the players were divided into seeds. 5Dave, Airtime, Liampie, Louis, nin and myself were the top seeds.
51 of the 71 entrants came through with an entry to create a dozen groups of four (but one of three due to the odd number of entries), each only allowing the top two vote gainers to advance. Once all the entries where in, the “group of death” award unofficially went to the one with entries by FK, wheres_walto, JimmyLeassig and PizzaWurscht. The final vote was 20 to 18 to 12 to 1. PizzaWurscht’s China Rising entry pulled off a big upset of FK’s Haunted Estate for first place. However, Jimmy racked up 18 second place votes while FK only had 7. The result was FK advancing with 34 points to Jimmy’s nail-bitting 33.5! In other first round action, inthemanuel’s Earl Grey was the consensus top entry of the round and would have been the only entry to shut out all others in their group for first place votes, but geewhzz cast one vote for my Bad Kraken! entry which was also ranked as one of the top entries in the first round. Other top round one entries were: Thompson's Pier by Airtime, Parkouroaster by JJayMForce and New Society by shogo.
In MM2014's second round, only 18 entries were received and six brackets of three were improvised as the initial bracket plan was kinda dead only left for general guidance on who could go where. The Mirage Hotel & Casino's White Lightning by FK was one of the strongest entries of the round. Liam got a win with one of the funniest contest entries thanks to the Inspiration Well. Shogo advanced with a clever entry in the Black Mesa Research Facility. nin won with one of the most fantasy things he’s ever made, SKM-011K. Faas won his group with one of my favorite all-time MM entries, Turtle Rescue and Discovery Center. The “group of death” in this round was considered by most to be the one with 5Dave, gdb and myself. 42 by 5Dave was a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy entry that got him the win and advanced Dave to Round 3. gdb scored nine first place votes for Conquest for the Forgotten Empire (it was really a lot better than that horrible name, lol) and I landed six with my (somewhat rushed) Comic Con Miami entry. To the surprise of some, my entry was not included in the wildcard vote since it finished third, despite getting six first place votes. So, with that bit of controversy, the defending champ was eliminated. JJayMForce and inthemanual advanced to the third round when they were the top two vote getters in the wildcard vote.
Round three of MM2014 resulted in two groups of three. Faas was replaced by Stoksy and no entries were received from shogo or nin. At this point in the contest, both groups were “groups of death” but the 5Dave vs. inthemanuel vs. JJayMforce group stands out as maybe the most competitive of the contest. 5Dave’s Heart of Darkness entry landed 13 votes to win while inthemanual's chess themed Sacrifice entry received 11 votes and JJ’s Where’s Waldo (Titanic) Disaster entry picked up four votes to win. In the other group, the replacement Stoksy won big with Angel Concert Hall over Master of Portals by FK and A Slice of Bijlmer by Liam. inthemanuel won a wildcard spot in the finals with Stoksy and 5Dave.
In the finals, FK replaced 5Dave to face Stoksy and inthemanual. Each produced a solid entry, but ITM got the win 33 to 7 to 6 with his double-leveled Cavumus entry. It was a runaway win thanks mostly to its detail and height, two main ingredients in a strong micro. Stoksy placed second with Ode to the Ood. It used map height well with the spaceship above, but its Dr. Who theme was hit or miss. FK’s The Time Traveler entry placed last, but was a fun entry with its blurred timelines.
Coasterbill wrote: Um... Holy Fuck.
Up until recently I really didn't "get" NCSO but I'm really starting to appreciate it and this park really added to that appreciation.
Circa 2014, RCT2 parks without custom scenery objects (now known as "NCSO" parks) were not much of a thing. Few people would build in that style and LL still had a good presence if someone didn't feel the need to use more accurate B&M supports, custom paths and 1K ruins everywhere. Seems RCT2day didn't get that memo. Kidron Park was one of the first parks to really show how clever you can get with the limited set of objects that came built into the game. Shortly after Kidron, RCT2’s future H2H7 building partner shogo captured an NCSO NE Design with Rougarou, a power GCI wooden coaster layout highlighted the map and showcased the skills of an upcoming parkmaker who would become one of the most accomplished of the decade.
These days, LL seems to be fading into the sunset, but in 2014 it was still a catalyst for a number of high-quality releases. The award for most productive builder in either game surely went to csw. He had a very productive year with a tri of full-sized parks winning NE Silver thanks to RedditLLand, Capricorn Coast and A Study in Mountain Composition. Not to be outdone at LL productivity, Roomie also had yet another productive year in his storied RCT career. Constantopia won NE Gold on a medium sized map and was highlighted by Zilant, a dominating wooden coaster. Roomie also won NE Silver with an even smaller, yet super-hacked map, when Eastfields Mall was released. LLLL!
While 2014 did not have a lot of massive releases and only a single NE Spotlight, it did have five promising NE Gold parks. The highest scoring of these parks was Drouwenerland by future H2H9 star Rene. It was a small park, but packed with atmosphere and well-themed. Montferland was a solid debut NE park by Seb, who faded away after 2015 when he was a part of Robbie’s H2H7 team. Kepler Science Education Center by Ling was one of the most anticipated parks of 2014 and is the accolade that highlights the three pages of parks Ling has produced. Vitaminland by Faas was a fun-packed and colorful health themed park. Along with his work in Micro Madness, it helped Faas get on the radar as a promising upcoming parkmaker. One thing all four of those golds had in common was a medium map size. Really, it seemed like no one tried to go full map to get an NE Spotlight even though the admins surely wanted them. Kirkland by Paul 999 had the full map size to do just that. However, the skill level was just not quite up to spotlight level. Kirkland, a Dutch rooted park, was a timeline revival of Paul’s 2006 version.
Liampie
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Perhaps NE's weakest year, which explains the somewhat thinner write-up by Kumba. Very few noteworthy releases, an 'okay' contest in MM2, and even the admins were in a bit of an activity slump I recall. Thorpe Park is still top notch though, and personally I was enjoying the Dutch wave - see last paragraph.
The iris, Adix, Cork + reunion topic is crazy. Seems like they were all lurking at the same time. How many of them are lurking now?
inthemanual
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This was the year I became an admin, and it feels like an oversight not to mention that. So this is me mentioning that.
Liampie
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@inthemanual: I agree, but it is covered in the links at the bottom!
@Steve: 'BelgianGuy laments dropping quality'
