RCT Discussion / RCT Hot Takes

LL judging should almost be considered a completely different game/scale than RCT2 judging at this point.  Not only is it literally a different game, but in order to judge LL you have to have it running, which is quite a feat these days.  It's pretty unlikely anyone who doesn't enjoy the classical LL style would put in that kind of effort these days, so to begin with the userbase in the panel is often one that has a pro-LL bias.

 

That being said there are so few releases in LL that are high end work (75% +) that there really isn't a great standard to judge by these days, so work from 5, 10 even 20 years ago at times is all you really have to compare too.  Even so we've had like 2 80%+ LL parks in the last 5 years?  It's a really high bar.

2. I think the excessive focus on 'composition' in an isometric game is kind of silly as there's no perspective... you could have good composition with a still screenshot but as soon as you move the screen in-game, it suddenly looks 'bad.' In addition, this site has a strange obsession with making everything look 'sparse' and 'clean' when most artistic depictions of isometric and similar projections, like a wimmelbilder or a bosch painting take advantage of the lack of perspective to fill the picture with detail.

 

I think the first point here is moot, because good composition is building in a way which considers all 4 angles, not just the single angle of a screenshot.

 

And to the second point, I think it's perhaps more useful to think of composition in RCT in terms of readability. Detail is only effective when you can understand what you are looking at, and because the isometric projection has no 3D depth it means you have to compose it in such a way that gives borders between fore and background, this is often done with foliage for example.

 

So in a way I argue the exact opposite: composition is important precisely because there is no perspective.

 

I think the first point here is moot, because good composition is building in a way which considers all 4 angles, not just the single angle of a screenshot.

 

And to the second point, I think it's perhaps more useful to think of composition in RCT in terms of readability. Detail is only effective when you can understand what you are looking at, and because the isometric projection has no 3D depth it means you have to compose it in such a way that gives borders between fore and background, this is often done with foliage for example.

 

So in a way I argue the exact opposite: composition is important precisely because there is no perspective.

 

There's actually two kinds of composition that matter here: screenshot composition and park composition. And you're absolutely right about park composition. I think however, that Jaguar is conflating the two somewhat, arguing that something that's composed well for a still image screenshot might not look good from another angle or even if the camera is moved slightly. And while that's also true, I think most of the community refers to park composition when they say "composition," rather than the composition of the screenshot. 

The flip of that is also true. There have definitely been a few very talented members that SUCK at composing screenshots, but still have very strong park composition. 

I only want to respond to the "LL is overrated" take and say I agree. The continuation of LL how NE knew it died some time around 2005-6 when RCT2 was eventually all that mattered. Some passionate players like Loopy, Milo and later pierrot, to some extent Liam's Escapist Experience, and then more seriously again alex, picked it up to do new things with it, and it was usually amazing, albeit typically relying on extreme hacks and an inevitable "rct2-in-ll" look. Today we see Terry wanting to carefully revive a contemporary LL, and it's lovely to see. But most anything else people do would very likely have been flamed on 2005-6 NE for being super boring and done before. I thought people were aware of it, but even some of the more basic LL seems to receive lots of praise today, and I never quite understand why beyond a "cute nostalgie homage" kind of lens that by definition removes itself from competition.

I only want to respond to the "LL is overrated" take and say I agree. The continuation of LL how NE knew it died some time around 2005-6 when RCT2 was eventually all that mattered. Some passionate players like Loopy, Milo and later pierrot, to some extent Liam's Escapist Experience, and then more seriously again alex, picked it up to do new things with it, and it was usually amazing, albeit typically relying on extreme hacks and an inevitable "rct2-in-ll" look. Today we see Terry wanting to carefully revive a contemporary LL, and it's lovely to see. But most anything else people do would very likely have been flamed on 2005-6 NE for being super boring and done before. I thought people were aware of it, but even some of the more basic LL seems to receive lots of praise today, and I never quite understand why beyond a "cute nostalgie homage" kind of lens that by definition removes itself from competition.

 

I've never really understood the "RCT2 in LL" comment and why that's frowned upon (or at least seems that way). 

I only want to respond to the "LL is overrated" take and say I agree. The continuation of LL how NE knew it died some time around 2005-6 when RCT2 was eventually all that mattered. Some passionate players like Loopy, Milo and later pierrot, to some extent Liam's Escapist Experience, and then more seriously again alex, picked it up to do new things with it, and it was usually amazing, albeit typically relying on extreme hacks and an inevitable "rct2-in-ll" look. Today we see Terry wanting to carefully revive a contemporary LL, and it's lovely to see. But most anything else people do would very likely have been flamed on 2005-6 NE for being super boring and done before. I thought people were aware of it, but even some of the more basic LL seems to receive lots of praise today, and I never quite understand why beyond a "cute nostalgie homage" kind of lens that by definition removes itself from competition.

I'm not sure I follow this at all. It feels like simultaneously shaming the community for not trying to do something new with LL and shaming those that do try to do new things with LL. 

Edit: On second thought, maybe I'm reading some unintended negativity into the "rct2-in-ll" comment.

 

I'm not sure I follow this at all. It feels like simultaneously shaming the community for not trying to do something new with LL and shaming those that do try to do new things with LL. 

Edit: On second thought, maybe I'm reading some unintended negativity into the "rct2-in-ll" comment.

  That's what I'm thinking as well. 

even some of the more basic LL seems to receive lots of praise today, and I never quite understand why beyond a "cute nostalgie homage" kind of lens that by definition removes itself from competition.

 

 

As someone who has been playing LL recently, I'm worried my work will be perceived as just "cute", "boring", or "done before". But, this is the hot takes page, so I won't get too defensive lol

 

 

 

As someone who has been playing LL recently, I'm worried my work will be perceived as just "cute", "boring", or "done before". But, this is the hot takes page, so I won't get too defensive lol

  I think a big part of it is perspective. Since I'm part of the "newer" generation I wasn't around when the community started.  I love the LL you've been putting out even if it's "been done before". Maybe that's because I wasn't around to see what was done before, I don't know. But also that brings up another good point. Why do we always have to push boundaries?  Of course if we did the same thing all the time, then we would be bored, but I think that everyone has enough of their own content to bring to the table that that wouldn't happen. 

most landscape objects look bad and noisy and draw focus to something that should be a good opportunity for negative space.

Honestly I feel like LL is a great way to practice the basics without getting too caught up in detail, especially if hackless or with very minimal hacking a la Natelox. I'd even say my RCT hot take is everyone, especially newer parkmakers, should try a LL park in that style to really get the hang of basic macro and planning. Hackless NCSO if you don't have a copy of LL. Don't make it about accolade score or pushing boundaries; just learn what you'll need to confidently go for that.

Wow, so much stuff to respond to. I can't catch up. Here's some thoughts on Jaguar's hot takes. I agree with some of it. This not so much.
 

1. Playing the game experimentally or using gimmicks is generally frowned upon and unfairly viewed in a negative light. That is, until a 'good' player starts using the gimmicks or it gets accepted by the general community. Biggest example of this would be the WW/TT objects... people hated them for years and using them on a screen caused the scores to tank. After this, once a bunch of people got ahold of the disaster bench and the DKMP server at large started using them, people started accepting them.

 
I disagree. An idea is cool, an idea done well is really cool. The better your non-experimental aspects, the better you'll be able to sell the experimental aspects. It makes sense that it sometimes takes a more established player to set a trend. Besides, when its a top tier player, people are more likely to pay attention. There's some bias here, but I don't think it's quite as malicious and intentional as you're making it sound here. Is it even bias? Or just correlation?
 
I disagree with the WW/TT objects, I think we (the NE majority) agree they still suck. The fact that another community has been built around a WW/TT disaster bench style of parkmaking doesn't change that.
 

2. [...] In addition, this site has a strange obsession with making everything look 'sparse' and 'clean' when most artistic depictions of isometric and similar projections, like a wimmelbilder or a bosch painting take advantage of the lack of perspective to fill the picture with detail.

 
Is there a strange obsession with clean or sparse? I think for the past two years, the 'crunch' meta has been dominant. I hope a diversity of styles will continue to be accepted in the future - I partially hope that because my solo is rather different from the mainstream meta in some ways: rather minimal, spaceous, no curves or half diagonals, some other things. I hope these things can be seen as a style rather than a flaw. I also hope there's room foor wimmelbilder style parks. I can see how you treat the game as a wimmelbilder kind of thing, it shows in your parks such as Hellforge or Phototrophian. I think the diversity in approaches to the game is very important to maintain.

 

That brings me to LL. It's just another (collection of) genre(s), not something that is inferior just because of how it differs from the modern styles. Maybe we're just retreading old ground indeed, but we haven't been to these grounds in fifteen years and it's refreshing to look at and to build. In the desert of crunch, hyperrealism and other 2022 things, LL offers something that it didn't offer in 2005.

 

'RCT2 in LL' is always fun to see in my eyes. It shows that people are out of their comfort zone and learning.

By no means meant to shame anyone. Sorry if it came off that way.

 

Just agreeing with Jag that LL tends to be more easily overrated, or at least it looks that way to me.

 

"RCT2 in LL" means to force RCT2's native object stacking into LL through codex. Think of Loopy's stacked barrels for example.

I disagree with the WW/TT objects, I think we (the NE majority) agree they still suck. The fact that another community has been built around a WW/TT disaster bench style of parkmaking doesn't change that..

 

 

I think while most people still think the objects suck, but they will generally consider it pretty impressive when they're used right. Not to mention there's sort of a Skiffa-style that while still very underrated imo, is generally well-respected on NE or at least not seen as atrocious. The usage of expansion objects has sort of exploded in recent years.

Compare several years ago when using expansion scenery 'ruined' a screen, whereas it's just considered a different, if admittedly still fairly controversial style now.


As for LL... there's nothing wrong with it but my point is that if you replicated something from LL in RCT2, it's likely to receive a much lower score, even though aesthetically they're the exact same thing. This doesn't mean LL parks are bad, but it does make it seem as though the parks are, at least in part, not judged for how they look but for how tedious it was to make them.

I came up with another one. I think that the focus on RCT2 instead of RCT3 or Planet Coaster has stalled the development of the subjective parkmaking experience. Just think of what sort of mindbending coasters you could create if you see them only from the rider's point of view. Instead of worrying about custom palettes in OpenRCT2 we could walk through parks like a guest buying custom food and walk around like we're an actual guest in the park. It's a shame that RCT3 wasn't a better game, or more people would have adopted it for parkmaking and we may have more interesting parks than we do today.

 

 

 

I think while most people still think the objects suck, but they will generally consider it pretty impressive when they're used right. Not to mention there's sort of a Skiffa-style that while still very underrated imo, is generally well-respected on NE or at least not seen as atrocious. The usage of expansion objects has sort of exploded in recent years.

Compare several years ago when using expansion scenery 'ruined' a screen, whereas it's just considered a different, if admittedly still fairly controversial style now.


As for LL... there's nothing wrong with it but my point is that if you replicated something from LL in RCT2, it's likely to receive a much lower score, even though aesthetically they're the exact same thing. This doesn't mean LL parks are bad, but it does make it seem as though the parks are, at least in part, not judged for how they look but for how tedious it was to make them.

They are judged based on the medium they are presented in. 

 

I came up with another one. I think that the focus on RCT2 instead of RCT3 or Planet Coaster has stalled the development of the subjective parkmaking experience. Just think of what sort of mindbending coasters you could create if you see them only from the rider's point of view. Instead of worrying about custom palettes in OpenRCT2 we could walk through parks like a guest buying custom food and walk around like we're an actual guest in the park. It's a shame that RCT3 wasn't a better game, or more people would have adopted it for parkmaking and we may have more interesting parks than we do today.

There are plenty of RCT3, Planet Coaster, or Parkitect communities and this is not one of them.

Part of the problem with expansion objects historically was also their accessibility. It wasn't until recently that OpenRCT that the majority of people even had access to the objects and weren't restricted from viewing parks with them.

Also iirc, many of them are LS and we're very difficult to use in detailed building before Open as a result.

They are judged based on the medium they are presented in. 

 

 

There are plenty of RCT3, Planet Coaster, or Parkitect communities and this is not one of them.

True, there are some but they don't have an accolade system and they, as far as I know, aren't as active as NE. 

I think the issues G Force mentions on the WWTT objects, and how they're mostly alleviated now through Open, is very true. I know a lot of them are bad objects and the community itself has done much better ones, but I find it exciting when people make weird objects look good (ie Julow, Skiffa). It's a different area of style in RCT we've not seen enough of and that still has certain potential in my eyes.

Giant, disproportionate, gaudy sculptures instantly ruin the immersion.