RCT Discussion / Fantasy vs. realism

I've been told that my style tends to drift between fantasy and realism. I like doing both, but does a park need to be completely real or completely fantasy?....looking through a lot of the runner-up's and spotlights, I've found its sometimes hard to distinguish between whats real & whats fantasy...its easy to give a ride or park a "realistic" name, but come to find out the ride / park isnt necessarily "real"..I would love to hear some peoples thoughts about this....

I prefer realistic parks, but if a fantasy is well executed it could also be one of my favourite parks...
I love mala parks, but also RCTNW style parks... it's hard to tell the difference sometimes, and a fantasy park could also be realistic, for example asian adventures by Mike Robbins...
It's something personal I think, and what you like/dislike,

SF

me and ed chatted about that =)
somebody bumped it in the basic chat (its our aim convo)

It's not like you have to choose, and there are no set rules for a "fantasy park" or a "realistic park".
Just build what you like and don't care about what it would be classified as after it's release...

They can be used in unison, but there are some that are obvious, eg. SFWOE-Phatage. It's built solely for realism, and that is pulled off fantastically. But you get some people who say, I'm building a realistic park when it's not realistic at all. I tend to use both. I couldn't imagine seeing my parks in real life, but they do obide by the laws of physics

Metro

I consider a lot of my stuff to be realistic. I can't think of anything i've done that's been especially fantasy-ish.

Mala is realistic, if you ask me.

Hello.


I tend to make my theming ealistic and my ride envisioned creations of my own.


Raven-SDI
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Fantasy but not pushing the boat out. This has just been stated in the crypto topic too. I like a mix of both but towards the fantasy side of things.

To qoute coaster ed

I'm going to go back to that realism vs. fantasy debate I had with Blitz-Sama where we ultimately agreed that they're the same thing. People who build crazy fantasy parks are imagining something that could exist and creating it on the screen too. It's just that fantasy parkmakers aren't always imagining amusement parks and the way they choose to express their imagination is different. Getting back to this particular park, if it's an amusement park that SFAW Fan is imagining then there's a lot more he could do to make it look realistic. It could be more complex buildings like Joe Holland would build. It could be unconventional use of theming objects like aero21 would build. Those are better expressions of reality to me than some simple buildings surrounded by trees. This is as abstract and expressionistic as it gets. This is like the lego version. When you simplify reality to it's basic shapes you get something different from reality. I can see why that would be beautiful to you but I think you're wrong to say that it's the ultimate end of "realistic" parkmaking. It's an abstraction just like everything else. I happen to think buildings which look like buildings are more realistic than buildings which look like blocks. I'll probably never come up with a "truly accurate" park, but even so I would contend that what I do is no less "realistic" than what you do - and certainly more so than something like this park.

I preatty much agree with that thinking of "realistic " parks

I can never quite determine what is fantasy and what is realism. I've never actually thought about it though. I tend to think fantasy is RoB style. That's how I view fantasy whereas realism is more SFWoE IMO. But as I say I'm not sure about this fantasy/realism thing.

Anyway JKay. Having viewed Thrillzone in the full, I really can't determine what you classify as. It's kind of realistic but not, but it's not fantasy I see it. It's a great park nonetheless.

You guys are forgetting, Micool is the only fantasy parkmaker.

When I build a park, I don't think, " is this going to be a fantasy park or a realism park" I just go ahead and build what I want to, trying to make it look as beautiful to me as I can (unless, as is often the case, I run out of time and rush it, see pro tour entries 2-4). I guess, I get an idea for a park, build it the way I want, then see what category it fits into.

In terms of preference, Mike Robbins style realism doesn't do it for me at all. But I think all large solos should be recognisible as a theme park, there's always the odd exception though (cbass )

cBass does do themeparks, peep-friendly ones as well I think. He just adds some really creative ideas to it.

I'm not doing theme parks though

I was referring to wisconsin which is meant to be like a charicatured tourist map according to the readme. But yeh, a full theme park from cbass would be awesome.

I go for Realism. I like it better It's sometimes good to have a group park though with different parkmakers that like different styles. It can be contrasting and I like that.

Ahem. (page 3)

For the sake of redundancy. I'm interested what you guys have to say about it though.

I fail to see the "realistic" nature of SFWoE... unless we are talking about rides alone.

But it seems like I'm the *only* one who thinks that way.

I want it to be fantastic, as in stuff you don't see every day. Like...aquazone.

But I'd also like to think that if someone had enough money/will, someone could feasibly turn aquazone into a real life park. That's where I like drawing the line.

I think "the luge coaster" is great...its a fantasy idea, not done in real life, but not like "pshht! they would NEVER do that!" Or my aquabatic rollersoaker, or my GTA ride. That's examples from me.

I'd LOVE to see Erwindale or Battlfield RCT in real life :-p.

To be honest, who honestly gives a fuck as to whether a park is realistic or not? As long as it looks good, that's all that matters IMO.

John, SFWoE was realistic for an RCT park. It's near impossible to create an identical level of realism of a real-life park in RCT. So it was realistic for RCT.

I believe the most fun and successful kind of park is where you go for places that exist in real life, but present them as they were meant to be, as you have always pictured and imagined them. If you take Egypt, for example, there are many slums there, but you don't generally present that, you show what you think of when you think of Egypt, like Ancient Egypt, maybe some mythical stuff, maybe some Muslim stuff, but not much that would be considered ugly.

Many places in the world are not what you would consider affluent, but are still pleasant. Those are the down-home, traditional places that are the meat of a theme; I mean, you can't just present an entire place with only the most famous monuments; you gotta make it look like a settlement. Those are the kind of places that are generally nice, pleasant, and successful in RCT. Then there are the places that are just ugly, like apartment blocks or urban sprawl, and usually those are avoided. The thing that makes the first group nice to work with is that those people have generally lived there a long time, and in their struggle to maintain their community in a certain environment, leading to certain practices and traditions being incorporated which give the settlement a unique flavor.

That's what's done in RoB, TH, SWA, and many other parks: semi-fantasy, semi-realism based on the best and most unique aspects of a place.