RCT Discussion / RCT History

mmmm....let's see if I can remeber everything.

I think I got rct1 about 3 months after it came out. I was with a friend who played it and I tought it was so cool that I bought the game also. After that moment I was sold. I played the scenarios time after time to improve the way I did it and practice for the next scenarios untill I finnished them all.
Than I bought CF and LL and they gave me new challenges again.
but after I while I got bored by the game cause I saw no new challenges and tought I reached the limits of the game. I went to the RTS games also but kept playing rct1 in occasion.
Until I heared RCT2 would come out. 3 days after it came out I had it and I was suprised ... after completing some scenarios I noticed there where no new ones. but that wasn't such a great deal for me cause I met some friends in real life that played the game to and we started a little competition where one person made a scenario and the others had to complete it. these scenarios started as simple things, but after a while we made complete parks already before making it a scenario to make it more challenging. Than one day I came to the site rctholland. This site gave me the acces to custom objects (which where a bit rare back than), after reading the site for a while I registered on the site to show my first attempt to make a custom park (that's more that 5 years ago already). this park wasn't much, but people liked it already cause the style I used was kind of new. My first park was called "Welcome to Hell" but was never finnishd cause I planned it pore. Than I joined one of the so called Coaster Compagnies they had on that site. Theire goal was to make themed coasters for other parks. With this I learned something about coaster designing and theming. but still everything was very basic and I stayed away from the custom objects cause my early experience with them weren't so good cause I tought they didn't add that much to the game (I haden't heared of TT's objects by than). I kept looking at other players parks and kept praticing and I did some projects in rct2 which weren't complete. until I started on "The Sealed Area's". This was my first real attempt to make a park, and it also was the start of the believe I had a very special style. This park featured a hell theme and a heaven theme, diveded by a large canyon.

After this park was done I got some reconition but I stayed one of the "rookies" and I was always trying to help the newcomers to become better with tips etc. a while later the first real good custom objects reached me and I tought it was time to try something new. I started a story based scenario/park which was inspired on Bionicle, but with a complete own storyline. Here I tried the new quarterblocks etc. and noticed I could make nice things with them. In this park I made a city on the water which floated on giant water plants. and I made a city in the trees and a city underground etc. But this project wasn't finnished cause I lost intrest in it.

By this time i was intrested in contests. There were some on the dutch boards and I participated in them. Slowly I became one of the more established players until I started "Imaginary World" , by than I had finnished some small parks for contest and I tought it was time for a larger park again. This park I also advertised on the english boards (I believe it was my first post here on NE), and it was received pretty good. Some people compared me to kumba(/darren) altough I had no idea who he was by than but I figured it must be a good player. This was also the first park I started hacking. It maybe sound strange cause everyone now knows me as one of the best hackers. but I started very late with using a trainer, I first tried to reach the boundries of rct2 without adding anything, and when rct2 alone couldn't handle it anymore and switched to the trainer. it all started with very simple hacks and this park was a learning park for me. but also this wasn't done because I made it way to large for me to keep intrest. So i started with smaller parks again. one of the first parks I really finnished after that was Port Oxbay, it was suppost to be an area in Imaginary world, as was Aztecinopel. Both of those parks where made seperatly in the end cause I needed other objects. After that I made a lot of smaller parks for contest until the H2H3.5 began.

I was drafted in kumba's team and started on a park where someone else would step in later, but this contest was cancelled and I finnished this park "Fobiotopia", altough not many people really liked it, there where things in it which where pretty good already. But now I had created a style where I actually build every thing out of Quarterblocks. I kept this doing for a while and it almost got me in the PT2 (or was the PT2 before the H2H3.5 , I don't know anymore), with Playboy Park. This all ended when I started working on Fantasy. This park actually made my name what it is nowadays. This park features some worldfirst hacks and when I started it, it was made in the best workbench which was availble than (cause I made it my self with all custom themes ). The park had some very special archy which drew the attention of some people. But I still have to finnish the park.

I still have the habit of getting lured into contest, like I did with the PT3 also. Altough I am tripple qualified for it (bonus spot, accolade and PM) I still wont participate in it cause I want to finnish other things now.


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mmm... I forgot everything about the club ... ah, maybe I will edit it later.

became coaster enthusiast
joined coasterforce
got rct
got rct3
got rct2
watched the likes of metropole, x250, cp6 & jk post their parks on coasterforce
started lurking at ne
stopped playing scenarios & started building parks
posted parks at cf
joined rctspace & various other sites
joined ne
won Weekend Getaway at RCTSpace
joined RCTMajesty
won Cell Contest with Majesty
found JJ
joined RCTAvenged
became designer @ avenged
became vice leader of designers @ avenged
became mod @ avenged
joined NEgt
became admin @ avenged
became co-leader of avenged
soon to be co-owner of avenged.

Well, not much really.

Got RCT in 99
Got RCT CC in 00
Got (Illegal) RCT LL in 00
Got RCT2 in 02
Got RCT2 WW in 03
Got RCT2 TT in 06
Got RCT3 Plat. in 07.
Joined some forums in January 2007.
Tried for VP, failed (Glad I failed) miserably.

And yeah.

The scenarios were all I did in RCT1 when I got it in third grade for my birthday. Of course, being 8 at the time, I had no idea what trainers and such were until I was around 13, and even then took no interest. RCT2, I just blazed through the scenarios at age 12, started trying to make pathetic recreations of Cedar Point and made sandbox scenarios and some of the weirdest coaster designs you would ever see. RCT3, as soon as I opened it, I went into sandbox mode and crashed around 47 Air coasters at once, then delved into the scenarios. I found them to be a bit challenging, but got through them all. I've pretty much beaten all the scenarios in all the games. And that's my history.

I'm about to bump this topic up the chain again, but maybe it will spark some others to share their memories, too. I haven't even thought about RCT in probably 6 years, but I was talking to a friend today, and we were reminiscing on things we used to do when we were younger. I actually started talking about RCT, and came to find out I lost all my old parks I had worked on. I ended up reaching out to Mike Robbins and he pointed me back here. Anyway, my story.

 

I got RCT in 99 when it was released. Around the same time I was looking on the internet for roller coaster ideas, and I stumbled upon Chocobogo's RCT page. He had a way to upload roller coasters people had created, and I started thinking I wanted to create my own website for all things RCT related. 

 

MisnersRCT was born, as I was building my wesbite, and playing the game I was introduced to Cav from Cav's RCT Depot, and he became my website design mentor. Mind you this was all over AOL Instant Messenger too! I decided I wanted to become a web designer, so Cav spent a bunch of his time helping me learn new things I could do with HTML. Around that time, Danimation was launched as well. I spent a lot of time talking with Alex and Mike there.

 

Cav ran a contest for Riverfront Amusement Park that I ended up winning because I designed rides like Disney World covered rides. Shortly after that Cav decided he was going to step away from RCT, and asked if I would begin hosting Steve Frank's Collection of Real World Coasters. I also had a monthly featured park as well on the website.

 

Then, I graduated HS, and headed off to college. I did not have time to run a website any longer, and closed Misner's RCT. I stopped playing right after RCT2 came out, in fact, most of the trainers and editors that exist today weren't even around when I left the RCT world. NEDesigns was just forming and Danimation was just ending around that time. I built a lot of parks through the years, but never consistently as I spent a large amount of my time maintaining the website.

 

I don't think I'll probably ever build another RCT park again, but in my search for some of my old parks, I figured why not do a little sharing here as well.

wow, what a thread to bump. some really fascinating reads in here.

 

what was the danimation civil war? what happened there? there's just so much interesting history. I bet the people then would think its ridiculous that theres still an active community playing the game and in the eighth season of head-2-head! with an almost entirely new community of people than existed then.

 

I do wish we still regularly got 2000 downloads on our releases though... lol

wow, what a thread to bump. some really fascinating reads in here.

 

what was the danimation civil war? what happened there? 

 

 

There was a bunch of stuff that was going on, and it depends on who you talk to about it as well. I spoke to Dan and Alex pretty regularly, and if I could summarize what REALLY happened, minus all the drama that followed (which i only know some of it), Dan wanted to move Danimation away from an RCT community and focus more on his business of graphic design, animation, and production. If you go there now, that's all you will see.

 

There was a bunch of turmoil and drama that followed as Dan moved on from the RCT community, and at the same time a "NEW" sort of secret community of the best RCT designers (now known as New Element) was forming. With Dan moving on, and a lot of other people starting to look elsewhere to provide their services/designs, things got really messy to say the least. People were mad at others for stealing staff/talent, rumors started flying, a few CRAZY threads on the danimation forums got going, it was really a total meltdown.

 

Is 'Fatha still around? I knew him as Sir Fets before he became the NE Legend he is now. We worked on a few parks together, and he might have some additional perspective on this that would elaborate on the side of the story I know.

Hey MisnersRCT, you may never have been very active on NE, but do you happen to remember anything about the first Head 2 Head competition anyway? It's a piece of history with a lot of blank pages. I'm hungry for any scraps of information...

 

Fatha hasn't been around in years. Not many people from that era are left in general... We've still got Roomie/roomraider/Gutterflower/Chris Sawyer (rumored) though who goes back all the way too.

Liampie,

I was around for the very first release on NE designs which was (I believe) Nevis? Or maybe xcoaster or posix? It was a park with an alpine themed coaster with actual ski jumps using track merging which I cant remember whos it was now because it was so long ago...... forgive me if it was someone else. I think it was called extreme universal or something like that.

I frequented NE for a few months after that, but then headed off to college, and girls became much more of a priority after that for me. I would check NE sparingly every few months from there, and then I probably stopped completely after 2005 until maybe six years ago when I reinstalled rtc to play around a bit.

I was not around by the time H2H started up I dont think, unfortunately. NE was very new when I stopped playing RCT. Also, I had my own website I was running and while not a competitor to NE by any means, I had a lot more time invested into keeping my website up, and once I decommissioned it, my playing RCT or keeping up with the community was pretty minimal. Steve Franks alone kept me busy with 2 releases per week at times.... I was really fortunate to be offered his collection when Cav stepped down. It was passed onto Red Phoenix of RCT Station after I closed down MisnersRCT.

I wish I had kept the website up as an archive. Would be awesome to go back and see all the work I put in maintaining that website..... there was a ton of cool parks and content there for sure. Again, before NE kind of changed the way parks were built/themed. Merging track and scenery was BRAND new when I completed my last mega park (Northampton Oaks Amusement Park is here on NE). I actually never released it until a few years ago because I forgot I finished it, and it was right when I was leaving for school.

^if you'd like, you can still find Nevis' park in the park database up at the top there, you got the name mostly correct- universal's xtreme. It holds up surprisingly well compared to other parks from then, so it must have been absolutely astounding at the time.

 

H2H was like 2002ish IIRC? so maybe you would have been around. or at least have some contacts for us. I'm also a sucker for this rct history stuff. All the different websites and clubs and stuff really fascinates me, as does the idea of being an active/famous player at a time when rct was huge casually so you could actually expect huge viewership for your parks. When I was 6 or 7 then I remember downloading some random stuff off a website, I wish I could remember what it was now.

Yes, UIX!

It was absolutely amazing and ground breaking at the time. I actually didnt release my finished park Briarcliff because of it. Thanks for jogging my memory. I wanted to go back and do more with it than I did because it was so much better than what I had just finished. I thought I was going to be super progressive with my scenery merging because Id only seen one other park that used it, and now I cant remember his name but his work had a sit down B+M coaster with excitement like 15.66! Actually his whole Park was full of super high excitement coasters if I remember correctly now. The sit down coaster had loops and the train cars would disappear going through the loops because they werent supposed to do that. He was well known for making some of the trainers we were using at the time, (pre-beast trainer and he figured out hex editing, too) but his name leaves me for some reason. My mind wants to say his name started with an H for some reason but that could completely be wrong. He used merged tracks and I was dead set on doing it different than anyone had ever done.... then go figure maybe a day or two before I was ready to release my park to the world, and Nevis came out with the show stopper and the unveiling of NE to the rest of the RCT world. I actually remember IMing Iris telling me Nevis was working on something that was gonna change the RCT world and he had something to do with it. Man was it amazing when it was finally released.

I still talk to Mike Robbins, we are Facebook friends, and he might be able to help with the RCT History (post NE launch) more than I can. I can give a bunch of history pre-NE but anything after NE started is when I was basically gone.

Wow, just read what I wrote about starting RCT and it's crazy how I still can remember the parks I started when I was a kid.  It's actually possible that I can locate a few of my earlier parks, possibly even my original parks built with my cousin (probably like from '03/'04.  I believe those were built on the desktop my parents still have collecting dust.  There's a few parks I released early on (probably on rct2.com) that may be lost - one's an arabian themed park that defeated KONG in a contest quite spectacularly, another is a Norwegian fjord park.  There's also a collab I did with zburns from a H2H style contest on another site - it featured a small lake with waterslides.

 

I can see if I can locate the super old parks just for a fun share with the community (they're trash, if I recall).  I won't actually have the save of the others, so if somebody has an obscure collection and they're in there for some reason, I'd love to view them again.

 

Anyways really enjoyed reading those Mike Robbins and iris posts.  Weird how there's actually a community history surrounding an old game, that morphed into some kind of art form.  Could be a decent sociological study, in all honesty..

one of my friends is doing an art history major, I should convince her to do her thesis on NE

Nice of you to chime in on this, MisnersRCT! I got into RCT in 2002 I think, after having played it for a few years with a friend who got it when it came out in '99. I didn't participate in the community until 2003, I think, and I always find it interesting to read about what happened before that. For a couple of years in the early 00's there really were a lot of sites dedicated to RCT. I followed NE closely since the early days, but were never active here in the community's heyday (though I think my account dates from 2004 or something? And there's also an earlier one with the same name in Swedish). The first site I discovered was probably RCT Station, by which time Steve Franks' recreations had already moved there (I remember being fascinated by those), and from there I discovered NE. The stuff I saw at NE back then really blew my mind, and when I sat down and played some RCT in 2013 I was amazed to discover the site was still going! Then OpenRCT revived my interest in the game in 2015, and here I am since then, though mainly a casual observer as I've always been at this site. 

 

Cocoa, I thought about doing that a couple of years ago, but after doing some basic research I felt the community was already very aware of the artistic qualities of the NE approach to RCT, with an established canon of "old masters" and masterpieces and an arthistorical awareness of different stylistic trends through the years, etc. I found it would be rather redundant to write an art history thesis about it, and I also felt it would be somehow arrogant or destructive towards the community's own aesthetic self-awareness to come from outside with an academic perspective on things, turning the community into somekind of curiosity or arthistorical "other".

 

If anything, I'd say folkloristics would be a better discipline to approach NE from for research purposes, considering that discipline's emphasis on the community's own understanding of its values and practices. Trying to fit NE into an arthistorical context wouldn't really be meaningful to neither the discipline nor the community, I feel. But maybe your friend could find a way to accomplish that.

Alright, let's see if I remember this correctly...

 

I discovered RCT through a friend of mine in 2002. He talked about it in school and I was intrigued by it so I borrowed the CD-ROM from the public library, as they had itin their collection. I was instantly hooked and loved the scenario play, always building miniature railways as the first ride in every park even though I kept going bankrupt because of my train craze... Good times.

 

I kept playing RCT1 scenario's on and off till about 2006, when I finally got hold of a game I've heard a lot about, RCT2! Not knowing any better, I once again started playing scenario's but the fact you couldn't unlock new ones sorta made it lose the feeling of reward and I got bored. Then I discovered the scenario editor... Quite fast, the only thing I did in RCT2 was creating new parks, and by that I mean new scenario's just like the ones I always dreamt about, but I never finished any of them come to think of it.

 

The site I used to visit most of was CrazyUSCoasters back in the day, as it had quite a lot of inside info about how the game worked and some nice screens about other people their scenario's. I believe it's still up and running! http://www.crazyusco...s.com/index.htm But in 2007 I had my eureka moment. I discovered RCT-Guide.nl, the stronghold of the Dutch masters with names that are still known today: FredD, Liampie, Sulakke, Levis... I saw a new sort of RCT and I liked it: realism! Since that moment I've been striving for the best. I learned about custom scenery and 8cars. I tried to emulate what I saw on the Guide as I loved the style. I never joined though because I thought I wasn't good enough. When the site finally closed in 2009(?) I started to lurk on the site the Guide quite often referred to: NEDEsigns. I downloaded a few parks and again the same pattern was visible: I tried to get to the same level as I saw here, but always with the inspiration from the Dutch masters in mind. This is where those printed screens I saved from the guide come in. They guided me (get it?) towards my own stye. I learned about 8cars and started experimenting with it. I started noticing improvement after every park i finished. Then, when I finally thought I had something worth posting on NE, I joined in February 2015. And the feedback and warm welcome made me improve massively since that time, more then I did on my own the previous years.