Humble beginnings and failure shows

[Kriscendo]

I thought I may share you one of my first fireworks shows. Supposedly it was called the The Future is Now.  It was made back when I was in high school so I teenager at the time when I was known as KMBofRCT3.  I thought I had a great premise idea but it was poorly executed due to the way the the show was set up and how bad the synchronizing was and had no lasers (Again I was a teenager so I had a hasty mind).  Any of you showstoppers would like to share your humble beginnings or show failures/cringe? 

 

[Anon-P]

Not exactly my humble beginning but, this was my first ever show I've ever made

 

[Kablary]

23 hours ago, Kriscendo said:

Supposedly it was called the The Future is Now.

For your first show, this is actually pretty damn impressive! Your choreography, while light throughout, is really spot-on when the effort is put into it. Especially in those final moments towards the end - love the colors and sequencing at 6:40!  A long time ago I mixed a sountrack with the music from Tron Legacy that I'm fairly certain followed the exact same track progression. Great minds think alike, huh?

A couple months ago, I sorta joked in my "Welcome" topic about how I was known for announcing projects, but never following through. I hope ya'll are ready for my long and dismal history as a beginner.... 

The very first show I ever announced was on AtariCommunity and was called "Bionic's Pyro" back in late '07, a companion fireworks show to the rollercoaster I named "Bionic." I had just acquired the RCTPyro Pack 12 and had no idea what to do with it, so I set off effects randomly to the song Recalcitrant by Pro>Tech (a very good electronica song, for the record). No video exists of that, but I have this screenshot and a logo someone from AC made for me:

The next show I put together and recorded was called "Ballistophobia" and used Daft Punk's Crescendolls - it was just a bunch of battery shells from Ilyxr's P1 and P2 and flares going off randomly to the song with no set whatsoever. BOO BATTERIES! Again, no video exists, but I do remember creating a thread on vPyro for this and getting some very polite-yet-annoyed feedback about the show being too simple, sorta a "thanks for trying" response.  This is all that remains of that show, THESE PIDDLY SCREENSHOTS:

After that came Battlefield, a show that was used as an entry to one of vPyro's Community Contests back in 2008. DAMN that was 15 years ago....

This was followed by a slew of other shows announced over the years, but never carried to any sort of completion: Blackout, Sensory Overload, Amped!, Sunshine, Spawn, Creep Show, Cruor, Daybreak (a Holiday-themed collab with PassawayandJeff), StompBox, Bloodlines (when I was with IE Studios), Noire (a FyreTek project with Caebicca), Magique, Believe, Carnage: Reprisal, XMAS, Ragtime (another Caebicca collab), Sacrificed Sons (a 9/11 tribute show with FyreTek)... 

The only other show I ever complete after Battlefiled during this time was Carnage, but even that was still short one song from it's original soundtrack.

 Carnage '09, music from the film Dead Silence OST and Position Music:

 

Some remnants of the other projects exist in the form of logos or screenshots of sets built in-game (even fewer with any pyro placed), I even have some of the soundtracks still, but most are lost to time. Enjoy this non-chronological collection of crap from the last 15 years!

StompBox '09, music was Prodigy's First Alert:

 

 

Sunshine '08, music from the fiom Sunshine OST:

Amped! '10, music from the film Knight & Day OST:

Spawn '09, music from the film The Final Destination OST:

Cruor '10, music was The Used's The Bird and the Worm:

Daybreak '09, music from the films UP and Bolt OST:

Believe '10, a redo of Daybreak:

Bloodlines '10, music from the film 30 Days of Night OST:

Noire '11, music from the game L.A. Noire OST:

XMAS '12, music from the Saw franchise:

CreepShow '08, music from the Saw franchise:

Sensory Overload '08, music from Juno Reactor's Labyrinth album:

Blackout '08, music was Immediate Music's Lucius dei:

Magique '11, music from various Position Music albums:

Carnage: Reprisal '11, music from the films Saw, The Unborn, and Piranha 3D OST:

Ragtime '10, music from the film Chicago OST:

And then some set doodles for sets from shows long-forgotten...

 

 

 

Edited August 6, 2023 by Kablary

[Kriscendo]

Thank you for sharing Kabalry and Anon-P!  Anybody else have some humble beginnings and failures who would like to share?

[RobertaME]

4 hours ago, Kablary said:

I do remember creating a thread on vPyro for this and getting some very polite-yet-annoyed feedback about the show being too simple, sorta a "thanks for trying" response.

The attitude of people like that who gave you feedback baffles me. All it does is discourage people from submitting anything. It's not helpful, no matter how well-intended it is. For every person it inspires to try harder, it makes many others just give up trying at all. This was the sort of response I got way back in the day which is why I never shared anything for a VERY long time. (this site was the first place I tried resubmitting any of my RCT3 creations... the last being the long-lost Atari forums)

Thanks for sharing all your history, Kablary!

3 hours ago, Kriscendo said:

Anybody else have some humble beginnings and failures who would like to share?

I have a video somewhere that I shot many MANY years ago of my first pyro display set to Disney's "Fantasy in the Sky". It was made before custom pyro downloads existed, so it's 100% made of default pyro effects. I'll see if I can dig it up in the next couple days and post it. :^)

[wolfpaw]

That's such a blast from the past to see all of those shows @Kablary! I remember Ragtime very well... it never got finished right?

You can see all my past shows and stuff on this topic here. I'll spare you all the details and story of me getting into RCT3 and stuff before I officially made my first "project" and shared it online, haha

[Kablary]

10 minutes ago, wolfpaw said:

I remember Ragtime very well... it never got finished right?

Cae started work on it, but I don't remember seeing anything beyond a trailer. The music was a lot of fun! (or so I thought...)

11 minutes ago, wolfpaw said:

I'll spare you all the details and story of me getting into RCT3 and stuff

WE WANT THE STUFF

[Anon-P]

If there's one show that's considered as my worst, it would be "Soundless Voice". The set alone was the worst one I've ever designed, considering that the song I used was themed around snow. However, the choreo alone wasn't too bad but still too much relying on batteries on some parts

 

[Kablary]

2 minutes ago, Anon-P said:

If there's one show that's considered as my worst, it would be "Soundless Voice"

Your worst show was your tribute to The Creators Lounge?! Oh man, poor TCL 

And it wasn't that bad, Anon. The colors were pretty! Maybe a little bright at parts...but that was like your signature move. BLINDING LIGHT!

[Anon-P]

9 minutes ago, Kablary said:

The colors were pretty! Maybe a little bright at parts...but that was like your signature move. BLINDING LIGHT!

[Kriscendo]

Funnily on The Future is Now, I got criticism on Vpyro. Probably from Claudio or someone else over that show.

[CrazHadder]

Well at least you had a first show, lol.  I cannot even show you my first show, I have never made one.

[RobertaME]

10 hours ago, CrazHadder said:

Well at least you had a first show, lol.  I cannot even show you my first show, I have never made one.

Okay, managed to find it in my terabytes of old data storage!

This was made in 2006. (I had to run it through a compression since the original file was 70mb)

Fantasy in the Sky (RCT3).mkv

I know it's very basic, but at the time I was very proud of it! (and I still am, to a degree!)

[wolfpaw]

9 hours ago, RobertaME said:

Okay, managed to find it in my terabytes of old data storage!

This was made in 2006. (I had to run it through a compression since the original file was 70mb)

Fantasy in the Sky (RCT3).mkv

I know it's very basic, but at the time I was very proud of it! (and I still am, to a degree!)

Those vanilla effects give me such nostalgia! Haven't seen them in awhile 

[Kablary]

On 8/13/2023 at 4:10 AM, RobertaME said:

Okay, managed to find it in my terabytes of old data storage!

This was made in 2006. (I had to run it through a compression since the original file was 70mb)

Fantasy in the Sky (RCT3).mkv

I know it's very basic, but at the time I was very proud of it! (and I still am, to a degree!)

Your effects syncing was dynamite! Every time those shells broke apart, they fell on a beat of the music, which is pretty heckin' sweet. I'd love to see what new shows you can produce with newfound access to TONS of new effects and that skill with the laser editor 

[RobertaME]

2 hours ago, Kablary said:

Your effects syncing was dynamite! Every time those shells broke apart, they fell on a beat of the music, which is pretty heckin' sweet.

::blush:: Thanks! It was hard learning how to sync things up since there were no tutorials on how to make good displays back then... so everyone just learned on their own. Getting the timing down was painstaking, but worth it in the end!

2 hours ago, Kablary said:

I'd love to see what new shows you can produce with newfound access to TONS of new effects and that skill with the laser editor 

I've only ever done one other show of any complexity, and that was my "When Can We Do This Again?" water show. I still plan to do a good recording of the show at some point and post it up. Other than that, I don't really have any plans to make more shows since that's not my primary interest in the game.

Mostly my interest is in coming up with new ways to solve the scenarios and making use of the hundreds of CSs/CFRs/CTRs I've downloaded over the years, now that I've learned how to edit OVLs and fix little issues I've had with them. (there's some really beautiful custom content out there that have horribly broken stats or are far too cheap and sort of make it feel like cheating) I think I'll leave the master-class shows to people like you and the others here that show true talent!

[Cody]

Beautiful! The set is unique and the pyro is definitely the star of the show with the effects working with the music so fluently. 

[Bookworm91]

So, when I made this show back in 2006/7 maybe 2008, I had no idea that other people made virtual firework shows in RCT3.  I was in high school, the internet was still a weird and unusual place for me, and I lived in Mississippi.  I felt like no one except one or two people understood my love for firework shows.  My family went to Disney World for Thanksgiving in 2006 and I saw Illuminations: Reflections of Earth for the first time and it was love at first sight.  My friend, who visited Disney often had the soundtrack for that, Wishes, and Fantasmic.  We would listen to them on the way too and from football games on the band bus.  I saw RCT3 Gold in the Walmart and I had to have it because I had only ever played the original game.  Eventually I discovered the mixmaster and I played around with the in-game music and learned how to synchronize the effects to the show.  I thought I was being original and clever.  Then I figured out through the ReadMe file that came with the game that I could put my own music into the game.  My friend loaned me her CDs and, with my dad’s help, put them on the computer.  That was when I started working on RoE in the game.  I didn’t know how to record and I took great care to avoid all the lag so that I could play the show straight through for my parents.  In 2009, after high school graduation we were getting ready for another trip to Disney as a graduation present for me.  I was looking up firework shows at Disney and I stumbled upon an RCT3 show called “Magic in the Sky Part I/II” which is still on YouTube.  I was stunned.  I was not alone.  I spent hours watching shows and eventually found the website vPyro (RIP) and found a community that truly understood me.

I say all that to set the stage for a show that was made by a boy who thought no one would ever watch his show except his parents.  I present my first attempt in the virtual pyrotechnic world, Illuminations: Reflections of Earth

 

[RobertaME]

4 hours ago, Bookworm91 said:

I present my first attempt in the virtual pyrotechnic world, Illuminations: Reflections of Earth

Fantastic, @Bookworm91! It reminds me of my own show, but dialed up to 11!

Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful piece of your past. I truly love it!

[wolfpaw]

I never realized how similar our "origin" stories were @Bookworm91! I too saw IllumiNations in person and was immediately hooked, amazing what a simple firework show can do. It still is to this day my favorite firework show ever created, it's just so good. I too saw RCT3 Gold but in a Gamestop and got it and played it on my family computer (I was like... very very young, haha) for only like an hour a day - that was all I was allowed to be on the computer back then. After a few years of not playing RCT3 because I lost the game, I re-bought it through Amazon when I was a freshman in high school and discovered vPyro. Just like bookworm, my first show had to be IllumiNations as it is the one that started it all for me. This was my first show created (granted I definitely had help through vPyro at the time so I already had access to effects and didn't use the vanilla ones)

That is the super short condensed story without going into much detail, just thought I'd share since I found it funny how similar it is to bookworm's! 

[Anon-P]

9 hours ago, wolfpaw said:

I never realized how similar our "origin" stories were @Bookworm91! I too saw IllumiNations in person and was immediately hooked, amazing what a simple firework show can do. It still is to this day my favorite firework show ever created, it's just so good. I too saw RCT3 Gold but in a Gamestop and got it and played it on my family computer (I was like... very very young, haha) for only like an hour a day - that was all I was allowed to be on the computer back then. After a few years of not playing RCT3 because I lost the game, I re-bought it through Amazon when I was a freshman in high school and discovered vPyro. Just like bookworm, my first show had to be IllumiNations as it is the one that started it all for me. This was my first show created (granted I definitely had help through vPyro at the time so I already had access to effects and didn't use the vanilla ones)

That is the super short condensed story without going into much detail, just thought I'd share since I found it funny how similar it is to bookworm's! 

If I'm not wrong, you tried to remake it at some point, right?

[wolfpaw]

17 hours ago, Anon-P said:

If I'm not wrong, you tried to remake it at some point, right?

I was going to but never got around to actually doing it apart from updating World Showcase lagoon and making a pyro pack for it. I may revisit it someday...

[Gin]

It's so cool to see how far we've all come to show-making.

From the quality of effects, to recording, to choreography, it all improved from night to day!