Hello! I doubt anyone will know me... but I know most of the people likely to end up here. I've been a long-time lurker on many RCT related sites for almost 20 years. I very rarely have reason to post anything, usually because by the time I see something I actually could comment on, someone else has already said what I would say!

A little about me... I've played RCT games since the original game. Not that unusual, but I'd been playing computer games since the 80s on a C-128... and even wrote a few in 8502 machine language. That got me into coding at an early age... which led to a strong grasp of mathematics... which led to a career in Statistical Data Analysis before becoming a full time Mom to my two boys... the job I loved more than any other. When RCT came out, being a total Disney Parks nut, I promptly dug into the code and swapped the in-game music for my own mix of Disney park soundtracks. I did the same when RCT2 came out... replacing the default music tracks with customized mixes of the same length. (to this day I can't hear the instrumental version of Summer Magic without seeing the RCT2 opening menu in my head) When RCT3 came out with the ability to add custom music built-in, I was in heaven.

Over the years I've lurked on just about every RCT site there was... rctycoon at fortunecity... rctgrotto... and many others that are long gone. Unfortunately, time is the most limited commodity we have, and raising my boys kept me too busy to really get into RCT3 as much as I would have liked. I could find an hour or so to look for new downloads every once in a while, but my fond dreams of making my own CS had to take a back seat to orchestra recitals, science fairs, ROTC Drill Meets, etc.

With my boys now grown and going their own ways, I finally have the time to make the things I always wanted but nobody else made, so I started looking up all the knowledge gained on the crafting of Custom Content through the decades, only to find much of it lost to time; Shyguy's World was the last serious repository of CS how-to's. Barely a month after resuming my quest for this lost knowledge though, came the word that it too was going away.

I literally cried.

Learning that this will soon be the repository of all that lore has raised my hopes that I may yet still learn the things I need to do the things I want to do. :^)

I'm a decent coder, even though my skills are rusty and severely out of date. Still, it allows me to change things I want to fix in things... CFRs that have no price and almost cheat-level stats now have costs and appropriate stats in my RCT3 Platinum install. I've even made my own pseudo-CTR of Radiator Springs Racers using in-game tracks, downloaded CTR cars, and road scenery pieces. (screenshot attached) I still have a ton left to learn though, and 3D modeling is beyond a joke for me. (I'm no artist)

Hope to be seeing more of you all in the coming months!

Welcome!

Welcome to ParkCrafters! Really cool backstory, I still have a lot of PDFs and instructions on how to create and import your own custom scenery into RCT3 and plan on adding all of that info to this site very soon. I've already added the tools needed to do this over at the downloads section here.

Hope you get more time to do the things you want to do and I'm excited to see what you can come up with!

54 minutes ago, Knight Rider said:

Welcome!

Thanks Knight! I've seen a lot of your stuff! Very cool!

2 minutes ago, wolfpaw said:

Welcome to ParkCrafters! Really cool backstory, I still have a lot of PDFs and instructions on how to create and import your own custom scenery into RCT3 and plan on adding all of that info to this site very soon. I've already added the tools needed to do this over at the downloads section here.

Hope you get more time to do the things you want to do and I'm excited to see what you can come up with!

I have all the PDF tutorials for making CTRs from Markus Lomberg (both in English and Deutsch) as well as the Flat Rides tutorial by Belgabor. Where I get tripped up is the lack of info on WagenDaten, SchienenDaten, and CFR_Daten usage for the CTR Creator 1.0; the example TXT files are okay, but a lot of the meaning of variables isn't explained well, so I've had to learn a lot by trial and error. There's still a lot of things that I don't know how to use... and making my own 3D models is HILARIOUSLY bad! (I tried to make a model of the Monsanto House of the Future once in Blender... it wasn't pretty! :^Þ )

I have the Importer v18b2 down pretty good. The roads you see in my RSR ride above is a repackage of Maddox61's Road Set with the modxml data re-positioned up about 10 cm to hide the track for the cars using the Importer. That was pretty simple, though. Flat Rides are still WAY beyond my skill set. Best I can manage is hand-hacking OVL files in a hex editor to make adjustments to existing CFRs to suit my needs. I still can't find a lot of important data sets though. (such as where in a CFR's OVL file is the byte that controls what ride category a CFR belongs in) Once I get more of this down though, I plan on sharing my insights here so others can learn from my efforts.

I mostly enjoy making these custom things for my own parks. Since a lot of it is reverse-engineering other people's work (since I can't 3D model) I can't share any of my final products... but I can share the processes I use, so there's that at least. ;^)

I DO have a pretty fair hand at making pyro displays... mostly to Disney music. I did one last year to Owl City's "When Can We Do This Again" from the Paint the Night Parade soundtrack that worked out pretty good... fireworks, lasers, and water jets all synced up to a shortened version of the song. (the demo shots below are just against a generic backdrop... not much scenery added, just a sandbox to sync up the effects to the music... I don't think much of my artistic touch... but I love doing the detail work like this)

 

Thanks much for the welcome! I'll poke around when I can to see all that's here so far. (with much more to come, I'm sure!)

I'm mostly into the pyro side of RCT3 so I can definitely show you some stuff! I'll get the tutorials I have uploaded pretty soon along with all the pyro packs I have from back then, maybe we can see a new show from you! Keep an eye on the downloads section and the RCT3 tutorials section for some new content soon!