In search of relatively-obscure RCT3 fun facts for a YouTube video

[KelseySkybox]

Hi! I'm an aspiring YouTuber, and RCT3 is my favorite "tycoon"-genre video game. I am working on creating a video which will showcase some obscure facts, trivia, features, weird glitches, behind-the-scenes tidbits, etc. about/in RCT3. However, I am having trouble digging up old interviews/press/discussions about RCT3, due to decade-old "link rot", and even Wayback Machine isn't helping very much at the moment.

As such, I basically have two things that I am looking for:

1- Old web pages with info about RCT3's development, pre-release materials, glitches that were patched out, early reception and reviews... etc

2- Other assorted trivia about RCT3. Pretty much anything goes, as long it it's not super-duper-common knowledge, it's at least somewhat verifiable, and it stays "rated" G or PG.

If you provide me with any links and/or info, I will gladly credit you in the video, unless you would rather stay anonymous.

Also, keep in mind that my video editing skills are... kinda subpar. The video's info will am to be high-quality, but the visuals may not be. Just a heads up.

 

For reference, here are the fun facts I already have:

1- In this interview, RCT3 dev Ken Allen briefly mentions various scrapped features for the Soaked Expansion, including water pipes, deep/shallow areas of pools, and "beaches" (possibly referring to swimming in natural water?)

2- The "Guest Info" menu in Complete Edition is glitched; an icon and two useful buttons are visually missing, although the buttons DO still work if clicked on.

3- In the National Treasure scenario, four torches are floating above the default build-height limit. (This MAY also occur in some other scenarios?)

4- Items sold in shops (food, accessories, etc) can be renamed via the shop interface, and this new name will show in the Peeps' "carrying" menu.

5- If the helicopter which confiscates neglected animals is followed for long enough, it will dive towards the ground and suddenly vanish. Sometimes it even clips into the ground.

6- It is possible to easily "clone" custom Peeps made using the in-game Peep Editor, by using a lot of copy-pasting in a TXT file. There doesn't seem to be a limit on the maximum number... aside from the game crashing, of course.

7- The park entrance in the Castaway Getaway scenario can be deleted, which prevents any more Peeps from ever entering that save-file again.

8- Escaped animals do not play with toys that have fallen out of exhibits.

 

And here are some facts that need verification:

1- RCT3 definitely has a sun, but does it have a moon?

2- Can the Wild Expansion animals die of old age?

3- Is the blurry photo on the Park Inspector's jacket really of an RCT3 developer, or is it just a stock photo?

4- Do some of the food stalls, such as Fries, increase Peeps' need for drinks? This was definitely a rumor in RCT1 and RCT2, but I think I read somewhere that it's actually in RCT3?

 

Anyhow, I look forward to hearing from you! As for my YouTube channel, I'm not going to share the link here until I have confirmation if people are actually interested in my project.

[tasewis992]

Not sure if these are considered fun, but here are some tidbits I've found/observed:

• On the air powered coaster, a flat, unbanked to banked track piece counts as a drop on the test results.
• Of all of the campaign scenarios, A National Treasure is the only one that forbids tree removal. However, there are no pre-existing trees inside the park area or purchasable land, so the rule is a bit pointless unless the player decides to plant trees themselves. (The topiaries are not considered trees and can be removed normally.)
• Although the background and landscape of The Money Pit strongly suggest the park is in a desert, the climate of that scenario is set to temperate, so it occasionally rains in the scenario.
• All of the in-game water rides forbid children.
• The galleon animatronic from the base game comes with supports. If you place the animatronic above ground, you can see the metal tiles underneath. In Captain Blackheart's Cove, if you remove the water body, you can see the scenario designers placed blocks under the galleons to kill the supports, so the ships look like they are naturally floating on the water. The newer scenery items don't seem to have this problem. For instance, the outrigger from the paradise island theme doesn't come with any supports, so you can directly place it on the water without all the hassle.

I've also had a lot of fun abusing my park staff:

• Janitors don't seem to have an animation for falling. If you drop a janitor off a cliff, they strangely look like they are sprinting down the cliff.
• When an animal keeper drowns, her shovel will levitate above the water next to her.
• Janitors, security guards, entertainers and animal keepers seem to have the same animation for drowning, except the animation seems to play at a higher speed for janitors and animal keepers.
• Excluding the park inspector, the staff don't have special animations for swimming inside a pool complex; they just drown instead of swimming normally. (The game doesn't let you directly place the staff inside a pool, but you can make a roller coaster explode near them and knock them into the pool.) The staff, however, are capable of rescuing themselves and leaving the pool (provided the pool complex has a changing room.)

And lastly:

• The wooden benches in Vanilla Hills can fall apart. The strange thing is that I have never seen that happening in any other scenario, or to any other type of benches. I wonder if anyone has more information on how benches break in the game.

Good luck with your videos!

[RobertaME]

You already have a lot of the ones I would mention. Here are a few I didn't see:

- The original opening scene shown in the Coming Soon ads showed an attractor similar to RCT2. This was replaced in the release version to a slideshow.

- Baby animals inherit their parent's Social stat. (i.e. if you have a pregnant lioness with an 11 Social, all her babies will have an 11 too)

- All of the OVL files in the game can be edited to change an object's stats, except for Style\Vanilla\Style.common.ovl and Style\Vanilla\Style.unique.ovl that contain the original flat rides. These files are protected by a checksum and if they are altered in any way the game will refuse to launch. The expansion pack flat rides and all tracked rides and scenery lack any sort of checksum. It's unknown why Frontier locked only these two files to prevent editing them.

Hope that helps. :^)

[Traveller]

One resource you might want to check, is Prima's Official Game Guide for RollerCoaster® Tycoon 3™. One of the most curious aspects with this guide, are the four exclusive Download Bonus files, which were only available via Prima's website with the four codes in the book needed to download these files. I have no knowledge what these files were, other than they were created by RCT3's developers especially for Prima. All I know is these downloads included one roller coaster, one structure, one scenario and one fireworks display. (This guide's digital version is downloadable for free from Internet Archive's website.)

Other interesting features in the guide are the developer interviews and special info bits about making the game. I find the comments by David Braben (Founder and President of Frontier Developments) most interesting regarding what COULD have been in the game (...and this is where MY imagination starts to run wild!): 

 

"When developing a huge game like RCT3 it tends to be the small things that stand out in my memory. One of these was applying to the US ratings board (the ESRB). Sadly, in order to get an "Everyone" rating (this is important if the game is to be made widely available), we had to remove the graphic vomit (in addition to a few other things), from when a peep comes off an extreme coaster. This seemed such a silly requirement, and annoyed me an unreasonable amount! - There's still vomit in the game, but it's a bit more subtle than originally designed."

 

One curious fact from PRIMA's guide: The name of the "Park Inspector" is "Mr. Jobsworth"

And finally, here's the mathematical formula of how Park Rating is calculated in game:

((peeps * 150)/2000) [max 150]

+ ((happy_peeps * 600)/peeps) [max 500]

- ((departed peeps - 25) * 7)

+ ((total_ride_up_time/number_of_rides) * 2)

+ (total_ride_excitement * 10)/8 [max 100]

+ (total_ride_intensity * 10)/8 [max 100]

+ ((total_ride_excitement/number_of_rides) * 50/3.7)

+ ((total_ride_intensity/number_of_rides) * 50/5.2)

- (litter_older_than_4_min * 4) [max 600]

- (injured_peeps * 25) [penalty decays over time]

+ (30)[when VIPeep is satisfied - decays over time]

Edited June 6 by Traveller

[Traveller]

Here's a list of coaster types where children are not allowed in the game:

    Air Powered Vertical Coaster
    Flying Roller Coaster
    Laydown Coaster
    Stand-Up Twister Coaster

[DCMM99]

I do have a couple:

-You can remove the entrance/exit from a ride after it has been opened. Removing the exit behaves differently depending on the ride:

On tracked rides, guests are stuck and will never get off.

On flat rides, guests will just walk off the ride platform after riding.

If you delete a ride with no exit while guests are riding. The guests will be teleported to the map's origin (0,0)

You can make the smallest ride in RCT3 that guests can use with this method for the Crazy Golf.

-A really cheaty way to beat scenarios is to import designs from RCT1/2 since importing rides completely bypasses research.

-You can trap guests by using a lot of entertainers in a small area. Guests will get caught in a loop of watching them.

-In the scenario editor, you can offset the skybox by subtracting one edge of the map and add to the opposite side.

-You can get negative stats for the Aquarium by repeating the same piece over and over again.

All types of animal shows that use mixmaster can also get negative stats by making them too long.

-Dizzy Dropper has no friction.

-Like the older games, RCT3 has stat penalties for not making the minimum stat requirements, however RCT3 does not have any excessive G-force penalties.

-In the base game, hiring staff in sandbox mode will not make them fully trained.

-If you were to import a design from OpenRCT2 that uses the new color palette, the game will crash.