It's been a minute. Building a dark ride brought all of my pent up Frontier rage to the surface. This game is more broke than even I realized. But I'm sure I'll get over it, especially now that I get to do all my building outdoors for awhile.

This reminds me of the unbuilt WDW Western River Expedition as well as Knott's Timber Mountain Mine Ride...very well done! I also really like the facade...the mix of building styles really sets it off and masks a large building very well.

Edited Friday at 07:31 PM1 day by Wabigbear
spelling

Great job! This is your best work to date, at least of what I've seen. I liked the kids trapped in the cage in the beginning. And I noticed the Bird Cage Theater from Knott's.

So what things did you find broken in the game, as I've avoided building any dark rides yet and don't want to waste my time if it's a nightmare getting things to work the way they should. Not that I expect much to get fixed in the future.

38 minutes ago, Wabigbear said:

This reminds me of the unbuilt WDW Western River Expedition as well as Knott's Timber Mountain Mine Ride...very well done!

I've researched both of those for separate attractions, wasn't trying to emulate Knotts with this one but I'll definitely take that comparison! Thanks Wagi!

7 minutes ago, shyguy said:

So what things did you find broken in the game, as I've avoided building any dark rides yet and don't want to waste my time if it's a nightmare getting things to work the way they should. Not that I expect much to get fixed in the future.

I mentioned the special effects issues in the video, we're also missing a few effects both visual and sound from PC1. This ride is a 3 story building (it is in real life too, both locations I think) and I had to build the track and building first and then try to theme from the inside. My lower level was underground and everytime you click the scaling button (amongst other times) the game kicks you backward about 20 feet, which in this case would kick me outside into the park and I'd have to navigate my way back in. Camera collisions are ridiculous; if all other collisions are turned off nothing should stop or slow down the camera but that's not how Frontier rolls. And of course the ginormous (and very lazy) hitboxes they put around everything made it impossible to ever select the piece I wanted. Several times I would click something and the game would select an aquatic rock clear across the park. The coaster I originally wanted to use inexplicably had a light on it which couldn't be turned off or color changed. There is no lighting in the rooms with the two lifthills in this ride; that is all light bleeding through the nearby walls despite how they used raytracing as a selling point for this disaster. As I griped at BN, natural water glows in the dark so I ended up using pools for both the bridge scene (always my intention) and the flooded mine (not at all my intention.) There's probably much more; the initial build on this was close to 3 weeks and then I spent another 3-4 weeks just putzing with it and waiting for Frontier to release their DLC (which was completely worthless) and a QOL update that broke ALL of the lighting that they fortunately fixed a week later, although I still had to manually reset all the lights associated with this ride. I still think that the lighting overall is vastly inferior to what we had before in both games. Combine all of that with the shitty UI that they haven't done one thing to improve since release, and I have been a very grumpy old man for the past few weeks. 😄

That was probably more than you asked for but I think I needed to vent and it was safer to do here than BN, and I know you have been much more realistic about the state of the game. As for the dark rides of yours I remember from Expo3k, I don't recall a lot of water/mist/dust/smoke or the like and there are many other effects that do work in the dark. Also the sci-fi set does seem to be one of the least botched and most complete that they've brought over, possibly because it didn't have as many textures for them to destroy. I did have some issues with the resolution quality of my dark scenes for the video but I think that's a separate issue from Frontier and most likely a "me" problem. I do think you will be able to build a decent first draft at the very least of any dark ride you want to build, which you might as well do just to get an idea of the space you'll need to earmark. And in the meantime who knows what Frontier will do along the way to fix or possibly break something else but I suppose overall they seem to have moved in the right direction, it's just taking way too long to do it. Speaking of which, all of those issues I experienced mean you should probably plan on a dark ride build taking longer than you think it will.

For anybody else reading this who hasn't been playing the game, you really can eventually get good results that look way better than what we could get in PC1. It just takes awhile to get them.

33 minutes ago, shyguy said:

Great job! This is your best work to date, at least of what I've seen. I liked the kids trapped in the cage in the beginning. And I noticed the Bird Cage Theater from Knott's.

Almost forgot to respond to this part of your comment -- Thank you! High praise as I know that over the years you have seen a lot of my crap (and some of my PC1 stuff didn't completely suck, I think.) Those poor kids went in there for a photo op and couldn't figure out how to get out again, even though the door is clearly wide open. I tried to make it look like they were dancing to the disco music but they probably just really need to find a bathroom.

I really enjoyed the ride! The upbeat western music sets the mood for a lighthearted, not-too-serious adventure, like some of the soundtrack from the 1973 movie "Westworld". (Tagline: Where nothing can possibly go worng.) (sic) Your dark ride is just like Pirates of the Caribbean! Except we've got western badguys instead of pirates... and they have six-shooters instead of flintlocks... and it takes place in the Old West instead of the Caribbean........ OK, it's not like Pirates of the Caribbean at all, BUT IT'S EXCITING AND FUN! I liked the combo of dark ride and roller coaster. I would've liked to move through the dark ride portions a little slower so we could see things better. But maybe slowing it down would spoil the lighthearted tempo of the ride? Nice job!

1 hour ago, JB said:

I really enjoyed the ride! The upbeat western music sets the mood for a lighthearted, not-too-serious adventure, like some of the soundtrack from the 1973 movie "Westworld". (Tagline: Where nothing can possibly go worng.) (sic) Your dark ride is just like Pirates of the Caribbean! Except we've got western badguys instead of pirates... and they have six-shooters instead of flintlocks... and it takes place in the Old West instead of the Caribbean........ OK, it's not like Pirates of the Caribbean at all, BUT IT'S EXCITING AND FUN! I liked the combo of dark ride and roller coaster. I would've liked to move through the dark ride portions a little slower so we could see things better. But maybe slowing it down would spoil the lighthearted tempo of the ride? Nice job!

Haha, thank you - was the original Westworld a comedy? I need to go digging for that now. I agree that the pacing (which I liked) did mean missing out on some details. I tried to compensate by steering the camera to the important stuff but even then the signs went by too fast. (I just checked and they are almost all legible by pausing, but I guess that's not an option actual park guests would have.) The ride does speed up after the trainwreck for that quick curve to help distract you before the oncoming "train." The signs on that curve are barely legible, but similar to the first version there are arrows pointing to Pigeon Forge and Branson, where the main inspirations are, and then I threw in "Albuquerque" as a Bugs Benny reference, for the hell of it. Seemed appropriate next to a fake train tunnel on the wall. 😉

Edited yesterday at 03:11 AM1 day by JPTV

No, Westworld was not a comedy. It may start out light-hearted, but turns dark very quickly with the theme park animatronics attacking the guests (that does sound like a comedy, doesn't it). I thoroughly recommend it, as dated as it is.

So thanks for the long rant, er, explanation of the problems you had. It sounds like nothing I haven't already encountered, so I actually feel more confident to press forward. I had heard some people having issues with all the triggers they spend hours setting up, getting jumbled up and nothing working correctly. But I agree you can do some really great things with the game, as long as you're prepared to be a masochist and put up with the ordeal of creating anything remotely complex. Frontier is a company with some great artists and animators, but they absolutely suck at game design. The bugs that are still in the game, and there are still so many, are not there because the devs just haven't gotten to fixing them yet, but because the devs are incompetent and simply don't know how to fix them. At least that's my belief, anyway.

And don't expect "that" big dark ride coming any time soon from me. I have so much I need to do first before I get to it, and I haven't decided whether it is going to be a recreation, or something different with a completely new story line. Maybe I'll do a recreation of the original RCT3 version. 🤪 Check it out on my Youtube channel if you want a laugh and see my very first, absolutely horrible, attempt at an indoor roller coaster.

Edited yesterday at 07:08 AM1 day by shyguy

7 hours ago, shyguy said:

And don't expect "that" big dark ride coming any time soon from me. I have so much I need to do first before I get to it, and I haven't decided whether it is going to be a recreation, or something different with a completely new story line. Maybe I'll do a recreation of the original RCT3 version. 🤪 Check it out on my Youtube channel if you want a laugh and see my very first, absolutely horrible, attempt at an indoor roller coaster.

Are you talking about Space Port or War of the Worlds? I just watched them both and the rides themselves are quite well done for RCT3. I will say that seeing those graphics and remembering what it took to build that stuff with the limitations of that game does make me a little less bitter about the current state of PC2.

1 hour ago, JPTV said:

Are you talking about Space Port or War of the Worlds? I just watched them both and the rides themselves are quite well done for RCT3.

Space Port.

Did you watch the Original version? (not the updated version)

11 minutes ago, shyguy said:

Space Port.

Did you watch the Original version? (not the updated version)

Yeah, original. It was the first video on the channel. Now that I know about the update I'll go watch that too.

It's cool you've still got your YT content back to RCT3, somehow I ended up with 2 YT accounts and lost track of the one that had my RCT3 stuff. Perhaps that is for the better.

1 hour ago, JPTV said:

Yeah, original. It was the first video on the channel.

Well then, you've convinced me. I'm recreating the original! 😉

1 hour ago, JPTV said:

It's cool you've still got your YT content back to RCT3, somehow I ended up with 2 YT accounts and lost track of the one that had my RCT3 stuff. Perhaps that is for the better.

I have/had 4 YT accounts. I recently pulled all the content off the others and added them to my current one.

Really nice ride. Lots of detail and fun. Would love this ride in real life.

Thanks Wowman!