RCT Discussion / I Give Up

You know what? I consider myself a pretty patient person, so I thought i'd get myself to take a good look at each QFTBX entry and give some comments on what I thought. So I take the time to download them all, which took long enough, nevermind what it must be like for non-broadband people. RCT2 filesizes are ridiculous. This is why NE's bandwidth is such a problem.

OK, so now we get to the real hard bit. Loading each park. It seems that everyone feels some stupid fucking need to put minor pieces of custom scenery in their parks, the use of which is often inconsequential. WHY?! Basically, if there is custom scenery in the park that I don't have, I have to load the park twice. That's 10 minutes of sitting here loading, with an error trapper in the middle. Now, normally if I start the game by loading the park, I don't get an error trapper - it's only loading a park from in-game. Or so I thought. Actually, now I get an error trapper even when loading from out of game. It's so fucking stupid. Here is the sequence:

1. Double click on park
2. Loading
3. Checking Object Files
4. Loading
5. Loading (again)
6. Checking Object Files
7. Error Trapper.

This takes at least 5 minutes. And I have to repeat it each time I want to see a park with custom scenery that I don't have.

Now I got through 3/4 of all the QFTBX parks over the last 3 days, but now i've had about enough. Seriously, people, is it that hard to do without that one fucking statue? Is it such a problem missing off one custom-dustbin?!

So, I give up. I thought I could be helpful and give people the feedback they deserve, but I can't. Add to that the fact that the voting/feedback threads have been (inexplicably, it seems) closed, I really can't be bothered with it. Especially when I find that a lot of rct2 players just can't be arsed with LL parks (even though it's infinitely easier to load/manage than rct2). I felt sorry for Prince in the PT because his park was basically ignored compared to the others.

Basically, i'm seriously pissed off and would like to apologise for not giving feedback on the rapids and hypers. I'm sure they're all very nice.

I'm sure we all understand where you are coming from mantis. I'm afraid there really is no way around the error trapper, but here is what I do: (It takes about 5 minutes off the loading time)

Once you look at a park w/ imported scenery, close RCT completely. Then reload and load another saved game. You will never get an error trapper this way. (Plus loading RCT after an error trapper takes 5Xs longer then loading it w/o the error trapper)

So yes, it gets annoying, thats why I really think we need a bench for this contest. Sure it takes a little of the possibilities away, but then we can upload the files w/o having to import the scenery, lowering the size of the file. Just a thought.

(And I would post comments on the RCT parks, but I don't own LL anymore. I really wish I could see them tho, because the screens of recent LL parks I've seen look great)

Once you look at a park w/ imported scenery, close RCT completely.  Then reload and load another saved game.  You will never get an error trapper this way. (Plus loading RCT after an error trapper takes 5Xs longer then loading it w/o the error trapper)

That's what i've been trying to do, but it's started to check the scenery twice, so I don't get an error trapper the first time through (as expected) but then it decides to check again and gets an error trapper the second time through. I just don't see why people include new scenery when half the time it's not even used!

But imagine how it feels to those that have to load the park every day until its completion. They may not have to go through the scenery exporting but they have to sit long enough each day to outrageously override the time it takes for you to just load the park to view once.

I try to do different things now with parks, i send the simple workbench out to certain people to see if they receive an error trapper. If they do i find which object it is and get rid of it. Certain objects cause that error trapper, and it seems some people dont know how to check the objects they make and that truely lies on the fault of the creators not checking their objects before release.

One reason the saved games amount to such large file sized is because people include the custom rides. Each ride exported is probably an average 1-1.5mb in its own. Some more than that. But you cant blame someone for picking scenery in the editor and not using it in game because peoples ideas change as they build, or simply, their ideas dont work. Things change, and RCT2 doesnt allow for someone to just pick something else among all of the things, what they set out with is what they have to deal with, unless you convert to a scenario, import to DImport, go through every single piece to find the scenery to replace, search through the objdata folder for the piece used to replace, save it, load the game again, and load the new scenario.

Basically, the park is much more of a hassle for the creator than it is for the viewer.

Well all I can say to that is thank god I don't play the game.

It really seems like RCT2 discourages you in all ways, but is it really that hard to spend 5 minutes opening a park to show some appreciation for the strenuous time that creators go through to produce something?

I spent 3 hours on thursday, 3 hours yesterday and another hour today. That isn't 5 minutes, i'm afraid. And I could say the same, but more accurately, about people not looking at LL parks.

There's me thinking I was doing as much as I could. Obviously i'm not showing enough appreciation for RCT. Sorry.

I've only been able to open one. The rest have given me error trappers everytime.

I understand. I try to use the custom scenery I make and try not to add too much extra stuff other than my own. RCT2 was terribly written and is very bug ridden. Fortunately for me, my computer and hard drive are fast and load times stay minimal, but I know that on the other computer I use, I would have given up on RCT2 long ago. I am disappointed the threads got closed. There was no reason voting couldn't have stayed open longer and given more chance for feedback. A lot of these entries took a lot of effort and the parkmakers deserve the chance to get more feedback. I was working on something for my favourite entries, but now there seems to be nowhere to post the comments.

Even more frustrating is the pain having entries sent in without the scenery box checked and having to try to hunt everything down if you want to even see the parks and having a spotlight that many can't even look at. I spent most of the evening last night tracking down scenery just to look at Phantasia and Diego's QFTBX entry.

I'm sorry this put you over the edge Mantis, but I do understand your frustration and appreciate your effort.

I feel your pain. Toon, as for why Phantasia wasn't easy to open, if you first open the "bogus game" of Phantasia, then you will have ALL of the SCENERY items. From there, all you need to do is hunt down the rides. They can ALL be found at RCT Bonanza. Anyway, back on topic. Yes, load times are a pain for this game....even with my pentium4 3.2Ghz processor and 1GB of RAM, I am still stunned at how long it takes to load things......imagine what a nightmare RCT3 is going to be for load times....yikes!

P.S. I would love to give feedback on RCT LL parks....but I seem to be unable to run that game on XP. Any suggestions, as I would love to see what peeps are doing with it.

mantis, you have created, what is quite possibly, the greatest topic ever. I completely agree with you.

I almost thought mantis was quitting LL.

Anyway, I've never had any problems loading RCT2 (if anything it takes less than a minute when loading, even while checking for the objects). Besides, you'd think with all the other parks you've downloaded in the past you'd think you would have almost every object created, lol.

Good luck with this though, its still a pain in the ass even if it takes 30 seconds.

Same thing happens to me. This is why RCTLL > RCT2

I wish people would stop using custom scenery all together.

RCT2 is much more of a hassle than RCTLL with all the cusom scenery and everything. I wouldn't have the patience to do all of that shit to look at RCT2 parks, and that's why I stick to LL. That and I just don't like RCT2.

It's not so much the quantity of all the scenery, but the shitty quality of most of it.
You would think it would be fairly easy to tell if it was quality or not, but apparently it's near impossible.
I really wouldn't mind having the errors if the scenery was quality and something I could use
Generally speaking, it is mostly half-assed and/or utterly worthless.
It sucks to have to go through and prune all of the useless crap, only to have it redownloaded within a week.

Halt the bad stuff!!!

Pishaw, that's why I don't even play the damn game.

Anything you can do in RCT2 can be done in LL, but with more detail, and more creatively.

This has nothing to do with that.
LL versus RCT2 is a boring topic.

Forgive me for allowing this topic to emulate real discussion and flow naturally

People arguing over which game is better is real discussion?

theres a simple solution to this big problem. do what you (iris) did with the pro tour contest, just make everyone use a workbench. with a workbench:

1) all the builders have the same scenery, thus no one can say "oh that guy had better custom scenery than i did"
2) we dont have to sit through all the loading/checking objects crap
3) have 1 park with the import data box checked and then all the rest with it unchecked making the files MUCH smaller making less bandwith on the site.

quite simple