Park / Zodiac Thrills
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28-February 06
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Thanks for all the comments so far! I can say more later, but for now...
Kumba: You're right about the boat names. I missed an opportunity there. We can all learn something from Kumba!
Six Frags: I'm glad you liked Ristorante Libra since I designed it 3 and a half years ago. You may notice that the dome is lifted brick-for-brick from the state capitol in Wisconsin.
tyandor: Good call on the Schwarzkopf. I actually modeled Scorpio after the Whizzer at SFGAm, though mine's probably twice as long.
WME: I'm a Gemini too! I just thought that with 12 rides and 12 themes I didn't really have room for duelers. Besides, aren't there already real-life duelers named Gemini?
I noticed
SF
Blow me.
I'd also like to add that I'm slightly unhappy that this park is so low, but I appreciate that not everyone will love it.
I'm really sorry for the person who's going to get "grinched". I'm wondering who it could be...
looks great, cbass. more detailed review later.
Alright, I've spent the last 20 minutes looking at the park and I would've taken more if I didn't have anything else pressing to do. All four coasters were SWEET though... That shuttle is sick and while the schwarzy was a little over long it still has reasonible pacing and a lot of smart choices made on the layout. Those preaching that this doesn't look like something cBass would be are right, it's far too natural for that. Everything, all the creativity and all the details come off as effortless which lends this park a refinement over the ghish's previous work. The use of invisible path here is brilliant beyond belief because it's used so effortlessly on little things like bridges. The rapids ride was easily one of the best I've ever seen. Just some of the touches with it were pure genius.
Man I'll have to comment on this one again after I take enough time to fully examine it. Amazing...
ride6
Edited by ride6, 01 March 2006 - 02:59 PM.
Congrats on this cBass. I really loved everything. I have no complaints nor suggestions on where you could improve. You're really are playing this game by your own terms and it's all going into your favor. Excellent park, dude.
So many things here, I think I may bring back that "little things" thread after I spend the hours and hours more of looking at this park that I know I will. Architecture, path layouts, ideas, rides, atmosphere...this park has everything, and as I said before none of the other parks even come close to it. Its your best work to date, although I'm afraid that many won't realize it because it doesn't have one of your "out there" concepts like your other work.
Anyways...not at all my friend. See, I never said you were bad. In fact, I think your PT2 screen was better than 3/4 of the others. I was just making a generalization that you would've been placed lower than cBass. I thought at first you would get around 9th place. Then the results went up and I had you at 6th. But I never expected cBass to place any lower than 3rd.
Also, I gave you a compliment in that post. I said that I think you'll place in the top 5. But oh well. No one here ever listens.
Edited by laz0rz, 01 March 2006 - 04:40 PM.
It's a good entry from one of my favorite parkmakers. I hate that my score was the lowest of the judges, but what's done is done.
I will say this over and over. Judging these contests is very difficult. The parks can be so different that it's nearly impossible to decide which is better at times and when you combine time restraints on judging and the sensory overload that comes from looking at 14 parks in a row there are bound to be decisions that one regrets down the road.
I don't however think it's appropriate to criticize the judges at this point in time. Sure you think this is the best park you've seen to date, and obviously from my ranking, I do too. When you average out all the judges, as a group they did too. You haven't seen the rest of the entries so how can you say that the judges got it wrong. Just because you love it doesn't mean everyone will judge parks by the same criteria as you do. For instance, I personally don't care how 'realistic' a coaster necessarily is, but that is obviously an important criteria to you. You're a great parkmaker, but your way of viewing and building parks isn't the only way nor necessarily the best way. There's no right or wrong here...just opinions.
This park was so fun to look at, you have such an amazing capacity to make your creative ideas a reality, and make them work -- that is the BEST quality a parkmaker can have in my opinion. Like others have mentioned the woodie and flyer were especially impressive. Btw, the support structure for the turns on the back of the woodie was brilliant and perfectly symmetrical, I loved it. I really can't say enough great things about this park, the only minor flaw I noticed was the foliage was bland in some spots.
But yeah, um, wow. I can't wait to see the other entries.
On to more sobering matters.
cBass. My thoughts on the park are a little scattered, so bear with me
I know you've been away from RCT for awhile, but its releases like this that just remind me how good you are at this game. While I found the park slightly overwhelming, it was quality on almost all levels of parkmaking in my book. When I say overwhelming, I mean there was almost too much substance for me to absorb in such a small space. If this thing was expanded into a full-scale solo, it would probably be lengendary, because the ideas are so refined and theme-able.
The way you use what is provided to you is just mind-blowing. This park breaks what I consider "rules" of parkmaking these days, but does it in a way that is acceptible to accomplish the desired theme. For instance, the Libre Ristorante. I don't think anyone would ever even try to mesh that much Roman scenery together to construct a building like that. But it works, and it works well. Other examples would be the bullseye / arrow and the signs surrounding the park. It all just gives me that same feeling of unique creativity I got when I looked at Wisconsin; its a wonderful feeling, i must say.
I didn't really find any of the coasters or rides overly exciting. I can say, however, that they served their specific purpose and did come off with that ultra-realistic touch that added leaps and bounds to the park. The only exception is the woodie, which I loved as a ride itself and consider one of the more unique wooden roller coasters I've seen in awhile. Same goes with a lot of the architecture. Most of the buildings are not complex at all, in fact some very basic and boxy, but they are consistant and
do what they need to do: cater to park-goers. I guess what I'm getting at here is the park had tremendous flow that directly related to its uber-soothing atmosphere. Not something easy to pull off in the game these days.
I'm sure I'll have more thoughts on the park later, but I'll leave at this for now.
The Zodiac symbols around the park was a really cool touch as well. The only complaint I have was that a few buildings and some of the foilage wasn't working for me, but that's just in my opinion.
Overall, it was a brilliant park to say the least. I can't imagine what the other 6 entries are to beat the fantastic quality of this park.
~Jazz~
Edited by Jazz, 01 March 2006 - 06:36 PM.
Jkay, I don't mean to be disrespectful, and I tried my best to make my post more about this park than the others. This contest isn't to see who gets first place, but what park does, so when I say that this park was better than your's, please don't take it personally.
No offense taken. I'm just saying thst you brought my name up... I guess I was in a rather poor mood earlier, sometimes I wonder why I said things like that because really that's not how I am.
Thanks for the comment.
ride6
ps- I love Foamy! Long live Illwillpress!
Edited by ride6, 01 March 2006 - 09:22 PM.
cbass - I spent another 15 minutes or so looking. I keep finding more depth in this...
Corkscrewed Offline
Dang it! I KNEW I shouldn't have made fun of the Rockets!!
I guess the reason I made this park was because I'm known for crazy, over-the-top parks and I wanted to thwart people's expectations a bit and actually make a theme park. However, I didn't want to just copy someone else's style so I had come up with a few ways to make it original, and I think I've done that. Of course, I'll always be cBass and I can't help myself sometimes so I compromised and added the border of symbols around the park edge. In hindsight the zodiac theme set me up for certain problems since 12 different themes are hard to fit on a contest bench, no matter how big I lobbied Iris to make it.
I really appreciate the comments on the coasters, since that's really where I put in the most work, and it was all done before the bench was even released. I knew that coasters had been a weak point for me so I did a lot of homework. But instead of studying classic RCT coasters I studied real ones, and maybe that's why they're sort of hit/miss. The woody was the first design, over a year old by now. I experimented with triangular layouts for days before settling on the one that became Taurus.
For a while I was working on a suspended coaster because I knew I wanted an Arrow coaster for Sagittarius (the archer, get it?). I realized I wouldn't really have enough room for that, so the Arrow became a shuttle instead. Imagine my surprise when I realized one of my test layouts actually looked kind of like an archer's bow. So I went with it, and added the chairlift track for effect.
I love mini coasters so I knew I wanted one of those in the park. The Schwarzkopf reminded me of the first coaster I ever rode as a kid, so I decided on one of those as an homage. That design I got in about 4 or 5 tries.
Of course I had to include a big steel coaster, but I didn't want to make a B&M. Everyone makes a beemer. I figured the Vekoma flyer fit the ram theme pretty well, charging head first across the mountain. Plus most real Flying Dutchman layouts are pretty compact, and that suited my needs here. I tinkered with that layout the whole time I was working on the park. That is, until I realized I could no longer stop the ride because the intesity rating would be too high if I had to test it again. And that was way before I started theming it. Just another way I tend to make things difficult for myself just for the fun of it.
As much planning as I did, some of the best ideas in the park were things I didn't think of until I was actually making it. The two best examples are the crab and the scales. The former I had just planned on being a lightly themed twister in the middle of the woody. My original idea for Libra was a top spin, which also kind of tilts back and forth. Those two flats ended up being some of the best theming in my park, and it was all done on the fly.
I had a lot of fun with the landscaping, especially the water elements. I could make a whole park that's nothing but flowing water (hmmmm....
By the way, Phatage, you're absolutely right about the carousel orientation. When I made those I was envisioning them being kind of on a precipice overlooking the river going past below. Of course it didn't really work out that way, and it turns out they would have looked much better facing the entrance plaza.
The major regret I have when I look at the park now is that I didn't leave myself enough time to do justice to the architecture and path theming in the Aries section (other than the sign). It was the last thing I worked on and at that point I was really scraping to finish up. I basically phoned it in.
So anyway, thanks for checking out the park, thanks for replying if you did, and thanks for reading my little book here.