Park / Thunder Rock
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19-September 22
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Not gonna lie, I didn't know Thunder Rock was a scenario until after the park was done so I was just freestyling random stuff during limited availability and creating more work for Zara. In a way I think it worked because it gave the park a unique feel, but that's a credit to the concept and Zara's effort keeping this together to the finish line. He and AJ bring top tier vibes so it was chill
I wanted to give some explanation for our park, since a lot of people seem to be confused by many of the choices I made. I kind of knew that would happen and I seriously considered including a decent-length readme to explain, but I felt like it was more fun to have people's first impression be the work itself, without being told how to understand it. Still, now that everyone has had a chance to view it, I figure I might as well share my thoughts.
So this is a scenario remake. This park is heavily inspired by scenario play-throughs I did when I was younger that were full of lots of coasters all entwined together- the sort of thing I was building in 2005 hehehe. Several people have mentioned the parks similarity to the work of Evil WME. Although I am vaguely aware of work, this was not really intentional. I just figured that density was a thing I would do when trying to beat scenarios, and I wanted that high energy feeling. Still I did try to capture something of what I understand to be classic NE: old objects, keeping it clean, not zero clearancing too much.
The other concept of the park, I'm not sure if much of anyone got, which is that I set it in the Western United States. All the foliage and rockwork is heavily inspired by stuff you'd find in California, Nevada, and Arizona. This is not meant to be a part of a larger park, this is a giant rock in the desert with coasters on it and nothing else for miles. The horses and monster trucks are transport rides- that's why they aren't themed. Springs in the rock make the are (relatively) lush, compared to the surrounding desert. The transition of foliage from pine forest to cacti is very typical of the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains near where I live (except I had to use Saguaro Cactus because that's the object that RCT has). The heavy use of wildflowers is also typical of the area. This idea extends into the archi as well. The asian area is there because of the heavy influence of Asia in the western US. Also, because walto just built it and then I had to make it make sense in my head later.
Which brings me to my attitude with this park- I really wanted to capture the laid-back theme of this contest. I intentionally didn't polish certain things. I didn't bother with an opening message, I didn't hide the mini golf teleport rack with black tiles, etc., because I just didn't really want to give a fuck about those things. they're tiring and they add very little imo. I'll do it for a really high effort park (like a major solo, or an actual h2h park), but I think it's kinda more fun to just... not. Builders shouldn't have to hit a checklist. Also why some of the rides have silly names- I just don't really care what the scramblers are named- that's not the point- the point is it looks cool, so why not name it "Cliffhanger (too cliche)". It hangs over the cliff, but also cliffhanger is just a really cliche name. So a lot of this park was winking at all the bullshit of naming rides and polishing out whatever, so I really wanted to just question that a little, in the most fun way I could. I probably could have timed the ferris wheels, but again... who cares? Besides the opposing builder, I mean. Even if they were synced, then the one in the water would be stopping, which doesn't make a ton of sense because it's not like the water periodically stops moving.
I really loved building this park. Thanks to my fellow builders and team for the support. AJ did a ton of stuff all over the park, especially around Bat Cave (his baby), plus a lot of the mine train layout and wild mouse, tons of archi, idk a lot of stuff. walto came in late and mostly did the archi at the front of the park, which was a huge help to get it over the finish line. I feel like with this park and Highlands I finally started to feel comfortable with CSO. I told Steve after last h2h I was giving up hacking, and I think he thought I was joking, but it's been nice to focus more on aesthetics and shit. Anyway, I hope this park brought a little bit more joy to the world. I'll shut up now.
With the livestream postponed and I probably not being able to attend let me share some of the things I was planning on telling in the livestream about this park.
The idea for this park was first suggested by Microwave. The idea was to have some kind of worship for the Crooked House as it is used so often. During the construction of Riff Valley I build a little bit on this park. Mostly trying to create some kind of castle. We originally went for some kind of castle in the center which would protect the crooked house and around it stuff would be there. There was no really defined idea yet and I was planning on mostly just doing the castle and not much more. Riff Valley took more time then originally planned so I wasn't able to build more on this park. I hoped that Microwave would build more but his time was limited too. So by the time Riff valley was done we had the basics of the castle in the center and a bit of the favella. The water ride was there but not really defined. Somewhere just before Riff Valley was done I build the custom flatride just to get to grips with it a bit again and see what else has changed in Open. For me this park felt mostly as a fun project to try out some things at that point. We took the bottom three picks of the team and made something with them. I mostly saw this as a nice way to build with some other people and try out some things to close off the season. We had planned some other awesome team ups to close the season strong as a team so this could be a slack off park.
But then more and more things happened with the availability of people. Morganfan build a bit on Crooked house too and then didn't have time for a while. Luckly some things in my situation changed so I had more time and I decided I wanted to see this park done so I would have more than 1 contribution in this contest. Especially after losing with one vote with Riff Valley I felt I wanted to get another park in with the hopes of finally getting a H2H win which wasn't against a unfinished park or a forfeit.
So I decided to give the people what they wanted and went to build a dueling shoestring coaster. I had to look up old parks of myself to figure out how to do certain things again but eventually got it to work. Making the shoestring went easier then expected untill I was in the part where the trains go through the two loops which cross at the top and the bottom. I found out that the trains can only go trough this in 1 direction, so I had to time the coaster in a way where the change of direction to get out of the loop happened before entering the quarter loop again, else the ride would crash. This was a hassle to get working while also afterward getting the time right again to have them dueling in the intertwined cobra rolls. Eventually I got it to work and after a lot of tweaking with different track parts etc I got the shoestring to a point where 1 train was perfect and the other one was off by 1 subpixel or something. So I believe you need to have the game run for over a ingame year before the ride would crash because then the 1 subpixel difference between the shoestring track and maintrack would have shifted the train in the maintrack enough to crash in either the loop of the top of the vertical station (depens on the weight of the peeps which one would fail first).
After spending some time on getting the shoestring to work I heard that microwave probably wouldn't be able to build anymore. So I hoped to finish up the park with morganfan. At this point we struggled with the overal theme of the park as there was no real concept and this halted our progress. So after some brainstorming we came up with having the park represent an actual crooked house / fun house in the different area's. So I started on making the shoestring coaster into Mirror Maze. I started of quite conservative with the theming by mostly using glass, I did have the white and blue colorscheme with pink accents already. I was trying to emulated some of the older builders which were not afraid to use some of the lesser used colors. After posting some screenshots cam suggested to go even wilder by using the LL land textures and after some experimenting with it I found a balance where it would look very wonky but still (in my opinion) readable. Finished up the mirror maze area went quite quickly afterwards. If I recall right I started building the shoestring on a friday evening and before the next friday I finished most of the area.
At this point morganfan and I where tweaking the lay-out of the inverted which was originally build by microwave. After some iterations we came to this design and morganfan did the supports and station for it. But then also he wasn't able to do more. So I decided to spend about every free hour I had untill the deadline to finish up the park. Luckly for me the round 6 was introduced which gave me just enough time to finish the park. I frist took the favella area and added some slides to this area to make it more resemble the theme we came up with. Afterwards I went on to the mount madnezz area where the idea was ot have all kinds of obstacles etc. The bridge with elevators was something I came up while building the station for mirror maze. I accedently got the doubledeck observation towers to bounce up and down and then figured I could use that to make a bridge with multiple of them. Building Mt Madnezz went quite easy. This was mostly a coaster where I tried to put in as many different track pieces which normally shouldn't be used by a coaster to figure out what they did and show them off a bit. The theming of mt madnezz is a style I learned while working together with egg_head on kiriki dutch falls in my first H2H. So this was also a style which allowed me to build very quickly as it was a simple style to build in with many different variations on the same theme to not make it to bland.
So by this time about half of the park was done, in the meantime I kept refining the central castle bit by bit as that would be the things drawing most attention on first glance. Next up I tackled the inverted area. Morganfan already made the station and set the color palet for this area. We decided the theme of that area would be "hanging" as it featured a inverted coaster. So after some experimenting I came up with the gardens suspended with balloons. This also allowed me to not needing to do to much foiliage. I build some of the suspended gardens and then filled up the missing pieces with some small buildings. I felt the gardens needed to be watered so that's why I made the helicopters flying around to water the gardens. By this time we already had the flying dragons around the castle so having some more flying things fitted the park.
While I had to go away for a weekend I came up with the claw grabber machine and how to build that so when I came back I tried to make it. After a lot of tweaking I couldn't get the cars to line up perfectly so I decided to cheat a bit and use the ride vehicle editor to change the track position of the cars to make sure they all where at the right spot. This made me able to continue building and not spend to much time on it. After that finishing up the rest of the area was easy. I added the small drop tower on the castle wall as I felt something was missing there, and the chairlift was also added as I wanted to have a chairlift somewhere because we where using a lot of verticality so this park would be perfect for it and I used enough elevators already.
By this time most of the area's where still quite basic, they had some fun things but nothing really exceptional, I was mostly focussing on first just getting everything in the park filled up. So I went on to the bouncing castle. This area was build in record time. I think I build the whole area in two days. The whole area was formed in my head already, and using the mazes to sometimes make peeps jump was something kumba also used in his park but I wanted to still use it too even though he showed it off already. I think it really added to the area. The motor cross around the edges was something in my mind instantly also, I still remembered the ride when it was build so I just had to find it again and use it. From what I remember it was the first custom tracked ride made by Amazing Earl and Buggy together so it's fitting it's in a h2h classic park even though it's probably older then PT2 era even.
After that I figured I had to make a entrance area and I wanted to fill this with some crooked houses. Microwave orginally put three crooked houses on the entrance already and I just took that and buid from it with the slanted walls everywhere. I figured that with the help of the scenery manager it should be less of a hell to make something like that. And it went quite okay allthough I would have loved that the window I was using would behave well, if you look closely you will see that the window will change height depending on the angle you are looking from. I don't know yet if this is an issue in the object or in openrct2. Finding textures which allowed to be placed on slanted land was a challenge though, a lot of walls don't support it so I had to find some that did. In the end I wasn't completly happy with the outcome but it was good enough and I had the rest of the park still to finish.
I think it was like 2 days before that deadline that all major things in the park where done. At this point I started working on finishing up the transitions between the area's and fixing the last peep issues. I tried to make the slide in the favella work with peeps but I think there is a bug either open or the ride vehicel manager because I kept getting random crashes of the ride, it seemed to be caused by peeps being to heavy, but lowering the car weight more and more didn't seem to fix it even though I lowered the car weight enough that even the combination of heaviest peeps should be below a level which was working before. I also tried to change the car to only host 1 peep but this didn't seem to work either. So eventually I gave up and just left it on test.
I did build the small water coaster launcher as I felt something was missing there. I believe I saw it mentioned somewhere on discord and I was like "hey I can make that" and did it. Hacking it took me less then an hour which was nice. trying to get the accelaration and decelartion to a level I liked was the biggest hurdle but with some trail and error that was easily done in the end. Because this ride was made later I was able to fix the exit bug which are on the custom flat and mirror maze. The way peeps exit a ride works slightly different in open from what I found out (or my memory is bad here) so if you look closely you will see that peeps entering mirror maze or the custom flat will dissapear if they exit the ride, they are just lost in the void.
In the last day before the deadline I added most of the nice easer eggs and details to the park. Some things where added before like cena spying and the dragon egg together with the sacrifcial egg_head. That last one is a nudge toward a discussion which happened after kiriki dutch falls was released. Probably only Kumba here would understand it but I felt it fitted to include here as the area is inspired by that park in the end.
Deciding who got a easter egg was very easy, it where just the people I could come up with an idea first. There is probably a bias toward the builders I spoke to most during that time. People like tom_dj aren't that well known but they were participating in h2h4 (which is about the time period we where aiming for too) and as a fellow dutch parkmaker who tried to get into the NE crowed we spoke quite often. So having him in there was a nobrainer for me. I wanted to have a homage to at least every H2H4 team also, and at the castle I made banners for every h2h classic team (hope someone noticed this). Besides that most other easter eggs where mostly just me having fun. Getting the hurricanes homage was hard as making a hurricane in the park was difficult. So in the end I went with the easy joke and just have kumba gloating with his prizes. In the end ofcourse I also wanted to have a reference to my own old team, so thats why there is the elementalist in the entrance square giving a show.
At the end I was able to finish up the park and submit it. Liam noticed there was a peep group stuck somewhere and luckly this was before the end of the deadline, this probably happened when I was fixing up some pathing, so in the end I was able to fix that still before the deadline.
In the end I think this was the park people were expecting me to make in combination with Riff Valley. In Riff Valley i gave them the more serious park making where I used things like quarterblock sculptures etc to really add to the theme and have clever small hacks which try to add to the park without being to obnoxious or anything. This park for me was mostly a combination of micro madness parks. I figured that on just building skills I couldn't produce a park which I mostly solo'ed that could win. And once it was clear that this park would be our only chance to not finish the competition winless I went for the stategy I used in the past. By just going for very high concept idea's and cramming as much as possible in a park to just wow everyone and overwhelm them with all the interesting stuff to forget that maybe the archy skills and foiliage might not be the best. But what I didn't account for was that the community had changed to much. The hacks and tricks have less of an impact as things like this are done a lot more now. And I feel that people are less used to parks full of stuff and really want to more open parks with a cleaner overview. At least that is what I think is happening, I will need to figure this out more. But I knew that this would be a park which some people would hate, just like in the past if I go full in my own style some people love it and some people hate it. I just hoped that the lovers would outweight the haters, especailly because this contest was suppost to emulate the other styles a bit and I felt this park did that quite well (as this could have been something I would have made 15 years ago).
I must admit I'm salty that I didn't won but that has nothing to do with the other park. I think the other builders did a good job on their park. It's mostly the saltyness which I always had with the rct community and will always have. The discussion of fantasy vs realism and everything in between is one we had plenty of times in the past, and I've always been one to build more in a fantasy style. I've given many harsh critiques in the past to other parks which I've called "boring" and "uninspiring" because I felt there was just nothing in them to give it any life or invoke any feelings. I still feel this a bit. I appreciate the skills people use to build this. And especially when also taking care of all the little details like behind the scene's pathing for construction workers etc. But often I feel that these parks fall short on going the complete realistic way and mostly care about the looks and sacrificing it for the practicality, those are the moments I will be most vocal as I feel these park allthough they might look nice just miss to much to be considered "masterpieces". I'm not saying this goes for thunder rock as it is clearly not completly realistic. It's a form of parkmaking which at this point in time I don't have to much experience with. When I was active in the community we did have the timeline parks and like I said it reminded me most of those kind of parks, but I learned during this compeition that there is a new crowed of people who appreciate certain types of parks which I don't understand yet. There might be skills involved in these park I don't see yet. So I will study up on this community to see what they want so maybe with my next release I can get them in my camp and appreciate the style where you just go beyond what is possible in real life to go for something from your dreams!
Everyone thanks for the comments, and thanks for the builders of thunder rock for this match up!
If this doesn't go for Thunder rock then why bring it up? lol
Sephiroth Offline
What the fuck does this even mean? Even if a park loses people can talk about it, who died and made you God? GTFOH with that bullshit lol.
Levis, thank you for the write up. Glad to see you back and building, and it was fun to read all that went into Crooked House. Your historical knowledge and jokes are always welcome.
Because I tried to put some things in context.
I understand Levis It just feels weird to bring this up in a post specifically about these two parks if the point you're trying to make doesn't necessarily pertain to either park. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something though.
I felt that some people thought I was to negative on the other park during the match. So I wanted to give some context on why I did that in the past. Just to explain that this time it was something else. I was really suprised to see thunder rock get so many votes and thats why I wanted to explain why sometimes I can be quite critical about certain parks but this park for me wasn't that kind of park. I just don't understand thunder rock as it's probably some kind of art which I don't get.
Both parks seemed to be a bit of a "jumble of ideas" and lacked some coherent theme that tied it all together.
I'll be open in saying that crooked house was a bit too all over the place and I advocated for having less randomness. Felt like random = crooked house.. which just didn't make sense to me. Sorry guys.
Thunder Rock feels like a scenario build. Definitely get the laid back vibe because I built Isola di Levanzo in the same mindset. Interesting to see the different approaches to the prompt of the contest.
I didn't enjoy Crooked House as much as others seem to do. I don't think it is because of the realism vs. fantasy or the classic vs. non-classic debate. I'm looking at this from an aesthetic point of view, that's why I found it hard to enjoy.
The bright red/yellow castle was an eyesore colour wise, and where the castle met the water it seemed either very unfinished or really random.
Also the paths were very blocky. There is a way to make angular paths feel organic/flowy, it didn't happen here. Even basic aesthetic rules like putting ground texture under the paths weren't met. I also didnt understand the choice for the low castle turrets as fencing. Talking about fencing, the fencing was pretty random as well. Black wood fencing seemingly randomly interchanged with castle wall fencing, etc.
You get the point, all aesthetic choices were made seemingly without thought to me. Another example is the blank walls that were made interesting with randomly placed brown vines, which again just seems very random to me.
Sure there were some nice hacks and tricks, but the rides, scenery and other surroundings should imo not form the background for those tricks. I think the tricks should be used to help showcase a park that looks good.
I feel like there might be some object conflicts going on here. I don't remember using any "black wood" fencing.
I think you're missing Faas' broader point, which was that he felt the object selection and overall composition in Crooked House was random and difficult to look at, which I agree with. I apologize if that sounds blunt, but I want to voice my opinion honestly.
Thanks very much for the writeups guys, really appreciate the peek behind the curtain. Always interesting to hear about people's approach to RCT, this contest, etc.... different strokes for different folks I guess, there's more than one way to skin a cat. With a contest like this where the stipulation is "vote for your fave park", there's always gonna be people who like a range of things better than others, that's what makes it a vibrant and diverse community. If we all built the same there wouldn't be any point.
And i think you are missing my point that of indeed there are object conflicts which make you see a different object in game then I do then ofc it will seem random.
ok, i dont know what i was doing 5 months ago. I guess moving to america, thats my excuse. anyway, i'm here for reviews now...
crooked house: overall, hilarious park, full of eye-and-ear destroying early rct2 batshittery. the area with the slides was genuinely graceful and interesting IMO
thunder: despite being a giant coaster stack, there is quite a lot of graceful parkmaking here. a lot of cute corners and pretty vistas, and I particularly like the waterwheel structures on top of the mesa. great work here