Park / Revelations of Stonehenge
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31-August 25
- Views 2,628
- Downloads 82
- Fans 14
- Comments 23
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85.00%(required: 80%) Spotlight
CedarPoint6 90% yes Milo 90% yes Terry Inferno 90% yes Babar Tapie 85% yes barnNID 85% yes G Force 85% yes J K 85% yes ottersalad 85% yes Scoop 85% yes deanosrs 80% yes posix 80% yes RWE 80% no 85.00% 91.67% -
Description
****One important note, please view with the latest development version of OpenRCT (the older variants have a bug with the sound design)****
Revelations of Stonehenge is a high fantasy map set in outer space. There are five different areas to this park: “The Castle of Archangels”, “The Snow Gardens of Japan”, “The Savannah of Africa”, “The Fragments of Antwerp”, and last but not least, “The Journey for Mekkit”. For a full park description, check out the Read-Me.
For the best experience, please view with OpenGL and sound enabled. -
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Wow. Still blown away by all of the love and enjoyment. First off, thank you again for exploring Stonehenge. I think it would be fun to talk about how this park all came together. This is gonna be a long write-up, so feel free to stick around if this is your kind-of-a-thing.
When I first joined DKMP, I already had some experience playing OpenRCT, but all I knew how to do was terraforming and mine theming. Right away, I got a taste of what was possible with two memorable entries by Hobeon and Congoy. I had no idea how people made floating islands in RCT, but I knew I wanted to take a stab at this. I got some inspiration from the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 zombies map called Revelations, which has this cosmic greenery-esque aesthetic. This little park I made was some of the most fun I ever had building.
I then thought to myself, “what if I made a whole park like this?” Sometime around August of 2023, Deurklink announced a new contest form that we heard rumours of, the Park Creation Contest. The theme was world wonders, so we had to either use existing ones, or make up our own world wonders. I was hitting a mental roadblock just getting started, but my friend BallpitWarrior suggested I check out Stonehenge. It piqued my interest. Minimal, but reverent. Stonehenge was to be the center of the park, and have the path network stretch out into 5 themed areas.
The initial buildings were pretty basic. None of them in this courtyard survived my nuking process, but the old-timey European village aesthetic was in place.
Part of being a fantasy builder that’s sometimes hard to explain is the willingness to do whatever comes to your mind, but also reining it in. I didn’t do too much of the latter when building this castle, but I’ve always wanted to make one this huge. I found a beautiful reference image, and got to work replicating it in game. The biggest worry I had was running out of height, but I was able to fit it within the limits. Barely.
Not too long after I completed the backside of the castle, Mulpje suggested I use this new palette of his called the Europale. I can’t really put into words how incredible this thing is. What started as a dark and almost dingy palette turned into a flexible world building tool. Each area looks as though it was made with its own tailor-made palette. It’s the most brilliant addition to the game, and I hope more people put it to use.
Japan was next. I wanted to capture the magic of snow in Japan. It’s unlike the snow anywhere else. Maybe it’s the nature of the foliage? The way the gardens are nestled? The pagodas? It has this tranquility seemingly unmatched. Every time I listen to traditional Japanese music, there’s a resulting focus and zen, so I wanted to try and capture some of those emotions with this. It’s not as massive as the nearby castle, but as Congoy put it, “you’ve got this big hot moment right next door. You don’t want to have too many hot moments all competing against each other.” Wise words of wisdom! Words that certainly helped as I navigated other areas of varying intensity.
By the time I started Africa, I began to realize something - this park would never get fully realized for the contest. I got something presentable, but it's not even half the park we’re looking at. That said, it was the first stage to finishing something on this scale.
What I didn’t fully understand is just how much this next year and a half would be a test of my stamina. Right before H2H started, I got to work on the front facade for the Antwerp Central Station. This whole area was initially going to be similar to NYC. Then the idea turned into a fusion of different cities with crumbling, slanted buildings. But after a few experiments, I quickly learned this wasn’t going to work. Instead, I focused on one particular city with architecture that always fascinated me - Antwerp. The Belgium architecture just hits different.
During my time in H2H, I started to learn some important fundamentals of architecture, and getting a taste of what parkmakers actually do to earn their title. It was eye-opening, and necessary for going back and revising the existing areas. It was also right around this time when I consulted Otter for feedback. Having recently completed a spotlight of his own and being a critical eye for the panel, there’d be no better person to reach out to than my newfound teammate.
I feel as though Otter had some of the most tremendously helpful feedback of anyone I consulted with. He didn’t just carefully go through everything and analyzed what could be better. He gave me the big picture advice. “You need to give people a reason to revisit and explore this park.” Replay value is extremely important, and it became my primary goal going into existing and new areas alike.
After getting my old areas into a more comfortable state (for now), I circled back over to Antwerp and began the macro planning. Figuring out where all of these buildings would go wasn’t easy, but having a flyer layout in place (mostly) helped me plan the path network and key interactive moments (like the first wrap-around out of the launch). Best to take care of this before beginning construction on an actual facade.
Even so, there was one moment in particular where Scenery Manager came in clutch, as the block parallel to Inducer’s launch was way too close to the coaster.
Perhaps there should be an entire channel dedicated to the screenshots and progress of The Fragments of Antwerp. But one of the parks that changed the name of the game when it came to city builds was Screameasy. Leon and friends single-handedly raised the standard to what was considered “an untouchable level”. That standard soon became my standard. I wanted Antwerp to be my answer to Screameasy. I wanted it to be so rich, it would overwhelm the viewer. I wanted Antwerp to be the single greatest thing I could possibly make in this game.
The Church of our Lady Cathedral was one of the last buildings to come in. As tall as she is, the real thing is even greater in height! It’s a picturesque moment in the park and one that helped tie everything together for the flyer, while also not taking over the focal point of the Central Station, but rather enhancing it.
Having some sort of connecting feature between Antwerp and The West was necessary, so I opted to have an “opening” train station double as the park entrance and the train entrance. I went with the Onstead station, as it’s similar in aesthetic to the Central Station in Antwerp. Leaning into the fantastical nature, the bridge itself would be a light bridge merging into an American industrial bridge.
The last area, The Journey For Mekkit. So I’ve wanted to do a Western in honor of a builder named Mekkit. For those who don’t know him, Mekkit was a legendary player on DKMP server back in 2019-2020. In a similar way to Xeccah coming in with Blue Oak or Alex with Ancient Worlds, NCSO went through a unique renaissance by someone who didn’t just have the eye for macro and micro detailing. He knew tricks to help make NCSO even more flexible. The man earned an entire webpage called Mekkit University, which was a great tool to help newfound builders enhance their abilities. Towards the end of 2020, Mekkit sent his last message in DKMP and was never heard from since. Despite this, his influence on builders like Swag is unmistakable. As you go through this area, you’ll catch occasional glimpses of Mekkit. Most notably, the road lines for the main street.
Anyways, like with Antwerp, the layout came first. I ended up using this RMC from our semi’s park in H2HX. It was the best looking coaster I had made at the time, and captured some really sweet moments. Notably the second inversion, which is a nod to Iretont’s first RMC contest coaster. I almost went with this layout, but ultimately went with something more refined.
Sketching in the macro came next, and the theme was Fall, one of my favorite seasons of the year. I wanted to capture an autumn breeze reminiscent of Chateau Frontenac, so I focused in on mixing up the wind sculpted rocks, crunch-ifying the textures with a mix of recolorable stones, and using multistacked trees with invisible fruit trees as fallen leaves.
In fact, I cannot stress how important the invisible trees with berries have been. Everything from fallen leaves to crumbling rock, snow, magical mist, landscaping crunch, and even the space atmosphere itself, this might be my favorite object in the map.
But around the end of September of 2024, I ended up hitting a massive roadblock. At this point in the journey, I had sunk so many hours into this park, I was genuinely upset with myself. I knew that this time would have been better off spent on mastering my music, so I abandoned the project entirely. My mind was racing with thoughts like, “if only I had put these 500 hours into my oboe, just imagine where I’d be professionally.” I thought I had wasted my time and my energy on something that would never enhance my career. So I threw in the towel.
All of my incredible mates supported my decision, but were nevertheless bummed out. Seeing from the sidelines how much effort went into this. I was honestly hoping to disappear from the game and the community all-together. But Josh gave me some words of encouragement that stuck with me. “I feel like i'm better at my job because of the time I've spent building in this game lol. Despite what you think, you haven't wasted your time. You're just shuffling hours up a bit now”
And he’s right. Having a more attentive and critical eye for understanding how a park is composed helped me with understanding how both others and my own musical technique are composed. After sitting on the sidelines for months on end, on January 3rd of the new year, I took the leap of faith. I did what I vowed to never do again. I started building.
After completing the upper section, I began the descent into the cliffs. For this section, I wanted to explore a type of rockwork I’ve seen people dabble with, but not for an entire mountainside. The recolorable prehistoric rocks. After taking a few tips from Turtle on texturizing them better, I had something that approached the level of Fisch rocks. Personally, I prefer this to the recolorable prison corner technique that many builders (myself included) have recently adopted in dkso.
Onto the mainstreet buildings, I was feeling a direction towards a breezy anytown USA atmosphere, as 94 aptly put it. Therty showed a couple of photos from Gunnison, Colorado. It was a hit, so I got to work.
This last building is pretty significant, as it ended up being moved over to Antwerp. 94 challenged me that if I could pull this off in dkso, I’d be able to feed families. So I fed some families.
In addition to this, the last thing I added to Antwerp was a suspended swinging coaster laid out similarly to the magic. This park needed another mainline coaster to balance the line-up, and this was the perfect candidate.
Wanted to give a quick shoutout to Fidwell and his Ramp-ifyer plug-in. It allows you to smooth your pathing up hills if you're building without full-on CSO pathing. Definitely recommended.
At this point, all of the big stuff was done. Now came the really hard part - refinement. The last 5% of any build of this size has to be the most grueling patience test the game can offer. But I wasn’t going to settle for less. With how many hours I clocked in, every detail needed to matter.
Africa went through quite the glow-up with crunch.
Perhaps the most game-changing one of all was signage. When I told the discord that Antwerp was my answer to Screameasy, everyone was clambering, “you need signage, moar signage!” And they’re right. Signage adds heaps of personality and distinction to buildings. The bones were there. Just needed that extra push. And this push went beyond just Antwerp. Signage was added to every island. Why not add some Kanji in Japan?
Seeing how the European area looked before and afterwards was eye-opening for me, and goes to show how important iteration and refinement are.
One of the last and most important changes I made was to my inverted coaster, Listening Wind. After pondering the choice for months, I decided to have the first drop interact with the temple. Not only did it provide purpose, the flow was immediately better.
After sending her off to several reviewers, something happened that I never thought would - I clicked the “Add Park” tab on NEDesigns. It was finally done. Just as soon as the park got released, it got scored. All of us were on the edges of our seats watching the votes come in. When the average score stayed locked at 86% and then 87%, I felt confident. At first, I saw the spotlight award. Then, I saw the 85.00%. Obviously, I built this for myself. Not for a score. Being one of only a handful of players to finish a full-scale fantasy build was bragging rights of itself. That said, my Monday was a mix of joy and relief, but also a sense of reassurance that my hard work was seen by the NE community and panelists.
Some retrospective thoughts. I’ve seen many people talk about the dkso style. I’m not sure what that is anymore. Is it the workbench? Is it a school of thought? Kinda like how the “NE style” is a thing with parks like RoB? I don’t think I build like anyone on DKMP, or that Stonehenge looks like anything from that server. I’d say if anything, most of my influences came from NE builders, like Hoobaroo, Mulpje, Babar Tapie, and Leon. Ultimately, I like to think I build what I want.
For years, dkso has been referred to as a “fixed cso workbench”. And it is, technically speaking. These objects aren’t in RCT2 or the expansion packs. That said, because it is considered cso, I was going to treat it exactly like cso. If everyone says it is, then it’s cso, and I have to build to the detail standard we can expect from cso. That was my motto going through the project, and it helped me push the workbench to the limits. If you look around closely enough, you can start to make out where the line of the bench goes, and beyond that, it can’t be pushed any further.
Or can it?
A huge thank-you to everyone who downloaded and explored this park. And to anyone who’s read this far. I can’t believe you’re still here. I’m just overjoyed at the reception Stonehenge got. Not just within NE, but across different communities. Seeing this park has over 2,000 views already is insane. As the creator, I think it’s a park that many veterans and newcomers will enjoy for a long time. Hopefully, forever.
The designs are incredible and interesting and the colors are super cool, very pleasant. I'm 100% sure this was a lot of work, with many details very well designed and positioned in this incredible setting. Very creative the connection between the areas in this outer space. I loved everything.
Congratulations to the team for the brilliant work
Maybe the most stunning NE Spotlight park map we have ever seen. It's the first to use a void background, which is long overdue. The grand fantasy feel is done so well. I love the streams of magic and stardust all over. The little islands/vignettes were cute and seemed inspired.
The main areas were all so well done and the level of detail is just crazy. Your skill with facades is something else and so cool how you worked in some half-diagonals. Antwerp stands out as the best, just so much great creative detail. So cool that you did this all without custom objects, that takes a lot of skill.
Definitely a park I'll be going back to... have too, there are so many great little details!
Congrats again on both NE Spotlight and NE Parkmaker!
This is such high praise!
And I fully agree.
Absolutely stunning work through and through.