RCT Discussion / Classifying RCT

The Realism-Fantasy debate in RCT is as old as the game, but it has rarely reflected the actual makeup of the community and the currently popular style of building.  I've been thinking for quite a while that we aren't doing ourselves any favors by lumping things into categories they don't really mesh with, and it helps to think of RCT history the way you might art history, with periods of loosely associated trends.  

 

I'd like to share the rough categories I've started mentally sorting things into to help myself out and see what the community thinks; feel free to add your own views, terminology, or disagreements.

 

]['s very loose in no way binding guide to common RCT styles

 

I think of things in a broad spectrum with what we'd call "Fantasy" and "Realism" at opposite ends, so I'll present them in rough order from least- to most- tied to theme parks.  Remember, I'm suggesting it is very possible for a park to fit in several categories or sit in-between somewhere; these are just clusters of similar ideas.

 

Surrealism - FK, Dali, and generally the sort of stuff that doesn't try to emulate a place so much as a feeling, a state of mind, or a concept.  If there's a rollercoaster here, it isn't supposed to be a rollercoaster - it is probably a symbolic representation of something abstract. If stuff is randomly floating or has no connection whatsoever to reality, chances are this is the category I'd put it in.  

Examples:  BOMB, Internet City, Thoughts, basically everything Ge-Ride built, ivo's surrealist work.

 

Fantasy Realism - Levis, Tolkein, and a whole lot more.  If it feels weird seeing those two words together, maybe think of this as "fiction."  This style of parkmaking is all about creating or borrowing some kind of fictional world and then making it as real as possible - doing the best you can to make it seem like this place does exist.  Tolkein's works or Dinotopia might be good examples.  The key point that separates this from semi-realism is that projects built in this style are often not intended to be theme park environments at all, just an RCT interpretation of some magical place.  If they do have theme park elements they are often only very loosely attached to what an actual real life theme park would be.

 

Semi-Realism - These projects are almost always Parks of some kind - they're intended to be a theme park environment where guests visit - but they rarely pay much attention to how accurate to real life something is if it looks and feels okay in RCT.  This is where you'll see realism mixed up with things most realism-focused builders wouldn't dream of, like crazy unique coasters or ideas presented as though they were real life possibilities.   The vast majority of old-school NE falls into this one.  You might notice that a lot of old spotlights only have cursory efforts at placing dining, restrooms, transportation, and backstage details in the park - semi-realism aims to give you the sense of a theme park without being bothered with all the difficult, ugly real-world bits.  

 

Realism, Hyper-Realism, and Recreationism - You know what Realism is - you build what is - or with a minimal amount of imagination could be - real. So why the other descriptions?  These descriptions to me provide a good sense of how individual players decide to balance the challenges of RCT.  

Do you prioritize making it look good in game or making it as accurate as possible?  Do you only plan attractions you know exist, that your park could afford, and meet the expected hourly capacity goals?  Do you make sure all attractions have posted warning signs and fire exits?  Do you build your own objects to make sure you can get all the unique details right?  These are the differences between someone who wants a park to Feel Possible, Feel Real, and Be Correct.  Its hard to say where something falls specifically - other than recreations obviously tending towards recreationism - but I'd usually make the call based on how much non-park-proper stuff the parkmaker presents us with.  The more focus there is on backstage the more likely I am to call it hyper-realism or recreationism.

yeah I think those are some good categories. I think there is something else, which I'd call... magical realism. It sort of fits into fantasy realism, I suppose, but it has more of an emphasis on the park aspect. So its like a fictional, unrealistic environment, but still with all the necessary theme park stuff- entrances, queues, etc. I think Corsair viridian, worlds of tim burton, those sort of parks fit more into this category. I guess its all the parks that clearly couldn't exist but aren't really fantasy, also. Or incorporate some sort of fantasy.

 

I'd love to see this done from more of an rct history sort of perspective- like you could label the eras (golden age of rct2, etc) and describe their features and why things were the way they were. that stuff fascinates me. I love looking, for example, at really old rct2 parks and seeing people still build and design like its LL. (eg Euroscape, but for a more amusing example I love Natelox's maharaja park, possibly his only rct2 thing ever. He had to make special cs for it that emulates LL stuff exactly. classic nate), and watching people make sense of cs. You can also try and pin down what the most important parks were, in retrospect. Like I think watson's woods was huge, I remember it being huge, even though today its less mentioned and definitely dated. I know realism started before that (kayte ridge, even phatage's worlds of excitement which I never liked) but wwap feels to me like an important stepping stone to where we're at now.

 

anyway, you get my drift

I do like this idea of something that is a little more generalised, and blurs the lines between 'realism' and 'fantasy' which I like. I think that the categories make a lot of sense, I would maybe separate traditional 'realism' and 'hyper-realism/recreationalism' just because I feel that recreations and things like that are just that kind of next level above. Where things outside of RCT are taken into consideration such as real-life locations, building company, imperfections etc.

 

I also would love to see some RCT-eras loosely planned out, as I think that would be really interesting to see. I'd love to hear the opinions of others [especially those who have been around since almost the start] about how styles have developed towards a seeming realism -> hyper-realism age. [Basically what Cocoa said haha]

I largely agree with your distinction in the four categories, apart from some details in the definitions. You forgot one category though: the conceptless shit parks everyone used to make before discovering the community. Mindless chaos. Some call these parks 'megaparks', GigaG probably calls it 'masterpieces', but I like to call it 'freestyle'. Not only the shitty parks from new members and children fall into this category, but also parks like WME's Mount Doom or perheps Mount Sinister. I wouldn't say either of those are fantasy or surrealism.

Secondly, I think you should make the distinction between style and approach. Fantasy, surrealism or realism are approaches to the game, seperate from style. Six Frags and Geewhzz have both done realism, but in completely different styles. Style is another dimension that's much harder to define, but there are definitely several styles that are clearly distinguishable. First thing that comes to mind is Paulism, because that's where I come from. It was never prominent at NE, but in the Dutch community around 2005-2006 literally 75% of the people were trying to imitate Paul, which resulted in a distinct aesthetic for Dutch/Belgian parks. NE-style is an obvious other style. Four corners, center lake, sprawling theming in a consistent style, not rarely with a lot of 2x2. A more modern candidate I see is 'NCSO revival'. NCSO has been reinvented after years of being boring, with players like Insanity, RCT2Day and Shotguns showing us that NCSO can result in good serious parks. I'd say a lot of the German players during the last ten years also share a lot of traits. I don't know how to define it, but I see it in players like Colorado-Fan, prodigy and Jonny, as well as Beagle and early Fr3ak. Phantasialand-school, maybe?


Great stuff to think about. I'll write a more complete analysis soon, complete with visualisation.

Have to love how we never cease to enjoy the discussion of this.

Overall very clean and accurate analysis. Enjoyed reading it. Just not too sure on the surrealism category. I think you have mentioned a variety of approaches as examples. Especially cBass' work was perhaps the most strongly concept-driven stuff someone has ever submitted to the site. I would thus find him much more under the Fantasy Realism category, whereas ivo or Ge-Ride were probably building what you may call "Experimentalism", an almost absent minded playfulness in RCT, going for nothing but emotional effect (perhaps this links with Liam's missing category?). Another interesting candidate similar to cBass by the way would be Blitz.

Maybe add realism examples from CP6 and geewhzz' works. They are genre defining players in my opinion.

Where would you put RoB by the way? It's clearly realistic, but not recreationlist, and not very semi-realist either. It also has many elements that are just "beautiful". I think it has a quality that isn't really captured here yet.

cocoa,
I think those examples are all semi-realism, no? Good point on WWAP actually. I think you're right that it had a lot to do with paving the way for today's hyper-realism.

Liam,
very interesting second paragraph. I think what ][ outlined are all approaches. They're the fundament. Then Paulism would be a style of hyper-realism, inspired by location. NE-style belongs to Semi-realism, featuring recognisable style elements like colourfulness, palm trees, virginia reel awnings, popularised by Pyro and then x-sector. You could probably discover dozens of styles over the years. Could be a nice project for us.

I think you're right about RoB escaping those categories. I would also lump a bunch of natelox's stuff under that. aesthetic parkmaking is what I would call it.

 

it's sort of like... impressionism, I guess

I'd call it building for atmosphere. It's what I try to do most of the time. 

This is always the most interesting topic in RCT for me. Even with the current h2h and the detailed work immediately before it, I wonder how we'll adapt in terms of park completion, the object data limit, etc. It doesn't entirely correlate with everything mentioned in this topic, but I keep thinking of macro vs. micro, and how that relates to parks today. 

 

I personally see myself making a sort of transition between the two, worrying about how a park completes itself on a more macro, "overview" level as opposed to micro detailing which sickens me now, and relates to my usual trend of unfinishedness, as many others fall victim to. I just see the increasing levels of deco blocks as the culprit for the next step in the NEvolution of RCT.

nin, YES! Very excited to see what RCT comes from that process.

 

I think extreme detailing is a "style" according to Liam's understanding. It's a choice people usually make when they follow the approach of extreme realism, what ][ labelled "recreationism". It links in with the desire to recreate as accurately as possible. There are extremly detailed non-realistic parks too though. AvanineCommuter comes to my mind perhaps, or ThatGuy's work which is quite detailed and certainly not recreationist.

 

I thought about RoB. I think its unique element is that it sees the park in light of the game's nature. By that I mean welcoming things like ride entrance huts, nicely working them into the architecture and using the native queue lines for them. There's an acceptance that certain things may be a bit weird and rather unrelated to real life, just because the game is what it is. This aspect is embraced instead of removed (hacking). It's something I'm very much in favour of. I find it can improve atmosphere quite strongly.

 

I'm not sure though it's necessarily an approach in the understanding above. It's a bit like an either…or decision people make as they approach the game differently. Liam, would you say it counts as style choice? I'm not so sure because it's too global and fundamental in the parkmaking process.

I think there are two ways we can go from the realization that this level of detailing is too much (from a finishing parks perspective, and an object limit one, etc).

 

We can either choose to focus on creating great, full parks on the macro scale at less detailing. like zippo's or magic realms or jk's parks. those are huge parks that succeed at a good enough level of detail to be awesome, but not overly detailed.

 

Or we can scale down the size of our parks. Thats the method I tend to adhere to... designs and golds are in my future, I reckon. but one never knows

Patiently waiting for nincso to become a thing.

This topic is gold. Wow. How did I miss it before?

latest developments from the RCT Studies ][nstitute







writeup to follow later.

Very nice diagrams! Looking forward to the write-up. 

I'd like to hear more as well, as I find the diagrams as they are hard to situate certain parks in. It's quite an arbitrary classification. When is for example something more semirealism and when more fantasy realism?

I've got a few ideas. There are a few more specific approaches to RCT that I'd like to discuss. For fantasy there's the abstract and cartoony divide. One one hand you've got Swoon, and for lack of an outsider's example, there's Geon. One is based on visual beauty and free expression without the demands of normal landscapes and buildings, the other on screwing with proportions and doing the impossible. Where though, would we put something like Cube-A? Maybe a symbolism category would be in order. These could be like cities on a broader map.

 

For realism there's a sort of style that was around before Watkins Woods where they'd take a conventional setting and an amusement park over theme park focus, with a non-recreational park, but they wouldn't overemphasize the small details. There's a specific park that I saw which gave me the idea but I don't know what happened to it. I call it fun realism but others may object to my category. I don't know.

 

For my own work, I can see how it would give different reactions. It's true that I often figure out what I'm making as I build. Where CP6 said that he makes the park and focuses hard to get the entrance area right, I have worked from the other perspective, making the entrance and using that to inspire the rest of the park. My most abstract works are probably my RCT Space Valentine's Day runner up and since I didn't do enough to make the place look like a genetics college, my area in Majestic Paradise. As for the colors being out of sync with the rest of the park, that's not my fault however. The first person to build was Ultratycoon who built the hotel and it was similarly bright. IgnoReme is a park that I was hoping to build with FredD so it would have been better with his input but it shows that I sort of ran out of ideas with it. I had more specific ideas behind Megalomania and Archetype though I didn't know what to do with the latter towards the end of the layout. I didn't go into every park of mine thinking I'd build a fantasy park. Fusion(a well deserved last place), IgnoReme, the Valentine's Day entry, Geon, Mirage Bridge maybe, those I'd describe as fantasy. But for USNW, Megalomania, Archetype, and Majestic Paradise, I considered them more as bold themes in real parks than I did as fantasy parks though I wasn't as concerned about the smaller details as many others. I suppose for USNW I went much too far but most people hadn't even heard of that park until recently, aside from some former RCT Majesty members.

 

And for the category of surrealism, I think that there's a pretty noticeable gap. What people choose to call it will vary from person to person, but there's the symbolic 'This is a symbolic roller coaster that represents a story or an idea" like in IgnoReme and the 'does something that's truly impossible in real life like Fright Nights by Phatge or Fk's Seasons or one of the floating island parks that appear in many contests.

 

There could be even more categories, like ][ntamin22 suggested, making comparisons to the evolution of art and music. I'll leave that for him to share. Obviously there's the themed scenarios from SecondRun or Attack on SS Infinity which turns RCT into an arcade game. I don't know how to categorize parks with palettes or the parks from after and before OpenRCT2.

 

Anyways, lots of thoughts from an external and internal perspective. Hope I didn't bore anybody. Share your own thoughts or reply to what's already been said.