Custom Scenery Exchange / Custom Rides by X7123M3-256

Intamin first gen freefall cars are virtually impossible. They are a very unusual hybrid of a tracked ride and a flat that can't be achieved without modifying the game substantially. I'd be surprised if you could even hack one, what with the way the cars flip up as they leave the brake run.

 

Second gen freefall cars might be done, but it isn't easy because I never figured out the peep loading positions for flat rides. The Larson super shot still has them zeroed out.

 

Larger flat rides and flat rides with novel animation sequences can't be done. I don't plan to extending my ride generator to support flat rides for this reason - I can't think of anything that can be done correctly because all the game's flat ride bases are too small.

 

If you want backward Arrow trains, reverse the sprites on the Corkscrew coaster (or I'll do it for you if you want). I might model my own Arrow trains anyway, because I want to have models of the most widely common train types in case I ever get round to finishing my coasters simulator, but it's hard to justify doing that for RCT2 alone when they're already in the game (but it would allow me to add the missing sprites).

 

I'm not going to do Drachen Fire trains, not because it's impossible but because they were specific to one short-lived ride, which was built under some fairly unusual circumstances. I can't see many people wanting to use such a train, and I certainly wouldn't use it. The same goes for other trains that are variants of trains already in the game - although I'm thinking of doing new style B&M invert trains simply because I already have the seats modelled.

 

The next train that I do will probably be either Mack mega coaster trains or Intamin Accelerator coaster trains.

Did somebody already do the Arrow Mine Train cars? I seem to remember them being done?

^You mean this?: http://www.themepark...php?f=3&t=56309

 ARRT3.DAT (1.13MB)
downloads: 4

The guy in that thread who said you can't change seating arrangements is wrong. They also seem to believe that the sprite flags are hardcoded (they're not). You can add inversion sprites to a coaster type that doesn't normally have them, the game just won't use them unless you merge tracks.

That thread was from 5 years ago to be fair.

Yeah, but where did that idea come from in the first place? Compare the B&M hyper trains with the Giavonola ones - they have different capacities, but the same base ride. It should have been apparent that capacity can be changed even if it wasn't known how to do it. I've seen a lot of things saying this or that is hardcoded when what they mean is they don't know how to change it. Some stuff is hardcoded, of course, but there's some stuff that clearly isn't.

But I agree with slaymegaga. mean I feel it would be interesting to make old school trains though. Other parks did use the drachen Fire trains. Also you could use them for boomerangs as well since some have similar trains to drachen Fire. Also I think he met first gen free fall cars not track.

Sure I could do first gen freefall cars, but how would that be useful if there's no track to run it on? You can't simply merge - the elevator lift and weird switch track at the end aren't available on any track in the game. Maybe you could abuse the hell out of the reverser coaster or 4th dimension logic to get something similar, but you'd still need a lot of hacking and that's not something I know how to do.

 

Drachen fire trains would be possible, but it's just not worth it. It takes weeks to model a train, especially one without any schematic available. Generally, any ride that can run Drachen Fire trains could also run the default Arrow trains without being unrealistic. I know multiple people have suggested doing this or the Vekoma trains, but I just don't think it's worth it given the similarity to existing coasters. It's the sort of thing I'd consider if I already had an Arrow model to work from. A brief search for "Arrow Dynamics train schematic" turned up nothing, which suggests collecting data for this would be hard.

Sure I could do first gen freefall cars, but how would that be useful if there's no track to run it on? You can't simply merge - the elevator lift and weird switch track at the end aren't available on any track in the game. Maybe you could abuse the hell out of the reverser coaster or 4th dimension logic to get something similar, but you'd still need a lot of hacking and that's not something I know how to do.

 

Drachen fire trains would be possible, but it's just not worth it. It takes weeks to model a train, especially one without any schematic available. Generally, any ride that can run Drachen Fire trains could also run the default Arrow trains without being unrealistic. I know multiple people have suggested doing this or the Vekoma trains, but I just don't think it's worth it given the similarity to existing coasters. It's the sort of thing I'd consider if I already had an Arrow model to work from. A brief search for "Arrow Dynamics train schematic" turned up nothing, which suggests collecting data for this would be hard.

 

First Gen Freefalls can be made easily by just vertical coaster track.  The only thing that doesn't work is in the return and station the cars are lying down instead of upright.  Sure its not exactly perfect, but who cares, you cant make the game perfect and you shouldn't dismissing making trains simply because it wouldn't be perfect.

 

Also, are you ever going to release the program you use to make the trains?  I can't remember if you said you would in the past or not.  Excuse me if it already has been, but I was just wondering.  It would save you a lot of stress and allow others to make their own trains for their specific needs if they so desire.

I do intend to release the program (actually it's already on github but nobody else seems to be able to get it working, so I think it needs a makefile, and a binary build for the Windows users). I've been intending to release the program for a while now, but it needs a lot of polishing off and bug fixing, and that's really tedious so I never get round to it. Hopefully when I'm done working on the object database thing I'll have some time to finish it off. I think if I do any other tools in future, they won't have a GUI - it takes longer to make the interface than the actual code.

 

In the meantime, if anyone else wants to do a ride that can't be done easily with existing tools, just send me the model and I'll run it through the tool for you. It doesn't take long.

 

 

I, personally, am dismissing trains because they can't be done right. It takes a long time to make the trains and my aim has always been to make trains that fit in as much as possible with the existing game. I don't use hacks beyond what's available in OpenRCT2's cheat menu, so cars that depend heavily on hacks just to work right are never going to appeal to me. There's too many possible rides to spend time working on those that aren't even going to work properly. My last two trains have been pretty poor in that regard, so for my next one I'd like to do something good. At the moment I only have 3 rides that are actually decent.

 

By far the biggest factor dictating what rides I can do at the moment is the availabilty of good reference images. It's got to the point where if I don't find at least one schematic, I'll not do the ride, because twice before I've got halfway through modelling the ride before finding out that the images I have just aren't good enough. The wing coaster had to be remodelled almost completely about 3 times, and that was with a schematic.

 

Like I said, if you want to model Intamin freefall cars or anything else, I'll run it through the tool for you, but I'm not going to be doing them myself. I want my rides to run properly without hacks - and that's just not achievable for the Intamin freefall. Indeed, it's such an odd ride I don't know it it will ever be achievable. How many people even use Intamin first gen freefalls anyway? It's an extremely rare ride, and out of production.

Haven't seen it mentioned in a while, but are you still planning to release the scaled up RMC?

Yes. I will try to get it done next weekend when I'm back on my desktop (my laptop has a very outdated version of my tool, and I don't have time to fix all the errors that will likely crop up trying to build the latest version on Windows right now). I'm back at university now so I don't have as much time, and I'm also working on another project, so that's why there's been a delay. I wanted to get it done last weekend but it never happened. I'll post it here when it's done.

Here is the download for the oversized RMC trains The trains are 10% larger than they should be. I have also put them on B&M track, because you're just going to merge it anyway. I have not changed the preview image, and I've also not changed the excitement multiplier, so expect to get unreasonably high excitement ratings (the excitement settings were tuned for the wooden track, and I don't really want to spend too much time tweaking them for a ride that's already unrealistic).

I know you probably hate because I say ride ideas that are probably impossible to make in RCT2. Anyway, you should make a Intamin Tilt Drop Tower Car, like Falcons Fury. I feel you would have to make seats be tilted already, just have the people facing down the whole time. I also think you should make the intamin drop tower cars that hang from the side of coasters like Giant Drop and Lex Luthor. 

Neither is possible, sorry. It is possible to do a plain second gen freefall without the tilting, but my program doesn't handle flat rides, and I'm not looking to add that capability in the near future, because the last tower ride I tried to make was such a disaster. I don't know how the peep loading structures work for flat rides.

Could anyone try opening this link, and telling me whether the included files open correctly? It's a selection of various parks downloaded from this site, that have been altered so that all previously non-exporting objects should export properly. I'd like to know:

 

* If they crash on load

* If the objects unpack correctly (ideally, they'd be tested with only default objects installed)

* If the unpacked objects are saved to the ObjData folder

 

I've tested them and experienced crashes, which I believe to be down to OpenRCT2 not handling hacked parks well. I sent them to geewhzz to test, and he says they crash first time, and open correctly the second time. I believe this issue may be unrelated as he said the unmodified version of the park also crashes, but I'd like to have a few more people test it to be sure.

Ok, so I know its been 3 weeks but I did DL and try to use these files in OpenRCT.  Because of the way the object system works in RCT, objects dont export from your main folder, so you have to re download all the objects in order to view the parks you can in regular RCT2.

 

However, I was able to use these new .sv6 files to open them right off the bat, no need to DL any other objects separately.  These were super helpful, although I couldn't test them in regular RCT as I already had them all downloaded.

OK, thanks. I did also test them myself in OpenRCT2 but experienced crashes and I wasn't sure if it was my script or OpenRCT2 that was responsible. I'm pretty sure that the problem is not in my script though - I don't touch the map data at all, just the packed objects and available ride list. The issue geewhzz experienced with rides not being saved properly turned out to be a permissions error. There was a problem with my script removing path objects that were not unused - my solution is to not remove any path objects. If anyone has any information on how to detect which path objects are used, I could possibly revisit this, but it's not a big deal as those are among the smallest objects in terms of file size.

 

I've pretty much finished that script now, but I'll go back and add to it if there's anything else needed.

My renderer now has support for texture mapping, specular highlights, and true color:



These changes have been implemented because they'll be necessary in order to use the renderer for producing custom scenery, which is something I've wanted to do for a while. Despite the abundance of custom scenery available, I still want to be able to make my own.

 

Most of the game's scenery was rendered in true color and then dithered to get the final image, and my original renderer could not do that. For scenery that is remappable, the original behaviour is still desirable which is why it will still be supported. The old renderer would render in grayscale, as for a remappable surface only the intensity matters as the color can change. The new one will render in true color, then convert only those pixels that should be remappable to grayscale. This facilitates rendering objects that are partially remappable and partially not.


The addition of support for specular highlights is part of a change to the material system. Previously you only had the 32 colors viewable in game to work with. This was done so you wouldn't have to adjust colors manually to match the game's lighting, but it also removes the flexibility to have remappable areas darker or lighter than normal. I didn't like this limitation because it's hard to justify - I don't know if Sawyer always used the same materials for remappable surfaces, but existing custom scenery certainly doesn't. In the new system you can set the diffuse and specular color arbitrarily.


The ride generator is not currently using this updated renderer, because the old renderer had a lot of features that were only needed by the ride generator. Because this new renderer is to be a standalone library, it will not have these features. They need to be moved elsewhere in the code, but this hasn't happened yet, so the ride generator keeps the old code for now.

 

I intend to focus on getting this new renderer working for scenery before I integrate it with the ride generator, but before I can do that  I need to perform a similar rework of the DAT loader code, which currently only handles rides.

I've finally got around to starting a new custom ride. It will be a Mack mega/launch coaster, because they use the same train for launched and non-launched rides so I can do launched coasters, but the train can still be useful without hacks.

 

I'm hopeful that this one won't be as difficult as the wing coaster was because I found (almost) complete schematics - with dimensions!. They were found here, and then I perspective corrected them in GIMP so I could use them as a reference.