Ask the Experts / Launches & Lifts

  • F0ndue%s's Photo

    I've started toying around with some old projects again, and it got me wondering how one could build a coaster that has a launch and a regular lift hill. Appearently somebody found out that by merging  the coaster with the station of a reverse freefall coaster each straight non-diagonal piece of track will act as a launch track, and in order to provent that you have to replace those pieces of track with brakes. But is there any other way to solve this problem? My coaster would use a lot of merging/track switches, and I'd rather not have to use brakes. Besides they look totally out of place.  

  • GammaZero%s's Photo
    Now you can do this easily with booster track.
  • X7123M3-256%s's Photo

    Booster pieces would be the obvious solution.

     

    If you need it to be vanilla compatible, then I can't think of a good way to do it. The reverse freefall thing will work, but it makes every straight track a launch so it limits your layout. You might be able to hack something together using a shoestring, but that's not exactly an elegant way to do it.

     

    The best idea I could give you would be to use chain lift exclusively for the launch, and the launched lift hill for the lift. If you space out the launch pieces, you can get this to go slow enough to pass for a lift, but it's still pretty fast and more like a cable lift than a chain.

  • ][ntamin22%s's Photo
    Boosters are probably much more practical. I haven't done any testing with the LIM-mode hack in a while, but you should be able to make the track the brakes are on invisible and build a dummy track in the opposite direction to get the clean appearance. You'd be surprised how little most layouts use vanilla straight track, anyway.
  • F0ndue%s's Photo

    It's not so much about me caring for vanilla compability, it is more about me having to use vanilla to implement the track switches. (it's based on Expedition Everest). Does vanilla crash when the coaster contains boosters?

    Dummy tracks are out of question since I already use the mine coaster track as dummy track, the actual coaster runs on Mini-Coaster/B&M looper.

     

    EDIT: How do I actually build these boosters? I cannot find any cheat or trackpiece, and I just updated to the latest stable build. 

  • X7123M3-256%s's Photo

    It's not so much about me caring for vanilla compability, it is more about me having to use vanilla to implement the track switches.

     

    What kind of track switching are you doing that you need vanilla to implement it? I can't think of anything track related that can't be done in OpenRCT2 (except perhaps reassigning stations to different rides - but is there an actual use for that?)

     

     


    Does vanilla crash when the coaster contains boosters?

     

    Yes, vanilla will crash if you use any track pieces not available in vanilla.

     

    If you really need vanilla, there's a way around this - merge onto spinning wild mouse track and then use the spinning control toggle (If you need to adjust the speed, start with giga track, build a booster, then change the ride type to spinning wild mouse). These track pieces share a track piece ID, so a spinning control toggle will still be interpreted as a booster by the train, but a spinning control toggle by the drawing code.

     

    This will not make the booster work in vanilla (it would behave as an ordinary straight track piece), but it will make it not crash the game so that you can carry out any hacks you need to in vanilla.(note: I've not actually tested this in vanilla, but I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work)

     

    Hiding the booster piece with a corrupt element might also work, but I've had problems with corrupt elements in vanilla as they are so I don't want to say that with confidence.

     

     


    How do I actually build these boosters?

     

    They are available on the giga, twister, and I think certain other track types but I can't remember exactly which. If they're not available on the track type you're using, don't worry, they'll still work fine - just use the arbitrary ride type cheat to change the track type, build the boosters, and then change it back. The boosters would then be invisible but they will still function, and you can zero-clearance another track piece over the invisible booster.

  • F0ndue%s's Photo

    Thank you. The switches, or rather merges that I was refering to would work like the switches on Expediton Everest (train enters section forwards, halts, rolls back and exits backwards through a different exit). And as far as I know you could only do these with MOM. But obviously I've been gone for a while and it seems like there has been some progress with OpenRCT.

     

    EDIT: I still cannot find the boosters. Are they in the special track tab? Do I have to enable some option? Or am I just plain retarded?

  • X7123M3-256%s's Photo


    And as far as I know you could only do these with MOM

     

    If you do them the way I would do them, then you only need zero clearance. In some more complicated cases, like when you have two switch tracks on the same tile, then you might also need the tile inspector, but I can't think of any track merge that would require MOM (though MOM might still be an easier way to do it)

     


    I still cannot find the boosters. Are they in the special track tab? Do I have to enable some option?

     

    You shouldn't have to enable any option - they're right underneath the brakes in the menu.There was a bug that caused them not to appear if the park was created before the booster pieces were added, but I had thought that was fixed. If you definitely can't find them, try the coaster designer and see if you can build them there.

  • F0ndue%s's Photo

    Seems like the bug you mentioned was the problem. Seems like I'll have to download one of the newer versions. 

     

     

    Attached File  Unbenannt.png (12.08KB)
    downloads: 12

    BTW, this is an example of the merge I was speaking of. I cannot find the tutorial for it anymore, but is there any tutorial on how to do it with the tile inspector?

  • X7123M3-256%s's Photo

    The process is exactly the same as for a normal merge (build one track, then build another track over the top using ZC), except you have to pay attention to which order you build the tracks in (you can swap it after the fact with the tile inspector though). I put together this tutorial, but obviously you're using a turn instead of an S-bend (it should work with any track piece, as long as the ends line up). I also have this other tutorial that shows the process in more detail (toward the end of the video).

     

    Neither of these tutorials explains how to set up the blocks after doing this merge (at the time that I made them, I didn't know how). If you can't figure it out, maybe this one would help.

  • nicman%s's Photo

    The save was made before the boosters were implemented so to fix this convert your save into a scenario and then load it and save it.

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