NE 20th Anniversary / History of New Element - 2016

 

The History of NE

 

 

When 2016 began, it’s hard to imagine anyone expecting the year to be one of such change and evolution for NE. But that’s exactly what happened, especially with the growth of OpenRCT2. I personally think of this time as the beginning of a new era in the community, and really the beginning of what might be considered sort of a renaissance at New Element. The community was resistant to some of this change initially, unsurprisingly, as it causes a few teething issues but we quickly learned how valuable adopting the new would become.

 

But first, the year started off with a bang. The release of Busch Gardens Asia by Robbie92, perhaps the most hyped park of all time, certainly in my history on New Element. An instant spotlight, really hard to imagine anyone sober actually selecting no in the spotlight voting here, the only question was just how high the accolade score might be. It was certainly a rocky road for Robbie, hitting the object limit far from the park's completion forced him to significantly cut back on his ambition with the project and re-work some areas to carve out as many object slots as possible. Enlisting help from a few object makers to squeeze as much out of the game as possible, the park was finished, or maybe not… but that's neither here nor there. When the final vote was entered and the accolade score dropped everyone was shocked, 98.13%, nearly perfect. Busch Gardens Asia was now the new king of the accolade panel score, surpassing previous best Starpointe by almost 4%. To this day this score has not been approached, and maybe never will. Also quite notable that BGA was the first spotlight winner since Airtimes Thorpe Park in March of 2014, an almost 2 year wait, one of the longest in the site's history.

 

Busch Gardens Asia by robbie92	Busch Gardens Asia by robbie92
Busch Gardens Asia by robbie92	Busch Gardens Asia by robbie92

 

When the dust settled, it's almost as if a weight had been lifted off the community’s collective shoulders. Finally, a new spotlight! After a decent batch of near misses, this seemed to effectively open the floodgates on a stream of new spotlight parks that would last until the end of 2017. Perhaps it’s just by chance that BGA was the first after such a long wait, but it’s hard to pick a better opening act to what would become the biggest run of new spotlights since 2011.

 

Seemingly out of nowhere, Lagom, a new member who started posting screens in mid-2015, was quickly approaching completion of his Liseberg recreation. A very ambitious project that had really started turning heads a few months earlier due to Lagom’s rapid skill improvement he was displaying through the few screens and posts he made. Much like Robbie, significant issues skirting the object limit delayed the release of the park by a few weeks, and forced Lagom to forgo the classic blacktiling effect that most NE parks used. However, finally on the 15th of March, Liseberg was released. Everyone was blown away, the level of atmosphere, scale and attention to detail was incredibly high for a member’s first release. It was a Spotlight!

 

Liseberg by Lagom

Liseberg by Lagom

 

Notching a solid 85%, Lagom was now an Elite Parkmaker on his first release, earning the coveted red nametag on the site. While certainly a little more controversial in its Spotlight designation than BGA, it’s hard to deny the level of quality and uniqueness that Lagom provided us with Liseberg. It’s also one of the first RCT2 spotlight parks to designate a notable portion of the map to the park’s surroundings, and this subtle shift in focus from park to surroundings and “non-park” content, which certainly has become more popular since then, within an ever shifting meta that has begun to be more tolerable of non stereotypical themepark content on the site.

 

The spring of 2016 at New Element also saw former moderator Kumba, after much clamoring for a new contest by the community, host his independent Survivor contest. In which each competitor has 72 hours to fill in a 30x30 square on one of two maps anonymously, using NSCO. Then, the squares are eliminated survivor style, meaning that the lowest quality squares are removed from the poll and voting is hosted again until 1 square from each map remains. The last surviving square from each of the two maps is then voted on Head-2-Head style to choose the winner. This style of contest is rooted in the RCT club dynamics of the mid 2000s.

 

Both maps produced many high quality squares, with standout contributions by Kumba himself, dr dirt, Ling, Bigshootergill, along with Stoksy, Cocoa, Fisch and Louis. The final results were released on April 10th, and in classic Kumba contest fashion, he named himself the winner by a score of 10 to 7 over Louis. Kumba’s square titled Black Mamba vs. Taipan is truly a very sweet dueling B&M monstrosity that was well deserving of the Survivor 2016 crown.

 

Kumba's plot on Survivor

Fisch's plot on Survivor

 

By this point, a new version of RCT had become pretty well known amongst the New Element community. But this version was unlike any other, as it was a completely fan-made open source version of RCT2. Initially OpenRCT2, as it is officially designated, didn’t seem to offer much reason to be used, at least amongst us at New Element. As many were skeptical of alternative versions of the nearly 15 year old game after the flame-out of RCT Modified a few years earlier. Why change what isn’t broken?

 

I think I first heard of OpenRCT2 sometime in late summer or early fall of 2015. Initially, skeptical, like many others, as it lacked compatibility with the trainers that were vital to creating the hyper detailed custom scenery parks that New Element is known for. For those first few months, really the only feature that I felt was useful was its ability to eliminate ghost objects upon opening an SV6 savegame. I guess playing the game in fullscreen or in your custom resolution of choice was also nice, but at the time not worth switching over for actual building. However, gradually, over time, OpenRCT2 began to adopt and add features that New Element wanted. The ability to zero-clearance was a big one, although in a different way than the 8cars trainer, it proved to be far more user friendly, especially with large parks. These trainers, such as 8cars or Son of Beast, were absolutely critical to create the type of detailed parks and hacks that New Element is known for. But they grew increasingly frustrating and unwieldy as compatibility issues developed over the years and parks became increasingly more and more complex. OpenRCT2s features quickly absolved the need for any trainers at all. Another massive addition was the autosave feature, which probably could have cured endless heartache and saved countless hours of lost work over the years due to things like error trappers or misclicks. Next, all of the scenario editor tools were able to be unlocked while in normal build mode. Allowing you to edit your object selection while in game, move park gates, or even expand your map? Gasp! Then the tile inspector was added, a feature that allowed you to manipulate the objects on the map in a way like never before. Soon, a feature was added that allowed you to hide entrance huts, previously a process developed by geewhzz that was so painstaking and technical that most avoided it entirely.

 

All this was great, and so finally I and a few others began to adopt OpenRCT2 as their primary version of RCT for building parks. I still kept the vanilla version handy in-case an erroneous update messed with the appearance of our park or a meteor struck the developers server and left us with an unusable version of the game. A fear that was probably not justified at all, but at the time many of us were still skeptical as some mininsule features still lacked from Open, or of parks not being compatible with the original vanilla version of RCT2.

 

Well, on April 11th, 2016 New Element was forced to make a decision that would change the course of its history. Scoop, a new upcoming realistic builder, submitted his park title Oakridge Acres, a project he had been working on for a handful of months. But this park was different, it utilized some features that made it incompatible with Vanilla RCT2. How shocking! While not really a notable park for its quality, it was the first ever OpenRCT2 only release on New Element. At the time, at least by my memory, it didn’t bother me too much, I had been using OpenRCT2 almost exclusively for a few months and didn’t mind being forced to use it to view the park. Nonetheless I did avoid features that would break vanilla compatibility for whatever reason at the time and for a good while longer, mostly being the hidden entrance huts option that OpenRCT2 provided.

 

While there were some teething issues with the site, exporting objects and things of that nature they were tackled, and from this point on OpenRCT usage skyrocketed and would quickly grow to dominate the site by the end of the year.

 

Not even three weeks after this moment, we would see another historic moment in New Element history. Alex, who had burst onto the scene in 2015 as a primarily LL player, was developing his second major park. He debuted the concept with a few groundbreaking screens in late 2015 that truly turned the tide of LL and probably would have made him a household name on their own. Titled Luna Park, a favorite concept of mine, Alex was creating perhaps the most ambitious LL park since the days of Loopy and codex. To much hype, Luna Park was released in late April and earned the accolade of Spotlight soon after. The first LL spotlight since Through the Ages way back in 2011, which meant that two long spotlight droughts had been broken in 2016 already.

 

Luna Park by alex

Luna Park by alex

 

Luna Park is truly one of my favorites to this day, its uniqueness and identity are just so strong in what had for many become a tired game of repeated themes and styles. The map transports you to the golden age of roller coasters and theme parks that peaked during the early 20th century.

 

Only a few weeks after the release of Luna Park, New Elements' official 2016 contest was announced, The New Element Olympics 2016. Coinciding with the 2016 Olympics in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, this contest asked members to compete in a variety of olympic themed challenges as part of self organized country teams. A unique contest format for New Element, and one that promoted a more casual approach as compared to Head-2-Head.

 

The contest ran from May to August and saw a striking amount of variety in its submissions due to the unique challenges. Placement in each challenge was determined by a community poll, the top three finishes in each event were awarded a medal, and points were awarded to each country based on finishing position.

 

 

	Aesthetica		Kingdom of Ni		Grand Duchy of Relaxembourg
	][topia		Parkmenistan		Southern Chillippines
	Doninican Republic		Arrowmania		People's Democratic Republic of the Chillippines
	Coaster Rica		Timbabwe		$wagiland

 

Notable events included the infamous Disaster Bench, part of the 50x50 Improvising event, was a throwback to the old days of bench restricted contests, but with a massive twist. The bench included only objects which were considered ugly, broken or and unusable by usual standards. This drove an incredible amount of creativity and really opened the eyes of NE to a whole swath of new objects and styles that could utilize textures which might not have been considered up to standard previously. Another interesting event was 120x120 Landscaping, as the top finisher was a sort of sci-fi entry from Jaguar that depicted the center of a spinning galaxy in the vastness of space, named Via Lactea. This was quite controversial at the time but ultimately showed the community's appreciation for the creative approach taken by Jaguar.

 

Liampie's team Parkmenistan emerged as the early favorite with some strong early showings and commitment to quality and consistency. Darkhorse county, Kingdom of Ni, led by Jaguar proved to be their main adversary due to their commitment to completing each event. In the end Parkmenistan came out on top and took home the NE Olypmics team gold medal, with Kingdom of Ni taking hom Silver, and Aesthetica rounding out the podium positions with bronze.

 

Panoptica Peaks by alex and Liampie	Last Days by alex, Tolsimir, Faas and Liampie
Via Lactea by Jaguar	Thessaly by ][ntamin22, Bubbsy41 and RWE

 

New Element saw yet another significant release during this time, just before the end of the Olympics, I released my follow up park to Westwinds, appropriately titled G Force’s Worlds of Fun. While still in a similar style to Westwinds with its focus on american realism, this was a very different park to Westwinds. It featured a much more sprawling, natural layout, and multiple themed lands and attractions, along with many trees. But like Westwinds, this park was not without its own controversy. Many screens I posted during the park's construction featured extensive comment threads, arguments and debates on the polarizing style the park was constructed in. The heavily forested, lightly themed realism I went for didn’t seem to do enough for many. Most of the feedback I remember getting was either to remove trees or to improve the theming. Perhaps justified, but ultimately didn’t fit the style I was going for at the time. Once again the object limit played a significant factor in the park's completion and scope, hence the odd shape of the map and general unevenness of some areas. Ultimately the park was released to critical acclaim and earned the designation of spotlight with a score of 84.38% and an 80% yes vote ratio.

 

Immediately upon release many compared it to Westwinds, jokingly referring to the park as “Eastwinds” despite being a very different style of realistic park, at least in my opinion. Over time some have suggested that the scoring of the park was done with some sympathy for what many considered a snub on Westwinds, as Worlds of Fun is usually thought of as one of the weakest spotlights from this era. However it can claim to be the first spotlight released that was primarily constructed via OpenRCT2, something I personally think made a big impact on how quickly the park was constructed and certainly allowed for an improved end product over what would have been possible with vanilla. Regardless of this, the park is highlighted by some great coasters, especially Patriot, who’s layout was contributed by Pacificoaster and Beowulf, the Arrow looper from Austin55, along with a complete ride lineup set in a park with vast scale for the time.

 

G Force's Worlds of Fun

G Force's Worlds of Fun

 

As the summer drew to a close and fall began, NE was quietly preparing for a significant change. In November, inthemanual departed from the admin team; ][ntamin22 and myself were recruited to the admin team as assistants to Posix, Liampie, Louis! and Geewhzz. ][ntamin being one of early members of NE had been with the community since its early days, and possess a knowledge of NE history and developments that is rivaled by very few. Meanwhile, myself, had only been active consistently since early 2015 and considered myself very lucky to even be considered at the time. Both of us took up the task with my ambition and joy and hoped to make the next few years of New Element among the best.

 

 

Not long after this, rumors started to percolate that Alex had submitted his next park. He had released a number of very highly received screens over recent months, many anticipated it to be even better than Luna Park, which seemed sorta crazy at the time considering the extremely high quality and general revelation that Luna Park was. The hype was truly real, quite unique for an LL park at the time, before OpenRCT2 integration made them far more accessible. Upon release, Discovery Bay was met with immediate critical acclaim, some citing it as the best LL park ever (which might not be totally baseless as this claim often is). Unlike Luna, Discovery Bay fit much more in-line with the LL classics from the early years of NE. Featuring an Islands of Adventure, or perhaps more accurately, a Disney Sea style park layout with themed areas circling the map, all set around a center lagoon and point of interest. This is really a hard park to summarize as almost every aspect of it was transformative and unique yet provided a very familiar and nostalgic feel, it ticked all the boxes and is still the pinnacle display of Alex’s incredible parkmaking abilities in my mind. Almost giving us a window of what LL might have become had it not been supplanted by RCT2 and continued to develop at the pace it did around the dawn of New Element.

 

Discovery Bay by alex

Discovery Bay by alex

 

The initial acclaim was fully confirmed when the park received a 91.88% panelist score with 100% spotlight gilding. An extremely impressive accomplishment, earning Alex a well deserved legendary parkmaker status and the highest scoring LL release of the accolade panel era. This also marked Alex’s second spotlight of 2016, an incredible feat, Alex became the first player to win two spotlights in the same calendar year since artist in 2005. Not only had he notched two of the highest scoring LL spotlights ever but he had completed them so close together that it was almost overwhelming and at the same time guaranteed him to become parkmaker of the year at the 2016 New Element Awards. Oh, did I mention Alex was on the winning team for the Olympics this year too? Perhaps one of the best years for any NE member ever, his accomplishments in 2016 alone put him amongst the most decorated members in the community's history. But back to Discovery Bay, if there is any LL park that is worth viewing from the last ten years, this is it.

 

This incredible run of spotlights was no fluke, 2016 really saw an increase in full scale parks compared to previous years. Reversing the trend of dwindling full scale parks which had inflicted NE for the last half decade. Among other notable full scale parks include but are not limited to Baker Lake by Coupon (highest scoring non-spotlight full park), Budapleasure by Liampie, KnoxVegas by Maverix, Six Flags Great North by gijssie1234, Splashdown by inthemanual, Piano Park by Jappy, Treasure Islands and Forces of Nature both by bigshootergill. Full scale parks were truly back on the menu at NE.

 

KnoxVegas by Maverix

Baker Lake Amusement Park by Coupon

 

Now to circle back a bit, in October 2016 a periodically active member named Lotte (formerly gdb) posed a question on the site if people would be interested in a New Element discord server. At the time most of us had never heard of discord as it was really more of an online gaming community tool that had just started to become popular as an all-in-one replacement to AIM, teamspeak and other more broad messaging apps. Many early detractors, myself included, felt it would be unnecessary and not really be worthwhile as an isolated method from the main site. However Lotte was persistent and created the channel anyways, and within a few days only had a handful of members. But over time the concept gained acceptance, and whether it be through FOMO or other factors, a good number of the active members of the site were on the discord server and communicated regularly by the end of October. The rise of this discord server really coeniced with a big push by the community to utilize another new feature of OpenRCT2, which I had alluded to earlier. This feature was multiplayer.

 

It’s hard to understate the doors that multiplayer unlocked for many of us at the time. Suddenly, collaborative projects became far easier to manage, no more sharing save files and coordinating build times and that nonsense. Once one managed to navigate the moderately confusing server hosting process, of which a handful did, it became extremely easy to have multiple members building on the same map at the same time. Just a couple years earlier this would have been a completely mind blowing concept, and now it was a reality. Suddenly, having a dozen or so players all contributing to the same project at the same time became very enticing. But at that time, most of the servers were very casual, with only a few on the browser having any sort of coordination, and certainly none were up to the standards of NE. So after a few semi-serious efforts, Liampie and I really pushed to start a serious New Element quality community project. The server was opened on Christmas Eve of 2016, and quickly began to develop over the next few days as many NE members began their first real dive into the multiplayer feature. Although the work being produced was still pretty haphazard and scattered, a few players began to take leads and coordinate bigger plots of the park. Discord was critical for this process as it allowed for instant communication and also voice chat which was great for hashing out ideas and plans that were too hard to put into text. As 2016 drew to a close the park which was to become Mirage Islands was well on its way to being the first official NE community multiplayer park. But more details on that will come in the 2017 writeup.

 

So, that's 2016 in a nutshell, truly a breakthrough year for OpenRCT and an extremely packed one with 5 spotlights, a full contest, an unofficial contest, and many more top tier releases that I sadly didn’t have the space to elaborate on here. Personally I think that 2016 was one of the best years for NE, and a year that many of us look upon fondly here at NE. It was one of extremely high productivity that we hoped would continue into 2017…

 

Other selected releases		Other selected forum links
Scientifica		Logo Board
Skylands National Park		NE Alternative Awards 2015
Jötunn		I stop to read your posts
Last Days		Fisch pioneering multiplayer sessions
Panoptica Peaks		A panel debate
Canyons, Carts and Coasters		RCT Classic
Thessaly		Rank the coasters in your parks
Parkmenistan		Best NE memes
Parkmeni Pictures Studios		Subtle cultural variety
Relaxembourg National Park		Masterchef NE
FredD's Ultimate Coaster Kingdom		Shitposting turning political
Firestorm		US elections 2016
BiZaRrO!		Comment section from hell
Dark Realms		Da glitch
Spiritwind		Chemist knows how to make comment sections explode
Legend of the Loch
Splashdown Water Park		Early indicator of crunch movement
Katakiuchi
Victoria Classic

 

Just want to say it was a joy to read, and 2016 was a really fun year. Can't believe it's been 6 years since Luna Park and Discovery Bay. This was the Google Hangouts era. Discord with its streams is nice, but it's not the same as google hangouts. I saw so many great parks being built live, sometimes up to five at the same time. That as a good case of productivity rubbing off on other people.

great writeup, what an incredible year. I hadn't remembered that alex had two spotlights in one year. insanity.

 

has it really been six years on discord? wow. maybe...maybe its time to integrate a link to it more prominently on the site!! lol

I feel like 2016 was the start of a transition for RCT and NE. Openrct2 and Discord can be considered to have changed our community fundamentally and have had a huge impact on our building styles with the possibilities they offered. 

This was a great read - thankyou for writing, and for the kind words

I think Last Days was one of the first creations made with open multiplayer submitted to the site, it really felt like doing poineering stuff.