RCT Discussion / I Give Up

indeed, thats is a good idea for CONTESTS. but the problem is universal. They are looking at all parks people make within RCT2, predominately, solo creations.

Custom rides suck.

mantis, you speak for me as well. I went through the same ordeal with the QFTB entries and I assure you it DID take hours. And I would have liked to reply to some of the other topics also had they not been closed. I didn't even see the rapids and hypers ones until today and they were already closed.

And as far as making RCT2 parks, there's plenty more headaches there. Scrolling through the hundreds of items that ended up in my data folder from downloading parks and trying to pick exactly 255 of them which I'll be able to use is somewhere on par with getting a root canal. Rack up another couple hours there plus the fact that giving up halfway through means starting over again (which I've done more than once anyway). Then I get in the game finally and try to build and half the time I'm not placing an object where I think I am. The joy of looking at what other people create keeps me coming back but every time it's a huge slap in the face and many more hours wasted with nothing to show for it. Anyone who ever asked me for help on an RCT2 park, I'm sorry I couldn't come up with anything productive. God knows I tried. And I'm still trying for what it's worth but it's not easy to keep excited about something when it's driving you mad. It doesn't help that using a trainer means minimizing and maximizing the game every 5 seconds (remembering to right-click on the desktop each time first so RCT2 won't inexplicably minimize again when I try to click). Maybe some people have supercomputers which lower the loading times or superhuman levels of patience but I'm pretty decent at LL and after years of playing around with that, RCT2 still drives me nuts.

It does no good to post here how much better RCT2 is than LL. I've seen the parks and I can judge that for myself thank you very much. And I also can't help feeling a little bitter that LL parks rarely get more than a passing nod nowadays. mantis, I know how you feel. Don't feel bad about it, we all know you put more time and effort into looking at and commenting on people's parks than just about anyone else. I feel a little better at least knowing that my own RCT2 miseries are shared with a few other people. I guess I'm not just totally incompetent (hey, RCT2 keeps telling me I am). Is there anything we can do about this? Can we start some kind of RCT2 scenery list of only the best items so we know what they are and we can delete all the lame stuff once and for all? Can we try to stick to some kind of benchmark? I don't know, maybe everyone will just move on to RCT3 anyway soon enough. But it seems to me that with all these people here, we ought to be able to come up with some kind of a solution to end this madness.

I guess the challenge is...is there anything the community can do about it? I mean...maybe like a standard of custom scenery...so that all the shit gets deleted...but a way to approve new, good custom scenery? I mean, the community ended up passing on WW and TT, maybe we can find a fix for this too? Maybe not as extreme as my example, but itd be great if we could turn our anger for constructive purposes.

No it wouldn't...

you fool!

*slap*

=P

I think I have adapted to the waiting part of RCT2, most of the time I open a park I leave my coaster and do something for a few minitues, if not that im day dreaming or thinking of what i'll do when the park opens, but then when I open an LL park in a blink of an eye it bugs me that RCT2 is not just as fast.

I think the reason you get such huge files is the custom rides and not so much the scenery. I respect the ride makers for what they can do, but you will never see that stuff in any of my parks due to the file size. As for picking scenery takeing to long just try to use basic tabs then adding a few things spicifiec to your theme or park, that part never takes me that long and I always start from scratch.

It doesnt load-oh-so-fast on mine, but still its bearable, and I've got a pretty old PC. 3 hours is unbearable though.

The problem with the QFTBX is that there was no set work bench. Matter of fact that the lack of workbenches is the biggest problem to the game. Somebody needs to create a universal workbench, and do it in several different sizes. We could make a thread and get peepls to say what scenery they would like? And then all we need to do is compile the list, make the bench, and then release the bench in say 3 or 4 different sizes. This way file sizes will be minimal, people wont have a disadvantage from having 'better' scenery, and we wont get error trappers each time we load a park.

Its a question of adaptability though, are people willing to sacrafice total flexability on the scenery tab, for the better of the community?

I was so gutted that people couldnt see my coaster, I was really proud of what was a rushed entry, still it was worth a look. Im gutted I cant open Phantasia too. Custom scenery piss's me off. I will be using the same workbench all the way through the QFTBX tourny though, so il keep trying to upload my first entry other wise im f00ked.

mantis, you don't have idea how much i feel with you.

rct2 must die.

If you guys played RCT2 often, the game would load quicker in the future. I dont know if you uninstall RCT2 when you dont want it? If you do it deletes all of the custom scenery you had installed. So the next time you load up RCT2 from a downloaded park it has to install ALL of them again. If you kept it and opened a lot of parks, you would only have to install the few that you dont have. It doesnt take long for RCT2 to load for me, maybe a minute MAX to install the new custom scenery. Theres always going to be crap custom scenery, and theres not really anything we can do about that. If only the good objects were out there everyone would be a lot happier. I hate when i go through the onjects in the SE and find 10 of the same TT bush, or a crappy pre-made building that i wouldnt ever use. The same with custom rides, the only good ones (mostly) are AE's, most of the others are crappy quality and pretty much useless.

Mantis I was thought just like you when I didn't have my laptop.

When I got it RCT2 was working great but I still get pissed of with all the custom scenery and the missing data error. I try only to use toons scenery and for my entry I used the PT workbench

rct2 must die.

For me the only other scenery maker who I use more than a small amount of stuff from is Fisherman. Otherwise, I make what I need myself. Kumba has made some useful stuff, but nothing that I would find indespensible that I wouldn't have done myself when needed. Makonix and Couger also did some useful items, but Makonix also has a lot of stuff that I don't like at all. No offense to anyone else out there, but there just isn't much else that works for me the way I want the game to look. With that said, without custom scenery, I would never build in RCT2. I totally disagree that anything you could do in RCT2 could be done in LL and love the look I can get from the second game (tho that is not the point of this thread). Most of my most used scenery items have come about because they're something I wanted while building a park. I would be happy to compile a list of what I think the quality scenery is that is available right now and create a standard of what could be used for parks submitted to NE, but it would take a while to do this. I'm not sure it's worth the time with RCT3 looming on the horizon, but if custom scenery is available when RCT3 is released, maybe we should set up a panel to make these judgements for that game. If anyone is interested though, I would still be happy to head a panel here to do the same for RCT2. The only catch is that anything I release will always have new scenery and I'm not really interested in building with a limited palette as part of the fun of RCT2 for me is making the scenery I need for the theme I'm doing. We could easily create zip files with the scenery judged to be NE worthy, and then everyone could clear their objdat folders and go from there, but I'm not going to put anytime into this if the community does not think it is worthwhile. I have a few people in mind to join me on this panel, but would be happy to take volunteers if the community agrees to abide by our decisions. If we go this way maybe Iris could hold of on the next QFTBX round till we get this done, so that the next round can go more smoothly and so that any panel members participating in the scenery selection don't have to cut into there parkmaking time. Just a thought.

Kumba's got a great point, something I didn't realize until recently too. The custom RIDES are the ones that really amp up the file size. Just ask Meretrix!

Anyway, it's not too bad for me, tho QftB has been a bit annoying.

That is a great idea, even though it would be such an expansive project.

If you could do it though, parks would theoretically not have to have objects exported, and therefore filesizes would be MUCH smaller.

Richie makes a valid point, but actually if he was right about my case I wouldn't be annoyed. The fact is I rarely delete anything to do with rct, so i'd have thought i'd have pretty much most of the scenery available. What really grated was the fact that EVERY qftbx entry bar one gave me an error trapper. So that means each one had at least one piece of scenery that:

1) I didn't have in the first place
2) Wasn't in any of the other entries!

How that is possible I really don't know. I think the only entries in which I actually noticed the custom scenery being USED were aero's buddha statue, phatage's 1/4 land use and some of toon's blocks looked new (don't know if they were or not).

Metro's told me that his game loads fine, and that's the same for some other people here. Maybe it's just that my computer is that old or something. It's just so agonising. Perhaps it becomes psychological after so long trying! And god knows why it needs to check for objects TWICE. That's just unnecessary.

Anyway, i'm glad i'm not the only one. I do love rct2 because when I do actually get things open, they're often worth a long look, and if I didn't perservere with it I wouldn't be able to give people the credit they deserve for some amazing work (PT, for example, and some great solos). I don't have anything against people for playing rct2, because I can see the attraction of it. I have a BIG BIG problem with the game's functionality, though. If RCT was like a ferrari, rct2 would be a clapped out Lada abandoned in Alum Rock (but still with a really nice interior, or something...just go with me on this one).

Anyway, i'm feeling less snappy at the moment, so maybe i'll give it another go and take it slowly...as usual

I used to get those error trappers when i loaded up someones game (it came ight after it checked all scenery. If you load it up again it will work fine (or should). And will load MUCH quicker too the second time.

It doesnt do that any more, but i dont know how i stopped it, if i did anything to stop it.

ow boy do i feel your pain, looking into one park that has CS is ok, the game loads, checks scenery and goes on, but when you try to open another one the Error trapper comes in and kills the game, so you restart the game (if it even starts at all, sometimes i have to start the game up 3 to 4 times before it actually loads ), reopen the second savedgame you wanted to open, look at it, load the 3rd and BANG error trapper again, sometimes i'd like to smash things because of that, it's such a pain in the ass.

but the custom scenery is becoming more of a problem than a gift, i have (right now) 159 Mb of custom scenery with a total of 5025 items, and i'm not even adding the files i have in the 19 folders in my objctdata map !

5025 items, imagine starting a new park, choosing archy en theming stuff would take longer than building the park !

also, where's that patch that would help the game startup, i could use it, damm you infogrames...

Custom scenery is a bitch, although useful too. I can't even scroll in the scenerio editor anymore because of it. When am I supposed to sort all that out? There is too much of it and would take me forever. Ah well, we are to blame.

Sorry to sound like a jerk, but I have to brag.

I got my new laptop, and... WOW! RCT 2 loads FAST!!! I couldn't believe how fast it flew through the two loading screens and the object data checking screen! It took like... five seconds. It still gives me a trapper error the first time, but even having to restart a park twice, loading RCT 2 parks still only takes me like half a minute. I'm so happy!!!

Also, my video card might be a little *too* fast. Unless I bump the resolution way up, the coasters appear to go twice as fast as in "real life!"


Okay, I'm done.

bastard!