Although the roster of buildings and rides is smaller than the better-developed classic RCT series, everything’s gorgeous, and there’s lots of incentive to space your rides out a lot more than you would’ve done in previous theme park managers.
It is, admittedly, gorgeous.
The finances seem fairly well realized, given how late they were released to the public. It seems to me like you earn a usable amount of money faster than in, say, RCT3, but given how much the game encourages landscaping and scenery, my pace of park expansion in challenge mode isn’t very much faster.
Speaking of, the landscape design tools are fun to play with, and the expense of landscape sculpting in challenge mode is toned down a bit from previous RCT games, so it isn’t quite as impossible. I built a crescent-shaped hill around my park entrance area, and will be designing a few separate coaster areas behind tunnels through the hill. (See below for griping about tunnels, though.)
Complaints so far:
The camera controls are inexcusably bad compared to RCT3 and its bevy of options. Zoom doesn’t go to cursor, and middle-mouse-click-drag rotation doesn’t rotate around the click point, both of which are pretty major flaws.
The scenery filters deselect themselves whenever you leave the scenery panel, when I’d really prefer they stayed selected. It’s super-easy to place something, start fiddling with the fine rotation tools, and then realize you’ve accidentally deselected the scenery panel at some point. Then you have to laboriously go back through and pick the filters you want.
Inexplicably, tunneling is not yet a feature, unless I’ve missed something. You build underground by excavating a pit, building your underground stuff, and raising the land around it. Granted, this does make for some super-cool landforms, but it seems perhaps a little excessive.
There are some other little UI nitpicks I have, too, like how clicking on the current balance on the bottom bar doesn’t bring up the financials window, but those are less important.
I’m playing the first scenario with the pirate themed park and checking out the existing rides. I really like how the scenery is blended to the rides. For example how a castle wall curves around part of the rocktopus. I’m trying to do the same to the new rides I’ve put down and am having a real hard time. The building controls seem to work fine if I want to build something on a square grid, but I can’t even seem to find a way to angle a wall without having to back out and place each wall as if it was a new building. Getting everything lined up is a real pain so far.
Is there actually an easy way to create some thing like scenery surrounding that rocktopus ride? Based on my experience so far just getting a few wall segments lined up at an angle nicely it seems like it would take an hour at least just to align the partial wall around the back of that ride.
Tunneling is in, and very straightforward. It’s just a method you’d never think to try if you’re used to a heightmap-based system like RCT3 instead of a voxel-based one.
To make a tunnel:
Did a hole straight down with the Push tool.
Orient your cursor so it’s flat against the wall of your hole.
Use the Push tool on the side of hole, and viola! you have a tunnel.
This stumped me for a while, too.
Select the ride.
Look at the panel with all the ride info - at the bottom you should see a button saying something like “Start a new building using this ride’s grid.” Click it.
A grid will appear that you can build on that should match the ride - not sure about Rocktopus, but for coaster platforms you’ll now be able to put walls flush up against the sides, etc.
Bought this yesterday and have put in a few hours playing around in the sandbox.
I am really impressed. No crashes, it performs great, and it’s gorgeous as heck. I am super-impressed by the coaster building. The way you just bend the track around is an order of magnitude better than the old way of picking specific segments/curves. I built a not-horrible wooden coaster from scratch in about 10 minutes. It seems relatively easy to run coasters around other rides and terrain and it just sort of all works.
I do feel like the flexibility of the build tools is pretty overwhelming. I imagine I can spend about 95% of my time futzing around with decorating, rather than building rides or managing the park. Is that a feature or a bug? Not sure yet.
I would agree with @Fishbreath that the camera controls seem excessively fiddly and imprecise. I just can’t quite get a handle on them. I’m constantly zooming through or past where I want to be.
The number of non-coaster rides seems perhaps a bit limited. If you’re building a pirate land (for example), it seems like you have limited options for pirate-themed rides other than build-it-yourself coasters. Maybe there’s something I am missing there?
Back on the positives, it’s bright and whimsical and the music is great. It’s a feel-good game when I need some feeling-good.
As is typical with Frontier, I imagine this is a game that will grow in scope and depth over time, and I’ll be wasting approximately ten billion hours of my life playing around with it.
Might not be what you are looking for, but here’s a hacked-together reference I made for pasting into OneNote. I think it would work okay-ish printed out in landscape format.
Even better: if you dig a pit down to your tunnel depth and use the Flatten to Foundation tool, it makes a flat-bottomed tunnel with a height of half the tool diameter, which is perfect for making underground paths.
Here’s my first themed coaster with scenery triggers:
[quote]
• New rides: Rolling River, Invincible, Chair-O-Plane
These three new attractions are the perfect addition to your parks; you can add the stunning new Rolling River water ride, create a new epic coaster with the Invincible, or add a more gentle touch with the Chair-O-Plane! How exciting!
• BALLOONS!! The latest addition to the Planet Coaster shops is an all-time favourite, balloon shop Loony Blooons! We can’t wait to see your guests walking around with their colourful souvenirs. And even better, each balloon is on a string!
• More Shop news: Themed hats, mayonnaise for Monsieur Frites
We have also added a variety of hats to be purchased in the Hat Shops, themed to Western, Sci-fi, and Fantasy; so your guests will have loads more options for funky headwear! Lastly, your guests can now choose to top their fries with… mayonnaise (YES, HOLLAND REPRESENT!), to give them the best of flavours at Monsieur Frites shops.
• Two new entertainers!
You’ve already had some sneak previews of the two last additions to the park staff, but we’re so happy they are finally ready to join the family: give a warm welcome to Miss Elly, our Western hot shot patrolling the grounds, and Tiki Chicken, the fiery, community-created flavour maker.
• Help System: to… help!
• Scenario balancing to Pirate Battles and Monolith
Thanks to your valuable feedback over the past few days of beta, we have made some balancing changes to the two Beta Scenarios even further; try your hand at them again and see if you can still pass them both with three stars!
• UI flow improvements
The panel in the info panel and park management will now remember the last tab you were on; so you will not have to search for your active tabs again.
• More lights hooked up to Coaster Trigger system
Get the most of triggered events with even more lighting options to spruce up your coaster ride!
• VIP Staff Pass now supports facial hair
Get all the beards going this Movember!
• Polish, QOL and Balancing - more of this
• More optimisations: the team has been working hard over the last few weeks to get framerate up even further for a smooth experience, and today’s update has the latest fruits of their labours.
• Stability and compatibility improvements
• Boids: Flocking Pigeons!
And last but not least, by popular demand, your PARK AREA IS NOW OVER 2.5 TIMES BIGGER THAN BEFORE! As a result of the team’s hard work on optimisations, they have increased your park sizes. You’ll have even more space to put down rides, build crazy coasters, and craft intricate landscapes your guests will absolutely love! [/quote]
Though I’ve been harsh to RCT World, it sure would have been nice to have 2 stellar rollercoaster park games. Competition is good but knowing Atari, they won’t have the cahoonies to make this right. Btw, Nvizzio’s other game looks pretty ROKH. Since they’re using Unreal 4 for that game I wonder if it would have worked better than Unity for RCTW?
Sure! It’s deeply unfinished, but I’ll put it up on the Steam workshop later tonight. (I don’t recall if we’re Steam friends or not—if not, I’m the Fishbreath with the goateed, somberoed zombie avatar.)
Cautiously yes from me. While the limited ride variety concerns me a little, I expect Frontier to be good about adding content post-release, and there’s so much to put in between rides that I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. The game provides the tools and scenery to make some truly beautiful parks, and the roller coaster designer is superb, far ahead of any other amusement park game I’ve played.
The management layer seems a little easy once you get a roller coaster or two going—after I built my first, I haven’t had money trouble, and in that time I’ve made a giant cave and built a volcano, both of which are not exactly cheap.
That trailer does a great job representing the mood of the game.
And I’m always happy to hear the main menu music. It’s been on loop in my brain for like a week.
I’ve been fiddling with the terrain tools. They are pretty powerful, but I fear for my time and my sanity. I think I spent three hours placing rocks and building hills last night.I discovered that you can put down some rocks, embed them in the ground a bit, rough up the terrain, and then paint over the surrounding ground with the rock texture, and it looks awesomely realistic. I have visions of creating some awesome hills for a wooden coaster or river ride.
Whoever does their marketing is doing a great job. It just looks… fun. And not fun in a only this type of gamer or this group will like it but fun for everyone kind of feel.
