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[Obreht]

Agree with the dull textures. The trees also seem a bit overly cartoony to me? Otherwise loving the look and feel of the game, looks like a lot of fun just to plot things down.

[YM]

Looks awesome.  How can this be only 10% done? 

Thanks :D Well, it's not a real game yet, there's still a lot of content and systems missing!

It doesn't need to be a 'real game' to be awesome. Of all of the tycoon type games I've ever played, the 'game'y bits were the least interesting part. Get the building and running right and then the campaign mode is just a nice extra. Sandbox is what we crave!

(also the way those trees ping as they're placed is amazing :D )

[oyog]

It doesn't need to be a 'real game' to be awesome. Of all of the tycoon type games I've ever played, the 'game'y bits were the least interesting part. Get the building and running right and then the campaign mode is just a nice extra. Sandbox is what we crave!

Pfft. Speak for yourself.

[Focal]

I recently got obsessed with RCT again since the announcement of RCT4. TBH I don't have good expectations for the RCT series, it died with Chris Sawyer's departure. RCT3 was awful in my opinion and I'm betting RCT4 will be hell ridden with expensive DLC and Purchase buttons.

I've also been getting into game design, starting with gamemaker and attempting to grasp Unity. I've always fantasized about an RCT remake, one that is 3D, orthographic, has micro management of stall parameters, and inventory/stock management. So today I was gaping while riding the train to work because I clicked a link while scouring forums about FreeRCT and came here. You Sebastian are a god send! You are doing exactly everything I've dreamed of. Things are looking really good, keep up the good work. I will be following you guys every step of the way. I have a lot I'd like to add so I'll break it up but two things I'm not so keen on with the graphics. The head sizes and the ground inclines.

First the heads feel too big and remind me of Nintendo Mii's. They look unbalanced like they could topple over any second, or that their head will break off from stopping too fast. I liked the "programmer art" portions better, just my opinion but I feel the head shouldn't be wider than the shoulders, it looks awkward. See the green line and how it compares between models. The below image shows some different sizes, I put a green check by the one that I think looks best.


The other thing is the terrain and pathway ramps are very steep. It look like your going at a 1:1 grade which makes it look too intense and makes the shadows very dark. RCT used a 2:1 grade I think and it looked much more pleasing to the eye. I took a screenshot and edited it to make a 1:1 ramp and you can see how much steeper it looks. I think the ramps would look way better if they were have as high. Along with that would be raising the blocks by the 0.5 increment too. It allows for more variety.


Maybe these are all things that will change with time but I wanted to get them out there.

Thanks again for your awesome work!

[Sebioff]

That's some awesome feedback, thank you!

So, here's why these things currently are like they are (please don't understand this as trying to defend it! I'm curious to hear what you think about our decisions):
For the guests, I'd like to have it possible to see which way they are currently facing. I want to have their eyes visible so you can easily tell what they are currently looking at. For example, when sitting on a bench they might look at a ride or another guest passing by, or two guests might face each other and have a conversation. Here's an old gif to give an idea:

It's really not important for gameplay, but I think it makes them feel more alive...I don't think the head can get much smaller for that. I'll forward this post to Garret, maybe he has anything to add

We had a discussion about the vertical scale just yesterday.
The difficulty is that the terrain, paths and coasters have to fit together. In reality, he lifthills of old coasters are angled at 20-30°, which is in line with the flat lift hills in RCT, which is probably also why their terrain and paths have the same angle.
So why is our terrain angled 45° then?
With our current scale, bridges are much easier to build since you only have to go one tile up to build over another path. The stairs in RCT look too flat to me. Constructions like these aren't possible in RCT or look strange:

I think building paths shouldn't be a challenge, but building coasters should be.
For harder scenarios, we could have the player start out with older coaster tech, limited to 22.5° lift hills. He can't build over hills and has to fit his coasters into a flater area of the terrain. As the game progresses, he researches steeper lift hills and thus can start to make use of more parts of the terrain that were inaccessible before. I'm somewhat missing this kind of progression in RCT. In a way the first minute of playing a park is identical to 5 hours into the game.

So I think it would allow to design more interesting challenges. The downside is that our terrain does indeed look a bit too steep and maybe loses some variety.
I guess allowing 0.5 terrain increments would be an option...not sure yet if I like it/how well it'd work.

Let me know what you think It was a bit difficult to put these thoughts into words, I hope it at least somewhat makes sense.

[Focal]

Wow Sebastian, I'm impressed with the time you've taking to respond to the fans and community. Thank you very much  

You're explanation makes a lot of sense. I think being able to see which direction the guests are facing is ingenious. I didn't realize that was implemented. The example you posted looks superb, in that style I really like it, but I'm still hesitant on the new style. The "programer art" ones have a stubby cuteness about them and look balanced when it comes to mass. What if the bodies on the new ones were scaled up a bit, maybe added mass to the torso? I don't want to offend you Garrett, you're doing great on your art direction, I just think the proportions on the guests have an unsettling look. Part of it may be the way the face is projected on, it's not as clear and looks somewhat fetal at the posted draw distance. It also may be the way the head is pronated forward. I'd love to hear Garrett's perspective on it.

As for the ramps, I think the functionality of the 45° ones is an advantage and one that I would agree appeals more than 22.5°. But at the same time, it makes for a very tiring looking theme park when ramps are not possible. The ultimate solution would be if both could exist, 22.5° being a ramp and 45° being stairs. I'm not sure how your engine works but this could cause issues with how things lineup on height maps, eg. if a player places a ramp then stairs maybe it throws things off? If that were the case, you could force ramps to take up two squares to yield the same height increment as the 45° stairs. But this would mean you terrain heights would most likely retain a 1x1x1 unit size.

If you can pull off a 1x1x0.5 unit size you really should go for it. It will give the world much more variety and character, you could even have the terrain slopes to be dragged to a 22.5° or a 45° angle. It may require some retroactive coding, and be a pain, but the rewards are worth it.

I would absolutely love to be involved with the creation of this in anyway I can. I'm a mechanical project engineer with some foundational knowledge in computers. Please let me know if there's anything I can contribute, I don't seek credit or payment of any kind and just a volunteer.

Would you be willing to carry a conversation through email? I have lots of ideas and could draft pseudo code or game mechanics for you.

Thanks again Sebastian and Garrett, I'm very excited about this.

[Rogod]

Forgive me if this sounds like an insult, it's not intended to be - the work you've done it genuinely impressive.
But:
What's to say someone won't just go and play Rollercoaster Tycoon 3?
I mean, what does this have that makes it noteworthy, for want of a better word?

Again, I am merely curious, not trying to offend.

[Focal]

Not my place to answer for the devs, but I can tell you why I personally would. In my opinion RCT3 is graphically dated, the interface had consoles in mind and was a pain. It killed some sort of spirit that 1/2 had. I personally hated RCT3, especially the over the top cartoony art. That's just criticism of the game but now the plus points of Theme Parkitect.

The devs are developing a game with many more business management aspects. There will be lots of finer details that add to the dynamics of growing the park and profiting from it. This adds a whole new level of game play and makes it unique on its own.

Games can take preference just because of art direction alone. If the two games were exactly the same but one appealed to the majority because of the art style then it will triumph. Heck, even reboots succeed and this can be looked at as a spiritual reboot. RCT 3 is old, time for the new.

[Focal]

Here's my idea of the stock system.

-Players can build stock buildings, the scenarios can limit the number that can be built.
-The stock buildings can be scaled to different size, the larger the size the more capacity.
-In the stock building UI, there is a shipment frequency (This is dictated by the scenario)
-Similar to trade routes in Anno 1404 below, players can add specific goods to be stocked in the storehouse and set an amount to be purchased each shipment frequency.
-Each shipment date, ordered goods are added to the warehouse in order of how they are listed, if capacity is reached, the costs are still deducted but the goods are not received.
-A type of employee is assigned to a storehouse and moves from storehouse to stall when goods are needed. This would be like the market cart system in anno 1404.
-Goods decay after a certain duration resulting in a loss.

This may sound complicated but most of it is happening in the background. The real game mechanic is the player having to optimize the amount to order and the stall logistics. This is influenced by:
- Number of employees assigned to inventory stall
- Distance between storehouse and stalls
- amount of each good ordered

An example would be having a corndog and hotdog stalls. They both use hotdogs and condiments, but one needs corn batter and the other a bun. Storehouse would stock all 4 items and player has to observe sales data to determine optimal order amount. This would be provided in the UI with a sales graph.

Hopefully you're familiar with anno 1404 and that I made sense. If not, I would love to provide further clarity. I'll even make a mini game which demonstrates this if requested.



Stronghold storehouse example, you could just use a crate or box to represent good universally.

[Sebioff]

Part of it may be the way the face is projected on, it's not as clear and looks somewhat fetal at the posted draw distance.

Note that my screenshots are usually taken at the lowest possible quality (I'm currently developing on a business laptop that tends to overheat, it's not made for 3D games). Maybe that's part of the problem? Here's how they look at higher quality:

If you can pull off a 1x1x0.5 unit size you really should go for it. It will give the world much more variety and character, you could even have the terrain slopes to be dragged to a 22.5° or a 45° angle.

Convinced, I'll at least give it a try

Would you be willing to carry a conversation through email?

Sure! My mail adress is linked on the little envelope icon below my avatar on the left.

What's to say someone won't just go and play Rollercoaster Tycoon 3?

No worries, it's a valid question I think there can be multiple games in a genre - although for theme park simulations it's somewhat difficult, since RCT is so huge, did so many things right and already contains most of the important things. I hope that in the end this game, although doing many things similar, will be different enough.
Did you read the rest of the devlog? If not I can give a bullet list of planned things, but the short summary is that I want to add more of a management aspect to the game, which RCT only had in a basic form. I think that'll make the game play quite differently. As I wrote on the previous page, what I also think RCT lacked a bit is a sense of progression - you get new stuff to build as the game goes on, but apart from that the "late game" isn't different from the "early game". I think what I want is more like Theme Hospital or Prison Architect, where you start with something simple and more complexity gets layered on as the game progresses, whereas RCTs complexity is always the same throughout the game, across all scenarios.
Not sure how to explain it better

Here's my idea of the stock system.

That's pretty close to what I had in mind :D Not sure about some of the details, but those'll have to wait until I get to implementation anyways

[imaginedd]

I really like the idea of progression through the game. One thing I found whilst playing RCT from the start was just being annoyed that you didn't have enough money to build the end-game park, because you're right - there's no difference from the beginning to 5 hours in, apart from the money to do it all.

I'd be really interested to see what progression ideas you had outside of "here's one roller coaster you can build, in 20 minutes you'll be able to research a second". Maybe you could progressively update the theme of the park, in the same kind of way as Civ has different ages? Gradually you will have the kind of reputation where investors will give you the time and money to build a crowd pleasing roller coaster, but initially you've just got some second hand rides sold to you from a dodgy circus ringmaster.

[Sebioff]

Since the last update, I've implemented Behaviour Trees for staff AI - they're neat and look like they'll work very well for this game, but aren't particularly photogenic, so I didn't really know what to post here
Also other weird gamelogic stuff, like figuring out how guests decide how much they are willing to pay for park entrance, or when they should puke depending on sickness level and what effects this has on them. Not the most exciting stuff, but it needs to be done

There are many small decision making things like these that need to be implemented, for example we wanted to make guests raise their arms on flat rides:

But when exactly should they do this? For coasters it's a bit easier, you "just" need to find out which parts of it are exciting. But for flat rides the exciting parts are not that easy to find, or maybe all parts are equally exciting. I think in the end it'll be random, with the probability depending on the stats of the ride and how well it fits the guests preferences.

I've implemented a terrain leveling tool:

Coming up with a visual representation for it (the "cursor") wasn't easy - in the end, simply highlighting the affected tiles worked the best.

I've given the mixed terrain heights a try that Focal suggested:

Basically I like it, but I'm not entirely convinced yet because I think it makes building stuff more annoying - not because you have take care of it, but because it's harder to understand how the landscape is shaped and harder to tell the difference between a flat and a steep slope, especially if you don't see two of them next to each other to be able to compare.
Gridlines seem to help though:

[danieru]

For the slopes what about making the sharper slopes less grassy, maybe with stone or dirt peeking through? This way it is obvious from the texture which slopes are steep and which are flatish.

This could also add a game mechanic where sharp slopes decrease a park's attractiveness score. So late game players will start leveling mountains to maximize their park's attractiveness. Since terraforming is expensive it also adds a sink for the large late game profits. As parks expand it also serves to signal new and wild land.

[imaginedd]

Perhaps flat rides could take into account what surrounds them, rather than what they consist of in order to alter the public's experience. One ferris wheel is much the same as every other, however if you had one just tucked in a corner somewhere by the loos because it was only thin an fitted, it would be drastically less impressive than the ferris wheel that you had raised slightly off the ground and surrounded by trees, so that at the top you can see across a branchy sea of green to the rest of the theme park below you.

It would also give a much more direct and reasonable purpose to decorating your park somewhat sensibly.

[brokeit]

Hello,

I just found this topic, and I have to say: this is incredible! You've got a new fan.
Finally a park simulator I can have faith in again.

About flat ride interaction, I always thought it would be a nice touch if certain family members stay on a bench and watch their kids go on the ride, and wave at each other throughout the ride. It's realistic and it would be fun to see
That is of course provided that the guests will actually come in groups and not singular guests as in RCT1/2.

I bookmarked this page. You seem to make good progress, I hope you can keep it up!

[jddg5wa]

There are many small decision making things like these that need to be implemented, for example we wanted to make guests raise their arms on flat rides:

It may be the image angle or lighting but it looks like the arms are slightly bending outward.


Do you mind if I make a suggestion that they bend inward? It's quiet a bit more natural.



Although I may be jumping the gun with the suggestion since your still creating. Either way this is looking even better. It's cool to see more of the tools behind the gameplay.

[maxfreak]

Signed up to the site just to say how incredible I think this looks! Sebastian, you and Garret have really outdone yourselves with this. The progress you both have put into the game really demonstrates how much passion you both have for the project. Even though the game is far from done I really love the charm it has. From simple touches such as dust appearing after placing paths to the wonderful animations of placing scenery and objects. I wish you guys the best of luck with this project, I've followed you on twitter, am following this topic, and also book marked your Dev Blog as well. (I feel like a stalker *insert overly attached girlfriend meme here* lol)  I'll be sure to spread the word!

[Sebioff]

Thanks everyone

For the slopes what about making the sharper slopes less grassy, maybe with stone or dirt peeking through?

Might be an option!

It may be the image angle or lighting but it looks like the arms are slightly bending outward.

Right; Garret fixed it in the meantime, thanks!

Perhaps flat rides could take into account what surrounds them, rather than what they consist of in order to alter the public's experience.

Exactly! I'd like to have some system that can tell me which scenery is in the immediate vicinity of each grid cell; also, ideally scenery shouldn't just have an "influence radius" but it should check if the scenery is actually visible from some spot or if there's something blocking the view. This could be used for some interesting gameplay mechanics.
I did a quick test of this:

In the middle of the screenshot is the scenery item. When placing it, it does a bunch of raycasts from within an influence sphere to check from where the item is visible (indicated by these white lines; note how the terrain is blocking the sight).
It's not crazy expensive to calculate but not exactly cheap either (~60ms) so I'm not entirely sure yet if this'll really work. Maybe there's a faster way for calculating visibility? Luckily it doesn't have to be calculated in realtime and I could just put it in a background thread, so it miiiight work?

[imaginedd]

It's not crazy expensive to calculate but not exactly cheap either (~60ms) so I'm not entirely sure yet if this'll really work. Maybe there's a faster way for calculating visibility? Luckily it doesn't have to be calculated in realtime and I could just put it in a background thread, so it miiiight work?

You could perhaps widen the rays and reduce the line of sight influence to reduce the amount of beams being checked? Not that it would cut it down a whole lot, but it would probably be a significant difference when you have 50+ ornaments around your park.

Alternatively, maybe do a reference scan every time you place something and then store that value as a part of the ride meta details. At least that way it's only checked a handful of times.

[JobLeonard]

Assuming scenery is static, shouldn't it be possible to make a "visibility" grid that keeps track of what is visible for each tile? If you place an item, it by definition can only block the visibility of things visible in its tile, so you only have to re-check their visibility, and that of the placed item. One time cost of calculation, and after that it's a fast look up in the visibility grid.