Alpha 2 impressions (good and bad)

Vampiro · May 24, 2016

I have been playing around with Alpha 2 now for a while and i notice quite a few things both good and bad :

Bad :

- The coaster builder works fine but i still have a hard time getting tracks exactly as i want them to be. In my opinion we should have some Height/Curve/Banking numbers.
It also seems like some coasters are missing some track pieces. Overall i had to get used to it but after i got the hang of it it works pretty well.

On a sidenote i have to say im too much influenced by RCT3. Building a coaster there was so easy because everything would allign up perfectly with the grid. Also making curves was so much easyer because there were only so few options.
We wanted freedom, so we got it... Building a GOOD coaster takes a lot of time now but when you get the hang of it and take your time you can build awesome coasters! Just hope they will fix some minor things and add certain track elements.

- Bugs... I have a feeling Alpha 1 was better prepared then alpha 2 is. Ofcourse Alpha 1 had it's bugs but most of them weren't too serious. Alpha 2 seems to have some more serious bugs. I havent been playing for too long but i already found a few annoying ones. But this might be just me, maybe it's just a matter of bad luck. And i have 100% trust those will be fixed.

-EDIT- for some reason i sound negative about the coaster builder. I dont want to sound negative because im really happy with it, it just takes some time to get used to it. Its only common sense that if you want to build complicated things it will take you some more time. And i still have to get used to that, but in no way, shape or form do i think the system is not good! Actually it's awesome!

Good :

- The path system really improved! It feels very natural now and up untill now i didn't have any problems creating path's.
- Sound... I still think Custom Music is a MUST HAVE but the ingame sound is awesome. I just build the Insanity and when i close my eyes it's like im hearing the real damn thing.
I can say the same thing about coaster sounds, everything sounds so real!
- Didn't spend a long time yet with the terrain editor but my first impressions it's very impressive!
- Edge scrolling!! For some reason i already forgot this was a "new" feature. I turned it on right away and after 3 minutes i forgot we didn't have it before. and thats a GOOD thing!! edge scrolling feels so natural.
- Rotating scenery in 3 ways. Been playing around with this and this gives so much more creativity!

Overall im VERY happy with how everything is progressing! too bad we have to wait for so long again now to have more of this awesomeness [big grin]

SydVic · May 24, 2016

Vampiro said:
We wanted freedom, so we got it... Building a GOOD coaster takes a lot of time now but when you get the hang of it and take your time you can build awesome coasters! Just hope they will fix some minor things and add certain track elements.

I don't own the game yet...but is it really that hard to build a good coaster? I really liked the easiness of rct1 to 3 coaster-builder...and that you can create good looking and realistic coasters pretty fast. If it's really that hard, I hope that they will continue improving it and make it as easy as possible (with advanced options for the real coaster-nerds

)

Prototyp91 · May 24, 2016

please dont say that.. i whish we had the coaster builder freedom like in rctw coz else u cant never create real rollercoasters.. and for me it is pretty easy to build a good coaster here.. the loops and rolls are not good and not realistic here :s they need more smothness

Vampiro · May 24, 2016

SydVic said:
I don't own the game yet...but is it really that hard to build a good coaster? I really liked the easiness of rct1 to 3 coaster-builder...and that you can create good looking and realistic coasters pretty fast. If it's really that hard, I hope that they will continue improving it and make it as easy as possible (with advanced options for the real coaster-nerds )

In my opinion it is a bit harder to build GOOD coasters. If you want you can plop down a coaster within minutes, but if you have a coaster in mind and want to build it -exactly- like that, of when trying to make re-creations its quite a bit more difficult because there is so much more freedom.

So i guess it's both good and bad. Yes it's harder to build a good coaster, but on the other hand there are WAY more possibilities as there were in RCT3. Which is a good thing in my opinion.

cerealfruitcakes · May 24, 2016

I wouldn't say it's harder to design a good coaster, it's just way more time consuming. You can still quickly throw together an RCT style coaster where you build the pieces in a similar fashion(with limited banks/turns/etc) but you end up wanting to take advantage of all the free form/"off the grid" style building which adds a heck of a lot more time to the process.

There's definitely a bigger learning curve but I think as they improve the tools, that curve will soften.

Vampiro · May 24, 2016

cerealfruitcakes said:
I wouldn't say it's harder to design a good coaster, it's just way more time consuming. You can still quickly throw together an RCT style coaster where you build the pieces in a similar fashion(with limited banks/turns/etc) but you end up wanting to take advantage of all the free form/"off the grid" style building which adds a heck of a lot more time to the process.

There's definitely a bigger learning curve but I think as they improve the tools, that curve will soften.

Maybe you are right. Building coasters isn't more difficult once you accept you wont be building it in detail. When you set all curves and banks to be either 30 or 45 or whatever degrees just like in RCT3 building is still easy.

Ah well, sometimes i use way too many words, guess you summed it up pretty nice in way less words.

dalemac89 · May 24, 2016

I'm having fun with the terrain editor!

I really, really wish we had water!

Here is 2 hours worth of playing around. Eventually this is going to be a kind of 'Pirate Cove' type thing.

SydVic · May 24, 2016

Prototyp91 said:
please dont say that.. i whish we had the coaster builder freedom like in rctw coz else u cant never create real rollercoasters.. and for me it is pretty easy to build a good coaster here.. the loops and rolls are not good and not realistic here :s they need more smothness

Don't get me wrong, I don't want the limitations of the past games...of course I want it to offer as much freedom as possible - but on the other hand it should be easy to build rollercoasters - but I've watched a few videos and I think the coaster-builder lookjs really good so far...but yeah, like Vampiro and cerealfruitcake I think that it can still improve a bit more

.

But all in all, I'm really impressed. The terrain-editor is the best I've ever seen in any game before and the particle effects look also great...like the new rides. Great work!

DarthSteve90 · May 25, 2016

I think the alpha 1 coaster builder was better but maybe I just got used to it. miss the degrees I was able to do now its kinda eyeballing it. And some of the features of banking and extending the track don't seem to work as well as they did.

Roctopus · May 25, 2016

performance in this build does not seem as good to me as in the prior build, and that even in an empty park with a single coaster, maybe my imagination. I have a high end rig. I was for node based editing on the coasters, but am getting used to click the various buttons to move the track around, I'd like to see them move away from the length slider and just allow the user to control the length of the track, but I guess that would require going back to node editing.

Maybe there's a shortcut I've not found yet but when editing a track end piece I sure would like to be able to hold down shift to move it up.down / ctrl to bank it, and alt to change the angle. Coasters are not very smooth but I'm not sure if they plan to go for realisim of roller coaster tycoonism, it's certainly more on the tycoonism side now but much better the rct was. The coasters just don't feel right when riding though, can't put my finger on it.

simemo · May 25, 2016

What is the point in stating that there are 'bugs' if youre not going to mention what they are???

One of the main points of a forum like this when a game is in pre release state is to report bugs and glitches so the devs can fix them. Making a post on an Alpha game's forum and just stating "there seem to be some bugs" is a total waste of time, of course there are bugs, the game is in ALPHA!

Aaronroberts12567 · May 25, 2016

simemo said:
What is the point in stating that there are 'bugs' if youre not going to mention what they are???

One of the main points of a forum like this when a game is in pre release state is to report bugs and glitches so the devs can fix them. Making a post on an Alpha game's forum and just stating "there seem to be some bugs" is a total waste of time, of course there are bugs, the game is in ALPHA!

I think the purpose of the thread was to voice his opinions on what he likes and doesn't like.

Abletudu · May 25, 2016

dalemac89 said:
I'm having fun with the terrain editor!

I really, really wish we had water!

Here is 2 hours worth of playing around. Eventually this is going to be a kind of 'Pirate Cove' type thing.

[snip postimg link]

I tried clicking on your link and got a DNS could not be found error.

dalemac89 · May 25, 2016

You will do, as the forum doesn't allow post img links for some reason. Copy the link and remove the space, should work.

Harbinger · May 25, 2016

dalemac89 said:
You will do, as the forum doesn't allow post img links for some reason. Copy the link and remove the space, should work.

postimg is not allowed because they are known to serve malware/scareware to mobile users. I've reuploaded your image to an approved image hosting site (imgur) and embedded it in your post. If you want to post images here then I suggest you find a different image host.

simemo · May 25, 2016

Aaronroberts12567 said:
I think the purpose of the thread was to voice his opinions on what he likes and doesn't like.

I still say its very unhelpful to just complain about something (these mysterious 'bugs') without stating what they actually are. This is a forum for a game still in development, dont winge about 'bugs' if youre not willing to at least give the devs a heads up on what problems you might have had.

Bitter Jeweler · May 25, 2016

simemo said:
I still say its very unhelpful to just complain about something (these mysterious 'bugs') without stating what they actually are. This is a forum for a game still in development, dont winge about 'bugs' if youre not willing to at least give the devs a heads up on what problems you might have had.

Maybe he has reported the bugs he is talking about, in the appropriate manner, and here he is just generalizing. I mean, you can see the bug reports for yourself. They are not "mysterious" at all.

Vampiro · May 25, 2016

Bitter Jeweler said:
Maybe he has reported the bugs he is talking about, in the appropriate manner, and here he is just generalizing. I mean, you can see the bug reports for yourself. They are not "mysterious" at all.

Thanks [happy]

Ofcourse i have been reporting the bugs i see to devs

There was just no point in explaining them a second time when all i wanted was give my fair first toughts about Alpha 2.

Nevertheless i think this game is awesome and i will "share" the bugs i find to the devs to make the game even more awesome.