Parks Alpine Park

Bullethead

Bullethead
I tried to move on with my dream project of a satirical Louisiana-themed park but realized I needed some practice first. So I decided to get that practice doing something totally different from that, your basic medieval-theme park. Just to get in the habit of doing stuff, seeing how much room you really need for things, etc., plus trying to do scenery which is not my forte. Nothing will really carry over directly but the experience will be useful. So here's what I've done so far.

Dawn breaks over the embryonic medieval park.....




Customers emerge from the Cave of Creation to be confronted by prison fortress walls, which ensure that nobody can get in without paying, and will also have a hard time leaving.




Upon passing through the narrow gate, customers enter Entranceton, a walled city full of shops with a dwarfpunk clocktower in the town square. I see now in this pic I need to tweak the position of the shield on the tower. But anyway, one of the shticks of this park is that humans make buildings out of limestone and stucco, and dwarves out of sandstone and metal. This tower was a sign of goodwill between them.




To the right of the square is the town hall, which sells 2 types of drinks. This and all buildings are things I made for the occasion. No real custom parts to speak of, although I did recolor a lot of roof and wall pieces to get multiple shades of the same basic colors.




Opposite the town hall is a mercantile area selling burgers and hats.




At the back of the square is Entranceton Castle, or rather its roofless ruins, inside of which are bumper cars.






Customers can leave Entranceton by the west or north gates (the park entrance being in the SE corner). Development has only happened so far on the west side. Crossing the moat around Entranceton, customers enter Westville. The bridge needs work.




Westville is an agricultural hamlet with a large communal barn covering the queue for the Insanity ride. It also has 4 small shops on the plaza: hotdogs, balloons, and 2 drinks.




On the north side of the plaza is the facade of a spinning coaster. This wanders through a small hill full of strange caves and rock formations. The locals think it's an old dwarf mine, mostly because of the ruined dwarf tower on top of the hill, but it's actually all natural.






Also going through the hill is the track of the unfinished perimeter train. The spinning coaster's track winds around the train track, too. The train comes from a station across the moat behind Entranceton Castle. Its layout will grow with park development and the entrance to the spinning coaster is on the path leading to this station, from which another branch will eventually lead into the center of the park. Like most mechanical things, the train is also dwarf technology and the stations reflect this. This is the barebones station building, which will be repeated several times around the park's perimeter. I won't bother pimping this building until it's about time for the train to open.




Most of what I've got here seems to work OK. There were a couple of glitches however. Here, an omission or accidental deletion in pathing left a restroom disconnected. Strangely, customers could get into it no problem, but were disintegrated by a deathray (or something similar) upon leaving. The customers shown here are about to die, winking out of existence. Fortunately, the engineers at Bullethead's Sweatshop Industries managed to correct this issue before anybody noticed what was happening.




A more perplexing problem was on the path leading to the west gate of Entranceton. Right in the middle, for no apparent reason, 2 customers have been claiming to be stuck for several months now. These 2 have ignored assurances by BSI staff that there is nothing wrong with the path, as evidenced by the multitudes continually streaming by. It must be all in their heads. Thus, the other customers just write them off as loonies and ignore them. They are hostages in their own minds. Even the refugee from a "People of Walmart" video didn't give them a second glance.




And so here's a daytime overview of what I've done so far. I'm reasonably pleased with it, although of course I'm no expert at all in this sort of thing. I'd appreciate some feedback on things I could improve.

 

Bullethead

Bullethead
A new dawn breaks of Misfit Toyland and the boffins of Bullethead Sweatshop Industries unveil a new sections of the park......




It's Northburb, a bedroom community of Entranceton....




It consists of 2 drink shops, an ATM, an info booth, a restroom, and 3 rides. The first ride is Thunder Thrones, a chair-o-plane next to the village inn (which covers the queue).




The 2nd ride is The Shell Game, a spinny thing. It's queue is inside some support building for the adjacent railway. This building's shape was dictated by its proximity to the train track.




The main attraction of Northburb, however, is the Purple Martin, a small steel coaster that mimics the flight behavior of that bird. The queue is in like a garden while the coaster station is covered by a giant bird house (of the type commonly used to attract purple martins). The track loops twice around the railway as it crosses over a small pond (which was harder to arrange than it looks).




There's also a video of this coaster:

[video=youtube_share;npyhCrIKylM]https://youtu.be/npyhCrIKylM[/video]


As usual, some feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 

Bullethead

Bullethead
CHAPTER 3


The boffins of Bullethead Sweatshop Industries have decided things are getting to the point where they need to start planning future additions to the park instead of just winging it. The general idea at this point is to keep mostly on the plateau, leaving the western and northern edges, where the ground falls away fairly steeply, largely undeveloped. Maybe a few coaster tracks swooping down the escarpments but not much more. So, given the spatial constraints, the boffins started designing some coasters and dropping placeholder rides to get a feel for how to fill in the available acreage. Then they started building out the south edge of the park towards its final configuration.



After placing some of the first stuff west of Westville, the boffins went back and added some details and landscaping to smooth the transition. Here, they built a trestle between the Drunken Dwarf's hill and the adjacent hill of the Spinning Wheel (see below). They also buried a restroom in the hillside.



Speaking of the Spinning Wheel, here it is. This is of course the new Collider ride. It's got its queue in a small fortress so I think I'll call this area "Southfort". It will of course have a few shops when all's said and done. The landscaping is incomplete because there's a lot more large terrain features to do in the area first. The general vide of the gardening in this park is that benign neglect. So there were some floral arrangements that are now being overgrown with weeds. And of course, once you build one trestle, you have to build a bunch more, so some sort of lipstick will be applied to the railroad bridge crossing the queue and exit paths.



Next is the Scrub Brush, a repurposed dwarfpunk industrial featherduster originally intended to clean huge machinery but now a thrill ride. Adjacent to this is Tanglewood, a very convoluted woody I'm rather proud of. Video will follow once the gardening is done around it. Behind Tanglewood is Whiskey River, a raft ride, i the VERY early stages of construction so not really worth a look right now.

Observe how the train track goes through Tanglewood, adding a couple more headchoppers to its own original total of 15. The Scrub Brush also swings over both Tanglewood and the train track, and Spinning Wheel rises up adjacent to the track. I'm making the train to be as intimate with the other rides as possible, which I think is cool in its own right but also lets the train sponge up the scenery of the various rides without needing so much of its own.





As to the other coasters shown in the overview above, one of them is of course the Briar Patch hybrid, which I showed on its own a while back. Its gardening will be substantially similar to what's shown in that video. It's going to be in the general area shown but as of yet, its exact placement and orientation are undecided.



Besides Tanglewood and Whiskey River, the boffins decided they needed a kiddie coaster so created the Tobacco Hornworm based on the Wendigo. BTW, I think that's a strange name for a kid's ride. A wendigo is NOT a cute and cuddly caterpillar but a horrible anthropophagous monster of North American Indian folklore. There's even a cannibalistic mental disorder named after it, wendigo syndrome. So IMHO calling a kids' ride the Tobacco Hornworm is less of a problem. Besides, the Indians thought that insect had magic powers. But anyway, back to topic, the boffins produced a rather boring little ride, but it's capable of processing dozens of kids per minute. The ability to curve the lift hill at least helps keep the footprint down.



Finally, the boffins reveal their most ambitious design yet, the Brass Baboon (named after a Zelazny character). This is an Invincible-class giga-coaster over 1500m long and capable of 75mph, all green and yet kids will ride it. Sometimes. Actually, about 1/3 of all peeps seem to be afraid of it. But hey, you can't make everybody happy. At least it's not a total turn-off to kids. One of the design philosophies of BSI is to concentrate on coasters that kids will ride, especially for huge things like the Brass Baboon. If you build a great Invincible, woody, or hybrid, you cater to all markets. Then you can add a few kids-only and teens-only rides more or less in balance. So just as we have the Tobacco Hornworm, there will be some small non-kid coaster to match it eventually.

But anyway, the Brass Baboon is quite a ride. It still needs a bit of tweaking to improve operational smoothness with 3 trains. Right now, often a train has to wait a few seconds to enter the station due to the slowness of loading these long trains. I'd prefer that didn't happen. But OTOH, it's actually close enough now for government work.


That's it for this update. Tune in next time for fleshing out the Southfort area.
 

Bullethead

Bullethead
CHAPTER 4

Well, the boffins at BSI are kicking back with well-earned Christmas present top-shelf bourbon after a hard day's work building Southfort, which is now open to the public. The peeps were wowed and left the area with stories to tell their grandchildren.




So here's an overview of the new area. In the upper left, behind the railroad trestle, you can see Westville in the distance. Center background are the Spinning Wheel (in the actual South Fort) and Scrub Brush. Middle left is the Southfort shopping district and of course Tanglewood to the right. Bottom center is the Aeronauts. Take a good look at it because I neglected to get a close-up of it. The queue building looks pretty good from the sides that matter.

There's a "biome change" down the middle of Southfort. Gone are the pines of the mountains, replaced by hardwoods and denser underbrush of the river valley. In fact, all the trees are ash, so many that I've got the tune "Ash Grove" stuck in my head (I play it frequently on my concertina). I need to go back and put a few of some other type of tree in here.




Here you can see the finished versions of Spinning Wheel and Scrub Brush both in position to threaten the railroad. I'm really looking forward to finishing this park just so I can ride the train. It should be pretty cool. Anyway, the train now goes through a tunnel just after passing these rides.




On the other side of the tunnel, the train crosses over one of the sources of the Whiskey River. This is my 1st waterfall and still very much a WIP but it's not so hard. I suppose the train needs another trestle here. Anyway, this fork of the Whiskey River goes under the west end of Tanglewood before getting to the ride of the same name in the SW corner of the park.




Anyway, the shopping district of Southfort looks like this now. In the bottom left is a drink stand that originally was just a small "castlette", but which I decided to add a long cop-out screening wall to, the purpose of which is to shield the eyes and restrict access to the central area of the park. Hey, this place IS a fort, after all. Actually, I didn't want to continue the Drunken Dwarf's hill any more this way, so a wall was necessary.

As to the shops, the queuebarn for the Scrub Brush has grown a 1st Aid station. To the right of it is a pizza shop with drinks upstairs and an ATM under the balcony. Somewhat to my surprise, putting a path directly over an ATM was no trouble this time, like it was in my Grand Station. I suppose the difference is this time the upper path wasn't gridded. Anyhoo, across the street from that is an info and gift shop.

The boffins have gotten to the point where they can throw up a half-timbered multi-shop bulding in 10 minutes, and are frankly getting tired of it. And also getting tired of making new buildings each and every time, and also always making sure none of them are aligned with either a cardinal direction or any other building within half a mile. They say artists must suffer but neither I nor my boffins are artists so this is really pushing things for BSI.




But at last, on to something more pleasant. With great pride, BSI presents Tanglewood, the Wooden Wonder. Actually, this coaster's real name is Treble Clef, which you can see if you rotate the pic below clockwise 90^. I built it to go on Bourbon Street in my eventual Lousy Anna park, complete with a blues bar queue/station, but it's too good a coaster to let sit idle while I learn how to build Bourbon Street. So here it is, repurposed for Misfit Toyland. It's got a very tangled, compact layout.

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In this incarnation, it has a fairly nondescript queue, just a vine-entwined 19th Century greenhouse, but it works.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/QuaPLd]


And here' s the actual station and the stats. Note that the 1st hill crosses right over the middle of the station, which left a hole in the lovely wooden skyline. So the boffins filled that in with the supports going clear through the station.




And, as promised, here's a video of Tanglewood.

[video=youtube_share;hYy-s0AGguI]https://youtu.be/hYy-s0AGguI[/video]


Stay tuned for more. And as always, feedback is greatly appreciated.
 

Tillietwos

Tillietwos
Bullethead said:
Thank you! It's of course nothing as awesome as your stuff, but I appreciate your approval :) I should have an update shortly. I've pretty much got Southfort done now.
Click to expand...

Well I think your buildings and scenery and roller coasters are wonderful. I can't seem to get a handle on how to build coasters yet but eventually I will learn :)
 

Nemmie

Nemmie
This is looking great. I'm loving your commentary just as much. It's had me giggling a few times. The cave of creation made me er. [up]
 

Bullethead

Bullethead
Tillietwos said:
Well I think your buildings and scenery and roller coasters are wonderful. I can't seem to get a handle on how to build coasters yet but eventually I will learn :)
Click to expand...

Again, thanks. There's not much more to this game than those 3 things so this is high praise indeed :).

I've still got a long ways to go on perfecting my coaster-crafting, but I learned a LOT about making coasters from Silvarret's turorials. He's got a series of 4 so far: wooden coasters, hybrid coasters, brake sections, and Arrow coasters. Watch them in that order because there's a lot of theory in the first ones that you need for later. And the building techniques (how to manipulate the game to get the results you want) are absolutely essential.

The most fundamental thing I learned was that it really helps to know something about real-world coasters, their makes, models, history, uses, and ESPECIALLY track elements. I knew NOTHING of any of this until I watched the above videos, which then caused me to go research it all. Even went to the websites of real-world coaster companies. So now I know just enough to be dangerous, but it's helped me a lot.

At the same time, however, I'm not a huge realism fanatic trying to make everything as close to real life as possible. My true customers in this game are not humans but peeps who have somewhat different tastes and tolerances. As long as the peeps like it, I build it that way. If purists think it's potentially fatal for humans, then I just point out that this is happening on the planet Coaster, not the planet Earth, so we're dealing with space aliens who have a different physiology :)


Nemmie said:
This is looking great. I'm loving your commentary just as much. It's had me giggling a few times. The cave of creation made me er. [up]
Click to expand...

Compliments from another master. Thank you very much ;).

For my commentary, when talking about my own creations I try to be sardonically self-deprecating. First, I'm not very good at this. Second, whenever I play a "build something" game, I always imagine I'm running some powerful company that is willing to flog its anonymous, unskilled, and largely conscripted workforce however much is necessary to accomplish its mission and satisfy its customers :) IOW, it makes reasonably good stuff but you wouldn't want to work there. Also, I like to buck the trend of always trying for some sort of inspiring name by going the other way.

As to the Cave of Creation, is not the Planet Coaster method of having peeps come and go via a cave a perfect illustration of a very common belief system? The first humans emerged from the cave and their spirits return tho the underworld upon death. Which is exactly what happens in the game. So for a while I thought about making this a thing in my parks in the future, where the park entrance building is actually a temple located at the sacred cave, part of the whole religion of the peeps :)

But OTOH, that's a bit too humanocentric. This is, after all, another planet. So now, I envision the planet of Coaster as a whole to be an Earth-themed park set in the "Hitchhiker's Guide" universe, custom-built by the Megratheans. Which also gives me the ruthless company I imagine myself running, the business of which is actually building planets. Anyway, everything on the planet of Coaster is designed to suit the human body but most aliens have tentacles, too many legs, or whatever. Thus, to actually visit the park, the aliens have to "get in costume", which means their consciousnesses get downloaded into human-shaped clones or androids.

This actually explains a lot of things in PC. For example, the actual parking lot is an orbiting space station you never see with nothing but an antenna linking it to the surface. Then the alien brains are beamed down to an underground store room full of reusable human-shaped bodies of various shapes, sizes, and colors. These are first chosen and then attired and have their hair done more or less randomly by attendant robots who have only a vague idea of humanity, which is why peeps often look quite alien and their "families" don't seem to be based on human genetic realities. Anyway, once "in costume" and having put down a deposit on their temporary bodies, the peeps emerge into the park area. When they run out of money, they return their bodies to the rack and are beamed back up to the space station.
 
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Bullethead

Bullethead
CHAPTER 5

Today the boffins of BSI broke wind ground on the latest section of the park, Centerdorf. This is not actually quite in the center of the park area, but it's between Westville and Northburb across the tracks from Entranceton, so the name kinda fits. BSI upper management was unable to think of anything better.

But first, here's a glam shot of the Aeronauts ride in Southfort, which was omitted in the last episode.




In another aside, the boffins discovered, in the process of making a building they later scrapped, that the 2m stucco walls have the option of having a zigzag pattern painted on them. By default, this is invisible because the zigzag has the same color as the rest of the wall, so I hadnlt noticed this before. Who knew? So yay, a cool feature which, unfortunately, I have no use for at present.




Anyway, on with the show at last. Centerdorf at present looks like this from above. As marked on the pic below, there is still much baseline work to do before the final gardening. The "oither stuff" will likely be at least a couple more shops or heads, maybe a flat ride, too.



Anyway, with Centerdorf going up, it was finally time to flesh out the SE train station (directly behind Entranceton) so it needed a queue. And so it grew Queue Gardens (a pun of Kew Gardens, PC being a Brit game). This was all saved as part of the station blueprint so will be repeated at wide intervals around the park, hopefully far enough apart that nobody will notice they all have the exact same weedy garden.



The main largest attraction feature of Centerdorf is the Tobacco Hornworm kiddie coaster. However, I couldn't figure a way to theme it appropriate to its name and ended up making the station a sort of tree fort. So I'll probably change the coaster's name to something along that line and also repaint its cars so they look less like a tobacco hornworm.





Most of the rest of Centerdorf is shops. Here's the village in selling 2 types of drinks and some burgers around the side. I've tried to put 1 of each type of drink in this park but the only ones that sell much are sodas and water, so that's what we have here.



There's also 1 of each type of gift shop, BSI having received frequent complaints that the existing ones were too busy. 2 are in a big red barn and the 3rd is in a windmill. That should keep the peeps happy. Regarding the windmill, the boffins were gratified to discover that the sails actually turn and that gingerbread walls look just like mud plaster if you don't cover them with icing and candy canes.



Which brings us to what will probably be the most popular thing (apart from the gift shops) in Centerdorf, the Barburner (a renamed Genie). For some reason, of all ages peeps love this ride even when there are wicked coasters nearby. Anyway, the boffins got frustrated trying to build a queuebarn for this ride and after scrapping several buildings they ended up hating, decided to incorporate their angst into the ride. Simply using the stock ruined barn and adding some fires to it, plus repainting the ride itself, and problem solved.



So there's a rough idea of Centerdorf. It should probably have a restroom and ATM, plus maybe another flat ride, and then the dirt-moving and gardening can begin.
 

Bullethead

Bullethead
CHAPTER 6

So, Centerdorf is finally finished. It's a partially ruined market town and its market, with 1 of each type of geegaw shop, does a booming business. So much that even the coaster queues are pretty anemic at present. But this will probably smooth out in a few more days, as it has before.



This wad of peepmanity actually showed up before the area was "open", due to having to unpause the game to test rides and coasters. I looked up from that and saw the below. It's about 1 week of gametime later now and the crowd has thinned somewhat already, as shown in the pic above. I figure I'll jack the price of geegaw up by 2-3x. This is to cover all the time the peeps spend walking here and waiting in line while ride upkeep costs continue. Either I'll make the same amount of money or the peeps will go back to the rides.




Despite the mobs at the geegaw shops, even the carousel still does fair business, although it does take its entire extended run time to get enough peeps queued up to fill its seats. This pic of the town square also shows the only scenery I haven't built myself so far, a stock collection of vendor's wagons.




Apart from the market and inn, the other facilities of Centerdorf are a bit rustic.




What I spent the most time on was Treefort (nee Tobacco Hornworm). It needed trees, so I did my 1st dirt sculptures. I was rather scared of trying this but it turns out the terrain tools are fairly easy to use to make organic things like giant, twisted live oaks. However, there's no way I could make anything like the King Neptune in @Tricky's "Little Mermaid". I can't even do that with modeling clay :D




Treefort has 2 trees. The one on the left leans over steeply and has few branches. It's main job is to support the 1st downslope, at the Wendigo's weak maximum angle.




The tree on the right is more conventional and supports a couple of track segments.




Here's a video of Treefort. It's really a very short, simple little kiddie coaster. However, despite having next to no excitement or fear, it's more popular than the big 7.34-excitement, all-green Tanglewood, both of which have equally involved scenery. It also processes more peeps per minute due to its long trains and their quick turnaround, costs way less both to build and maintain, and I can change the same price for it. So, with the way peeps currently think, you want to build small coasters instead of big ones.

[video=youtube_share;ef7viHnhgeg]https://youtu.be/ef7viHnhgeg[/video]


And finally, here's a pic of the park so far at night.




Tune in next time, or not, for something involving another big coaster, despite the above, because big coasters are cool and this is sandbox.
 

Tim bo

Tim bo
Bullethead said:
In another aside, the boffins discovered, in the process of making a building they later scrapped, that the 2m stucco walls have the option of having a zigzag pattern painted on them. By default, this is invisible because the zigzag has the same color as the rest of the wall, so I hadnlt noticed this before. Who knew? So yay, a cool feature which, unfortunately, I have no use for at present.

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Yep I discovered this by accident too. I find it works really well with Mexican-themed things ... so I tried it while developing a Cantina bar and liked the result.

If you'll excuse my posting pics in your creation thread ... :)












Enjoying your updates and I like your ideas for your park. :)
 
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Barkshake

B
Really cool, I especially like the giant trees in that last update. They look spot on! Put me in the mood to do a Deku tree/Kokiri village park.. anyone know if one already exists?
 

Bullethead

Bullethead
Tim bo said:
Yep I discovered this by accident too. ....
If you'll excuse my posting pics in your creation thread ... :)
Click to expand...

If folks didn't post their pics, I wouldn't be able to steal their ideas :)

Enjoying your updates and I like your ideas for your park. :)
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Thanks!

Barkshake said:
Really cool, I especially like the giant trees in that last update. They look spot on! Put me in the mood to do a Deku tree/Kokiri village park.. anyone know if one already exists?
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Thanks. They look better from a distance, when the texture appears nice and dark brown, and the roots are more distinct from the grass. Up close, you can see a lot of white in the texture, because it's actually like a carpet of pine needles, not bare dirt. But with the alpine map, there aren't any bare dirt textures. The other brown one is covered with little pink flowers. Also, the roots tend to blend into the surrounding grass.

There are quite a few parks with ginormous trees in them, even in the stock Career Mode scenarios. But that just means it's a good idea. What worked good for me was using PULL set at 4-8m and 50-60% intensity to rough out the trunk and branches, then PUSH at 1-2m and 15-20% to whittle them into final shape. Also, when using PULL, if you move the mouse fast enough, it will out-run the growth of the terrain, so the branches naturally taper out to points without much later whittling required.

All in all, I found making giant trees not really any harder than making mountains, and easier than making ponds. But doing something really fancy with high levels of detail, like the human body, is beyond me. I can't even draw good pictures of people.
 

Barkshake

B
Aha I had no idea there were giant trees in the campaign! I pretty much picked up the game, chose sandbox and never looked back. Thanks for the terrain whittling advice, I have designs on eventually sculpting a detailed mountain range across a whole park but have so far made do with a giant gorge.

Is this park finished, are you working on something else?
 
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