Animatronics as a whole:
One of things that I think everyone would agree about, is that the new capabilities for animatronics in Planet Coaster 2 are absolutely amazing. There is a lot of potential already in the game for creating amazing things such as Tornadoes, Drone shows, trap doors, complex moving statues, the list is kind of endless to be fair, but there is definitely a few things that can be improved upon in the future and new things that could be explored.
I have had a look at a few of the previous posts about animatronics and I thought I would put together a post that has all the suggestions that I could find plus I added a few myself from my own experimentation and thoughts.
Improvement suggestions for what is already available:
1: At the moment any animated object; be it a moving platform, a pre built animatronic figure (eg. Beastboy), or particle effect, can only be set to one of the output settings, even when using the sequencer to manipulate the object. Currently to create complex movement we need to use multiple nested platforms to do simple things and I feel that adding the ability to change the simple animation using the sequencer would go a long way to help simplify the animation building. A quick example of this would be allowing for the same rotating platform to start in a slow rotation to medium and then to fast within a sequence. Simulating an airplane engine starting for example. Currently you would need 3 of the platforms to achieve this affect, adding to piece counts, complexity of build and frustration when things go wrong. Allowing the changing of this setting in the sequencer will make these kinds of things easier and less performance killing to boot, especially when we can already duplicate selected objects in the sequencer to repeat their current animation. This in my opinion needs to be the first change made the the current set up and high on the priority list.
2. Now this one might be a bit more difficult for you but would definitely go a long way to making animatronic platforms more versatile. Having a check box on the platform to make it invisible when it is not being worked on (working within a building group). Currently it can be very hard to find ways to hide these large platforms within show scenes, you need to hide them in the ground most of the time with the attached scenery moved high above it. This makes it pretty hard to work with sometimes, especially for complex animatronics. Being able to make the platforms invisible once the animatronic is fully made would help this a lot.
3. This is specific to the particle effect emitters, the way they currently work there is multiple different emitters for varying size of the particle. For me this is a bit silly especially in terms of animating the emitter. These should work the same way as the platforms do, with one emitter per type with a drop-down menu to select the effect strength. Eg large burst flame thrower or short burst etc. This then in conjunction with point 1 can be then used to change the strength of the effect with the sequencer. Not a deal breaker but just makes it more annoying to detail with multiple emitters.
4. Lastly in terms of current capabilities, it would be great if we could choose how long an animation runs for, or how long the animation holds a position for etc. a good example for this is trying to make a door that opens to let a car pass and then close. Currently there is a way of doing this using multiple rotating platforms but it is complicated. If we can use the sequencer to control these parameters it would be so much easier and user friendly. I also understand that this might be difficult to do with way the current animations work but if point one is implemented it might be easier. Please look into this though as it would make animating things so much easier and less time consuming.
Suggestions for the future to make Animatronics great and easy to make:
Okay now that I have gone through some of the ideas that would make the current set up better I thought I would look to the future of the game. There is definitely a lot that could be added and looked at but these are definitely some of the things that would make me excited to play.
1. Firstly I'd like to just ask for more, currently there is only a handful of pre built animatronics for casual players to use. Not all players have the time, inclination, creativity or patience to build their own animatronics. The current themes are awesome but there is so few animatronics that can be just placed down and turned on, that dark rides, coaster and flat ride queues all end up a bit samey. We need more. Viking warriors to create battle scenes, Heroes and monsters of greek mythology to fight each other, the different Pantheon gods in various sizes, Tribal People doing Dances, playing drums, Surfing, Schools of fish, sharks etc for with the underwater theme. Literally anything, but please give these great themes the love they deserve cause they could be incredibly but currently just feel bland. I would even pay for a dlc of just animatronics for these themes.
2. This goes hand in hand with point 1 of this section, when you are choosing themes for the DLCs please give us enough animatronics to make the new themes work amazingly.
3. The current moving platforms are great but there could and should be more variety. One idea that would be awesome if for a track platform. Basically the same as a tracked ride but for animatronics. Attach scenery to a point and then it moves around the track it can even use the same system to turning around and moving up and down. I know we can already kind of do this by hiding a trackless Darkride under the ground and attaching the scenery to the cars but this can be annoying to do and doesn't work very well for certain things. Example of what you could do with this kind of motion track is, conveyor belts in Santas workshop, a robot assembly line for a sci-fi theme or go full horror with a death contraption.
3. Guest triggered sequencer, one thing that I find kind of sad in PC2 is the lack of interactivity between the guests and the new moving elements. Having a guest activated trigger would help this. Think of this as like a interactive point, the guest moves to the position presses a button, the animation happens and they react with clapping or exclamations (maybe we can set some sort of setting to state the experience is scary or exciting or funny). This could then be used for creating things like guest used water guns over water rapids or log flumes or even in a kid's pool area.
4. While this point is not specific to the animatronics themselves it goes hand in hand with point 3 above, give us some seating/standing options for guests to congregate for time triggered events such as fireworks or fountain shows. Similar to the above point this would work by setting a trigger time at which point guests congregate to watch the show. After the event ends the guests move on. This is a bit similar to the info sessions in Planet Zoo but on a larger scale. Think the seating around the fountain in Epic universe or the area Infront of Disney Castles around the world.
5. Make it so lighting can be added to a sequencer, change light colour, make it flash on and off like strobing, make it get brighter and dimmer.
6. Have a checkmark on the flame emitters that allows you to turn off the black smoke effect. The smoke is great for realism but is really distracting when doing something like lava of fire pillars and such.
I have seen some people requesting that the sequencer be upgraded so that we can create custom animations using Bones and Key frames. I personally think that this is a bit excessive for a videogame. There is definitely plenty that can be improved on to make the current system better but full animating capabilities within the game will just kill performance and is not really needed. Plus it would take away valuable time from creating other aspects of the game. I am sure in the future when PC2 has had a full lifecycle something like the TMTK will get released and new stuff can be created in blender or something but we do not need to be able to key animate in this game.
Hope to keep adding to this list as more ideas come to mind, also happy to add any suggestions others have. I will also update this list as the developers upgrade the game or confirm it cannot be done. Happy building everyone!
One of things that I think everyone would agree about, is that the new capabilities for animatronics in Planet Coaster 2 are absolutely amazing. There is a lot of potential already in the game for creating amazing things such as Tornadoes, Drone shows, trap doors, complex moving statues, the list is kind of endless to be fair, but there is definitely a few things that can be improved upon in the future and new things that could be explored.
I have had a look at a few of the previous posts about animatronics and I thought I would put together a post that has all the suggestions that I could find plus I added a few myself from my own experimentation and thoughts.
Improvement suggestions for what is already available:
1: At the moment any animated object; be it a moving platform, a pre built animatronic figure (eg. Beastboy), or particle effect, can only be set to one of the output settings, even when using the sequencer to manipulate the object. Currently to create complex movement we need to use multiple nested platforms to do simple things and I feel that adding the ability to change the simple animation using the sequencer would go a long way to help simplify the animation building. A quick example of this would be allowing for the same rotating platform to start in a slow rotation to medium and then to fast within a sequence. Simulating an airplane engine starting for example. Currently you would need 3 of the platforms to achieve this affect, adding to piece counts, complexity of build and frustration when things go wrong. Allowing the changing of this setting in the sequencer will make these kinds of things easier and less performance killing to boot, especially when we can already duplicate selected objects in the sequencer to repeat their current animation. This in my opinion needs to be the first change made the the current set up and high on the priority list.
2. Now this one might be a bit more difficult for you but would definitely go a long way to making animatronic platforms more versatile. Having a check box on the platform to make it invisible when it is not being worked on (working within a building group). Currently it can be very hard to find ways to hide these large platforms within show scenes, you need to hide them in the ground most of the time with the attached scenery moved high above it. This makes it pretty hard to work with sometimes, especially for complex animatronics. Being able to make the platforms invisible once the animatronic is fully made would help this a lot.
3. This is specific to the particle effect emitters, the way they currently work there is multiple different emitters for varying size of the particle. For me this is a bit silly especially in terms of animating the emitter. These should work the same way as the platforms do, with one emitter per type with a drop-down menu to select the effect strength. Eg large burst flame thrower or short burst etc. This then in conjunction with point 1 can be then used to change the strength of the effect with the sequencer. Not a deal breaker but just makes it more annoying to detail with multiple emitters.
4. Lastly in terms of current capabilities, it would be great if we could choose how long an animation runs for, or how long the animation holds a position for etc. a good example for this is trying to make a door that opens to let a car pass and then close. Currently there is a way of doing this using multiple rotating platforms but it is complicated. If we can use the sequencer to control these parameters it would be so much easier and user friendly. I also understand that this might be difficult to do with way the current animations work but if point one is implemented it might be easier. Please look into this though as it would make animating things so much easier and less time consuming.
Suggestions for the future to make Animatronics great and easy to make:
Okay now that I have gone through some of the ideas that would make the current set up better I thought I would look to the future of the game. There is definitely a lot that could be added and looked at but these are definitely some of the things that would make me excited to play.
1. Firstly I'd like to just ask for more, currently there is only a handful of pre built animatronics for casual players to use. Not all players have the time, inclination, creativity or patience to build their own animatronics. The current themes are awesome but there is so few animatronics that can be just placed down and turned on, that dark rides, coaster and flat ride queues all end up a bit samey. We need more. Viking warriors to create battle scenes, Heroes and monsters of greek mythology to fight each other, the different Pantheon gods in various sizes, Tribal People doing Dances, playing drums, Surfing, Schools of fish, sharks etc for with the underwater theme. Literally anything, but please give these great themes the love they deserve cause they could be incredibly but currently just feel bland. I would even pay for a dlc of just animatronics for these themes.
2. This goes hand in hand with point 1 of this section, when you are choosing themes for the DLCs please give us enough animatronics to make the new themes work amazingly.
3. The current moving platforms are great but there could and should be more variety. One idea that would be awesome if for a track platform. Basically the same as a tracked ride but for animatronics. Attach scenery to a point and then it moves around the track it can even use the same system to turning around and moving up and down. I know we can already kind of do this by hiding a trackless Darkride under the ground and attaching the scenery to the cars but this can be annoying to do and doesn't work very well for certain things. Example of what you could do with this kind of motion track is, conveyor belts in Santas workshop, a robot assembly line for a sci-fi theme or go full horror with a death contraption.
3. Guest triggered sequencer, one thing that I find kind of sad in PC2 is the lack of interactivity between the guests and the new moving elements. Having a guest activated trigger would help this. Think of this as like a interactive point, the guest moves to the position presses a button, the animation happens and they react with clapping or exclamations (maybe we can set some sort of setting to state the experience is scary or exciting or funny). This could then be used for creating things like guest used water guns over water rapids or log flumes or even in a kid's pool area.
4. While this point is not specific to the animatronics themselves it goes hand in hand with point 3 above, give us some seating/standing options for guests to congregate for time triggered events such as fireworks or fountain shows. Similar to the above point this would work by setting a trigger time at which point guests congregate to watch the show. After the event ends the guests move on. This is a bit similar to the info sessions in Planet Zoo but on a larger scale. Think the seating around the fountain in Epic universe or the area Infront of Disney Castles around the world.
5. Make it so lighting can be added to a sequencer, change light colour, make it flash on and off like strobing, make it get brighter and dimmer.
6. Have a checkmark on the flame emitters that allows you to turn off the black smoke effect. The smoke is great for realism but is really distracting when doing something like lava of fire pillars and such.
I have seen some people requesting that the sequencer be upgraded so that we can create custom animations using Bones and Key frames. I personally think that this is a bit excessive for a videogame. There is definitely plenty that can be improved on to make the current system better but full animating capabilities within the game will just kill performance and is not really needed. Plus it would take away valuable time from creating other aspects of the game. I am sure in the future when PC2 has had a full lifecycle something like the TMTK will get released and new stuff can be created in blender or something but we do not need to be able to key animate in this game.
Hope to keep adding to this list as more ideas come to mind, also happy to add any suggestions others have. I will also update this list as the developers upgrade the game or confirm it cannot be done. Happy building everyone!
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