So ive been playing with the firework display sequencer and im not really happy of how hard and cumbersome it is for creating any firework show that goes along the rhythm of music.
It seems to be done in such a similar way to the coaster trigger editor (which is cumbersome and hard to use for anything complicated, but at least passable in that case because you are just moving the triggers down a visible timeline, in this case the track itself) and probably made like this to not confuse players with multiple different mechanics, that its nearly impossible, without outside help, to make any music show mixed with fireworks something easy to make.
The worst thing about all this, is that you nailed it more than 10 years ago with your own mix master, so its actually surprising its so badly designed from a playable standpoint this time around.
For anyone that hasnt played it before, this is RCT3 famous mixmaster, also made by frontier, probably one of the best things that game had UI wise.
This was the stuff of legends, a timeline bar, similar to any editing video program like Premiere or Vegas (or even the casual windows movie maker), with a wavelength option to see your music from a visual standpoint (like tracked rides right now during the trigger menu) and fireworks added to the timeline by choosing from a menu (instead of being different scenery, something that I dont find it that bad in PC, but I would lie if I didnt think being everything in a menu wasn't easier). You can even see the duration fo the firework in the timeline, and even the time when it explodes.
And I dont even want to enter into the territory of the menu where you could create your own fireworks, lasers and water effects, or the sheer variety of them form the get a go. Lets leave that for another time.
Now lets compare it to the, sorry for being so blunt, clusterf... of UI we have now to try to make the same thing:
Music and fireworks are completely separated menus for the same thing, not impossible to work with, but cumbersome.
The real problem begins with the miliseconds no good timeline, impossible to know exact effect duration of each firework, impossible to know where to place each one without testing the thing multiple times, wasting a lot of time to desing anything remotely a little bit more complicated than attaching some fireworks with zero sound. And chainging the seconds by hand instead of actually moving the thing through a timeline is so so slow, that was not fun when building a coaster, but its even less fun doing any kind of show with the sequencer now.
Its absolutely horrible, so so bad, I need to have the game opened in window mode with a smaller resolution, and have sony vegas opened in another window with the same track to see the wavelenght of the song in a timeline, and see the exact second I need to add to the firework I need to use in that exact moment. And it doesnt help either that the music is displayed in minutes and seconds, while the fireworks are only displayed in hundreds of seconds and miliseconds after you pass the 2 minutes mark, which makes them even harder to place in the invisible timeline.
In summary, making this so "casual friendly" (sinceresly, if I was a more casual player and saw how the display sequencer worked to make a show, I wouldnt want to touch it not even with a ten foot pole and would continue making normal parks), and similar to the track ride sequencer, has made this super hard to use.
I thought I could get accustomed with some time of practice after watching the streams and it being different than the beloved RCT3 mixmaster, but no, not really. This is not a practice thing. I can spend 6 hours on vegas to match a music show with planet coaster, and after days of doing this non stop, I still would work as slow as the first day everytime I wanted to make a new show.
I know developing is hard, and you have a bunch of time constraints Frontier, and Im sure the majority of people understand that, and I also know there will be people that dont mind spending 12 hours to make a 10 minute firework show. But please, look again at the UI of the sequence display and try to make it easier and more user friendly to create more complicated type of shows (that at the same time would make creating simple fireworks shows even easier). I dont think anyone of us mind bigger windows that cover more of the screen to create this type of stuff, instead of this minimalistic folder groups with seconds thingy, and Im sure everyone of us have used some type of editing software (even windows movie maker) to undertand easily how timelines work.
I've talking about this with some other Planet Coaster players and they have similar opinions about it, yes, we are SUPER happy we can finally make our shows, but this stuff is too time consuming and cumbersome, so we would love to have a future update (take your time, we really dont mind waiting for a better display sequencer UI) were we get more near to the mix master (even if its not exactly like that) than what we have now.
Some ideas for improving with a similar system that you have now:
-something like dragging and dropping the firework (or any kind of effect or trigger object) inside the display sequencer trigger folders menu (or even a whole folder) into a point in the timeline and it automatically writting the exact second in the timeline were it appears, without you needing to guess and write the number (This is the idea I most like becuase it would make it super fast a thing that now thakes a lot of time)
-See the whole timeline if you use a track of music (so you dont need to add a firework that shoots out hundreds of seconds later so you can hear the whole song) and giving an option so you can make it finish the second/minute you want (if you dont want to use the whole song).
-An option to see the wavelenght of the music track under the timeline, if possible. That would make it easier fo any player to see highs and lows of the song and add effects where they really want without hearing the same segment of the song a hundred times.
-This one is a little more severe of a change, but making the display sequencer an horizontal menu isntead of vertical, similar to the scenery objetcs, that you can make bigger or smaller. This would help a lot if the timeline would regain importance in the menu again, becuase the longer the timeline is, the easier is for placing stuff in the exact second you want.
-If there would be some kind of visual representation in the timeline of the duration of the effect, that would be fantastic, although I know that change would also be very drastic, and other things would be easier to implement.
This are just some of the ideas I have, and Im sure other people could come with even better ones.
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You have been doing a fanstastic job everytime with the game, my 1200 hours playing just show this, so im not hating this just for hating, I just want to enjoy all the hard work you put into it, becuase I know making this stuff is hard, and with some future improvement to this UI I will be more than happy [happy]
It seems to be done in such a similar way to the coaster trigger editor (which is cumbersome and hard to use for anything complicated, but at least passable in that case because you are just moving the triggers down a visible timeline, in this case the track itself) and probably made like this to not confuse players with multiple different mechanics, that its nearly impossible, without outside help, to make any music show mixed with fireworks something easy to make.
The worst thing about all this, is that you nailed it more than 10 years ago with your own mix master, so its actually surprising its so badly designed from a playable standpoint this time around.
For anyone that hasnt played it before, this is RCT3 famous mixmaster, also made by frontier, probably one of the best things that game had UI wise.
This was the stuff of legends, a timeline bar, similar to any editing video program like Premiere or Vegas (or even the casual windows movie maker), with a wavelength option to see your music from a visual standpoint (like tracked rides right now during the trigger menu) and fireworks added to the timeline by choosing from a menu (instead of being different scenery, something that I dont find it that bad in PC, but I would lie if I didnt think being everything in a menu wasn't easier). You can even see the duration fo the firework in the timeline, and even the time when it explodes.
And I dont even want to enter into the territory of the menu where you could create your own fireworks, lasers and water effects, or the sheer variety of them form the get a go. Lets leave that for another time.
Now lets compare it to the, sorry for being so blunt, clusterf... of UI we have now to try to make the same thing:
Music and fireworks are completely separated menus for the same thing, not impossible to work with, but cumbersome.
The real problem begins with the miliseconds no good timeline, impossible to know exact effect duration of each firework, impossible to know where to place each one without testing the thing multiple times, wasting a lot of time to desing anything remotely a little bit more complicated than attaching some fireworks with zero sound. And chainging the seconds by hand instead of actually moving the thing through a timeline is so so slow, that was not fun when building a coaster, but its even less fun doing any kind of show with the sequencer now.
Its absolutely horrible, so so bad, I need to have the game opened in window mode with a smaller resolution, and have sony vegas opened in another window with the same track to see the wavelenght of the song in a timeline, and see the exact second I need to add to the firework I need to use in that exact moment. And it doesnt help either that the music is displayed in minutes and seconds, while the fireworks are only displayed in hundreds of seconds and miliseconds after you pass the 2 minutes mark, which makes them even harder to place in the invisible timeline.
In summary, making this so "casual friendly" (sinceresly, if I was a more casual player and saw how the display sequencer worked to make a show, I wouldnt want to touch it not even with a ten foot pole and would continue making normal parks), and similar to the track ride sequencer, has made this super hard to use.
I thought I could get accustomed with some time of practice after watching the streams and it being different than the beloved RCT3 mixmaster, but no, not really. This is not a practice thing. I can spend 6 hours on vegas to match a music show with planet coaster, and after days of doing this non stop, I still would work as slow as the first day everytime I wanted to make a new show.
I know developing is hard, and you have a bunch of time constraints Frontier, and Im sure the majority of people understand that, and I also know there will be people that dont mind spending 12 hours to make a 10 minute firework show. But please, look again at the UI of the sequence display and try to make it easier and more user friendly to create more complicated type of shows (that at the same time would make creating simple fireworks shows even easier). I dont think anyone of us mind bigger windows that cover more of the screen to create this type of stuff, instead of this minimalistic folder groups with seconds thingy, and Im sure everyone of us have used some type of editing software (even windows movie maker) to undertand easily how timelines work.
I've talking about this with some other Planet Coaster players and they have similar opinions about it, yes, we are SUPER happy we can finally make our shows, but this stuff is too time consuming and cumbersome, so we would love to have a future update (take your time, we really dont mind waiting for a better display sequencer UI) were we get more near to the mix master (even if its not exactly like that) than what we have now.
Some ideas for improving with a similar system that you have now:
-something like dragging and dropping the firework (or any kind of effect or trigger object) inside the display sequencer trigger folders menu (or even a whole folder) into a point in the timeline and it automatically writting the exact second in the timeline were it appears, without you needing to guess and write the number (This is the idea I most like becuase it would make it super fast a thing that now thakes a lot of time)
-See the whole timeline if you use a track of music (so you dont need to add a firework that shoots out hundreds of seconds later so you can hear the whole song) and giving an option so you can make it finish the second/minute you want (if you dont want to use the whole song).
-An option to see the wavelenght of the music track under the timeline, if possible. That would make it easier fo any player to see highs and lows of the song and add effects where they really want without hearing the same segment of the song a hundred times.
-This one is a little more severe of a change, but making the display sequencer an horizontal menu isntead of vertical, similar to the scenery objetcs, that you can make bigger or smaller. This would help a lot if the timeline would regain importance in the menu again, becuase the longer the timeline is, the easier is for placing stuff in the exact second you want.
-If there would be some kind of visual representation in the timeline of the duration of the effect, that would be fantastic, although I know that change would also be very drastic, and other things would be easier to implement.
This are just some of the ideas I have, and Im sure other people could come with even better ones.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
You have been doing a fanstastic job everytime with the game, my 1200 hours playing just show this, so im not hating this just for hating, I just want to enjoy all the hard work you put into it, becuase I know making this stuff is hard, and with some future improvement to this UI I will be more than happy [happy]
