1: Sub-variations for rides. For example... Having the ability for a small 3-cup tea-cup ride, a larger 6-cup tea-cup ride, an even larger 9-cup tea-cup ride, 12, 15, 18, 21... Double-decker, Triple-decker, etc. (Appropriately, realistic decking to match the "expandable rides", or "upgradable". As well as having the ability to modify the colors, material types, speeds, twists, wobbles, rise/fall, etc... for the appropriate rides.) This would just add seats, arms, buckets, etc... Not be a whole "new ride creation". Just adding on to the existing tiny ride. Larger foundation, possibly, but not required. This would work just like adding cars to a coaster, for many rides. Swinging-boats, Merri-go-rounds, Gravitrons, etc... More people equals quicker queue digestion and also more required maintenance and creation costs, respectively.
2: "Area paths", added to the available "path types". So we are no longer limited to path-hacks, and actual "paths", can be used for just that... "Paths", while "Path areas" would simply be walking areas, which paths CAN join to. Allowing us to edit the points and curves of the areas outline, as well as "holes", of negative space, where we don't want people walking. So we can add flowers or details. As well as automatically creating obstructions for anything we place onto a path-area, like rocks or planters, so people are not walking through them.
3: A map that is completely "blank"... Simply a full "sky-box", without a sky or even any land. Something we can use to create our own true maps. Or, optionally, keep them left completely empty, building on a virtual-floor that doesn't exist below us, until we start building over it. For those of us who want to build out in space and have a star skybox, or under water with a sea-dome backdrop for the skybox, or in hell with a lava floor below us... Etc. Even if we want to build with a normal map of our own custom build. (Thinking about the "Sims", or "City Skylines", where you can build your own "background world", as well as the "buildable world area".)
4: Coaster-detail options... Since the tracks seem to be the BIGGEST FPS drop, of all the things, in the game. A factor that I attribute to a few things. The lack of LOD, because tracks seem low-poly, but they could actually be lower. So they remain unchanged in most LOD levels, causing big FPS losses. (Also related to the fact that the various shaders are all present, in all LODs too. Adding details you can't even see, at certain distances, like reflections and bump-maps, etc.) But, having the option for turning off things like "animated drive systems", or limiting the LOD for them. Turning off reflections, bumps, bolts and fasteners, non-critical railing and supports. For when the game starts to get bogged-down, as we add more coasters to this coaster game.
5: Better "people traffic AI"... I made a whole post about that. I'd want to see something done, before a new version was made. This current code just isn't working, at all. To any realistic sense, or even to any prior games, or current games level. It's just too wonky and mind-boggling. Ants have better traffic control. Dare I say, Cyberpunk 2077 has better traffic control, and they are horrible!
6: A "rendering mode" option, for videos and snapshots. (Also mentioned in another post.) For HD videos and screen-shots, adding details and lighting and shadow rendering quality that is many levels above anything we could ever get in a real-time game, even if we all had RTX "tricks", for better ray-tracing. (Thinking about it, IRAY might let you include the rendering engine in the game, free... Since it would be limited to only rendering your specific game, and not a full "rendering engine", for use by others.)
7: Stretch and dynamic scaling ability, even if restricted... For most of these items which have a NEED and a REASON to scale them. Like having trees, flowers, rocks, primitive shapes, fences, benches, potters, walls, etc. Many of the individual items could easily be just one item with a dynamic or literal scaling option, for endless, perfect-fit, desired shapes, for crafting our custom creations. Prices could be automatically adjusted, or not, depending on the situation. Like a tree could be limited to 8 sizes, constrained to an obvious minimum and maximum height, with 3 width adjustments. A brick wall could be thin, thick, short, tall, wide, narrow, tapered up or tapered down... That, alone, would remove like 20 individual items from the build menu and declutter it. (Honestly, it could be a primitive that has the option for being textured, or not.) Same with rocks... You could just focus on the "shape" and "texture" of a rock. But, ultimately, it could be any height or width or length. Easier to clone too, since it is not a "new object" for each variation. Fences would be "dynamically scaled". Making them longer would create the needed supports and banister rails, as needed, to maintain a "look", while retaining the "ends" and "joints". With a respectable charge for the "expansion", as it gets resized.
8: An option to make some items "Invisible"... For instance, I can hide a "bench". It still functions as a bench, but it can't be seen. This allows me to "build my own bench", or, for the modding community, it allows them to simply create a new bench from that item, without needing to setup another new item that does the same exact thing. (Honestly, this would go hand-in-hand with my next suggestion/desire too.) Another use for this would be if we wanted to "hide" things like speakers, or lights, or paths.
9: Placed items, if they have a "variant", which is the "same", should be "upgradable", or "changeable". Like the trash-can or park bench or walls... Handled just like the "paths", when it comes to texturing. (Also, paths should be "sizable", after being placed down. Yes, it will break rides, but you could actually "attempt", to "auto-adjust", the things bound to the paths. Or, if all paths are actually just "areas", then it won't matter, because if you made the path wider, it would still function under a ride, as the ride would "block" the path where it needs to be and overlap where they can already walk.) You have to stop thinking about paths being "paths", for anything other than a queue-line. Which should actually just be a normal path-area with a "railing system" marking the line, within any "path area", or not, as it would be adding it's own path-area with the railings.
10: Some "completely enclosed attractions", and/or "sealed attractions". A simple attraction like a "house of mirrors", which, like a bathroom or a hotel, is nothing more than a void that people enter. The attraction having options that are selectable, with various stat-outcomes and "additional costs". While a "sealed attraction", would be like a haunted-house. It could be like an "enclosed attraction", but if you wanted to make the insides with "stuff"... It would essentially teleport you to a "void", where you build the internals of the building. Essentially like a micro-park, but the internals would be constrained to the "in game size", possibly exaggerated a little, for convenience. (So it might be 2x larger inside than it is represented on the outside.) The point being... None of that stuff is "loaded" when you are outside, and when you enter it, none of the outside world is loaded. So, we get more potential creation, if desired, without any FPS hits, other than the outside of the buildings "design". This could also be done with many coasters, and other rides. Giving us a "shell" to build within, which has no physical "windows" but possibly still having windows that portray the light coming in, from outside, or the light within, from the ride. I am thinking of a ride like "Space mountain", or many of the "sheltered rides", you might find at a beach or carnival. Again, in the name of "attraction isolation", for the sake of FPS gains.
11: Fixed "vending machines", and "ATM", and other odd components. Those should be like park benches. They do NOT deserve a whole "path attachment", and I am not sure why the tiny ATM has a huge area "behind it", that can't have anything there. Again, a vending-machine should just be "a machine", and you select the "Type". They don't need individual locations for each type in the build menu. There is a lot of "we did it, because we could", and "we did it to make it look like more things", when these things should have been reduced, ages ago, into less items. They leave little room for "user content", without adding to the "mess".
12: Full modding API... Open-up deep parts of the game, so we can assist in development, without detrimentally altering it, in dangerous ways. At least for "single player". Giving us access to ALL the games processed data values/stats. While also allowing a form of "HOOK", so some internal aspects can be intercepted and altered, or completely managed externally. Like the "people traffic AI", the "choice selection AI", the "LOD adjustments", the "shaders processing", the "ride options". Make it, and they will make it better! Don't make it, and you are stuck doing it all yourself.
13: This is an internal thing... But... Custom ride optimization. When it comes to coasters, it seems like you are using the "edited raw data", as the coasters rendering output. When you should be taking the "edits", and using that to "create an optimized object", for processing in the game. Simply saving the "editable version", for when we are editing it. (The object with all it's "extra info", related to twists, bends, pitches, yaws, rolls, etc. So what THAT spits-out, is a segmented "object", that is just static parts in the final form. Minus the "moving parts".) I think that is part of what is also killing FPS, when it comes to displaying multiple coasters too. Just the shear complexity of "multiple deformations" of "single raw components", which must be done, prior to each rendered frame, as opposed to doing that deformation once, and just rendering the "multiple deformations" which is now a "single raw component".
14: Grass... Actual grass... Even if it is super low-poly, and spotty... It is easy enough to clone, animate, add and remove, as needed... without killing frame-rates. If Crysis, Skyrim, Witcher and Sims-4 can manage billions of sprite-grass, and your game can handle 400,000 trees flawlessly... I am sure you can add some decent grass to break-up the monotony of the super-flat grounds. (Actually, with a quick and dirty shader. You can create texturing variations to alter the ground textures with patchy discolorations to make it look less "solid" too. Simple perlin-noise and a post-process hue-shift, shade-shift, and saturation-shift, which takes almost no processing time to alter the rendered output of the actual colors. Even minecraft does that!)
15: Remove the "speed-pass bridge" requirement. That's not how it works... With speed-pass, you either have your own entrance, or you have a separate thin line, along the normal entrance path. (We should have both in the game, with various design gains. Having an isolated path, being limited to the thinnest path width, as it should always be mostly empty. Would give us the ability to get more people in, faster. Costing us more to build the path. While, if we don't have an isolated path built, it would sacrifice some space from the normal line, to let those people pass by the others who are waiting in line. So the smallest line which holds two or three rows of people, would have one row to let speed-pass through, and one row for normal people. A path with 4-8 wide, for people, would have 2 rows, or one row, for speed-pass.) I have NEVER seen a speed-pass that pulls you from the line, and then inserts you BACK INTO THE LINE. That is, honestly, the dumbest thing I ever saw setup in the game. How would you even manage that, in real life? You would need someone to hold people back, while you sliced speed-pass people back into the mix of normal people. No, if you pay for speed-pass, you skip the WHOLE LINE, and get on the ride, before any normal people. (Or it is a set number of speed-pass people, and a set number of normal people, on each turn. Or, you get a "queue alert", which lets you know when that ride is ready, and you go before the others, without having to wait in any lines, once your alert is given. Those are electronic passes.) In any event, it's just more odd complexity that doesn't even work in the game correctly, as it just leads to more collisions that stall the game, as well as extra "stuff" to be processed.
16: Better manipulation control for adding decorations, with less "click, click, click", just to complete a simple action, or "hidden shortcuts", to things that have no "click", but should. Including the removal of "grid-locked items", which should have the option to be placed freely, like non-grid-locked items can be placed. Again, this goes back to a prior suggestion, where there are a lot of redundant "specialty parts", that are, literally, the same exact parts but with different "grid-locks", which stops them from being used like other parts. Too much redundancy where it doesn't need to be. Honestly, non-grid-locked items could be made to be "grid-locked", making them MORE functional too. Provided that we can alter where they are located, within a grid, or alter the grid-snap-size. But that is for the more seasoned artistic developers, obviously.
2: "Area paths", added to the available "path types". So we are no longer limited to path-hacks, and actual "paths", can be used for just that... "Paths", while "Path areas" would simply be walking areas, which paths CAN join to. Allowing us to edit the points and curves of the areas outline, as well as "holes", of negative space, where we don't want people walking. So we can add flowers or details. As well as automatically creating obstructions for anything we place onto a path-area, like rocks or planters, so people are not walking through them.
3: A map that is completely "blank"... Simply a full "sky-box", without a sky or even any land. Something we can use to create our own true maps. Or, optionally, keep them left completely empty, building on a virtual-floor that doesn't exist below us, until we start building over it. For those of us who want to build out in space and have a star skybox, or under water with a sea-dome backdrop for the skybox, or in hell with a lava floor below us... Etc. Even if we want to build with a normal map of our own custom build. (Thinking about the "Sims", or "City Skylines", where you can build your own "background world", as well as the "buildable world area".)
4: Coaster-detail options... Since the tracks seem to be the BIGGEST FPS drop, of all the things, in the game. A factor that I attribute to a few things. The lack of LOD, because tracks seem low-poly, but they could actually be lower. So they remain unchanged in most LOD levels, causing big FPS losses. (Also related to the fact that the various shaders are all present, in all LODs too. Adding details you can't even see, at certain distances, like reflections and bump-maps, etc.) But, having the option for turning off things like "animated drive systems", or limiting the LOD for them. Turning off reflections, bumps, bolts and fasteners, non-critical railing and supports. For when the game starts to get bogged-down, as we add more coasters to this coaster game.
5: Better "people traffic AI"... I made a whole post about that. I'd want to see something done, before a new version was made. This current code just isn't working, at all. To any realistic sense, or even to any prior games, or current games level. It's just too wonky and mind-boggling. Ants have better traffic control. Dare I say, Cyberpunk 2077 has better traffic control, and they are horrible!
6: A "rendering mode" option, for videos and snapshots. (Also mentioned in another post.) For HD videos and screen-shots, adding details and lighting and shadow rendering quality that is many levels above anything we could ever get in a real-time game, even if we all had RTX "tricks", for better ray-tracing. (Thinking about it, IRAY might let you include the rendering engine in the game, free... Since it would be limited to only rendering your specific game, and not a full "rendering engine", for use by others.)
7: Stretch and dynamic scaling ability, even if restricted... For most of these items which have a NEED and a REASON to scale them. Like having trees, flowers, rocks, primitive shapes, fences, benches, potters, walls, etc. Many of the individual items could easily be just one item with a dynamic or literal scaling option, for endless, perfect-fit, desired shapes, for crafting our custom creations. Prices could be automatically adjusted, or not, depending on the situation. Like a tree could be limited to 8 sizes, constrained to an obvious minimum and maximum height, with 3 width adjustments. A brick wall could be thin, thick, short, tall, wide, narrow, tapered up or tapered down... That, alone, would remove like 20 individual items from the build menu and declutter it. (Honestly, it could be a primitive that has the option for being textured, or not.) Same with rocks... You could just focus on the "shape" and "texture" of a rock. But, ultimately, it could be any height or width or length. Easier to clone too, since it is not a "new object" for each variation. Fences would be "dynamically scaled". Making them longer would create the needed supports and banister rails, as needed, to maintain a "look", while retaining the "ends" and "joints". With a respectable charge for the "expansion", as it gets resized.
8: An option to make some items "Invisible"... For instance, I can hide a "bench". It still functions as a bench, but it can't be seen. This allows me to "build my own bench", or, for the modding community, it allows them to simply create a new bench from that item, without needing to setup another new item that does the same exact thing. (Honestly, this would go hand-in-hand with my next suggestion/desire too.) Another use for this would be if we wanted to "hide" things like speakers, or lights, or paths.
9: Placed items, if they have a "variant", which is the "same", should be "upgradable", or "changeable". Like the trash-can or park bench or walls... Handled just like the "paths", when it comes to texturing. (Also, paths should be "sizable", after being placed down. Yes, it will break rides, but you could actually "attempt", to "auto-adjust", the things bound to the paths. Or, if all paths are actually just "areas", then it won't matter, because if you made the path wider, it would still function under a ride, as the ride would "block" the path where it needs to be and overlap where they can already walk.) You have to stop thinking about paths being "paths", for anything other than a queue-line. Which should actually just be a normal path-area with a "railing system" marking the line, within any "path area", or not, as it would be adding it's own path-area with the railings.
10: Some "completely enclosed attractions", and/or "sealed attractions". A simple attraction like a "house of mirrors", which, like a bathroom or a hotel, is nothing more than a void that people enter. The attraction having options that are selectable, with various stat-outcomes and "additional costs". While a "sealed attraction", would be like a haunted-house. It could be like an "enclosed attraction", but if you wanted to make the insides with "stuff"... It would essentially teleport you to a "void", where you build the internals of the building. Essentially like a micro-park, but the internals would be constrained to the "in game size", possibly exaggerated a little, for convenience. (So it might be 2x larger inside than it is represented on the outside.) The point being... None of that stuff is "loaded" when you are outside, and when you enter it, none of the outside world is loaded. So, we get more potential creation, if desired, without any FPS hits, other than the outside of the buildings "design". This could also be done with many coasters, and other rides. Giving us a "shell" to build within, which has no physical "windows" but possibly still having windows that portray the light coming in, from outside, or the light within, from the ride. I am thinking of a ride like "Space mountain", or many of the "sheltered rides", you might find at a beach or carnival. Again, in the name of "attraction isolation", for the sake of FPS gains.
11: Fixed "vending machines", and "ATM", and other odd components. Those should be like park benches. They do NOT deserve a whole "path attachment", and I am not sure why the tiny ATM has a huge area "behind it", that can't have anything there. Again, a vending-machine should just be "a machine", and you select the "Type". They don't need individual locations for each type in the build menu. There is a lot of "we did it, because we could", and "we did it to make it look like more things", when these things should have been reduced, ages ago, into less items. They leave little room for "user content", without adding to the "mess".
12: Full modding API... Open-up deep parts of the game, so we can assist in development, without detrimentally altering it, in dangerous ways. At least for "single player". Giving us access to ALL the games processed data values/stats. While also allowing a form of "HOOK", so some internal aspects can be intercepted and altered, or completely managed externally. Like the "people traffic AI", the "choice selection AI", the "LOD adjustments", the "shaders processing", the "ride options". Make it, and they will make it better! Don't make it, and you are stuck doing it all yourself.
13: This is an internal thing... But... Custom ride optimization. When it comes to coasters, it seems like you are using the "edited raw data", as the coasters rendering output. When you should be taking the "edits", and using that to "create an optimized object", for processing in the game. Simply saving the "editable version", for when we are editing it. (The object with all it's "extra info", related to twists, bends, pitches, yaws, rolls, etc. So what THAT spits-out, is a segmented "object", that is just static parts in the final form. Minus the "moving parts".) I think that is part of what is also killing FPS, when it comes to displaying multiple coasters too. Just the shear complexity of "multiple deformations" of "single raw components", which must be done, prior to each rendered frame, as opposed to doing that deformation once, and just rendering the "multiple deformations" which is now a "single raw component".
14: Grass... Actual grass... Even if it is super low-poly, and spotty... It is easy enough to clone, animate, add and remove, as needed... without killing frame-rates. If Crysis, Skyrim, Witcher and Sims-4 can manage billions of sprite-grass, and your game can handle 400,000 trees flawlessly... I am sure you can add some decent grass to break-up the monotony of the super-flat grounds. (Actually, with a quick and dirty shader. You can create texturing variations to alter the ground textures with patchy discolorations to make it look less "solid" too. Simple perlin-noise and a post-process hue-shift, shade-shift, and saturation-shift, which takes almost no processing time to alter the rendered output of the actual colors. Even minecraft does that!)
15: Remove the "speed-pass bridge" requirement. That's not how it works... With speed-pass, you either have your own entrance, or you have a separate thin line, along the normal entrance path. (We should have both in the game, with various design gains. Having an isolated path, being limited to the thinnest path width, as it should always be mostly empty. Would give us the ability to get more people in, faster. Costing us more to build the path. While, if we don't have an isolated path built, it would sacrifice some space from the normal line, to let those people pass by the others who are waiting in line. So the smallest line which holds two or three rows of people, would have one row to let speed-pass through, and one row for normal people. A path with 4-8 wide, for people, would have 2 rows, or one row, for speed-pass.) I have NEVER seen a speed-pass that pulls you from the line, and then inserts you BACK INTO THE LINE. That is, honestly, the dumbest thing I ever saw setup in the game. How would you even manage that, in real life? You would need someone to hold people back, while you sliced speed-pass people back into the mix of normal people. No, if you pay for speed-pass, you skip the WHOLE LINE, and get on the ride, before any normal people. (Or it is a set number of speed-pass people, and a set number of normal people, on each turn. Or, you get a "queue alert", which lets you know when that ride is ready, and you go before the others, without having to wait in any lines, once your alert is given. Those are electronic passes.) In any event, it's just more odd complexity that doesn't even work in the game correctly, as it just leads to more collisions that stall the game, as well as extra "stuff" to be processed.
16: Better manipulation control for adding decorations, with less "click, click, click", just to complete a simple action, or "hidden shortcuts", to things that have no "click", but should. Including the removal of "grid-locked items", which should have the option to be placed freely, like non-grid-locked items can be placed. Again, this goes back to a prior suggestion, where there are a lot of redundant "specialty parts", that are, literally, the same exact parts but with different "grid-locks", which stops them from being used like other parts. Too much redundancy where it doesn't need to be. Honestly, non-grid-locked items could be made to be "grid-locked", making them MORE functional too. Provided that we can alter where they are located, within a grid, or alter the grid-snap-size. But that is for the more seasoned artistic developers, obviously.
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