Planet Coaster

[Daunt]

Yet again great buildings. So much opportunity for creativity.

I'm really hoping we'll be able to make restaurants and shops like this rather than just pre-set stalls and buildings. Any word on that?

 

[Shilka]

The stalls are indeed part of the building menu tab so they are for making a building around it yourself. There is a shops tab as well (you can see it in the screenshots), but it is currently greyed out as not available yet, so, I guess there will be premade shop buildings by the looks of it. What exactly that tab will contain in the future I don't know, but probably prethemed shops if I had to guess.

There's not much info from the devs about what's to come, other then stuff people have spotted in video's, and some ride renders. The alpha forums don't get any extra info in that sense. Devs are very responsive in the alpha bugs forum though.

In that sense we are paying testers, but I must say the game as it is now is already pretty stable. There's very little info about what's to come though.

 

[Daunt]

I'd really like to see something akin to how some tycoon games work - like Prison Architect. If you've never played the game, you plot off specific areas to be, say a dining hall, or a cell, or visitor's room. Then that area is required to have the things to actually make that area function as intended.

So for PC, you could map off a 4x6 plot as a restuarunt, then it will require having a kitchen / whatever, at least 4 tables, etc. Then you could map another area off as a bathroom, which will require toilets, sink, stalls.

This system would be something I think that would really make buildings almost completely customizable.

 

[Shilka]

I doubt we'll have anything like that in the game, but yeah, that would be nice..In most of not all theme park builders you end up building that kind of stuff, but it's not used by the AI unless you get creative with paths and seating...

...meanwhile I spent all yesterday evening building this; a pirate apartment building. Still not sure if I'm liking it myself...

 

[ElektroVodka]

Yep it reminds me of

Villa Villekulla alright...


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[Shilka]

Working on a kids rollercoaster with a 'hanging gardens of Babylon' theme.

The base building and its interior (inside part of the rollercoaster and paths/queues) is ready, now it's time to make the gardens and outside part of the coaster. A lot of work, but it's slowely getting together...

 

[Daunt]

Ridiculous Shilka. I caught a little bit of your building phase on your stream. Post a couple pics from eye perspective (better yet, do it when you're done).

 

[Shilka]

Here's one from eye perspective, this time with the coaster
(completing the whole thing will take a couple more days)

 

[Shilka]

I've started planting, and it's taking hours and hours XD
I think about 10 more hours of work and the attraction will be finished...
Some sneak peaks:

 

[Daunt]

Looking great Shilka. Fantastic gardening!

Do you get significant frame drops the more you add? I found it amazing that, in the video in the OP, the guy was able to add that many rocks and it didn't seem to affect FPS.

 

[Shilka]

I'm not getting a whole lot of FPS drop on big projects (just a few frames per second less), the most noticable thing you notice is increased loading time of the park.

Anyway, finally finished this project:

And here's a couple overview pictures, not from the viewpoint as a guest would see it, but it gives a good impression of the scale of the whole thing...

 

[Daunt]

It is getting more and more difficult to restrain myself from buying this. The deeper I've delved into it's features and Frontier's stance on how they're doing things / what their plans are, the more I'm confident that this game will undoubtedly be a smash hit.

Can you keep us updated in this thread with major updates/releases to it?

Hopefully I can acquire it soon so I can do my own review / preview for it.

 

[Shilka]

Sure, next alpha phase is planned for may 24, which will include coaster building and terraforming. (Current coaster building is only available through cheatcode and is not fully functional) I'll let you know how it is

Currently not building much because I don't want to burn out on the game halfway the alpha Once the update hits I'll be back to back to building. Hopefully we'll get some more themes too along the way, but I bet that will be later.

Basicly were testing basic functionality during these early stages, with limited content, I guess once the 3 stages have passed we'll be going into beta and slowely will see more content to the existing stuff added, during the last 3-5 months or so.

There's quite a bit of art and renders around of what's being worked upon, but it's not really presented in a central place so it's a bit hard to keep track of. It's spread around on twitter, through fansites, shows up in video's etc. I know they are working on a fantasy/fairytale theme, and I've also seen more stuff being worked on for the existing themes. Stuff like this:

 

[Daunt]

So yes... I've got it. So a preview blog will be coming soon.

Obviously you're much better than me... but here's my first stab at the game- Learning the ins and outs of the controls, how to manipulate controls, figuring out what I can and can't do. Still not sure how to rotate things beyond using the Z key to rotate. I'm pretty sure you can also flip them and such but I can't figure out how.

 

[Shilka]

Looking good Daunt!
The flipping and roitating possibilities totally depend on what object you're working with. Also, the axes along which it does those things depend on where your mousepounter is, so if you hold something over a slanted roof it will rotate along a different plane then when holding that object on a wall or the floor.
You'll figure out soon enough though, just experiment with what's possible

 

[Daunt]

Thank you Shilka.

Do you know, where do the tycoon elements stand in terms of the development stages of EA? Right now there's obviously no tycoon elements, no money making from rides or shops, no R&D (if there is supposed to even be any), ride rating, etc. I don't expect there to be right now but I'm wondering, is this planned with phase 2's release?

 

[Shilka]

All we know about that is this snippet:

As we enter the other phases of the alpha we may well add additional changes such as content, an increased (but not final) level of park management simulation and of course bug fixes and optimisations.

So, we might get something during alpha, or not, and certainly no promises on when. We'll have to see...

 

[Shilka]

Spent some time making this foodstall. Turned out a bit larger then I envisoned it...

 

[Wapwap]

Foodstall? That looks like a complete hotel!
Nice work though. I always like the amount of detail you put into your maps/buildings/etc.

 

[Daunt]

Incredible building Shilka. I plan to have a go now at a full-themed park now that I have the basics down. It's tormenting me though that phase 2 is inching closer!