Coaster Challenge/Competition

[Thergothon]

Alright, as suggested in the compact coasters thread, I'm starting a competition/challenge/whatever to see who can design the shortest roller coaster with an excitement rating over ten. There will be no prizes, just a bit of fun and a few awesome rollercoasters at the end of it all. Just so you know, a ten excitement is possible as Ive done a 10.05 but it was 6km long...

Anyway the rules so far are:

-You can use any type of rollercoaster you want. (This rule could possibly change as some rollercoasters may be biased in regards to excitement rating.

-Scenery is allowed, but no other rides.

-The rollercoaster may be a dualing coaster but both lengths will be added together as this competition revolves around tracklength.

-With regards to excitement, I think that tracklength is more important than excitement rating. This ensures an overall winner and prevents people from making massive rollercoasters that have excitements that are untouchable on a shorter ride. That said, if the tracklengths are very similar but the excitements vary wildly, excitement might take precedence (though this last idea is definately debatable and largly depends on the coasters made).

Thats it for now, I think there possibly should be another rule regarding the size of the park to reduce download sizes for people on 56k. [Edit]: The park size should be no greater than 32x32 squares.


If there is anymore suggestions, feel free to suggest and I will amend the rules if needed.

Anyway, have fun and get building.

S.

[rizzla]

Now, this is a monumental challenge. I just went pretty wild and still didn't get close to seeing a 9 on the excitement scale, no amount of scenery will fix that. This project might take weeks, so don't get impatient, cracking the 10 at all is an incentive and I'll get back to it...

P.S.: Just checked your monster coaster again, the only 10 I know of. Wild ride!

[rizzla]

You can use any type of rollercoaster you want. (This rule could possibly change as some rollercoasters may be biased in regards to excitement rating.

Now this gave me the idea to investigate the correlation of excitement, intensity and nausea for different coaster types. Call me crazy, I don't care - cause this involves a heck of a lot of work!

What of course turned out to be too simple is build just about the most boring coaster ever over and over and over again for different types of coasters: I went with a station length of four, then four normal chain lift ups, then four down again, a banked 180 and a boring backstretch with another banked 180 to get back to the station. I won't bother telling you all the results (do the testing yourselves :D), in fact I only tried about a dozen or so out anyway. Turned out that for the three non-serious candidates for a 10 excitement in fact this most basic design already produced reasonable results: The Water (Coaster) turned out 3.71/4.21/2.70, the Inverted Vertical even 4.25/4.54/4.03. While for the serious coasters, this was nothing - excitement ranged from 0.97 (Vertical Drop) up to 1.23 (MultiD). However, the nausea value ranged from 0.20 to 1.35 - again, the MultiD. The only conclusion (if even that) was that coasters that produced a bit more excitement also produced more nausea.

With only three coasters I then tried the following - adding 30 straight pieces (15 before and after the 1st banked turn), which resulted in having to add "block brakes" that accelerated them to 28.8 km/h so they'd reach the station. In all cases the excitement grew (so length in itself is definitely a big factor) while intensity and nausea dropped - like they should. It's too early to say any more - for that I'll do some more tests with brakes, maybe speeding up on straights and slowing down for turns and see how the ratings change.

When I built a proper coaster of 800 meters length with loops and all both as a Floorless and a Compact Inverted - to be honest, I didn't do two 1on1 copies like I should have, but they were pretty similar - I also noticed this: Unlike on the small model both these coasters were about even on excitement (6.5) but the Compact Inverted was already up to 8.5 intensity, while the Floorless stayed below 6 and I'm sure I can do better (slower turns?). To me, a higher intensity than excitement rating doesn't look promising to tackle higher ratings and probably the limit you can push a Compact Inverted to is altogether lower.

If anybody else is interested in testing and sharing results, maybe that would warrant a new thread. If not, I'll report any more definite findings here as it might help with the layout.

[Thergothon]

They are some promising results, I havent tried that myself, rather, I jumped into the deep end and built a coaster to find out how much scenery effects the ride.

The answer is... not much.

This rollercoaster...

http://free.hostdepartment.com/a/atragicopus/foas.jpg

..had an excitement rating of only 8.71 before I added scenery. After I was done, it totaled 9.02...

I havent yet tested the excitement for rides going through buildings and such as Im rubish at creating good buildings.

As far as actual coaster design is concerned... Ive noticed that air time seems to have a rather large impact on rating. From memory (I should have written it down at the time), when I was building this coaster, its excitement was ~7.5 with 0:03 air time, but jumped to ~8.6 when the air time increased to about 0:17

As for coaster types, I have a sneaking suspicion that the most exciting rollercoaster is the multidimensional rollercoaster as the one I built in the compact coasters thread is 8.28 without scenery and is only 1200m long as opposed to this roller coaster which is 2500m long....

Anyway, here is the park itself :

Forest Of Abandoned Souls (http://free.hostdepartment.com/a/atragicopus/park.jpg)

I zipped it up and then changed the file extension to jpg so I could upload it to my host (which doesnt allow .zip), so change the file extension back to .zip and it should work.

S.

[Thergothon]

Also, why did this thread get moved and whats with the 80+ views and only one response? Is this too hard for everyone? Maybe it should be in the 'veterens' forum?

[Thergothon]

Originally posted by rizzla
[B]The Water (Coaster) turned out 3.71/4.21/2.70, the Inverted Vertical even 4.25/4.54/4.03. While for the serious coasters, this was nothing - excitement ranged from 0.97 (Vertical Drop) up to 1.23 (MultiD). However, the nausea value ranged from 0.20 to 1.35 - again, the MultiD. The only conclusion (if even that) was that coasters that produced a bit more excitement also produced more nausea.


This is a strange result, however, Im more inclined to think that the serious coasters have a larger potential and that largly has to do with the amount of special pieces that are available to them, such as zero-g rolls and quarter loops, and that the smaller coasters have a capped excitement rating (that in itself could be an idea for a challenge, 9 excitement on a junior coaster, heh).

The other thing that is pretty obvious is that excitement is greatly effected by the g forces on the coaster. 5g seems to be the limit for lateral gs, though if it goes just past that limit for an instance there is little to no impact on the excitement. In other words, bank every corner and there is no problem.

S.

[TheButcher]

well, think about what is exciting in real rides, developerws must have had that in mind while making the game. X is the most exciting ride ive ever been on so i would asume a multiD would be best, if it can be done right. Also, tunnels, well buildings/tunnels due to game limitations. but seriously, who doesnt love airtime come on, just put what you like and it ought to help...or something.

[chrsharvick29]

I think the park should be alot bigger. It's nearly impossible to get a excitement rating over ten in that small area. File sizes shouldn't be a problem if they zipped.

I create coasters with 9 excitement ratings all the time and they are without scenery. If I put scenery, there would alot over ten. But that small area is a little too small for what I would do.

[Thergothon]

Ive almost done it....

Excitement just over 9, dimensions something around 28x27, length is 2158m, no scenery, no landscaping.

Its a multidimensional rollercoaster and once I nailed the rotations, the excitement went up over half a point and the intensity and nausea both dropped almost an entire point.

I'll probably finish this in the next couple of days, then I'll post it.

S.

[rizzla]

Sounds very promising. I still haven't even started working on this, probably cause it seems a huge task. Your favorite coaster, the MultiD? I haven't built a single one of those yet, the rotations make it a coaster for the pro.

[TheButcher]

Yeah the MultiD is definately for a pro, i havent even considered building one in RCT3 yet. I made a pretty good one in 2 but i lost it. The rotation is so confusing but with time you can creat amazing rides.