My new Planet Coaster story

[JAperson]

So I've owned planet coaster for a long time but haven't had it installed for a good while however I recently decided to give it a go again and so reinstalled it. In this thread I'm going to share my journey as I develop my skills in the game
My first go
So I loaded up the game and started a new park and then the game proceeded to crash, So I repeated the step. After actually getting started I named the park city street and used the city sandbox mode.
I decided I just wanted to construct a simple coaster as I wanted to get used to the game. Now I want to admit I'm not very good a video games at all and last time I played Planet Coaster I was terrible but I fancied having a go to see if I could improve.

I choose to build a basic B&M Hyper. I selected it and begun the process of building it. I shortly got frustrated at just how bad it was and so deleted it. I then started again to a much better attempt, I ended up autocomplete for a lot of the coaster as I didn't really know where to take it. I also struggled quite a lot with the banking tool and couldn't the the coaster to bank properly.

Overall I enjoyed my first go on Planet coaster in a while but am not very pleased with the caoster I build which, hopefully, you can see below. Any tips and tricks on how to improve will be most appreciated although do be aware I know just how rubbish this ride is.

 

[Burbs]

Planet Coaster is notoriously quite difficult to get used to. In my first park I could see a major difference in quality between the first area and the last one that I built, and decided to start a completely new park as a result with a higher quality starting point.

With regards to coaster building, I'd suggest watching the numerous tutorials on youtube for making them realistic to some extent. I'd say for now though to not make your lift hill incline much more than 30°, and stick a brake run out the back of the station, then link the track up to that rather than the station itself.

 

[JAperson]

ith regards to coaster building, I'd suggest watching the numerous tutorials on youtube for making them realistic to some extent. I'd say for now though to not make your lift hill incline much more than 30°, and stick a brake run out the back of the station, then link the track up to that rather than the station itself.

Thanks @Burbs . I hadn't thought about making a break run before hand that could be quite helpful. As for lift hill steepness I did try it steeper but I looked really odd for a hyper but perhaps that was too steep. I will 100% have to watch some tutorials to be good enough to build a whole park and when I get time I will do so,
Planet Coaster does seem to be hard to learn although I did already know some bits from before, I've only fiddled with it or a couple of hours and the coaster probably only took me 15 minutes however I wanted to start the thread to document my journey throughout the whole process of my learning.
Your feedback had been most helpful.

 

[Matt N]

Great stuff @JAperson; that coaster looks like a very noble first attempt!

As @Burbs said, PlanCo is a bit of a learning curve. You won’t get it straight away, but once you do, it’s wonderful; with a bit of practice, it’ll come like second nature to you!

In terms of B&M hypers more specifically, I do have a piece of advice for you. I’ll admit that I too struggled with that parabola the hills provide, but I’ve nailed a bit of a formula that seems to create a reasonably good parabolic hill or drop, if I do say so myself; I’m certainly quite pleased with it, anyway!

I do my parabola as follows:

• Up part: 22.50°, 45.00°, 67.50°, 45.00°, 0.00°
• Down part: 45.00°, 67.50°, 45.00°, 22.50°
• To change the height of your hills, I’d recommend lengthening or shortening the track pieces.
• For the first drop, I go with 67.50°, 81.00°, 67.50°, 45.00°, 22.50°, 0.00°.

Hope that helps!
EDIT: On second thought, I might actually go away and film a video of me building a sample B&M hyper coaster to show you how I do it, as well as to show you the sort of hills my parabolic formula creates! It’ll take a couple of hours to upload, but when it’s ready, I hope you find it helpful!

 

[JAperson]

Great stuff @JAperson; that coaster looks like a very noble first attempt!

As @Burbs said, PlanCo is a bit of a learning curve. You won’t get it straight away, but once you do, it’s wonderful; with a bit of practice, it’ll come like second nature to you!

In terms of B&M hypers more specifically, I do have a piece of advice for you. I’ll admit that I too struggled with that parabola the hills provide, but I’ve nailed a bit of a formula that seems to create a reasonably good parabolic hill or drop, if I do say so myself; I’m certainly quite pleased with it, anyway!

I do my parabola as follows:

• Up part: 22.50°, 45.00°, 67.50°, 45.00°, 0.00°
• Down part: 45.00°, 67.50°, 45.00°, 22.50°
• To change the height of your hills, I’d recommend lengthening or shortening the track pieces.
• For the first drop, I go with 67.50°, 81.00°, 67.50°, 45.00°, 22.50°, 0.00°.

That's all very helpful and I will bare it in mind next time I build a B&M hyper in PlanCo,

EDIT: On second thought, I might actually go away and film a video of me building a sample B&M hyper coaster to show you how I do it, as well as to show you the sort of hills my parabolic formula creates! It’ll take a couple of hours to upload, but when it’s ready, I hope you find it helpful!

That's very kind of you @Matt N !

 

[Matt.GC]

The three most golden of rules I've learnt.

1. Test as you build with the Vertical G Force meter on. Pause if you need to finesse a section you're not happy with. Test, test and test again. It will give you a constant read of the forces, speed of the train and length of your block sections.

2. The smoothing tool is your friend. Smooth as you go at all times. But watch out, it tends to take too much banking out of corners (which you can put back in slightly after you've smoothed) and it also tames down sections such as airtime hills. So use for bits that look crappy and not bits that take the intentional forces out of your coaster

3. Constantly adapt the length of each track piece of track you use.

 

[Matt N]

3. Constantly adapt the length of each track piece of track you use.

I’ll certainly vouch for this one. I only learnt it relatively recently, but I’ll admit that I think it makes rides look way more realistic, as well as the g-forces far more manageable, if you adjust the track piece lengths!

 

[Matt N]

Sorry to double post, but my B&M hyper video is now uploaded, if you want to take a look:

Hope you find it helpful! Apologies for the slightly crude nature of it; I'll admit that I'm not used to being in teacher mode when building in Planet Coaster, hence why you find me deleting bits and then rebuilding them to show you what I was doing!

If anyone else has a better idea or any criticism of my idea, though, feel free to tear me to shreds!

 

[JAperson]

Sorry to double post, but my B&M hyper video is now uploaded, if you want to take a look:

Hope you find it helpful! Apologies for the slightly crude nature of it; I'll admit that I'm not used to being in teacher mode when building in Planet Coaster, hence why you find me deleting bits and then rebuilding them to show you what I was doing!

If anyone else has a better idea or any criticism of my idea, though, feel free to tear me to shreds!

Thanks so much @Matt N that's really helpful. I'll follow along and that way I'll get used to the coaster builder.

 

[Ian]

Certainly agree with the previous comments around testing as you go. I do like the builder, but it can be pretty unforgiving sometimes when you try to go back and edit something in the middle of the layout. Especially if you just want to do something like slightly raise or lower a hill, it can quite easily start moving other things around and causing weird transitions.

For me I always find hyper coaster’s quite challenging to get right. Ultimately you’re just trying to nail the hills to make sure you have the right level of incline and decline relative to the speed of the train, but they don’t always tend to actually do a great deal else - especially if you’re going for an out-and-back style. You might be able to make an interesting turnaround and perhaps have some fun with some transitions towards the end, but I personally find it quite hard to come up with much else.

I would say if you’re just starting out try to avoid limiting yourself to one coaster type. Have a play with lots of different styles to get a feel for each of them. You may well find you take to one particular layout or configuration better than others

 

[JAperson]

Thanks for your comments @Ian the builder is quite good but can be challenging especially for layouts like hyper coasters. I've also found myself struggling with the banking tool quite a lot. I can never get the track banked how I'd like it to be. I have tried watching numerous tutorials' but just can't quite grasp it.

I would say if you’re just starting out try to avoid limiting yourself to one coaster type. Have a play with lots of different styles to get a feel for each of them

Yes I'm attempting to make sure to try as many coaster types as possible. I'm currently in the process of building an El Loco which is quite fun, creating the weird and wacky elements those always have but attempting to use many of the ready shapen inversions and turns within the coaster builder.
I think I was wrong to start with a hyper coaster as I've found that quite challenging and have mostly left the one at the top of the thread for now.

I'll be posting another update, including my El loco and some other bits within the next few days.

 

[JAperson]

My second attempt
So it's been a few weeks since my original post so I thought it was time for an update. In the last few weeks I haven't had that much time but have had chance to get one coaster built. Taking all of your advice I made sure to use the smoothing tool a lot as well as building something a little easier.

So I decided to built an El Loco, choosing it because of its versatility and its weird elements which I thought would be quite fun. It's built in the same park as my dodgy hyper coaster opposite it. Getting ready to build it I watched a few tutorials on youtube some of which were helpful.
Here are some pictures of the El Loco itself within Planet Coaster:



I did try and take a screen recording but my PC was having non of it so here is a few more pictures taken during the layout:




I know it's really hard to judge something without seeing it in action and sdo I;m sorry that I didn't manage to get a screen recording with a bit on tinkering I'm sure I could get it to work so I'll have a go for the next update.

So my thoughts on the coaster:

• The layout itself is quite good. It's not as compact as most El Loco's seem to be however I sort of like that.
• My banking skills are much improved but still not really very good. The smooth banking tool helped but it isn't as good as being able to do it yourself.
• It took me far to long to build and I spent ages tinkering with the tiny little things and I'm still not fully happy with it.
• I've got much better at drops and hills but they still seem a little off in places.
• Smoothing tool is key and now I know that my coasters have improved quite a bit because of it.
• Overall I think the coaster is okay, for a second attempt it is much improved and is considerably better than my original. I'm glad I ended up going with an El Loco as I found it much easier than the hyper coaster. Being able to use pre-set inversions and turns really helped too. I'm still well aware that it is both basic and not very well placed. I'm not focusing on scenery yet however may do in the future. I really felt like I wanted to improve my use of the coaster builder before moving onto that. Hence why paths aren't connected or anything like that.

I've still got a long way to go and I'm well aware of that but how do you think I could improve when building coasters?

 

[Ian]

Looks like a good attempt and a decent model choice. You can do a lot more with the El Loco type ride than a hyper.

For banking, as others have said before, take a look at the Lateral G Force heat map (it’s in the results tab). If a corner looks to have high laterals it’ll turn from white to purple. If that happens then you probably want to look at revising the banking on it. Use the ride cam to run around the layout a few times, watch how the coaster behaves and think about how that would feel as a rider. If at any point you feel like your face would be getting pressed into the side of the restraint/seat then you probably need to bank the corner more so some of that lateral force is felt as vertical force instead (pushing down on your head, through your spine and into the bottom of the seat - as opposed to pushing the side of your head and body into the edge of the train/restraint).

The ride cam is also really handy for spotting kinks and bumps in the track, which it’s quite easy to create without realising. Just think of all the times Saw and Colossus have bashed your head in and strive to avoid inflicting that same pain on anyone else! It doesn’t take much to have a jarring transition. The smooth tool will help to a large extent as you’ve found, but things can still feel a little funky if you don’t keep an eye on it.

The last tip I would also give is try to avoid straight track, even if it’s an incline. Unless it’s something you’re trying to deliberately go for, like PMBO does, you ideally want hills to roll. Your airtime hops under the lift look to do this quite well, but your first drop looks rather pointed. Like I say, there’s nothing wrong with it if that’s a deliberate design decision, but they’re quite uncommon in the real world unless you’re in Japan. If you look at the majority of coasters their big drops will follow more of a curve and don’t stick at the same incline or decline angle for long. This will get you that lovely smooth sensation as you ride.

Keep at it though. Nothing happens overnight, but the more you play around with it, the more you’ll get the knack. There’s a lot at play in the coaster editor, it just takes patience to work through and crack each individual feature.

 

[JAperson]

Looks like a good attempt and a decent model choice. You can do a lot more with the El Loco type ride than a hyper.

For banking, as others have said before, take a look at the Lateral G Force heat map (it’s in the results tab). If a corner looks to have high laterals it’ll turn from white to purple. If that happens then you probably want to look at revising the banking on it. Use the ride cam to run around the layout a few times, watch how the coaster behaves and think about how that would feel as a rider. If at any point you feel like your face would be getting pressed into the side of the restraint/seat then you probably need to bank the corner more so some of that lateral force is felt as vertical force instead (pushing down on your head, through your spine and into the bottom of the seat - as opposed to pushing the side of your head and body into the edge of the train/restraint).

The ride cam is also really handy for spotting kinks and bumps in the track, which it’s quite easy to create without realising. Just think of all the times Saw and Colossus have bashed your head in and strive to avoid inflicting that same pain on anyone else! It doesn’t take much to have a jarring transition. The smooth tool will help to a large extent as you’ve found, but things can still feel a little funky if you don’t keep an eye on it.

The last tip I would also give is try to avoid straight track, even if it’s an incline. Unless it’s something you’re trying to deliberately go for, like PMBO does, you ideally want hills to roll. Your airtime hops under the lift look to do this quite well, but your first drop looks rather pointed. Like I say, there’s nothing wrong with it if that’s a deliberate design decision, but they’re quite uncommon in the real world unless you’re in Japan. If you look at the majority of coasters their big drops will follow more of a curve and don’t stick at the same incline or decline angle for long. This will get you that lovely smooth sensation as you ride.

Keep at it though. Nothing happens overnight, but the more you play around with it, the more you’ll get the knack. There’s a lot at play in the coaster editor, it just takes patience to work through and crack each individual feature.

Thanks @Ian that's really helpful I need to use that G-force indicator as that sound very useful. I agree about my first dorp I wasn't entirely happy with it but I had already designed a lot of the layout afterwards and changing it would have affected the way the rest of the coaster rides.

 

[Matt.GC]

Thanks @Ian that's really helpful I need to use that G-force indicator as that sound very useful. I agree about my first dorp I wasn't entirely happy with it but I had already designed a lot of the layout afterwards and changing it would have affected the way the rest of the coaster rides.

Sometimes I delete whole mid coaster sections and just rework them, Maverick Heartline roll style! So it can be done. I find having the Vertical G Force meter on at all times when it's testing a great help and also gets you used to building as you start to become accustomed to how the physics work. It's also great for learning how to build proper airtime elements as well. I'm forever adjusting air time hills to get the maximum floater air time out of them.

I also have a fascination with block sections and capacity at the moment. I don't build coasters that I don't think could achieve an acceptable throughput in the real world (unless I was designing a coaster for Chessington of course). Constantly fiddling with station exit and lift hill speeds, departure timing, block section release acceleration and getting the perfect location for mid course block sections.

 

[Matt N]

I also have a fascination with block sections and capacity at the moment. I don't build coasters that I don't think could achieve an acceptable throughput in the real world (unless I was designing a coaster for Chessington of course). Constantly fiddling with station exit and lift hill speeds, departure timing, block section release acceleration and getting the perfect location for mid course block sections.

I thought I was the only one who did this, as well as the only one who remotely cared about in-game throughputs! In every park I build, I time theoretical throughputs for each coaster using real world data from the ride type being built (for instance, theoretical park time from the manufacturer), and I also adjust station entry and exit speed to be realistic too!

I try and aim for high throughputs, but I'm unsure if I succeed all the time; here's an example of what I'm talking about that I conducted upon my recent Worlds of Globala park: https://towersstreet.com/talk/threads/planet-coaster-throughput-geekery.5865/

 

[JAperson]

I also have a fascination with block sections and capacity at the moment. I don't build coasters that I don't think could achieve an acceptable throughput in the real world (unless I was designing a coaster for Chessington of course). Constantly fiddling with station exit and lift hill speeds, departure timing, block section release acceleration and getting the perfect location for mid course block sections.

This is something I'm going to start looking at in my next coaster builds. I've always personally, had a fascination with block sections and I think playing around with them in Planet Coaster would be quite interesting.
Thanks for your other advice @Matt.GC

 

[DistortAMG]

Bumping this topic. But I do enjoy seeing the progress of people and how they improve over time.

The best advice I could give, is just to keep at it. The more you play the better you will become.

As I am sure a few have on here, I have been playing these games since the original Roller Coaster Tycoon released, back in 1999. I have never grown out of the love of being creative and creating what you want. (Even with Theme Park before then!) For a lot of us, these are more than games, they are just amazing tools to allow us to be creative in what we love, theme parks. The fact I can then fill my creations with guests and run the park is the icing on the cake.

Some great advice and help has been offered in here from like minded people. You can clearly see some good improvements in the time you have posted in here. Looking forward to seeing what else you come up with, as I do with everyone's creations. You say you are notoriously bad at video games, there is no bad at this game. Room to improve yes, but this game was built on the foundation of creativity and the social / sharing side. Everyone is different and that is reflected in the creations, which is amazing. No one can be bad at creativity, everyone has their own take on being creative. You cannot be bad at being creative, only bad at the tools used to be creative with, but they can be learnt, no sweat.

 

[JAperson]

Bumping this topic. But I do enjoy seeing the progress of people and how they improve over time.

The best advice I could give, is just to keep at it. The more you play the better you will become.

As I am sure a few have on here, I have been playing these games since the original Roller Coaster Tycoon released, back in 1999. I have never grown out of the love of being creative and creating what you want. (Even with Theme Park before then!) For a lot of us, these are more than games, they are just amazing tools to allow us to be creative in what we love, theme parks. The fact I can then fill my creations with guests and run the park is the icing on the cake.

Some great advice and help has been offered in here from like minded people. You can clearly see some good improvements in the time you have posted in here. Looking forward to seeing what else you come up with, as I do with everyone's creations. You say you are notoriously bad at video games, there is no bad at this game. Room to improve yes, but this game was built on the foundation of creativity and the social / sharing side. Everyone is different and that is reflected in the creations, which is amazing. No one can be bad at creativity, everyone has their own take on being creative. You cannot be bad at being creative, only bad at the tools used to be creative with, but they can be learnt, no sweat.

thanks for some great advice @DistortAMG it's a very interesting game and I am hoping to become better at it over time.

I also must apologise that this thread hasn't been updated for a while I have been incredibly busy the past few weeks and have got another busy few weeks. There will probably not be much here until late December so accept my apologies all.

 

[DistortAMG]

No need to apologise, we all have lives outside of here!