No guesses at what it might be? shame.
Anyway I think I've left this long enough. Unfortunately this project has been taking much longer than expected due to the sheer scale of what I'm working on. To make up for it I've also got a second CFR in the works which should be finished much sooner.
But more on that in a minute, first I will continue with stage 2 of the design process by showing the later stages of matching the people to the ride. The first image follows on directly from the skeleton design shown previously but after it’s be fleshed out with most of the details. As such it looks very similar to the final version of the carts:
I'm sure you can guess now what ride I'm working on
The key point to notice about the above image is that the handlebars were out of alignment with the peeps hand motion. It’s hard to show without a video of the full motion but as the peep moved the hand didn't always follow the handlebar.
If you are really paying attention you'll notice that I called it a handlebar and not a steering wheel as a Zierer Jet Ski would actually use. This is because of one of the major limits that still exist in RCT. Currently it is not possible to create a new peep animation so a motion has to be borrowed from one of the pre-existing rides, in this case the wind surfer. However a wind surfer does not steer with a steering wheel. Instead I had to came up with my own design that would look appropriate for RCT. A group of the complete boats with the handlebars can seen below:
Stage 3: Creating a CFR
After the carts are tested and everything works well the design needs to be altered from a CTR to a CFR. This process involved designing everything else around the carts. And here it is:
And it is this stage where the project is currently at. The next step is to move the model out of SketchUp and into Blender for animating, edge finding (making everything look lovely and smooth) and putting the reference points in that RCT needs to function. However as this model has 17 objects per cart, 16 carts and at least 4 moving components for each this is taking a very long time. There's very little to show at this stage (
Stage 4: Importing) until I come to the animations. But by then the project will almost be ready for release, so this'll probably be the last update pre-finishing.
So now that I've revealed what I'm working on I'm sure you are curious about the second ride? I’ve come to the decision that now I know all the basics it’s time to stop making recreations and start inventing stuff for myself. I've had an idea over the last few days for a brand new ride design inspired by one of the classics. I hope to have this complete very soon but until then I'll leave this little picture:
Until next time. Feedback always welcomed