With a release date now confirmed for Planet Coaster 2, and a lot of other commitments taking up my time, I've had to concede that I'm not going to complete the Planet Coaster projects I've been working on. Rather than just abandon these projects and moving on I wanted to show a few of them here, as I've tried to push the boundaries of what the game could achieve and it was only my lack of time that's held these ideas back.
The concept I want to show today was probably my most ambitious:
Fairy Tale Flight:
Inspired by Peter Pans Flight and Fairy Tale Brook, this was an attempt to make a true Omnimover Dark Ride in the game.
The basic concept was to use the Chairlift transport ride, but instead of building it in a straight line I compacted it into two dark ride buildings. Why two? Because the chairlift can't make a complete circuit and has to have two stations. As the guests would only ever ride half the ride at a time I decided to split it into two separate Fantasyland style attractions. Both would have unique themes and load from either side of a main street. Because of this there would be a point in which the ride had to travel from one building to the other. I intended to make this bridge open so that those off the ride got a glimpse of the people on it as they passed overhead.
Version one of the layout:
The challenge would be to make it feel like two independent rides which didn't follow identical paths. I started to add barriers in-between the two sections of the ride. Adding pillars to hide the supports (which I discovered can't be turned off like coaster supports). Eventually I had the ride blocked out into multiple show scenes and the connecting corridors between them.
Here's an overview of how the ride currently looks:
And this is looking down the main street, with the two stations on either side:
I chose the placeholder names for the two sides of the ride as Adventure and Time, but as I worked on this more the two stories became more fleshed out. Adventure would focus on fantasy and storytelling. Whilst time would focus on an inventor and his amazing flying machine.
Adventure:
Guests boarding this ride would load in front of this mural inspired by Jack and the beanstalk.
Leaving the station they would pass through a medieval courtyard, before entering the Dragon's Lair:
If you look behind the dragon you'll see someone fixing a wall. This was part of a joke that the lair didn't have an entrance big enough for a dragon, and so every time the dragon wanted to get out it would smash through the wall and this poor peasant had to keep re-building it.
The following scene was still very much a work in progress. It is meant to be a fairy forest in which the riders ascended into the trees (on the right) and passed through the witches house (on the left). guests leaving the ride would get to walk through this scene as well.
At the end of this scene the witch would curse the riders, shrinking them to the size of a bee, after which they would enter the kingdom of the bees.
While very work in progress I think this picture highlights how compact the ride system is, and how I was hiding each part from the others.
Emerging from the kingdom of the bees ended the first half of the ride, as it opened up to reveal the ride to the main street.
The second half took a darker tone. It would start by ascending into a creepy forest.
Before dropping over a waterfall, to a land of dinosaurs. A lot of the visuals I was using with this ride involved the guests feet being close to the ground, only for it to suddenly drop away. This was my favourite of these moments.
The following section was through a jungle over rope bridges. It ended dramatically with the bridge being cut down by a giant saw. This acted as a transition to the rides final section; Victorian london, and the house of the storyteller, who had been writing all of the stories you had just experienced.
Flying out of the window riders would have a rare scene in which both sides of the ride shared the same space before entering the station. This concluded the Adventure side of the ride.
Time:
The second ride started with a similar Victorian London vibe to how the previous ride ended. This meant it would technically be possible to stay on and get a seamless transition between stories.
The vehicles leave the station by flying out the window and over a city. I was really happy with how the forced perspective worked in this scene. The lights on the road below are set-up to fade in and out and look like cars traveling along the street.
Entering anouther window brings riders into the inventors workshop. This ride has a clearer narrative, as we are introduced to the professor and his fantastic flying machine:
Out of anouther window and we take off over London! No prices guessing the inspiration for this part of the ride. As you can see this scene still needed a lot of work. All the pieces you can see scattered around were my many attempts to find objects that looked great at a tiny scale. I was very happy with the river, the books for terrace houses, and the London Eye I started working on. But getting the rest right with the pieces in game was a slow process.
The ability to scale objects in Planet Coaster 2 would have solved most the issues I had with this scene.
The ride circles london before ascending high into the sky. Here we see the professor who leads us on an adventure through space.
"Did I mention this car can travel through time too?". With a blast from the flying machines exhausts a portal opens before the riders, and guests are transported to a whole new world.
The riders arrive in medieval times.
Emerging outside and crossing over the main street the bridge kept to the medieval look on the outside of this side of the show buildings. Occasionally rats can be seen under the riders feet. This was inspired by a trick John Wardley used on Uncle Frankenstein’s Scream Machine. Have something surprise the guests when they can be seen off-ride. It makes people intrigued as to what they might have seen.
On the other side of the bridge anouther portal transports us away, this time to feudal Japan.
Anouther portal jumps riders forwards to the time of Pirates, in the Caribbean.
If you are unlucky this bridge would break, revealing the shark waiting below.
Around the next corner the vehicles enter a mill. I really love this scene as the barrels would roll under the guests as they passed over.
The final portal up ahead transported riders into the engine of a disused steam train, during western times. Passing by all the pipes riders emerged into a canyon town (at this point I struggled with the rockwork, as PC lacks the flat pieces of PZ. Fingers crossed PC2 includes these). We see that the professor crashed his flying machine, bringing our wild adventure to a close.
The ride ends with guests entering the gold mine to help him hunt for the parts to get home (a small scene after getting off the ride).
Hidden in the mine is also a portal to the fairy forest, which brings the vehicles full circle back to the adventure side of the station.
Which concludes this walkthrough of Fairy Tale Flight. It's such a shame I didn't manage to get further with this. There is always the possibility I'll come back to it, but as you can probably tell the parts that were taking me a long time to complete are going to be made infinitely easier with Planet Coaster 2. If I could port it over I probably would have kept working on this in the background, but with the new themes of the new game I think if this ride does return the story's will turn out very different.
Despite these pictures being very much work in progress I hope you've enjoyed looking at this concept. I've had a lot of fun making it because it's not like any other ride system we currently see in the game. And if you want to try something like this yourself I'd love to see this concept actually deliver on its potential.
…..
