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Santa Clara (RCT3)

Re: Santa Clara

:-[
Honestly. Blithering Lodge is, at it's core, a three year old project. This is miles ahead, it's the cutting edge of custom content!

Your paths are just sublime. You deserve awards for them alone, never mind rides.
 
Re: Santa Clara

Tim said:
Piece of advice to everyone else out there; this is what you call an update!

The Intamin looked ok but I’m kind of glad it’s gone. As I’ve said before the in-game Intamin track can be dodgy at best and really needs a proper custom track made for it.

The flyer now that is impressive. You’ve really got a knack of making layouts that look good. Not much more I can say really, it’s just pleasing in every way.

As a general note I like the way this park hasn’t started out with any form of back story. I’m actually finding it more interesting to watch this park develop without the limit of a story to give sense to each development. Stuff just happens and that’s good :D

Also nice to see you are part of Project Balloon. I wanted to join in but neither of my parks have appeared over at Shyguy’s
Thanks very much Tim! Really appreciate it. Completely agree with the Intamin problems, I don't think I'll be able to make a layout I'm happy with. We'll end up waiting for the PEP team to release the Blue Fire track and try to pass that off as Intamin (although why bother when you can build Mack ;) ). Also yeah, that update had 31 pictures! Whoops!

Eddie said:
Though choice picking this or Blithering Lodge as the best custom park on this site :p

In all seriousness, excellent looking park so far, Rupert! The rides and themeing look amazing ;D
;D Thanks Eddie! Glad you like it!

DiogoJ42 said:
:-[
Honestly. Blithering Lodge is, at it's core, a three year old project. This is miles ahead, it's the cutting edge of custom content!

Your paths are just sublime. You deserve awards for them alone, never mind rides.
Wow thanks a lot Diogo! I'm lucky in that I've had scenery designed for this park, which helps it look up to date. I can't do stories and get people gripped like you can though!




So most of what I'm showing you today is very unfinished, but I'm going to Alaska for 3 weeks so won't be able to do anything, so I thought I'd show you what I have done in the last couple of weeks. I'd like to say a huge thank you to StationJimJr for taking a lot of time to produce some very beautiful, very versatile CS.

So here's where we left off:

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Which has become this:

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And here it is zoomed in. There are gorillas in the big enclosure at the back - obviously there is a lot of work to do, including hiding the big in-game ape house:

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The raft ride that goes under the flying coaster's station and lift hill has now become a kind of water-safari, which firstly goes past some hippos:

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Before getting a good view of the new flamingo bay:

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Guests can get worryingly close to a rhino:

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And finally there is a new bridge which leads to the scarlet macaw exhibit:

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That's it for now, sorry I don't have more to show. Thank you all for the support, and see you in a few weeks!
 
Re: Santa Clara

Any particular reason this park is called Santa Clara? Is it anything to do with California's Great America which is located in the city of Santa Clara?
 
Re: Santa Clara

Gorgeous pictures, I'd love to know how you make the zoo aspect so real and detailed. How do you hide those ugly in-game houses? I find it a great shame that nobody has made invisible ones yet. Still, great update, love the area around the flyer. :)

EDIT: Please excuse my manners, have a great time in Alaska. :)
 
Re: Santa Clara

CGM said:
Any particular reason this park is called Santa Clara? Is it anything to do with California's Great America which is located in the city of Santa Clara?
Nah, when I started the park I had no idea CGA was actually in Santa Clara. It's not even named after the city, but after [noembed]this song by The National[/noembed].

NastyPasty said:
Gorgeous pictures, I'd love to know how you make the zoo aspect so real and detailed. How do you hide those ugly in-game houses? I find it a great shame that nobody has made invisible ones yet. Still, great update, love the area around the flyer. :)

EDIT: Please excuse my manners, have a great time in Alaska. :)
Thanks NastyPasty, it was incredible! :D Very glad you like it! Alas I haven't hidden the ingame houses, they just aren't there. It means every so often the Animal Protection League comes along to confiscate them. :-\




Santa Clara finally has a video! It's only the second video I have ever made after the short Balloon Project entry, but I'm pleased with how it turned out (despite the dodgy end music transition [or lack thereof]). Hopefully there's enough happening that you can watch it again and discover new things. :D Watch in full screen with the sound up! I hope you enjoy! It's on Vimeo rather than YouTube so can't embed, but click the link below!

VIDEO

:D
 
Firstly, many thanks to all those who voted this the Best RCT/NoLimits Creation of 2012, it's much appreciated!

So, it's been a while! For four months I didn't have the game, but things have progressed. I've tried a lot of ideas that have failed, e.g. a Fata Morgana-esque lakeside Arabian complex and a few coaster types, but I'll show you those next update, as well as some other WIP areas. Recently I've been continuing the Mayan/templey area. Hope you enjoy these pictures! :D

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Goodnight!

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;D
 
Thank you very much all! :D Sorry this update's a bit late.

So I wanted to show you how the park has progressed, and thought I'd do it in two parts. This update will show a number of relatively complete pictures showing how the park looks today; and the second update (as soon as I've finished putting it together) will show how the park has developed to its current situation, showing a number of failed concepts, themes, buildings and coaster layouts, and finally the main addition that looks like it will stay (although to be honest, who knows?).

So, finally turned on AO despite having an nVidia card for a year. Tornado is looking much the same, but needs some foliage updating and hopefully exciting work will be done to the station area.

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You can get a great view of both B&Ms whilst walking between them and the rapids:

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I've tacked on a small area adjacent to the Mayan/temple-y area. It's meant to act as a transition between the mayan area and a future area, that should progress relatively seamlessly together. To be honest I'm not too sure what it will be, but currently it's looking quite generic. I wanted it to feel quite enclosed by trees and without a straight path route through it - you have to walk around rides and buildings to get out. The idea is that when approaching the mayan area, you walk through a forested area with quite rustic buildings, winding your way around the rides and buildings, encountering increasing amounts of mayan theming pieces until you suddenly emerge through the trees to see over the lakes, with the waterfall plunging into the pool under the base of the pretzel loop, and a view across to the raft ride station. We'll see how well that works in time.

After visiting Efteling recently I was impressed by the number of flat rides integrated in areas around the park, particularly circular spinning ones. This made me feel like I really don't have enough flats in the park, so I'm trying to increase that. As a result, this new transition area has a Techno Jump thing and a Mack Seastorm. This mayan themed bridge has been changed to a more generic version as it is the gateway to a new more modern area:

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The red-roofed building will probably be a cafe of some sort, but I'm not good at interiors. The building with the pinkish, paint-flaking walls on the left is a toilet block:

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Why not grab an icecream from the stall and sit by the small beach? You can see the position of the Seastorm overlooking the lake here:

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The end of the raft ride now has a small dark section, entering through this ominous face. Boats departing the station drift past those on their way in:

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On the other side of the lake, I really didn't leave myself enough room for the transition between areas, so it's resulted in this. The build-up of rocks and foliage at the back is to try block out the park boundary, and helps to integrate the gentle slope this pathway has. To the right of the image is the exit of the small dark section I tacked onto the end of the raft ride:

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Turning to face the other direction, you can see where this is leading to: a significantly more modern, almost sci-fi area with an Intamin blitz coaster as it's anchor attraction. The building on the right is the exit shop for the new coaster:

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And here is the very large, imposing coaster station. It requires considerable further work, but I think I'm happy with this iteration so far. I'm not too sure what I'm doing with the big pointy beams, so we'll see whether they stay or not. I quite like them at the moment - you'll see their context in the next update:

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Thanks for reading - part 2 coming shortly.
 
Many thanks Diogo!

Apologies this is being posted so late, I kind of forgot :-[ Added a couple of pictures at the end to show what I've been working on since.




So, on with Part 2 of Santa Clara progress! Featuring a number of failed concepts and a fantastic new design for Tornado's station. :D

The last overview I showed I think looked something like this:

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And now it looks like this:

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:)




Along the way I tried out a few ideas that just didn't work. One of the first was a large lakeside structure somewhat inspired by Efteling's Fata Morgana. I'm still not convinced that deleting it (without any save) was the right decision, but I don't think it worked that well:

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From there I decided to build a duelling (and Möbius) woodie, which from the outset I knew had a terrible layout and I wouldn't keep it, but I decided to see it through anyway. I'm quite sure a proper woodie will appear has now appeared in the park at some stage.

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:/

After that, I attempted a launched coaster which turned out to be quite rubbish.

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:/




I then ended up building the Intamin Blitz coaster that still remains. It started off its life with a barely-started Mediterranean theme, which then changed into a futuristic concept based on Vodhin's Googie SkyPad sets; and when that failed I changed it to have the theme it does today.

Current overview:

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There are parts remaining from the past themes which will explain some of the fencing and foliage clashes - these will be removed as I progress.

The beginnings of the Mediterranean version (in blue):

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^ The idea was that the hill next to the station would be some kind of terraced olive grove plantation hill leading up to the villa (station). It didn't work.

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In green:

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Then came the Skypad version:...

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...which also didn't work.

The current theme is still evolving and there is a lot of work to do.

From the flyer:

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New restaurant thing, overlooking the river (need to sort out the transition to the diagonal section):

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And with the coaster going over its glass roof:

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And through the plaza for a bit of non-rider interaction:

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I can't really explain what my thought process was with the station, it evolved through a few iterations to get to this. I've hit a bit of a blank with the queueline, so that needs a lot of work. The exit path goes down into the shop part of the complex. I'm also probably going to remove the weird bits of coloured wall that come out at different angles.

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The pre-launch zero-g roll:

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Other parts of the layout:

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This view will hopefully improve:

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Just to show that transitiony area from before a bit more, it's really quite small so far:

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Seastorm:

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Along this space I hope to have some kind of path with buildings on either side, some with enclosed rides in, but I don't know if it'll work as I'm poor at buildings, especially on the diagonal:

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Mystery Mine got some new wooden framework for cars to zoom through:

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And I still haven't built this restaurant - I may offer the space to someone that wants to build a good, large themed restaurant:

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Another angle of the main complex:

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The abandoned mining town still needs huge amounts doing to it:

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And little has changed over at the flume thing:

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For a really long time I had tried many different designs for the station of the B&M invert, Tornado. Unfortunately they were all terrible, so I asked the zeroG if he could design something, and he came up with a fantastic concept. So, thanks to zeroG!

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Because of the part of the plane on the roof, I'm going to have to rework the main plane crash scene. I also need to sort out all of the path work around the coaster, adding lights, bins, benches etc. etc.

It's full of realistic details (and is completely functional)!:

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Finally in the rain:

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Big thanks are also due to StationJimJr for providing some amazing scenery for the park!

Phew, I hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading! :)




Given that I should have posted that on here a couple of months ago, here's what I've been working on since!

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I'll probably add more later when I next get online but keep the weird bits of coloured wall that come out at different angles of the Blitz, I think they really give character to the building. Makes it more than just a box.

Amazing as always :D
 
Tim said:
I'll probably add more later when I next get online but keep the weird bits of coloured wall that come out at different angles of the Blitz, I think they really give character to the building. Makes it more than just a box.

Amazing as always :D
Thank you Tim! :D Yeah I will be keeping them - I've just take a hiatus from that area to work on the new woodie as I wasn't really sure where to take it/needed to do something different for a while.

DiogoJ42 said:
You... are... a... GOD!
:-[ :D Haha thanks Diogo but no no no, I just spend 6 months on something until it looks pretty ok!

and thanks for the Thanks everybody!




So for the last few months when I could I've been working on a new wooden coaster - something I think the park was definitely lacking. If only I'd waited a couple more months until the wooden CT came out! :mad: :p It's a GCI, fairly Viking/Norse mythology themed (the tiniest bit of Wodan inspiration ;) ), and sits on the side of the park near the rapids' station and Tornado's cobra roll - a bridge over the rapids leads to the new area and a river has been created that joins up to the rapids: spinning bumpers make sure the rapids boats stay on track. There's still plenty to do in the area (currently it pretty much has just the coaster, but like all new areas I've started with the coaster and will build around it), but hopefully enough to show you what I have so far. Hope you like it!

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;D​
 
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Reactions: Tim
Phew, welcome back to Santa Clara! :D

As you may have seen in the BPT, I've spent the last couple of months revisiting the area around Tornado within the rapids, renewing pathwork, fencing, signage, queues, colours, foliage, and hopefully making the area much more welcoming! I think there have been comments on how bare the area looks on most updates :p The more I looked at it, the more I felt it was a really unwelcoming area to be in - a themed area can have a dark theme, but it should still feel like a part of a theme park that people want to be in. With that in mind, I felt I could retain the Tornado/light devastation theme whilst making it much more upbeat. Things like brighter colours (with a consistent colour scheme throughout the area), vegetation that's actually alive and string lights between lampposts hopefully all contribute to this. Tornado at Bakken is a fairly good example of this.

Well over two years ago, this is what the area looked like:

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And the same scene now:

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Different angles - the side of the station features a smaller version of the new logo:

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The new logo is over the entrance, with safety information and an estimate of queue time. There are new shades over the main outdoor section of the queue, which still gives a great view of the helix finale:

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The rapids has a new queue that extends all around the outside of the station and new, less-depressing colours. The building near the exit shows the on-ride photos, and its double width allows people waiting to buy snacks and drinks for the last section of the queue. The strange and pointless roof that extended from the snack bar near the cobra roll over the midway has been removed, making it feel more spacious.

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Things are looking nicer from further around the rapids course too, as boats pass the back of Cling's Catastrophe Coffee:

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When guests leave Tornado, they head down to the on-ride photo shop under its first corkscrew:

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A full train sweeps around the final helix, with the new logo painted onto the back of the station...:

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...whilst another train climbs the lift hill:

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When crossing one of the bridges to enter the area, guests get a view of three of the major coasters as well as the rapids beneath them:

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This area has:
- A major thrill coaster (B&M invert)
- A long Intamin rapids surrounding the themed area
- Two flat rides (S&S shot tower and twister ride)
- A coffee shop/deli with plenty of outdoor seating (Cling's Catastrophe Coffee)
- A basic fast food place near Tornado's cobra roll (with the coaster diving through a ruined half of the same building)
- A drinks stall near Tornado's entrance
- On-ride photo collection points for Tornado and the rapids
- Maintenance areas and garages for Tornado and the rapids

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Yet I'm not sure how much it feels like a true theme park area. Beyond the space by Tornado's exit/Cling's coffee, there's not really much public space and the midways are fairly narrow. The entrance and exit of Tornado are on different sides of the coaster. There isn't a large sit-down restaurant, or indeed any large buildings at all beyond the Tornado station complex. The rapids were quite restricting to build within, and I can't think of any park where the rapids acts as the division between lands. Really, a rapids should be completely within a themed area to be properly immersive and to avoid the effects of theming clashes from each side of it.

Still, despite all of that, I'm much happier with it now than before this refresh. Hopefully it feels more cohesive, more upbeat and welcoming and more complete. The main problem now is how unstable the file has become - it's over 21mb and crashes ridiculously often even with LAA and regular use of the Park CleanUp tool. One of the reasons this update has taken so long is because after scrolling through a few sets, it's liable to give up and require restarting. Building a fully-supported woodie was probably not the best idea :p There are a couple of updates left in it though ;)

Many thanks to SIMR on SGW for the fantastic logos and banners. I hope you enjoyed the tour!

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:)
 
You, sir, need to relax your self imposed impossibly high standards. How you can have anything to critisise in this masterpiece beggars belief.
The level of realism you capture from this game has reminded me of who to vote for in the forum's RCT award this year.
 
I meant to reply when this was first posted but have been reading it a little at a time.

The more colourful look is a big improvement, although I'd say the issue now is that some areas still have some of the gritty feel and stand out quite a bit. If only there was some good custom scenery that is gritty but not so dark.

I love the little details of the queue entrance and the new rapids queue line is as you've made the queue feel real and not as thick as the normal games queue line.

As for the Rapids as a ride I quite like the idea of using water rides to split up different areas. It's a bit like those old around the world in 80 days attractions that don't offer just one theme but a journey between themes. The trick is to make that story clear from the ride.

I might struggle to find the time to play RCT any more but I love watching this park grow.
 
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