Martin
TS Member
Back in the 2000s and early 2010s, if you wanted to design your own parks and coasters, you had two real options - the Rollercoaster Tycoon series, and the original NoLimits.
RCT gave you the ability to design and operate entire parks, but was limited by its isometric grid and basic coaster builder. NL gave you unprecedented control over creating coasters, and had much better graphics, but with the tradeoffs of only being able to build one coaster per park, anything beyond basic scenery being a faff, and of course losing the entire 'game' elements.
They were both hugely successful and had dedicated communities and ecosystems for additional, fan made content. So much so that even by the time I got into them around 2008 many of these resources had already come and gone and been lost to the internet. The complexity of NoLimits and the desire for more and more realism led to tools like 'Auto Heartline Generator' 'Elementary' and 'Newton' which could modify or even create your designs with far more accuracy than could be done by hand in the native NL designer.
All the while, a sequel was being slowly developed and I remember the hype around it only growing as every deadline was missed until it finally released a decade ago. The new NoLimits featured better graphics, even more complexity and freedom in designing rides and supports, scripting, animated objects, incorporated many of the old third party tools, and finally allowed multiple coasters in one park. In the following years, new coaster types were added, as well as support for VR headsets. Quality of life improvements were regular and continue to this day, but new coaster types have dried up - until this month and the release of the new Vekoma sit down model, which for the first time is at an additional cost.
Two years after the release of Nl2 came Planet Coaster, which combined the management sim aspect of RCT with much better graphics and freedom from the old grid, and a coaster designer that struck a balance between the total freedom and difficulty of NL and the simplicity of RCT - it might be extremely difficult or impossible to create a coaster as realistically banked as you can on NL, but close enough to bring to life the creative vision. It was a huge success, spawning its own creator communities and a sequel is almost certainly on its way.
Did PlanCo kill NoLimits?
Looking around on here, there's very little to no chatter about NL any more and hasn't been for some time. I never fire it up these days, and if I ever do, it's only to visit other people's parks. While I was never great at the original, I would from time to time build something I was happy enough to show people and post online, but I don't think I ever did that with the sequel.
The old Exchange died and the successor NoLimits Central is basically dead too. Probably the best ever creation made on NL2, Terra, is likely never going to be finished, as the last update on the project was over a year ago and just to say that the creator has lost interest due to the lack of updates to the software.
With so few updates or word from the creators of NL, a version 3 seems unlikely, and with paid DLC now available it seems that's the model going forward. To me it suggests that nobody is buying it any more so they need to charge people who already have it to keep it going. From a user pov that's a shame but everyone needs to eat so if that's the way it has to be, so be it, I just hope there continues to be free updates for QoL.
So what happened? Technically, it's easier to build realistic coasters on NL2 than the original, as all the old tools are built in, the prefab supports are much more realistic and you can add details like tunnels, transfer tracks and workshops, and even add flanges to supports in seconds. You can build entire parks (even if they're empty) and by doing a bit of learning you can script rides to do all sorts of fun things. Although the community seems to have dried up there are still custom tracks and trains available as well as scenery objects etc.
But maybe this is the problem? The complexity is overwhelming, not to mention the demands it places on hardware. The original NL had all its features along the top bar, NL2 has pages and pages of tools to cycle through. It still doesn't have the ability to design scenery internally, it still needs to be imported, usually after exporting the wire frame first, just adding more steps. Maybe people don't want to go to all the effort with it. Maybe the attraction of a dry simulator just went away once PlanCo fixed all the limitations of RCT.
I've never really been in to PlanCo for the same reason as I was never very good at RCT, I just lacked the attention span to spend ages meticulously designing a ride and area with proper theming. Plus these days I only have a laptop and find it difficult to use without a mouse, which I can't be arsed with. Maybe when PlanCo 2 comes out I'll try again because I do really want to and I think I've taught myself discipline over the years
But yeah, I was just wondering if anyone else has similar thoughts about NL and where the simulation market goes from here...
RCT gave you the ability to design and operate entire parks, but was limited by its isometric grid and basic coaster builder. NL gave you unprecedented control over creating coasters, and had much better graphics, but with the tradeoffs of only being able to build one coaster per park, anything beyond basic scenery being a faff, and of course losing the entire 'game' elements.
They were both hugely successful and had dedicated communities and ecosystems for additional, fan made content. So much so that even by the time I got into them around 2008 many of these resources had already come and gone and been lost to the internet. The complexity of NoLimits and the desire for more and more realism led to tools like 'Auto Heartline Generator' 'Elementary' and 'Newton' which could modify or even create your designs with far more accuracy than could be done by hand in the native NL designer.
All the while, a sequel was being slowly developed and I remember the hype around it only growing as every deadline was missed until it finally released a decade ago. The new NoLimits featured better graphics, even more complexity and freedom in designing rides and supports, scripting, animated objects, incorporated many of the old third party tools, and finally allowed multiple coasters in one park. In the following years, new coaster types were added, as well as support for VR headsets. Quality of life improvements were regular and continue to this day, but new coaster types have dried up - until this month and the release of the new Vekoma sit down model, which for the first time is at an additional cost.
Two years after the release of Nl2 came Planet Coaster, which combined the management sim aspect of RCT with much better graphics and freedom from the old grid, and a coaster designer that struck a balance between the total freedom and difficulty of NL and the simplicity of RCT - it might be extremely difficult or impossible to create a coaster as realistically banked as you can on NL, but close enough to bring to life the creative vision. It was a huge success, spawning its own creator communities and a sequel is almost certainly on its way.
Did PlanCo kill NoLimits?
Looking around on here, there's very little to no chatter about NL any more and hasn't been for some time. I never fire it up these days, and if I ever do, it's only to visit other people's parks. While I was never great at the original, I would from time to time build something I was happy enough to show people and post online, but I don't think I ever did that with the sequel.
The old Exchange died and the successor NoLimits Central is basically dead too. Probably the best ever creation made on NL2, Terra, is likely never going to be finished, as the last update on the project was over a year ago and just to say that the creator has lost interest due to the lack of updates to the software.
With so few updates or word from the creators of NL, a version 3 seems unlikely, and with paid DLC now available it seems that's the model going forward. To me it suggests that nobody is buying it any more so they need to charge people who already have it to keep it going. From a user pov that's a shame but everyone needs to eat so if that's the way it has to be, so be it, I just hope there continues to be free updates for QoL.
So what happened? Technically, it's easier to build realistic coasters on NL2 than the original, as all the old tools are built in, the prefab supports are much more realistic and you can add details like tunnels, transfer tracks and workshops, and even add flanges to supports in seconds. You can build entire parks (even if they're empty) and by doing a bit of learning you can script rides to do all sorts of fun things. Although the community seems to have dried up there are still custom tracks and trains available as well as scenery objects etc.
But maybe this is the problem? The complexity is overwhelming, not to mention the demands it places on hardware. The original NL had all its features along the top bar, NL2 has pages and pages of tools to cycle through. It still doesn't have the ability to design scenery internally, it still needs to be imported, usually after exporting the wire frame first, just adding more steps. Maybe people don't want to go to all the effort with it. Maybe the attraction of a dry simulator just went away once PlanCo fixed all the limitations of RCT.
I've never really been in to PlanCo for the same reason as I was never very good at RCT, I just lacked the attention span to spend ages meticulously designing a ride and area with proper theming. Plus these days I only have a laptop and find it difficult to use without a mouse, which I can't be arsed with. Maybe when PlanCo 2 comes out I'll try again because I do really want to and I think I've taught myself discipline over the years
But yeah, I was just wondering if anyone else has similar thoughts about NL and where the simulation market goes from here...