Turn cars backwards

[NightHawk]

Apart from the 6-Seater wooden rollercoaster & the Heartline coaster, you can't run trains backwards in continuous circuit mode. an option to just turn them around would be perfect.

Edited June 27, 2016 by NightHawk

[jensj12]

Doing this would require a new vehicle type to be added. Cars always face forwards (with the heartline being a special case). Feel free to extract the images from the dat file, add them to a new dat file with the cars facing backwards and share them here.

Edited June 27, 2016 by jensj12

[X7123M3-256]

The heartline isn't really a special case - trains are free to run backward in normal operation but chain lifts and stations only work in the forward direction (except in reverse incline mode). The log flume and reverser coaster are, however, a special case. I did try merging other rides onto log flume track in an attempt to reverse them, it doesn't work.

I actually have no idea how hard this is to implement, it's either very easy or very difficult and I don't know much about this area of the code. I expect it would be easier to get trains to dispatch backward and run the circuit in reverse than to actually reverse the train (so that it faces backward while travelling in the same direction as the track was built). On the other hand, it could potentially be achieved just by mucking with the vehicle draw functions and swapping sprites around (though this would be an awkward hack and may well interfere with certain rides)

For now, I'd recommend just creating a new DAT with the sprites reversed. That's what the 6 seater wooden coaster is - just an alternate vehicle type, nothing special.

[Broxzier]

You either need to make the entire train move backwards for that effect, but that makes you unable to use chain lifts and such, or make a new DAT file as described above, since the orientation of the cars will always be forward along the track.

[ihavenoideawhatimdoing]

i think the easiest way to do this is to simply make a custom coaster train that is technically going forward but looks like its running backwards.

[Ruedii]

Does anyone know if all the appropriate tiles exist to make this patch to create the additional mode from existing assets? 

It sounds like a very simple coding plugin to create the additional assets from existing ones.

Any roller coaster vehicle that has all the appropriate image tiles could do this, as well as the Ghost Train type vehicle systems.

Additionally, the Twist could be rigged to run backwards.  I'm not sure about any others, though.

[X7123M3-256]

The sprites definitely already exist for any car to run backwards (think about it - if a car runs backwards through a circuit it will use the same sprites as if it went forward just in the reverse order). It would be pretty simple to create a reversed version of a train in the form of a .DAT or .json file, as some of the default trains (heartline twister, wooden 6 seater) already have.

I am not sure how difficult it would be to create an option that allows any car to be reversed.

[Ruedii]

12 hours ago, X7123M3-256 said:

The sprites definitely already exist for any car to run backwards (think about it - if a car runs backwards through a circuit it will use the same sprites as if it went forward just in the reverse order). It would be pretty simple to create a reversed version of a train in the form of a .DAT or .json file, as some of the default trains (heartline twister, wooden 6 seater) already have.

I am not sure how difficult it would be to create an option that allows any car to be reversed.

Then the issue is to simply create a way to make an "overlay" package that can switch out the options of how things operate.

[X7123M3-256]

34 minutes ago, Ruedii said:

Then the issue is to simply create a way to make an "overlay" package that can switch out the options of how things operate.

Yeah, I'm not sure how easy that is though. In terms of how much drawing code might have to change, and whether or not the current save format could support it (you'd need a free flag in the vehicle struct to indicate a reversed vehicle). I really haven't looked into it so it may not actually be that difficult, but creating a separate object is a method that works right now,  if a bit redundant.