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Sorting attractions by track type is buggy and cheaty


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OpenRCT2 has a feature for sort attractions by track type rather than the way RCT2 does.

While on the surface it looks like a simple interface tweak, it is actually affecting gameplay and I consider it to be a cheat. Maybe it is even broken. Perhaps even broken by design.

Example: If you play Electric Fields (second RCT2 scenario), you have the oldie car attraction. If the feature is disabled, only Old Timers track style is available. But if you enable this feature, suddenly many more tracks become available, for example Catseyes. This track has a rotating tunnel which is not an available piece of the Oldie cars track. You may also place Megatrucks, which has even more pieces which are normally unavailable. I was able to place Megatrucks even if I haven't researched the technology needed for this.
The problem is: chesire cats, monster trucks, oldies and the traditional car drive from RCT are different things in their details but this feature conflates them into one weird blob. They don't only differ in cars, but also in available track pieces.

I *think* the only tracks of this “style” which *could* *maybe* be conflated are the RCT car drive and oldies, since they use the same pieces. The others (monster trucks, chesire cats) should be kept seperate since they use different pieces.
I haven't checked, but I suspect there are other track types which have been conflated but shouldn't.
Even if this is fixed, I'd still consider this feature to be a cheat because it allows you to change the car type of an attraction for no cost. So this feature is a cheat *by design*. Under RCT2 rules, you would have to destroy the old track instead and build a new one, which makes you lose money. It also allows you to place oldtimers, chesire cats etc on a monster truck track which can also have steep hills. This would be impossible under normal RCT2 rules.

IMO the easiest way to “fix” this is to move this to cheats because it heavily affects gameplay.

Edited by Wuzzy
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If you go to the options menu on the main startup page, select the gears tab and uncheck the box marked "Select rides by track type (like RCT1)" you will find that monster trucks and pickup trucks will be displayed separately. If you have not researched them they will not show up.

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I don't think this should be a cheat. I think the best solution is to prevent changing car types to one that doesn't have allow the track pieces currently used, and to prevent building track pieces that the currently selected train type does not allow or doesn't have sprites for (since many trains just allow everything). Then have a cheat to bypass that and let you build everything.

8 minutes ago, Wuzzy said:

Under RCT2 rules, you would have to destroy the old track instead and build a new one, which makes you lose money

Which is stupid, changing cars IRL does not involve demolishing and rebuilding the track. I don't think everything that changes gameplay should be considered a cheat - only things that can cause glitches or override limitations that are supposed to be there.

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CharlieP, you are missing the point completely. Wasn't it obvious that I was perfectly aware of what this option does? My post is about how buggy this feature is and it is kinda like a cheat.

X7123M3-256, by your logic the +5000$ cheat is not a cheat because it does neither cause a glitch nor overrides limitations. :P

I still think it's a cheat, even if it's a minor one. Car selection affects gameplay since this changes capacity and even excitement (etc.) rates. I fear we could argue endlessly about this. And stupid or not, this is just how RCT2 works. Is OpenRCT2 not a reimplentation of RCT2?

But this is not even the main issue here. The more serious thing about this feature is that it allows you to use tracks with pieces you haven't even researched, I think this is a real bug.

Recently I found there's even more to this feature:

If you start a scenario with this feature enabled, it unlocks ALL track pieces, even if not researched for the custom track building mode. For example, if you play Fungus Woods and start building oldie cars, you can build steep pieces, rotating tunnels and logs, stuff which you are normally supposed to research by researching chesire cats and monster trucks. This seems to stick for the entirety of the playtime. You have to leave the mission, disable the option and start/load the scenario again so it works properly agian. Sorry, if THIS is not a bug or cheat, then I don't know what the goals of OpenRCT2 are ... ;-)

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4 hours ago, Wuzzy said:

X7123M3-256, by your logic the +5000$ cheat is not a cheat because it does neither cause a glitch nor overrides limitations. :P

It overrides the limitation on how much money you have, and is therefore a cheat. That limitation is essential to gameplay - the ability to override it completely obviates the point of tracking money.

I am saying that the ability to change car types is never something that should have been restricted - and indeed it isn't for some rides already. Many rides do allow alternate car types that could be switched in game,  such as the Arrow suspended or the B&M hyper coaster (which, for some reason, allows cars to be interchanged with the Giovanola hypercoaster - pretty sure those cars shouldn't be able to be switched), but for some reason not every ride that could have been handled this way is. The need for the cheat would be eliminated if the default groups actually reflected which rides can run on which track. For example, the vertical drop coaster should be (and is) seperate from the rest of the B&M rides because DM track is wider, yet B&M sitdown, standup, and floorless trains ought to be interchangeable, but they aren't. The groups are also hardcoded and you can only have one per track type, which often forces you to seperate rides that really belong together. Fixing this would require a new object format however.

 

4 hours ago, Wuzzy said:

But this is not even the main issue here. The more serious thing about this feature is that it allows you to use tracks with pieces you haven't even researched, I think this is a real bug.

You cannot research track pieces, only objects. Like I said before, I think that if a track piece genuinely shouldn't be available on a given ride then using this feature shouldn't unlock it, and if it does then I'd agree that should be fixed, but many track pieces are missing for no good reason, like the missing steep to flat piece on the Arrow looper that is allowed on the Arrow hyper (which shares a track style). They've already added steep slopes to the junior coaster, and I've been experimenting with allowing corkscrews on the dive machine. If the game is allowing you to select vehicle types you haven't researched yet, that's a bug in the implementation of the feature that needs to be fixed, and not a reason to make the feature itself a cheat. I think that this feature, properly implemented, need not confer an advantage to players who use it, and if it does, then that should be fixed rather than relegating a potentially useful feature to a cheat.

 

I do not know if the issues you've brought up were an oversight or an inherent limitation of the current codebase, since I didn't implement this feature. But with the eventual switch to a new file format, any such remaining limitations could be removed anyway.

 

4 hours ago, Wuzzy said:

Is OpenRCT2 not a reimplentation of RCT2?

It's long past that point now. It's now an improved version of RCT2, so if something will improve the game, I don't see why it needs to be made a cheat just because it's different. It could be made an option, so people can choose whether or not to enable it. And this feature, in particular, is already an option - if you'd rather not use it you can turn it off. I don't have it enabled because it makes it hard to tell what objects are available from the ride selection menu.

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