Ability to "paint" track types (cheat)

[JMBuilder]

Track merging is a pain in the rear for me since it keeps bugging out and clutters the rides list with nonexistent coasters.

Here's a new cheat idea: Track "Painting." This tool would allow the player to "paint" a different track sprite over those pesky invisible tracks after Arbitrary Ride Changes. Invisible vertical climb? paint it with the LIM coaster track. No barrel roll? Paint the Twister coaster over it.

[Broxzier]

Which sprites are rendered depend on the ride's type, no information about this is stored in the track objects, so painting wouldn't be possible. To change one track element, all track elements of the same ride need to change, so you're really just changing the track type.

To keep the ride list clean, you could re-use the same ride on multiple locations.

[X7123M3-256]

6 hours ago, JMBuilder said:

since it keeps bugging out

I have never had problems with track merging. It is a hack but it's a very reliable one. In any case, there are only two ways a tool like this could work - either to do the track merge for you, or alternatively to make the selected track piece invisible and zero clearance the desired track piece over the top. Any problems caused by these hacks would also be caused by this tool.

 

6 hours ago, JMBuilder said:

clutters the rides list with nonexistent coasters.

So would your idea. You can only have one track type per ride; it's impossible to have multiple on a single ride.

There are several side effects from a cheat like this that I don't think you've thought through. Let's suppose I paint a track piece with another track type. A new ride would then have to be created and this ride can't be distinguished in any way from one the player placed. If I go to paint another track piece, it doesn't know a ride was already created. There are two options: you could scan the ride list for an existing ride of that track type. This would create a minimum of extra rides, but it has side effects - if that ride is demolished, then the player would inadvertantly demolish all the merged track pieces that they may not realize belonged to that ride. So you would probably have to create a new ride for every track piece you paint, which will fill up your available ride slots very quickly.

Also, what happens if you paint a track piece with one track type and then again with another? If you've created a seperate ride for every track piece, you could safely implement this by changing the track type of that ride. But if the park also contains a merge done manually, that's going to have the side effect of changing every other track piece that used that ride. You would end up having to scan the entire map to check that a ride is not used elsewhere first.

6 hours ago, JMBuilder said:

Invisible vertical climb? paint it with the LIM coaster track

You cannot use the mouse to select an invisible element. You would have to enable height marks on ride tracks and click on the mark.

Edited July 11, 2017 by X7123M3-256

[JMBuilder]

Well, poo... I need to brute-force my way into the code and figure out if I have any fathomable chance of making something work.