Guide: How to win awards with your park in OpenRCT2

[Deurklink]

In scenarios, park awards are a good way to attract more people to your park, as they temporarily increase your park rating (if i'm not mistaken).

When i do a seach on Google on how to win park awards(like 'best staff' or 'safest park') in RCT2, i get a lot of misinformation or incomplete information. With OpenRCT2, we actually have the exact information on how to win them and the exact numbers so i decided to make a list  

The following information is all taken from GitHub and all credits should go to the people who wrote the code (and especially the comments).

First  off, when are awards awarded, and which one is chosen?

Every month at the beginning of the month, the game chooses a random award that is not currently active. The game will check the conditions of the chosen award, and will award it to the player if the conditions are fulfilled. 

How long is an award active?

Awards are active for 4 months.

How many awards can be active at the same time?

You can have 4, but because the game checks a random one every month, this is very rare.

What do awards do?

Every positive award that is active multiplies the guest spawn probability by 1.25. Every negative award multiplies the spawn probability by 0.75.

Now here's a list of the awards, with the conditions you need to fulfill:

• Untidiest park award: More than 1/16th of the guests must be thinking that the park is untidy. This includes thoughts "The litter here is really bad", "This path is disgusting" or "The vandalism here is really bad". Cannot be active together with Best staff, Most beautiful park or Most tidy.

 

• Tidiest park award: More than 1/64th of the guests must be commenting on how tidy the park is, and less than 6 guests must be thinking the park is untidy. Cannot be active together with Most disappointing park or Most untidy.

 

• Best rollercoasters award : Park must have at least 6 rollercoasters which are opened.

 

• Best value park award: Entrance fee is 0.10 less than half of the "total ride value for money". Total ride value for money is calculated by taking the value for each ride and subtracting the entrance price of the ride from it. The value for a ride is calculated from its stats, and becomes lower as a ride ages. Basically, to get the award your rides should have a low entrance fee and your park entrance fee must also be low. Cannot be active in parks without money or parks in which no entrance fee can be set. Also cannot be active together with most disappointing park or worst value park.

 

• Most beautiful park award: More than 1/128th of guests think "Great scenery!" and less than 16 guests comment on how untidy park is. Cannot be active together with most untidy park or most disappointing park.

 

• Worst value park award: Entrance fee is more than the current total "ride value for money." Total ride value for money is calculated by taking the value for each ride and subtracting the entrance price of the ride from it. The value for a ride is calculated from its stats, and becomes lower as a ride ages. If you get this award, it means the entrance fee of your park is too high. Cannot be active together with best value park.

 

• Safest park award: If a ride crashes with fatalities, the game will store a value of 8 in a variable(without fatalities it's 2). Every 2 in-game weeks, 1 is subtracted from this value, so after approximately 3.5 months, the value is back to 0.

  For the safest park award, the game checks all rides to see if this variable is 0 for every ride, and if no more than 2 peeps think "The vandalism here is really bad".

 

• Best staff award: All staff types, at least 20 staff, one staff per 32 peeps. Cannot be active together with most untidy park award.

 

• Best food award: At least 7 food shops, 4 unique, one food shop per 128 guests and no more than 12 guests are allowed to think "I'm hungry".

 

• Worst food award: No more than 2 unique food shops, less than one food shop per 256 guests and more than 15 hungry guests must be be thinking "I'm hungry". Cannot be active together with best food award.

 

• Best restrooms award: At least 4 restrooms, 1 restroom per 128 guests and no more than 16 guests who think they need the restroom.

 

• Most disappointing park award: Park rating must be below 650 and at least half of rides must have popularity below 6 (on a scale from 0 to 255, so very low!). Cannot be active together with best value park. 

 

• Best water rides award: Park must have at least 6 water rides which are currently open and have not crashed recently.

 

• Best custom-designed rides award: Park must have at least 6 rides which are custom designed, and must have an excitement of more than 5.5

 

• Most dazzling ride colors award: At least 5 rides and more than half of the rides are colourful. A ride is considered colourful if the main track color is bright purple, bright green, light orange or bright pink. Hover over the colors in the palette in the game to see the color names. Rides without a track are not counted! Cannot be active together with most disappointing park.

 

• Most confusing park layout award: At least 10 peeps and more than 1/64th of guests are thinking "I'm lost" or "I can't find <ride name>".

 

• Best gentle rides award: Park must have at least 10 gentle rides which are opened.

 

Please share this post on other websites(reddit, youtube) if you see someone asking about awards. There's a lot of wrong information out there!

Edited November 26, 2022 by Deurklink
Updated some thought types and award duration

[Leudimin]

I'd like to get the most dazzling ride colors award . IIRC I got that one once. There are several I will never win, such as the best restrooms (US)/toilets (UK) one as I don't place many WCs, the best staff one as I don't hire either security guards (and I don't need them anyway) or entertainers, and the best value one as I don't use money.

Edited November 28, 2018 by Leudimin
One year later I've realized I had a literal translation from Spanish!

[Deurklink]

For most dazzling color scheme, it checks for the following colors:

static const uint8 dazzling_ride_colours[] = {5, 14, 20, 30};

If we start counting from zero with black, that would be the following colors (correct me if I'm wrong):

Bright purple,

Bright green,

Light orange,

Bright pink.

This would make sense to me as I have gotten the award in parks that mostly used these colors. 

It also looks like it only checks the main track color of the ride. I am guessing that is the first colouring option, but I am not sure yet.

-- EDIT: It looks like the ride also has to have a track! --

countedRides = 0;
colourfulRides = 0;

FOR_ALL_RIDES(i, ride)

{
if (!ride_type_has_flag(ride->type, RIDE_TYPE_FLAG_HAS_TRACK))
continue;
countedRides++;
mainTrackColour = ride->track_colour_main[0];
for (uint32 j = 0; j < Util::CountOf(dazzling_ride_colours); j++){
if (mainTrackColour == dazzling_ride_colours[j]){
colourfulRides++;
break;
}}}

Some awards like best restrooms are only feasible in smaller parks, unless you like to put down 50 toilets. Same goes for best staff. I think most dazzling color scheme is an easy award to go for in scenarios.

Edited November 27, 2017 by Deurklink

[YoloSweggLord]

Neat, I never knew about the 'most dazzling ride colors' award.

[Deurklink]

22 minutes ago, YoloSweggLord said:

Neat, I never knew about the 'most dazzling ride colors' award.

I received it only once.. The information i found online about it then said you were more likely to get it if you used lots of contrasting colors (Which turned out to not be true). I think it's frustrating that almost no correct information about this can be found online. I hope we can clarify the things in this list that are missing or unclear, and then share it around on the interwebs because awards are a really useful tool to complete scenarios.

[Batchman]

May I just say thank you for this thread ... cool to know how to earn the awards.

Now the only wonder is if they work the same way in RCT1&2 as OpenRCT2 or not.

[Deurklink]

On 28-11-2017 at 04:17, Batchman said:

May I just say thank you for this thread ... cool to know how to earn the awards.

Now the only wonder is if they work the same way in RCT1&2 as OpenRCT2 or not.

Sadly for me there is no way to look in the code of RCT1&2 (Nor would i want to look in assembler code). I guess the only way to confirm is by experimenting.

[Deurklink]

I did some research on best value park and worst value park.

So, for best value park and worst value park, a variable called totalRideValueForMoney is used. This is calculated by taking the "value" for each open ride, subtracting the price and multiplying the difference by 2. 

It looks like the value of a ride comes from a multiplication of the intensity, nausea and excitement ratings with certain factors. It then goes through an aging table, which makes rides lose value over time. (not shown in above code). This also explains why you can only charge a certain amount of money for your ride, which becomes less and less over time.

In the calculation for best value park, the entrance fee is compared to the total ride value calculated above (but divided by 2 again). Basically, on average, rides should be prized a lot lower than their value to get this award. Guests will comment that a ride is really good value if the ride price is a lot lower than the ride value.

I don't think you can get this award if your rides are free but I am not sure.

For worst value park, the entrance fee must be higher than the total ride value.

I found some other cool stuff while going through the code:

It looks like awards give you a 25% increase (or decrease) in the spawn probability of new guests. From the code, it looks like it really pays to have more than one positive award active. If we use a hypothetical probability, we would get the following results from awards:

1 positive award active: +25%

2 positive awards active: +56%

3 positive awards active: +95%

Having an overpriced park entry fee decreases the probability, dividing it by 4. Having an entrance price that's way too high again divides the probability by 4.

Edited November 29, 2017 by Deurklink

[Batchman]

So what counts as food shops? Mainly, do drink shops count as food shops?

For some reason, even when I seem to qualify for some of these awards, I never seem to get them in OpenRCT2.

And may I question whether there may be more involved in the park safety award? Even if there is no vandalism and no rides have ever crashed, I never seem to get this award until I have enough engineers running around. (Somewhere around 1 per ride or so.)

Edited March 4, 2018 by Batchman
More questions

[Deurklink]

52 minutes ago, Batchman said:

So what counts as food shops? Mainly, do drink shops count as food shops?

For some reason, even when I seem to qualify for some of these awards, I never seem to get them in OpenRCT2.

And may I question whether there may be more involved in the park safety award? Even if there is no vandalism and no rides have ever crashed, I never seem to get this award until I have enough engineers running around. (Somewhere around 1 per ride or so.)

You can always check in the code! https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/blob/develop/src/openrct2/management/Award.cpp
 

[flp]

I have some problems with the "Most dazzling ride colors award", maybe i do something wrong?

Following situation: new park with five tracked rides: 4 rollercoasters and 1 cycle monorail. 3 of them have as main colors the main colors required for the award. In my opinion, the conditions for recieving the award are true (At least 5 rides and more than half of the rides are colourful.).

But after a long waiting time, nothing happened.

After that, i coloured the other two rides also in the colors, but no award.

Then, i built a 5th coaster with the dazzling colors and after a short waiting time, the news with the award was shown.

So my questions: what did i wrong? Is the award only for coasters?

[Deurklink]

On 07/09/2018 at 22:44, flp said:

I have some problems with the "Most dazzling ride colors award", maybe i do something wrong?

Following situation: new park with five tracked rides: 4 rollercoasters and 1 cycle monorail. 3 of them have as main colors the main colors required for the award. In my opinion, the conditions for recieving the award are true (At least 5 rides and more than half of the rides are colourful.).

But after a long waiting time, nothing happened.

After that, i coloured the other two rides also in the colors, but no award.

Then, i built a 5th coaster with the dazzling colors and after a short waiting time, the news with the award was shown.

So my questions: what did i wrong? Is the award only for coasters?

It should count all tracked rides according to what i read in the code. Even when you fulfill the conditions for an award, the moment you get it is still random (as far as i know) so it can take a long time.