Custom Ride Questions (Go Karts)

[Guest]

Very new to custom content in RCT2. I've read this thread as well as Amazing Earl's tutorial as recommended. The poster mentions that while he recommends reading that tutorial, he does not recommend creating rides that way. Is there an updated way to create rides these days? Are the tools mentioned what I should be using? The next set of questions are specifically in regard to my project: I'd like to copy the Go Karts ride and change the kart sprites.  Everything else I'd like to do would be purely bonus, and I don't know how doable it is. Am I able to increase the maximum vehicle speed? Am I able to modify the track width? I'd like to do it double-wide with wider turns and wider vehicle spacing. Lastly, am I able to increase the maximum vehicle count?

 

EDIT: I could do something like this , I'm trying to figure out how exactly all of that works in regard to converting from one coaster type to the go kart type, as well as what plugins and commands he's using that I don't know about.

[DUBBO16]

Sadly this forum is not very active so if you want some fast answers maybe try reddit or similar. Im a noob for rollercoaster tycoon so i cant help. 

The only thing i know is openttd lol.

Good luck with your search for ride building!

[Gymnasiast]

10 hours ago, DUBBO16 said:

Sadly this forum is not very active so if you want some fast answers maybe try reddit or similar. Im a noob for rollercoaster tycoon so i cant help. 

The only thing i know is openttd lol.

Good luck with your search for ride building!

It is not very active, but it is active. Questions do get answered after a few days.

On 16/02/2021 at 06:10, Frownjob said:

Very new to custom content in RCT2. I've read this thread as well as Amazing Earl's tutorial as recommended. The poster mentions that while he recommends reading that tutorial, he does not recommend creating rides that way. Is there an updated way to create rides these days? Are the tools mentioned what I should be using? 

The most important reason he doesn't recommend that is how hard it is. There are a lot of sprites to get right and a lot of technical stuff. It's generally only recommended to look into this kind of stuff if you're much more familiar with RCT2.

At the moment, there are several tools besides the ones that Amazing Earl used, but they all have some drawbacks. I would like to improve them, but we're always strapped for time.

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The next set of questions are specifically in regard to my project: I'd like to copy the Go Karts ride and change the kart sprites.  Everything else I'd like to do would be purely bonus, and I don't know how doable it is. Am I able to increase the maximum vehicle speed?

That would need changes to the game. Currently Go Karts vehicles cannot override the maximum speed.

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Am I able to modify the track width? I'd like to do it double-wide with wider turns and wider vehicle spacing.

This would require new track pieces and also accompanying sprites. Not technically impossible, but an enormous amount of work.

By the way, the Go Karts do have code for handling wider turns (but only single width), but they lack track sprites.

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Lastly, am I able to increase the maximum vehicle count?

No, this is determined by how many vehicles fit behind each other on the station. And it maxes out at 31, which is a limit enforced by the SV6 file format. (We are slowly working on moving away from that, however.)

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EDIT: I could do something like this , I'm trying to figure out how exactly all of that works in regard to converting from one coaster type to the go kart type, as well as what plugins and commands he's using that I don't know about.

He has used cheats to temporarily change the ride type, so that he could use wider turns, and then made the track invisible, using scenery to create the illusion of a wider track.

[Guest]

Thank you for being so thorough in your response! I'm settled on using the cheats method for now as that's good enough for what I'm trying to do. My following question is that if I want to add a custom kart vehicle, do I need to create an entirely new custom ride just to have access to the vehicle, or am I able to add the vehicle standalone for selection with the Ride Vehicle Editor plugin? Second, when you say:

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By the way, the Go Karts do have code for handling wider turns (but only single width), but they lack track sprites.

I'm creating these sprites from scratch, does this mean I can design a track with the widest possible turn as long as I also design my custom vehicle with proper sprites for that angle? I'm not foreign to pixel art and I do have some experience with taking Isometric 3D models and converting them into 2D sprites. Also, is that the same reason things like loops and corkscrews aren't functional for Karts, or is that something much deeper?

Edited February 18, 2021 by Frownjob

[X7123M3-256]

4 hours ago, Frownjob said:

My following question is that if I want to add a custom kart vehicle, do I need to create an entirely new custom ride just to have access to the vehicle, or am I able to add the vehicle standalone for selection with the Ride Vehicle Editor plugin?

Your vehicle needs to be selected in the object selection in order to use it. It should not be necessary to build any additional rides.
 

4 hours ago, Frownjob said:

I'm creating these sprites from scratch, does this mean I can design a track with the widest possible turn as long as I also design my custom vehicle with proper sprites for that angle?

When it comes to creating the vehicle, you make the same sprites no matter how wide the turns are. Each vehicle has 32 angles of the car, and these same 32 sprites are used for both wide turns and small turns. This also means the default vehicles can handle wide turns already, they just lack the track sprites for it (the track will be invisible).

4 hours ago, Frownjob said:

Also, is that the same reason things like loops and corkscrews aren't functional for Karts, or is that something much deeper?

The go karts don't just lack the sprites for these elements, they also lack the code to draw them properly. Because the go karts have multiple lanes, they use different drawing logic from the other tracked rides. If you want to make these elements work properly, a custom vehicle that has the sprites would be necessary but not enough - if you want to do this I suggest you talk to the guy who implemented the wide turns (I think he's on the OpenRCT2 discord).

 

On 17/02/2021 at 09:25, Gymnasiast said:

The most important reason he doesn't recommend that is how hard it is. There are a lot of sprites to get right and a lot of technical stuff. It's generally

The main reason I don't recommend it is because his method is unnecessarily hard, and will actually lead to a worse result than doing things the easier way. For example, he tells you to find the camera angle by trial and error, instead of just telling you exactly what it is, and he suggests dithering the image to the wrong 256 color palette and then dithering it again (which will lead to worse colors than rendering in full color and dithering once). Also, some of his information is just wrong - for example, he says you can't change the spacing of the trains when there are examples of vanilla trains with different spacing. (I know AE didn't know how to change spacing, but really he should have known it was possible).

Creating a custom ride - especially a simple one like a go karts vehicle - is not especially difficult for someone who is already familar with 3D modelling or is willing to learn. I recommend starting with the JSON format and Oli414's Blender plugin, because this is the easiest way to get a good quality result IMO (although Oli's tool still has issues and he doesn't seem to be working on it at the moment). If you want your object to be a DAT file, you can work on that later.

[Guest]

Thank you for replying to both my Reddit post and here-- I'll probably stick to primarily using this website for questions and stuff. I'm going to see if I can get in touch with whoever worked on getting wide turns programmed, maybe I can take a look at their code and repurpose it for the widest turns.

For now I'm trying to use Oli's script and I'm running into some problems. I'll try asking for assistance on the discord.