Alpine Coaster: Thank you!

[chewey]

This is just a post of heartfelt gratitude towards everyone involved: The Alpine Coaster is a pretty awesome addition – thank you!

I'm particularly impressed by the individual braking behaviour. It's quite fun to just watch, especially with the occasional traffic jam created by a particularly slow guest.

You rock! 🥳

[ExCrafty]

Just saw this post, so went and had a look at this "coaster". No way to test the ride to see if a track design works or not. And the same as with Go Karts, you can't get any stats unless people get on the ride.

For me, this is disappointing, as I like to make designs, test and save good ones for use later.

This object also didn't appear in the "Objects Selection" listing for Rides and Attractions in the track design editor. I don't know how new this is since I haven't checked for a while.

This is obviously just my opinion.

[X7123M3-256]

44 minutes ago, ExCrafty said:

No way to test the ride to see if a track design works or not.

You can't really build a design that won't work unless you use cheats, because the alpine coaster will automatically place a chain lift on all uphill sections. If you have a very long flat section, you might find that the cars go very slowly and you get traffic jams, but in my tests I never had the vehicles come to a complete stop and fail to complete the circuit. It seems like the game won't allow vehicles to complete stop on flat track, they just get very slow.

It does not have a test mode for the same reason the go karts doesn't - the riders control their vehicle and it won't work without them. Moreover, because every rider behaves differently, the test results without riders would not be representative of how the ride functions with peeps on board. The alpine coaster also doesn't calculate G forces, so guests will never find it too intense to ride (this makes sense because they control their own speed and can go as slow or fast as they want).

In testing, I found that allowing the alpine coaster vehicles to dispatch without riders caused absolute chaos - the vehicle with no riders would proceed down the course at full speed until it hit the rider in front, whereupon it would stop dead and leave all the other vehicles stuck behind it. And it is not realistic because IRL the brakes default to the on position - if there is no rider to pull the lever, the car doesn't go.

There is one situation though in which the alpine coaster cars can be dispatched without a rider, and that is if the station platform doesn't have an entrance. This allows you to build a split station where the guests board at the top of a hill and get off at the bottom, with the cars being returned to the top empty.

 

44 minutes ago, ExCrafty said:

This object also didn't appear in the "Objects Selection" listing for Rides and Attractions in the track design editor. I don't know how new this is since I haven't checked for a while.

Rides that don't work without peeps won't appear in the track design editor because you can't have peeps there - it should appear in the object selection when it is accessed via the cheat menu or in the scenario editor. When the alpine coaster was first added I overlooked this and allowed it to be built in the track designer, but it was useless as you couldn't test it, and therefore, couldn't save the design, so it was removed to avoid people building a design and then being unable to save it.

I'd quite like for the alpine coaster and other rides that require riders to work to be available in the track designer somehow, but that would be a different project. The alpine coaster not being available in the track designer is consistent with the other similar rides. You can still save designs though - I just created a blank map in the scenario editor for that purpose.

Edited November 28, 2022 by X7123M3-256

[Dubaifreak]

Well, we can try to replicate the Dawson Duel! (the dual alpine coaster in Bellewaerde park)

[ExCrafty]

23 hours ago, X7123M3-256 said:

I'd quite like for the alpine coaster and other rides that require riders to work to be available in the track designer somehow, but that would be a different project. The alpine coaster not being available in the track designer is consistent with the other similar rides. You can still save designs though - I just created a blank map in the scenario editor for that purpose.

I also have a park map specifically for "Attraction Design". That's how I tried out this coaster. And yes, I noticed that lift chains are on for any up slope track.

I did say that this is all just my opinion, and isn't meant as a criticism of it.

I did get a couple of track layouts where riders came to a complete stop almost right at the bottom of a slope, therefore causing no vehicles to finish a circuit.