Q: do Hybrid/Single-Rail Coasters earn Excitement from Air-Time?

[RollerCoasterTyphoon]

Um, because, they shouldn't: they can deploy "zero-G" elements.

I am soliciting fact, not opinion.

Marcel Vos helpfully compiled this table: coasters capable of zero-G elements, without exception, do *not* earn any Excitement from Air-Time, probably because that would be too easy to exploit.

Answer, 'no', no worries; Answer, "yes", is this an issue?

Again, I am soliciting fact, not opinion.

Embedded Link, advance to 'Air-time':

 

[X7123M3-256]

18 hours ago, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

Marcel Vos helpfully compiled this table: coasters capable of zero-G elements, without exception, do *not* earn any Excitement from Air-Time, probably because that would be too easy to exploit.

I don't see where in the linked post it says that. The zero G roll elements did not exist when that post was written - the new track pieces were only added last year. The hybrid and single rail were the first ride types to get them and are still the only ones that have them available by default.

All coaster ride types except the alpine coaster calculate airtime - whether or not an excitement bonus is applied for airtime is actually dependent on the vehicle type. In the vanilla game, the vehicles which don't get an airtime bonus are the ones with over the shoulder restraints, while rides with lap bars do. So the hybrid coaster does and absolutely should get an airtime bonus - it has lapbar restraints and those rides are generally very airtime focused IRL.

The single rail is debatable - it has over the shoulder vest type restraints, which are somewhere in between a lap bar and a traditional OTSR. These didn't exist when the original game came out so there's no direct comparison in the vanilla game, and you could perhaps argue that it shouldn't get an airtime bonus, however it currently does.

[RollerCoasterTyphoon]

23 minutes ago, X7123M3-256 said:

I don't see where in the linked post it says that. The zero G roll elements ...

I did not say, "zero G roll": I said, "zero-G elements"; barrel/heartline roll, in-line twist, corkscrew; elements that "artificially" generate Air-time. Now, my bad: I definitely should have elucidated that better in the OP.

Thanks for an excellent reply: particularly that "yes/no Excitement" is dependent upon the vehicle, not the Coaster-type; drat, this (potentially) is a lot more complicated than I first had deemed ... at this juncture, I can not make even an opinionated disposition ...

Any additional information that anyone could provide is welcome.

I want OpenRCT2 to remain "honest": no "cheaty/hacky" stuff (haha: beyond deliberately employing cheats/hacks); I love what the Devs have done, what folks like you and Spacek and others have done; most folks at New Element, et al.; I do want to preserve the "cleanliness/authenticity" of the OpenRCT2 project.

Yes, drat (again): the distinction you've provided definitely muddies the waters surrounding my query.

Thanks (again).

T

 

[RollerCoasterTyphoon]

In this matter, as regards the original assets of the games, I imagine that the graphics actually will self-regulate the issue: trains that possess sprites for traversing zero-G elements will not be earning excitement from Air-time; perhaps that's why CS designed RCT/2 in this fashion.

I'd like more information, though.

Thanks again.

T

[X7123M3-256]

Just now, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

In this matter, as regards the original assets of the games, I imagine that the graphics actually will self-regulate the issue: trains that possess sprites for traversing zero-G elements will not be earning excitement from Air-time; perhaps that's why CS designed RCT/2 in this fashion.

I'd like more information, though.

Thanks again.

T

Whether a train has sprites for a given element has nothing to do with excitement rating (and the zero G roll sprites don't exist in the original game, so if that was the deciding factor then no vanilla train would get an airtime bonus). Whether or not the excitement bonus for airtime is applied is determined by a flag in the vehicle's JSON file.

[RollerCoasterTyphoon]

You and I again suffer a failure to communicate, including a reiteration of the original failure I've already cited: only you say anything about "zero G rolls"; I say nothing about "zero-G rolls", except to (now) repeat that I say nothing about "zero G rolls".

Based on the information you kindly provided, I entered the Track Designer and deployed 8 Coasters: 4 identical Loopers & 4 identical 4D Coasters; both populated with trains from these coaster types, Looping, Giga, 4D, Corkscrew.

The "zero-G" ELEMENTS on this 4D Coaster are the In-Line Twists & Outside Ravens; the Looping Coaster possesses no zero-G elements at all, relying solely upon "Air-time Hills"; just FYI, 4D generates almost 3x the Air-time, compared to the Looper. To be crystal clear: both coasters have no zero-G rolls.

Looping & Giga trains, on the 4D, earn a tremendous bonus to Excitement, even though speeds & G Forces remain comparable; Corkscrew trains returned a (lower) Excitement, comparable to the normal 4D trains.

Corkscrew & 4D trains, on the Looper, lose a significant amount of Excitement, even though speeds & G Forces remain comparable; Giga trains returned higher Excitement, comparable to the original Looping trains.

All this commutes with your information. Again, thank you.

The Looping & Giga trains flickered in-and-out traversing In-Line Twists & Outside Ravens; Corkscrew disappeared traversing the Outside Ravens. They do not have the sprites; hence my earlier statement about (some) self-regulation being built-into the original assets.

Typhoon

 

[X7123M3-256]

> The "zero-G" ELEMENTS on this 4D Coaster are the In-Line Twists & Outside Ravens; the Looping Coaster possesses no zero-G elements at all, relying solely upon "Air-time Hills"; just FYI, 4D generates almost 3x the Air-time, compared to the Looper. To be crystal clear: both coasters have no zero-G rolls.

The game doesn't distinguish between airtime generated by an airtime hill and airtime generated by an inversion. The game doesn't designate certain elements as "zero G", so I'm not sure why you're making this distinction.

1 hour ago, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

They do not have the sprites

They don't, but that has nothing to do with the excitement calculation.

[RollerCoasterTyphoon]

1 hour ago, X7123M3-256 said:

> The game doesn't distinguish between airtime generated by an airtime hill and airtime generated by an inversion. The game doesn't designate certain elements as "zero G", so I'm not sure why you're making this distinction.

I wonder if you and I are actually approaching accord ... I'm not going to divert (again) to explain what I meant when I described "zero-G elements"; that's above, in this very thread.

Chris Sawyer, evidently, more-than-20-years-ago, thought the distinction valid: um, hence, my initial query ...

Thanks for offering dialogue

[X7123M3-256]

6 hours ago, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

Chris Sawyer, evidently, more-than-20-years-ago, thought the distinction valid: um, hence, my initial query ...

I don't know what you mean -  Chris never made such a distinction, there's no such thing as a "zero G element" in the game or the code. I assume you're talking about special pieces that can give airtime. But there's no special treatment there, the game just adds up the total airtime and calculates the excitement bonus, if applicable, based on that. There's not a difference between a "zero G element" and an airtime hill as far as the game is concerned.

[RollerCoasterTyphoon]

On 07/01/2023 at 04:32, X7123M3-256 said:

I don't know what you mean ... I assume you're talking about special pieces that can give airtime.... There's not a difference between a "zero G element" and an airtime hill as far as the game is concerned.

You should already know what I mean, since this is from the 3rd post in this thread,

On 03/01/2023 at 12:46, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

I did not say, "zero G roll": I said, "zero-G elements"; barrel/heartline roll, in-line twist, corkscrew; elements that "artificially" generate Air-time. Now, my bad: I definitely should have elucidated that better in the OP.

Now, I have done a little research and I will explain precisely why I invoked Chris Sawyer: in vanilla, ALL coasters that can deploy these elements have OTSR restraints, without fail; while the short, 4-across "Twister", Hyper-Twister trains possess lap-bars, "true" Twister trains are all OTSR; the "Arrow-ish" Hypercoaster trains have lap-bars, while the "Arrow-ish" Corkscrew trains are OTSR.

Indeed, the original incarnation of the Hypercoaster demanded that the player build a Corkscrew coaster with no inversions: only then would Hypercoaster trains be available for selection. I'm not sure if a similar prerequisite was required to make a Twister into a Hyper-Twister (can't remember; just don't know), but the trains are the trains, and the distinction remains consistent.

It's pretty clear: the original game-design wanted to avoid potential abuse derived from any exploitation of the exaggerated Air-time that these elements can generate.

Thanks for patience, and continued dialogue.

T

[RollerCoasterTyphoon]

Hi. I'll link something from almost a month ago. Oh, I discovered it when it was fresh, but a certain someone's deliberate pretense of absolute obtuseness has left me so mad that, only now, have I found the resolve to make an additional assay.

So the genie is out of the bottle. Folks are making new Scenarios with OpenRCT2; IMHO, the established premises of the game should be remembered and respected; Chris Sawyer's creation should not be denatured.

To "Extreme with numbers to make it seem like I don't live in my Mom's basement and couldn't get laid if I walked into a women's prison with a fistful of pardons" I'll quote a line from a British TV show I rather like ("New Tricks"), "I didn't call you a pratt ... I called you a twat".

Sorry: obviously I'm still mad.

Typhoon

[X7123M3-256]

On 07/03/2024 at 16:50, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

IMHO, the established premises of the game should be remembered and respected; Chris Sawyer's creation should not be denatured.

The established premise of the game is that trains that have lap bars get an airtime bonus, and RMC hybrid layouts tend to be very airtime focused so of course this ride gets an airtime bonus. That it can be exploited is not surprising, but nor is it really an issue, because everything else is just as exploitable - the way the game calculates stats (and most other things besides) is very naive and it can't really tell the difference between good and bad designs as long as a few basic requirements are met. Just take a look at this corkscrew design that Marcel Vos shared recently:



Trying to "fix" this exploit by removing the airtime bonus would hurt normal gameplay because the ride is intended to be airtime focused, that would penalize players for building the ride the way it's meant to be built. Implementing an entirely new stat calculation that doesn't suck would be a separate project entirely (and if such a thing was added it would almost certainly have to be optional, because it would be a major deviation from vanilla behaviour).

I'm not being deliberately obtuse, your previous comments made little sense and not once did you make clear what the hell you were talking about. I see now that by "zero G pieces" you actually just meant inversion pieces ... why didn't you just say that ... you could have just posted a screenshot of the exploit you were referring to. Also, you don't have to use the hybrid coaster if you don't like the way I implemented it, and you don't have to build exploit designs if you don't like them. I don't like them either.

Edited March 9, 2024 by X7123M3-256

[ExCrafty]

@RollerCoasterTyphoon, please try to use simple language in your posts. You tend to come across as overly educated, and "talking down" to people here. Often I personaly find your posts difficult to understand, due to your vocabulary.

Your posts and oppinions are valid and welcomed but in a simpler language.

I don't intend this as offensive, just as (hopefully) constructive criticism.

[RollerCoasterTyphoon]

1 hour ago, ExCrafty said:

@RollerCoasterTyphoon, please try to use simple language in your posts. You tend to come across as overly educated, and "talking down" to people here. Often I personaly find your posts difficult to understand, due to your vocabulary.

Your posts and oppinions are valid and welcomed but in a simpler language.

I don't intend this as offensive, just as (hopefully) constructive criticism.

I'll thank you for your kindness and for your respect. I speak in English.

Typhoon.

[RollerCoasterTyphoon]

19 hours ago, X7123M3-256 said:

The established premise of the game is that trains that have lap bars get an airtime bonus, and RMC hybrid layouts tend to be very airtime focused so of course this ride gets an airtime bonus. That it can be exploited is not surprising, but nor is it really an issue, because everything else is just as exploitable - the way the game calculates stats (and most other things besides) is very naive and it can't really tell the difference between good and bad designs as long as a few basic requirements are met. Just take a look at this corkscrew design that Marcel Vos shared recently:



Trying to "fix" this exploit by removing the airtime bonus would hurt normal gameplay because the ride is intended to be airtime focused, that would penalize players for building the ride the way it's meant to be built. Implementing an entirely new stat calculation that doesn't suck would be a separate project entirely (and if such a thing was added it would almost certainly have to be optional, because it would be a major deviation from vanilla behaviour).

I'm not being deliberately obtuse, your previous comments made little sense and not once did you make clear what the hell you were talking about. I see now that by "zero G pieces" you actually just meant inversion pieces ... why didn't you just say that ... you could have just posted a screenshot of the exploit you were referring to. Also, you don't have to use the hybrid coaster if you don't like the way I implemented it, and you don't have to build exploit designs if you don't like them. I don't like them either.

Nice pic: Where's the Air-time bonus?

[RollerCoasterTyphoon]

On 08/03/2024 at 23:49, X7123M3-256 said:

The established premise of the game

 

Plural v. Singular, f**ktwat. The 1st sentence of your post, before you even completed it, is something I'm tearing apart. I can't believe you're such a pillock excepting, only, that you actually f**king prove it. BTW, I'm not done with you; hahaha, wait for it ...

um, naturally, in your Mom's basement. Oh ho ho, please wait for it again.

Mike-drop.

Typhoon

 

[RollerCoasterTyphoon]

The established premises of the game include the disposition that roller coasters capable of deploying "zero-G" elements do not have lap-bar restraints and do not earn the Air-time bonus. A year ago I pointed to Twister v. Hyper-Twister: the evidence and, hence, my argument remains absolutely indisputable.

Precisely what style of retard are you, or has Medicine/Psychology entirely given-up and thrown-in the towel? I could have sign-languaged this to Koko, the gorilla, and received acknowledgment but you, again, want to dance me around the May-pole.

Back to Mom's basement, troll. Here's a line from a Monty Python movie:: "Go away you silly pig-dog or I shall taunt you another time".

I'm daring you to provoke me again. Twat.

Typhoon

[X7123M3-256]

3 hours ago, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

Plural v. Singular, f**ktwat. The 1st sentence of your post, before you even completed it, is something I'm tearing apart. I can't believe you're such a pillock excepting, only, that you actually f**king prove it. BTW, I'm not done with you; hahaha, wait for it ...

 

What do you mean "plural vs singular". Do you think I should have said "one of the established premises"? I'm not interested in a pointless grammatical debate. You're not "tearing me apart", you're just insulting me for no reason, which is not winning the argument. If you don't communicate clearly it's not everyone else's fault if you're misunderstood. Your posts repeatedly use the term "zero G element" - which you made up - and you're mad because I thought you were talking about "elements that can produce zero G". The word you were looking for is "inversion".

I created all the code and sprites for the hybrid coaster; I know exactly how it works and I was the one who decided to give it the airtime bonus in the first place so I do know what I'm talking about here.
 

Just now, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

The established premises of the game include the disposition that roller coasters capable of deploying "zero-G" elements do not have lap-bar restraints and do not earn the Air-time bonus. A year ago I pointed to Twister v. Hyper-Twister: the evidence and, hence, my argument remains absolutely indisputable.

No, your argument is not indisputable, in fact, I don't think there's any evidence to support it. Yes, the hyper twister coaster gets an airtime bonus and the twister coaster doesn't, but also, the hyper twister coaster has lap bars and the twister coaster doesn't, and hyper twister coaster layouts IRL consist almost entirely of airtime hills while twister coaster layouts rarely have any. That's not evidence that the reason it gets the airtime bonus is because it doesn't have inversions.

My belief is that the airtime bonus is applied to rides which have lapbars. Evidence against this would be, for example, if there was a ride which has lapbars but does not get the airtime bonus, a ride that has OTSRs but still gets the airtime bonus, or perhaps a ride with the airtime bonus that has inversions IRL but is missing those pieces in game. That might suggest that Sawyer deliberately avoided creating rides that have both. But there are no such examples, and in fact, there are two examples in the vanilla game of rides that get the airtime bonus but also get inversions - and those are the looping coaster, and the wooden coaster. The looping coaster, in particular, isn't particularly airtime focused IRL. It would have made sense not to give that an airtime bonus. I believe the reason the looping coaster gets an airtime bonus and the corkscrew coaster doesn't is because the looping coaster has lap bars.

Another point is that the airtime bonus is a property of the vehicle, not the ride type - it's possible (though there are no examples in the base game) to have a ride with different train types available, one of which gets the airtime bonus and one not. This suggests that this bonus was meant to reflect characteristics of the train (such as the restraint system used) rather than those of the ride type (like the track pieces it has available). Specifically, I think this is meant to reflect the fact that airtime tends to be more fun with lap bars than more restrictive restraints, and rides with airtime focused layouts pretty much never have OTSRs for that reason.

Remember that at the time the game came out, it was very unusual for coasters with lap bars to have inversions - so, almost all the coasters in game which have lapbars also don't have inversions, and rides which did have inversions rarely had much in the way of airtime. It would have made sense at that time, to give the airtime bonus only to rides without inversions - it would make sense for the looping coaster not to get an airtime bonus, it would have made sense for the wooden coaster not to have a loop piece - but that's not what was done.

In recent years, however, it's become a lot more common for looping coasters to have lapbars and for rides to feature a mix of airtime and inversions, and the RMC is a prime example. RMC layouts feature a lot of airtime - but usually do feature inversions as well (not always though). Nothing like this existed at the time the game came out. So even if it was true that the vanilla game never gave an airtime bonus to rides that were capable of inversions, I think there would still be a very strong case that the hybrid coaster should get an airtime bonus. Not having the airtime bonus means the ride gets no excitement from airtime - in fact, it actively penalizes having airtime on the ride because you still get nausea - which would be completely wrong for the hybrid. Building a hybrid that has no inversions is more realistic than one which has no airtime - it's more like a souped up wooden coaster than a wooden version of the twister coaster.

[RollerCoasterTyphoon]

1 hour ago, X7123M3-256 said:

.My belief is that the airtime bonus is applied to rides which have lapbars. Evidence against this would be, for example, if there was a ride which has lapbars but does not get the airtime bonus,  wooden coaster than a wooden version of the twister coaster.

That's asinine: they shouldn't have lap-bars, you cunt. Twister v. Hyper Twister. Crawl back into your Mom's basement: stop being the world's biggest asshole.

I did warn you. Twat.

Typhoon

[X7123M3-256]

9 hours ago, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

That's asinine: they shouldn't have lap-bars, you cunt.

What shouldn't? The hybrid coaster trains? They do have lap bars:

 

10 hours ago, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

 Twister v. Hyper Twister

I've already explained that that doesn't contradict my hypothesis because the hyper twister coaster has lap bars and the twister doesn't. The hyper twister coaster doesn't contradict your theory that it has to do with whether the ride can do inversions, but there are two other rides that do. There are no rides in the game that get lapbars but do not get an airtime bonus, there are no rides in the game that have OTSRs but do have an airtime bonus. And, as I explained, the fact that the airtime bonus is tied to the vehicle and not the ride type, I think also points towards it having to do with the restraint system.

You clearly aren't even reading what I said and don't have anything else constructive to add, you either lack reading comprehension or you're just here to troll.

10 hours ago, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

stop being the world's biggest asshole.

You're the one being an asshole. You're the one whose posts consist mostly of insults.

11 hours ago, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

I did warn you

LMAO what are you going to do to me?
 

[RollerCoasterTyphoon]

"You silly pig-dog I shall taunt you another time".

RCT is not real life.

All Arrow and TOGO corkscrew/looping coasters use banked sloped turns: not in RCT.

Arrow suspended coasters, after Arrow apprehended and fixed the mistake, made sure that all turns use banked track: not in RCT.

For some weird reason Chris Sawyer decided that he just plain hated TOGO: RCT's versions of TOGO coasters are horrible; horrifically unrealistic.

That last, while it's a 'dig' at Chris Sawyer's dispositions, does not disqualify RCT as being, globally, one of the most-beloved games ever devised.

One of his dispositions that I will not dispute is that coasters capable of deploying "zero-G" elements do not earn Air-Time, because that would be too-readily-exploitable: the means of that computer game disposition resides in yes/no lap-bar; Twister v. Hyper-Twister.

Above, I linked a Reddit post that demonstrates the abuse.

Beg for more, pillock. Yes, you are the biggest asshole on the planet.

Typhoon

[X7123M3-256]

1 hour ago, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

All Arrow and TOGO corkscrew/looping coasters use banked sloped turns: not in RCT.

I don't know why these coasters weren't given banked sloped turns in the original game - my guess is just to save time making sprites - but this is a very common complaint that OpenRCT2 will probably eventually fix. We have added new track sprites to the looping coaster, LIM launched coaster, giga coaster and log flume, and someone is working on new sprites for the B&M. Some prototype banked curves for the Arrow track were already created as well, and they look pretty good already:


 

 

1 hour ago, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

One of his dispositions that I will not dispute is that coasters capable of deploying "zero-G" elements do not earn Air-Time, because that would be too-readily-exploitable: the means of that computer game disposition resides in yes/no lap-bar

Like I said, unless Sawyer himself comes out and says this, there isn't any evidence that points towards this being the case. All the rides in game that have lap bars have lap bars in real life. There is only one ride that has a different type of restraint system in game, and that is the air powered vertical coaster. It has OTSRs, because it was modelled on the prototype which had them. I would point out that it does not get an airtime bonus - despite the fact that it probably ought to  - which again suggests to me that it comes down to the restraints and nothing else.

And again, not giving the RMC the airtime bonus would be silly. Even the RMC train did have OTSRs, I would have seriously considered breaking from the established pattern and giving it the airtime bonus anyway because such an airtime focused ride not getting any excitement from airtime wouldn't make sense, once more, there is really nothing like this ride in the base game. Removing the airtime bonus doesn't just mean less excitement from airtime, it means none - in fact, airtime is effectively penalized. You would be penalizing the player for building the ride the way it's meant to be built.
 

1 hour ago, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

Above, I linked a Reddit post that demonstrates the abuse.

Yes, I understand the exploit you found. I do not think this is a good reason to remove the airtime bonus at all. This game is riddled with exploits - the original game had a similar exploit with the heartline twister that could give over 600 excitement. You've got people beating scenarios without building any rides at all or even using only one tile of land. This exploit doesn't break the game because the game is already broken - in fact I doubt your exploit layout would be more profitable in a scenario than a standard microcoaster design because it has low capacity for its size.

Removing the airtime bonus from the hybrid would penalize the player for using the ride the way it's meant to be used and therefore reduce the incentive to do so even further. It wouldn't affect most exploit designs, just that one specific one. Moreover, there are other ways this issue could be addressed. For example, it would be possible to make the game distinguish between hangtime and airtime and not count the former towards the airtime stat. That change might be controversial as it could affect the stats of existing rides, but designs that aren't intentionally exploiting this would probably be minimally affected.
 

1 hour ago, RollerCoasterTyphoon said:

Yes, you are the biggest asshole on the planet.

Yes, I'm a bigger asshole than Kim Jong Un and Putin, because I didn't make the hybrid coaster in exactly the way you wanted it. Maybe you would be happier if I didn't make it at all. You know, you don't have to use it, you don't have to include it in your scenarios, and it would take literally 5 minutes for you to download the train and make your own version without the airtime bonus - and if you really wanted it changed upstream then you have the same ability to submit a PR that I do, but you're not interested in any of that, you're just here to be a dick.

It's clear you don't think you're going to convince me of anything since you're just posting insults in lieu of actually responding to anything I said and it's clear to me that I'm not going to convince you of anything either, and I'm not sure you're even reading my posts, so I don't see any point in replying to this thread anymore.

[AuraSpecs]

X7 please do not further respond to this topic. This conversation ends here. Please do not invest any more time on this troll. He is just out there to spread negativity and insults. I know I have no admin access on this forum but concider this topic closed.

[ExCrafty]

6 hours ago, X7123M3-256 said:

 and I'm not sure you're even reading my posts, so I don't see any point in replying to this thread anymore.

Excellent idea.

End of discussion .... please.

If posts can't remain civil, then don't post.

[Gymnasiast]

I just banned RollerCoasterTyphoon for... obvious reasons. Sorry for not intervening sooner.