Well, this place has gots me to thinking on all sorts of levels. From lighting to ffects, rides, and park attendants. UGH! How can I dump all these ideas on you guys? So, I made a topic to submit ideas to.

Now, I'm taking it for granted that you've already have a fog machine suggested... What about a bubble machine?

I think you guys have VIP characters, and this is something simular. How about a park MC Team? A cute couple walk around the park with a cameraman, and they interview guests, host "gameshow-like" entertainment, give away prizes, and keep park guests entertained. The Cameraman? He's broadcasting to select queue path TVs, and billboards.

Disco Effects. Want to make a techno dance hall? Lets get some of the real McCoy light effects in here. Strobes, Mirrored Spheres, Spot Lights, etc.

I think I mentioned Neon before, but I thought this might be cool to put neon directly upon the spine of steel roller coaster tracks. Perhaps as an optional lighting package of some sort.

Another idea is, Rope Lighting. or strings of lights. How about when the lighting type is selected, the cursor might turn into an endless reel of lights. By clicking on the edge of roofs, or along the guard rails of coasters, edges of buildings, branches of trees, you can tack up a string of any color or multi-color light strings. Maybe even have a "chase" or Marquee function, blinking, alternate blinking, etc.

Design a Character editor: Every park has some sort of mascot. Might be cool to be able to create custom made characters.

Scenery: Birthday Party Decorations.

Shooting Gallery from a mobile base vehicle. Ergo: Men in Black: Alien Attack & Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin

Mobile Motion Base Simular to Spiderman.

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Around here, however, we don't
look backwards for very long.

We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and
doing new things, because we're curious...
and curiosity keeps us moving down new paths.

Walt Disney

Another idea I had, was the ability to manipulate scenery in a x,y & z axis. Like say you wanted an inverted support, or some theming, placed at an angle, off the virtical "plumb". For example, this might be cool to use if you wanted to create an upside-down room in a funhouse or dark ride. Or if you wanted to build scenery to lean over to one side.

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Around here, however, we don't
look backwards for very long.

We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and
doing new things, because we're curious...
and curiosity keeps us moving down new paths.

Walt Disney

Yeah a bubble machine would be ideal too, and I am sure it can be made too. Lawrence Welk and his orchestra used bubble machines when they played at the Aragon Ballroom at Pacific Ocean Park back in the 1960's and I have seen bubble shows in the past at Six Flags Magic Mountain as well. They used them not only for a rock band stage show where kids got to dance, but also in the Magic Pagoda which I am not sure if is still an attraction there. The Pike in Long Beach I think used bubbles for just before the car exit on the Laff-In-The-Dark so yeah this should be included.

It probably will require a 3d machine flagged to spew animated bubbles perhaps a gif type flat mask or something for those fx...good idea wolfie.

Bubbles would be a particle effect along with water fountains, fires, fog, dust, fire works. Once a particle system is made for the game.

All scenery should automatically be able to rotate, move (DUH), and scale on all 3 axis. I would also like to give CS creators the ability to create variables of their own for their scenery, like color (obviously), but also more advanced things like timing/speed of animated objects or the brightness of a light. I understand that this would likely require some coding on the CS creators part, but if implemented, could make TPB3D scenery much more versatile.

Smallish Wrote:All scenery should automatically be able to rotate, move (DUH), and scale on all 3 axis.

This raises another idea. Lets say that you plan to create a building. And it's square/rectangular. Would you have to reset the settings for each wall? Or would it just be place & rotate a basic building, then drag the walls out to cover the area desired?

What about buildings with bumped out "rooms". like "L" or "T" shapes? Or structures with second or third floors?

Curious dogs wanna know!:h

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Around here, however, we don't
look backwards for very long.

We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and
doing new things, because we're curious...
and curiosity keeps us moving down new paths.

Walt Disney

I envision the BG created buildings as a whole object with sub parts that can be selected individually, so you wouldn't have to change each wall to your settings individually. I also envision the BG like Sketchup, with the ability to extrude faces.

Bubbles would be really cool :)

Has anybody been to Chessington World of Adventures (UK) and went on Bubbleworks?

I'ts a really funny darkride, with lots and lots of ducks and bubbles!

How about:
Small scale versions of thrill rides for kiddie land areas. I think that it would be cool to be able to create something like a kidsized floorless, or stand-up coaster. Or mini versions of normal scale thrill/flat rides? Could these just be rescaled as a whole, and still work out as child-sized attractions?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Around here, however, we don't
look backwards for very long.

We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and
doing new things, because we're curious...
and curiosity keeps us moving down new paths.

Walt Disney

I got to thinking about testing coasters and what real parks do to test them. They put dummies in the seats. These look like white plastic figures, and their filled with water to simulate the average body weight of a human being.

While I don't think we should go through that extreme of actually animating the filling of the empty shells with water. But it might be cool to have a set of dummies appear in the coaster trains when the testing is initiated.

Also, it would be kind of different if the trains crash and all the dummies fall out, spilling water all over the place. It makes more sense than explosions and balls of fire. If you ask me.

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Around here, however, we don't
look backwards for very long.

We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and
doing new things, because we're curious...
and curiosity keeps us moving down new paths.

Walt Disney

Here's another idea. Mirrored windows, (for building high rise structures) funhouse mirrors, (kinda wonky mirrors that streach and squash the image that is "reflected") or mirrors in general. (Nice for gift shops, restrooms, resterants.)

[Evid]=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6179432634249787416[/Evid]

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Around here, however, we don't
look backwards for very long.

We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and
doing new things, because we're curious...
and curiosity keeps us moving down new paths.

Walt Disney

Has the subject of "supports" come up yet? The reason I ask is because in almost all of the previous RCT games, there has always been the need to create custom supports. These were always created by some talented folks, as custom scenery. Is there a possibility that this theme park builder can include supports as an auto-build-with-the-coaster OR included in the scenery selection? Just a thought.

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Around here, however, we don't
look backwards for very long.

We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and
doing new things, because we're curious...
and curiosity keeps us moving down new paths.

Walt Disney

Yes. I asked that somewhere, and basically what they annswered was:


The coaster could come with generic supports when built, and once you wanna change the supports, just click them and a window should pop-up with various different supports, for different track pieces.

Although, that wont be as hard as it was on the RCT games, since on TPB3d you would just change the type of support, by clicking it, and dont have to bother trying to place them correctly as we had to do on RCT3...

In RCT2, we had to place INDIVIDUAL PIECES for just one beam. It was a lot better in RCT3, though in a few cases, there would be problems with the beams sticking through too far.

Since TPB3D is freeform based, I'm quite sure the support system will at least use (or be able to use) a node-beam system.

You mean, drag a node and the support columb would draw itself along that line to the node, and make a concrete footer for an anchor to the ground? Interesting. Especially if the concrete footers would merge on their own if they're right on top of each other. Or auto-weld the columbs together if they intersect, thusly reducing the anchoring concrete footers.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Around here, however, we don't
look backwards for very long.

We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and
doing new things, because we're curious...
and curiosity keeps us moving down new paths.

Walt Disney

Another idea crossed my mind tonight.

A roller coaster turntable. It can slow and stop a coaster, lock the train in place, then rotate. It could then either let it roll smoothly, naturally off the turntable, (in another direction,) or catapult it off the turntable, (IF the position lines up with a catapult type track configuration,) OR cause it to roll backwards off the turntable. All, of course, onto tracks that it'll automaticly line up with.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Around here, however, we don't
look backwards for very long.

We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and
doing new things, because we're curious...
and curiosity keeps us moving down new paths.

Walt Disney

Actually this would be great for those wanting to make a ride much like Disney's Himalaya coaster where the train is quietly rerouted down a different tunnel, then forwarded to the caverns where passengers watch an animatronics of the Snowman throwing a tantrum at them. In fact it would almost be mandatory, including a timed way to lock a train from rolling then sending it up with block brakes. Can you imagine the posibilites of coaster type rides, how many variants the community park builders will have...endless I think.

Oh, the animal kindom coaster. I think the train is held on an incline, simular to the slope of a normal theater, (or maybe more steep.) And the trains are locked, while viewing the shadowy video. My guess, while the train is locked, another track section is moved into place, so when the train is released, it follows a different track than the one it arrived upon. It's sort of a hybred coaster, with a sort of shuttle coaster feature graphed into the layout.

Quite imaginative, and nothing less than what I've come to expect from the Disney Imagineers. But it isn't a turntable. It's a brake set that holds the train on an incline, and a track section is switched out for another section as the video is played.

Which is ALSO a good idea to include. A braked incline, and a switched track. I just wish we could have a switch that changes out the route between a horizontal track, and a drop. As well as a switch that reroutes a straight for a curve. You'll need those for diverting trains to a storage barn anyway.

But in the turntable I suggested. The train is rotated, while sitting on a track. It's not "track being switched out for a different section" to divert to another circuit. The train rides on the turntable, is locked down, then is pointed in another direction. I just thought I would clairify.

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Around here, however, we don't
look backwards for very long.

We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and
doing new things, because we're curious...
and curiosity keeps us moving down new paths.

Walt Disney