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Topics - JB

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Community Chat / Happy Birthday to Walt Disney's Head

« on: December 05, 2020, 09:37 PM »

Happy birthday to Walt Disney's Head (Dec. 5, 1901).

Still spry at 119 years old. Also happy birthday to Walt himself.

Community Chat / I'm still around, but... (Update 3-08-20)

« on: December 04, 2019, 12:00 AM »

Some of you have probably noticed that I haven't commented in any of your threads for a while. That's because I just spent a fabulous 9 nights and 10 days in Hospital World (One of Disney's lesser-known properties

)

In other words: Around noon on November 23rd I went to the emergency room having chest pains and shortness of breath. Yep, I was having a heart attack; it actually started the night before; couldn't get any sleep on the night of the 22nd. I just got out of the hospital yesterday (Dec. 2nd).

This was all unexpected, as I never had any heart trouble before. After the first couple of days in the hospital I was informed that I'm also diabetic, my LDL (bad) cholesterol was sky high, and I had high blood pressure. I knew my (untreated) blood pressure was high, but I didn't know about the other things.

Even though I'm home now, I'm not spending very much time at my computer (duh). Concentrating on letting my heart heal, etc. (There was also some damage to one of my heart valves). I'm feeling okay now, no pain; I just get exhausted really easily since my damaged heart isn't pumping enough oxygenated blood to the rest of my body.

So, I'll still be looking at (and reading) your threads here at SGW, but not commenting as often as I used to; at least not for a while.

At the end of this recovery period I will probably be undergoing open-heart quadruple bypass surgery (yay me). So I have that to look forward to, as well. But I also look forward to being an active SGW member again, sometime in the near future.

- JB

The Artist's Corner / SPOOKS- A hand-drawn 3D comic book

« on: October 21, 2019, 03:07 PM »

Rabbit and Cheezit in:

SPOOKS

A Hand-made 3D Comic Book

I can hear you ask: "What the heck is this?" And "Who (or what) the heck is Rabbit and Cheezit?"

First question first: This is a hand-drawn 3D book I made way back in 1983. That's 36 years ago!

And since the book has a (comically) spooky theme, I thought I would post it here in time for Halloween.

Second question:

This is Rabbit and Cheezit. They're stuffed animals, otherwise known as plushies. Rabbit (he's the rabbit

) is a retail toy from (I think) the early 1950s. Cheezit (he's a rat) was made by me in the early '70s, out of a pair of old brown socks; sort of like a sock monkey. He's maybe 10 or 11 inches high. Rabbit is 7 or 8 inches high.

The photo above is a colorized version of an old black & white Polaroid snapshot I took from about the time this book was made. Rabbit and Cheezit are still around somewhere, but I couldn't find them to take a new photo. So this old snapshot will have to do.

As kids, we played pretty (i.e. very) rough with Rabbit. At some point, his head started to rip off; sort of like Nearly Headless Nick in the Harry Potter stories. His stuffing was spilling out. So we crudely sewed his head back on. In the photo above, you can just see the stitches where rabbit's plastic face meets his neck. In the Rabbit and Cheezit stories (yes, there are many of them. More about that in a moment), Rabbit is drawn with the stitches prominently displayed on his neck, sort of like Frankenstein's monster.

One of my brothers and I started making these Rabbit and Cheezit books in 1973. We called them "Rabbit in Wonderland" (original, huh.) There are 12 of them in all, well, 11 ¹/2. I never finished the 12th book. We eventually lost interest in making them around 1990. I guess Rabbit and Cheezit are sort of like Winnie the Pooh and his pals; in that, they're stuffed animals that have a life of their own, with many adventures and tribulations.

I made the first Wonderland book and left the story dangling with a cliffhanger at the end. Then my brother made the next book, also with a cliffhanger. Then back to me, and so on. At the end of each book (we called them Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc.), Rabbit and Cheezit were about to get ripped to shreds, eaten, zapped by a ray gun, or whatever. Rabbit has a carefree sort of personality. He's a never-look-before-you-leap kinda guy. He's also been known to use an occasional mild swear word. Cheezit, on the other hand, is almost constantly fretting about everything. He generally takes a subservient role, as seen in the photo above where he's using an Egyptian-type fan to keep Rabbit cool.

This book, Spooks, is a stand alone story that has nothing to do with the Wonderland books, although Rabbit mentions them in the story below, as you'll see. The Rabbit and Cheezit books are filled with pop-culture references, and 'borrow' heavily from movies, TV shows and advertisements that were popular at the time they were written. Some of those references are pretty obscure now (and even back then).

About the 3D: I made this book using the 2-color, red/cyan anaglyph method. That's where you need a pair of those red/blue 3D glasses to make it work (red filter goes in front of the left eye). If you don't have a pair of those glasses, you can use colored cellophane (dark red and dark aqua) to make your own, or just hold the cellophane up to your eyes.

But since a lot of you probably don't have the colored glasses and don't want to bother finding (or making) a pair, I'm also including (at no additional cost to you) side-by-side versions of the pages, where you cross your eyes to merge the two halves into a single 3D image. I wasn't even sure if I could make the side-by-side images from the red/cyan scans. After trying 2 or 3 different methods, I came up with one that works pretty well.

The 3D effect looks better in some pages than in others. I'm surprised it works at all, considering that I just eyeballed the paintings and guessed how far apart to make the red and cyan portions of each page.

So. Finally. Here is SPOOKS. You'll see the red/cyan version followed by the side-by-side version of each page. Those of you who can't make the cross-your-eyes method work and don't have a pair of colored 3D glasses can still enjoy the book by looking at the left (or right) half of each side-by-side page.

(Click to enlarge the side-by-side pages.)

Front cover:

Page 1:

Page 2:

Page 3:

Page 4:

Page 5:

Page 6:

Page 7:

Page 8: "They're here" is from the movie "Poltergeist", which came out a year before this book was made.

Page 9:

Page 10: This was a larger fold-out page; 4 times bigger than the others.

Page 11:

Page 12:

Page 13:

Page 14:

Page 15:

Page 16:

Page 17:

Page 18:

Page 19:

Page 20:

Page 21:

Back cover:

RCT Parks & Rides / [RCT3] Lost Imaginarium- (Update 7-15-20)

« on: May 30, 2019, 04:29 PM »

I mentioned at the beginning of my "A Visit To IMAGINARIUM- with the Peepertons" thread that the park you see in that story is the third version of Imaginarium. The first version was completed in 2012. The second, in 2013, and the current version in 2014. Each version of the park took most of a year to create.

In this thread I'll be showing images from the earlier versions of Imaginarium and comparing them to the current version. Here, you'll see the rides that were deleted or altered in some significant way, plus any other ramblings that might be of interest. I still have the files for these older versions of the park, so they're not really 'Lost' like it says in the title above. But I like the dramatic sound of it... and the graphic looks cool.

So why make three versions of the same park, you ask? Didn't you get burnt out by the end of the third version, you ask? The answer to the second question is- yes, I did. The answer to the first question is- Imaginarium v1 was basically a test park; a place to try out new CTRs, CFRs, and custom scenery. I didn't pay any attention to where a ride ended up, so there weren't any coherently themed areas. Sci-fi, Medieval, Old West, Fantasy, Rustic- they were all jumbled together. (Well, they still are, sort of, but not as much.) I also didn't pay any attention to how many polys I used; the more detail, the better. As a result, the park was very unstable and crashed frequently. And the lag... oh, the lag. This was before I discovered Large Address Aware; to increase the game's RAM usage. Also before Park CleanUp was a thing. It probably is a little more stable now.

I started making the second version of the park determined not to make the same mistakes I made in the first. I cut back on detail and polys. I made the tracked rides a little shorter, and omitted a couple of flat rides. I also tried to keep similarly themed rides together in the same area. The result? Not much better than the first. Still too unstable, still too much lag. The ultimate goal was to create a version of the park that was stable enough to not crash when naturally transitioning from day to night, and to reduce the lag.

So for the third version, I really tried to cut back on polys and the amount of detail in the park (but still have it look nice). I omitted more flat rides and shortened the tracked rides some more. The result? A little better, but not much. That's when I decided to not do a fourth version; at least, not until I learned how to make and import my own custom content; concentrating on making low-poly objects.

Now that you've slogged through that wall of text (it gets more picture-y pretty soon), here is an aerial view of all three versions of the park:

At first glance the three parks look a lot alike: Ya gots yer castle, yer moat, several domes, rocky areas of different colors, a swimming pool/lake, and wooded areas. But when you look closer (careful you don't make an oily spot on your screen with your nose), you can see that there are rides, or parts of rides, in v1 and v2 that are not present in v3, and vice versa.

For example:

In Imaginarium v1 you have the flat rides: Airships, HellFire, and Shuttle Simulator. Plus, Journey To Olympus; an observation tower ride.
Imaginarium v2 still has Journey To Olympus (in a different location), but not the flat rides mentioned above.
Imaginarium v3 lacks all of those rides but has the flat ride, Rocket Riders, which is not in the other parks; plus the Canoes (also in v2).

There are many other differences, mostly the amount of detail that you see when you ride a ride. I'll be showcasing all these v1 and v2 rides in future updates of Lost Imaginarium.

To prevent ruining the surprises in upcoming episodes of my other thread, "A Visit To IMAGINARIUM- with the Peepertons", I've decided to (more or less) synchronize the two threads. I'll be showing parts of Lost Imaginarium that correspond with where the Peepertons currently are in that story. And in that story, the Peepertons have just embarked on their journey through Time Trek; which is where this thread will start first:

In the upper left you see the exterior of the Time Trek station as it exists in the current version (v3) of Imaginarium. The same design is also used in v2. To the right of that you see the station in the first version of the park. At the bottom, you see an earlier version that existed for a month or so. I like the look of the domed roofs from Klinn's ElectroSet, but they're high-poly and disappear at a medium zoom distance. Plus, the domes keep you from seeing inside the station, so I used Moby's Glasshouse and Frameworx pieces, instead (upper right).

Here are two more exterior views of version 1 of the Time Trek station:

And here's a look at the interior of the station:

In Imaginarium v3, I used Markus Lomberg's CTR Creator to put the RR DoomBuggy CTR on their Invisible Track. Here in version 1 of the park, I used the Universum Der Energie CTR from the Europa-Park Add-On (I think that's the one). I'm not sure if the CTR Creator was released yet in 2012; in any case, I didn't know how to use it then.

My thinking for this ride was that the track, as well as the car and the riders, should be unseen as you ride the ride; so as not to distract from the scenery. With the Universum Der Energie CTR, I had the overhead track to contend with. Most of the time you don't see the track so it's no problem. But in parts of the ride, which you'll see a little later, I had to cover up the track to keep it from being seen.

Here you see the cars about to start their journey into the past. I used some more of Klinn's ElectroSet pieces for the rings. Alas, the rings have tons of polys, so I used other sets in later versions.

An overview of the station with the roof removed:

And two more views:

After leaving the station, you go through the glowing Chronotron Tube (Liam's Warpgate set) which 'prepares' the riders for their trip through time. Then, into the first Portal (the stargate from JCat's SpaceWorx). You will encounter many Portals as you ride-the-ride. They act as focusing lenses that send the riders to different periods in time. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.) Once you're through the first Portal, you enter a large show building:

...Where you find yourself floating in space, surrounded by stars. You encounter the first of many billboard images that inform you in what period of time you have arrived:

The timeline of the ride starts at the earliest point in Earth's history and advances forward with every Portal you pass through; always forward.

The stuff you're seeing now, till the end of this first post, exists only in version 1 of Time Trek. That's right, I deleted the first 4.49 billion years of Earth's history; give or take.

I was reluctant to do so, and kind of sad. I liked the look of this part of the ride and it showed Earth's history from the beginning, which was my original intent. But it was also heavy in polys and particle effects, and the ride time was too long, sooo... out it went.

But here it is! Brought back from the dead:

The idea here is that you see the primordial, glowing orb of the Earth, still being pummeled by asteroids and comets and the occasional stray moon. That blank black strip at the top of the image is where I covered up the overhead track.

Your Time Trek car (they weren't called Time Capsules in v1) gets closer and closer to the glowing ball. Like a camera zooming in, the car enters the fiery atmosphere of the Earth and continues to the surface, where you move through a hellish landscape of flowing lava and erupting volcanos:

This animated GIF is, by necessity, fairly tiny and highly compressed to keep the file size as small as possible (2.17 MB). With the GIF and the next few screenshots, you should get an idea of what this part of the ride was like. There's no audio here so you'll have to imagine a lot of rumbling, bubbling and hissing.

I didn't cover up the track here as it would have blocked the view of the diorama.

As you can see, shyguy's Rock Set is well represented here as well as Xistics Particle Storm sets, MGP's Large Billboards, and JCRise's Animated Lava.

I kinda sorta tried to match the billboard images to the volcanic outcrops and lava flow (with varying degrees of success).

This a panorama made from the two billboard images for the left wall as you enter the volcanic diorama.

And this a panorama made from the three billboard images for the back wall.

Leaving the heat and noxious gases behind, you come to another billboard:

And you encounter the second Portal:

Which sends you forward 1.5 billion years:

Here you see early oceanic life forms. The toothy creature is the angler fish from ImagineerJohn's Finding Nemo set. The tentacled plant is from Old-Spice's Halo set. This is a 'dry for wet' diorama- made to look like it's underwater but actually isn't.

The rocks with the 'caustic' rippling effect are from CSF's Rock set. The billboard pictures were made from online images of early ocean life. I added some of the game's plant and animal life (angler fish, tentacled plant, etc.) to the images to blend the background with the foreground.

This is a panorama made from the three billboard images for this diorama.

Here's a night shot:

Here, you get a better look at how the background and foreground work together to form the diorama. The nighttime coloration/lighting doesn't match up as well as it does in the daytime:

Once again, you pass through a Portal. This time you are flung another 1 billion years forward to:

We're still underwater (this is another 'dry for wet' diorama). Things look pretty much the same as before except... the creatures are bigger now:

I've always thought that the in-game Sea Serpent looked more like a prehistoric beast than a sea serpent. Here, they seem to fit right in. Plus, they thrash around every few seconds, adding movement to the scene.

A couple of night shots:

This is the back wall panorama made from three billboard images:

And here is the two-image panorama for the left wall:

Finally, here are 3 overhead views of this part of the ride with the roof removed:

Version 1 of Time Trek has 15 dioramas. I deleted 8 of them for the current version (v3) of the ride. You've just seen the first 4 deleted dioramas and you'll be seeing the rest in future editions of Lost Imaginarium.

By deleting those dioramas I chopped 3 minutes off the ride time- from 11 min 39 sec, to 8 min 41 sec. In the current, shorter version, the peeps don't complain as much ("Let me off! Let me off!"), but they don't jump for joy when they exit the ride either. Oh well. (stupid peeps)

So, in the next edition of Lost Imaginarium we'll jump forward nearly 2 billion more years. But first the Peepertons, from my other Imaginarium thread, have to catch up and experience that part of the ride. (That's the synchronization I mentioned earlier.)

Until then, here are some 3D images (you knew there would be 3D images, right?

) and a few GIF wiggles:

The rest of the Lost Imaginarium episodes will be shorter than this one (I think

Fun & Games / Madame Zelinka: Knows all, sees all

« on: October 29, 2018, 10:51 PM »

Some of you may have already seen this in my RCT3 Imaginarium park thread update that I posted a couple of days ago. I figured more people would enjoy it here in the Fun & Games section- especially now during Halloween season:

Spoiler (hover to show)

I'd like to hear if Madame Zelinka's prediction was correct.

RCT Parks & Rides / [RCT3] A Visit To IMAGINARIUM - with the Peepertons (Update 10-06-19)

« on: August 01, 2018, 11:28 PM »

A Visit To IMAGINARIUM - with the Peepertons

A year or so ago, shyguy started a thread titled: "Why aren't you posting your projects?" Why indeed. I had been mulling over story ideas about a RCT3 family visiting one of my parks, and shyguy's question spurred me into action.

When I finally began writing my ideas down and assembling them into a coherent story, I was still an unregistered lurker here (and had been since dinosaurs roamed the Earth, or so it seems.)

I just recently joined SGW to learn the ins and outs of posting text and images in preparation for long projects like this one. And it is quite long. So I'll be posting it in smaller, easy-to-chew segments. I encourage all you lurkers out there to join SGW and become a participant- If this 65 year old guy can do it, then so can you.

This is the third version of my Imaginarium park; completed 4 years ago in 2014. The first two versions were somewhat larger, more detailed, and a lot more unstable. At the time that I was building Imaginarium, I had no idea that I would be writing a story that takes place in the park. So this story is being written (still incomplete) to fit the park and not the other way around. Many, many thanks to all the custom content creators who work so long and hard to share their artistic creations with us.

As you read this story you'll recognize many of the quirks, eccentricities, annoyances, bugs, and RCT3 'game features' that we are all familiar with. In fact, the story is essentially written to showcase all of those things, with some pretty pictures thrown in. And so begins:

A soft [ping] is heard. Or maybe it's more of a [blip]. Or maybe just a subtle, silent shift in the vast space-time construct that is the universe. Whatever it is- a family of four materializes on the peep injection point at the end of the 'Parking B' walkway; one of two walkways which lead to the entrance of Imaginarium theme park... the Peepertons have arrived.

Meet the Peepertons:

Walter P (Wally) Jillian P (Jill) Baxter P Tiffany P

Wally looks at his family with an excited grin, "Well kids, here we are! On our way to Imaginarium!"

"Yay!" Baxter exclaims, jumping twice into the air.

Tiffany, who is now a teenager, shares her older brother's enthusiasm but neglects to jump into the air- that's for kids, "Ooh, it looks so exciting!" she says, "Don't you think so, Mother?" Lately, Tiffany has started referring to her mom as 'Mother'; the teen thing again.

Jill looks at the park spread out before them, "Yes, it looks very exciting! Storybook Gardens looks like a fun ride."

Jill peers at the long serpentine walkway ahead of them, "Oh my. How far is it to the park entrance, I can't see it from here. We'll be worn out before we even get there!"

All thoughts of the path ahead are pushed aside as Tiffany lets out a shriek, "Eeek! Mother, the parking lot is gone!" Indeed, Parking Lot B is nowhere to be seen.

Baxter, always the adventurous one, looks in gleeful wonder at the vast expanse where the parking lot should be, "Cool!"

Tiffany continues, "How did we get here?"

Jill, "Well... in our car, of course... at least I think we did... I can't seem to remember." She looks at her husband, "Wally?"

Wally frowns and scratches his head, "I thought so, too... but now that you mention it... I mean, how else did we get here?" He grins, "Do you think maybe we just appeared out of thin air?" He looks back warily at the non-existent parking lot and chuckles nervously, "The Gamer works in mysterious ways," he concludes. In truth, the Gamer decided not to include the parking lot- too many unnecessary polys.

As the Peepertons begin their long walk to the park entrance, Baxter points and says excitedly, "Hey, look! There's the FreeFall rocket! I can't wait to go on FreeFall! The car climbs up the gantry all the way to the top, then falls straight down the inside of the rocket and out the bottom..." His expression slowly shifts from excitement to concern, "Wow... It's so TALL... I bet you can see it from anywhere in the park... Just looking at it makes me wanna... [Yeeurghh]."

Tiffany looks down in horror and disgust, "Eewww... Mother, Baxter just yeeurghhed all over my shoe!... Eewwww!"

Jill takes a kleenex out of her fanny pack and hands it to her daughter, "Here, dear. Take your shoe off and wipe it on the grass over there. Then use the kleenex to finish up. That'll have to do for now... And you, young man," she turns her attention to her son, "Honestly, Baxter. If you're going to get sick that easily..."

"Aw, Mommm," Baxter says while wiping the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, "It's just a little puke... It won't happen anymore." He gazes again at the towering rocket, "It's just that... it's so high up an... [Yeeurghh]."

"Eeewwww! Now he yeeurghhed on my other shoe! MOTHER!! Make him stop!" Tiffany moves to the other side of the walkway, as far away from her brother as she can get.

Two weeks later, as morning turns to afternoon, the Peepertons are about halfway to the park entrance and the kids' excitement mounts: "Aren't we there yet?" "I'm tired." "I need to pee." "I wanna go home."

Their dad tries to cheer them up, "Aw, c'mon kids. We're almost there!" He squints into the distance, "Look! The entrance is just ahead. We'll be there in no time... a week... two weeks, tops!"

As they continue their journey to the park entrance they see other peeps leaving the park, heading toward the non-existent parking lot.

Baxter points at a kid's Imaginarium balloon, "Cool! I wanna get a balloon like that. It's got dinosaurs an' castles an' futuristic stuff."

Tiffany, her shoes still a little squishy, looks disdainfully at the balloon, "Hmmph," she says snootily, "balloons are for kids... Ooh, I like that clear one! It looks like a dewdrop sparkling in the morning sunlight." Baxter rolls his eyes.

As the sun sets and the sky darkens, the colorful park lights begin to flicker on, giving Imaginarium an excitingly magical and other-worldly appearance. "It looks excitingly magical!" Jill says. "And other-worldly," Wally adds.

Another two weeks go by and as the sun rises, the Peepertons finally arrive at a small hub where the 'Parking B' walkway merges with the one from 'Parking A' and the path turns to face the park entrance.

"Welcome to Imaginarium!" Wally reads the sign aloud with gusto.

As the Peepertons walk through the entrance turnstiles and onto the bridge leading to the castle, the SkyTrain soars by just above their heads.

The kids' enthusiasm rekindles: Tiffany, "Ooh, it looks even more exciting close up! Look at the people flying around the castle on those brooms! I wanna go on that!" She sees her brother turning an odd shade of green, "Mother! Baxter has that pukey-face look again... he's gonna blow!" She distances herself from the 'Human Geyser', as he is now known.

Baxter, struggling to keep his innards inside, looks down, instead of up, "No I'm not," he says, hoping it's true. Slowly, his 'pukey-face' goes away. He gazes intently into the clear water of the castle moat, "Cool, look at those dolphin-shaped submarines! That's the Voyage To Atlantis ride."

Jill looks at the elegant-looking subs gliding beneath the water, "I think we would all enjoy going on that!" She looks across at the loading dock, "And the line seems to be moving quickly."

Wally picks up the pace, "C'mon then. We've got a lot to do and a lot to see!"

They cross the bridge and go under the castle's portcullis into the tunnel, which passes through the castle and into the park.

They can hear spooky music and moaning ghosts filtering slightly through the tunnel walls, "Hey! That must be coming from The Haunted Castle ride," Baxter exclaims. He places his ear to the wall to hear the creepy sounds.

As they emerge from the tunnel, Baxter looks at the fountain in front of them, "Cool, that's just like the scene on the Imaginarium balloon we saw outside the park, only a lot bigger!"

Wally spots an Information booth to the left, "Guess we better get a park map so we know where we're going... Don't wanna miss anything, right?"
He returns with the map and unfolds it so everyone can see.

[click to enlarge]

Wally points to the map, "So, we're right here next to the castle tunnel; the fountain is right in front of us. Where do we wanna go first?"

Jill studies the map, "Voyage To Atlantis is off to our right, not far from here. I say we try that first. What do the rest of you think?"

"Sure," Baxter begins, "we gotta start somewhere... The Haunted Castle is just to the left, I wanna go on that next!" "And Broom Riders is real close to it!" Tiffany adds.

Wally folds up the map, "So it's settled then. We do the subs first then double back this way. We'll decide what to do next after that. We can always split up if we wanna do different things."

With that, the Peepertons head for the Voyage To Atlantis queue.

To Be Continued...

-------------------------------------------------------------

At the end of each story segment I'll be including a few stereoscopic 3D images of the parts of Imaginarium that the Peepertons have just visited. So...

Just kidding. No glasses needed! Using the above image, simply click on it to enlarge it and cross your eyes, as if focusing on a point close to your face, so that the two images overlap completely and perfectly. Then allow your eyes to bring the composite image into focus and, wallah (or viola

) - 3D! The Imax glasses and the text should now stand out from the background. I've found that it's easier on the eyes if you sit back from your screen a couple inches more than usual when viewing these 3D images. Behold!...

[click to enlarge each pair of images]

RCT Parks & Rides / [RCT3] The Many Faces of GTT's Glas Labyrinth

« on: July 24, 2018, 09:45 PM »

Once upon a time (2014), in the land of beer and lederhosen (Germany), Green Tom Tom presented to the RCT3 community a walk-through flat ride:

the Glas Labyrinth

I really like this ride. Mainly because it's a walk-through attraction (see also, GTT's Hedge Maze). Yeah, there are similar in-game rides, e.g. the House of Fun and Laser Battle. But with those rides, the peeps enter and just stand in the middle for a while, then exit. (The Insect House, Nocturnal House, and Reptile & Amphibian House are interesting though.) But here in the Glas Labyrinth, the peeps really walk through the maze; which is a lot more fun when you're exploring your park with Jonny Watts.

There is one down-side to this ride... it has dismal statistics. The excitement and intensity ratings are barely over 1.0 - theming it heavily does practically nothing to improve the excitement, and there's no way to increase the number of circuits to boost the intensity. The first time I used this ride I placed it near the middle of a park. After several game-years, only a handful of peeps had gone through it; disappointing. But by placing it near the entrance of the park, so that it's the first attraction the peeps come to, it'll get plenty of guests to make it worthwhile.

With its bright colors and pop-culture references, the façade of the Glas Labyrinth fits right in with a county fair/funfair setting, as shown above.

But what if you want to put it, say- into a Pirate themed area, or Old West, etc?... Gotta cover up that classic '50s car and the Blues Brothers!

I've played a lot of downloaded user-made scenarios (you can find hundreds of 'em at rctgo.com), and over time, a fun and interesting challenge developed: plop the Glas Labyrinth down near the park entrance and cover it so that it fits in with the themed area. Here are several versions of the Glas Labyrinth that I made for various scenarios over the years:

As you can see above, my first attempt was rather half-@$$ed. The 'fun challenge' idea hadn't occurred to me yet and I just wanted to cover the darned thing up.

I didn't spend a lot of time on this Alpine themed version. It looks more like a barn, but it gets the job done.

I guess I should say that none of these themed versions of the Glas Labyrinth are as detailed as I would have done, had they been in one of my own sandbox parks. I'll often spend 2 weeks or more working through a scenario. But that's nothing compared to the months it takes to complete a sandbox park- sometimes, good enough is good enough.

Here we have a sci-fi version, day and night. The scenario places the park in (I think) a Martian crater; lotsa rocks, mining, and excavation going on. There are many types of sci-fi themes: retro Buck Rogers 1930s-'50s style; immaculately white and sparse; well-used grunge, etc. So here, I made the Glas Labyrinth reflect its rustic surroundings. I named the ride Crystal Cavern.

Moving on to a tropical island scenario, this one is Polynesian/Hawaiian themed. It's called Kamehameha's Palace. Pay no attention to the burning torches on the tinder-dry palm frond roof. (In lieu of fireworks, the roof catches fire nightly and has to be replaced on a daily basis.)

Howdy pardner! Park yer horse at the gate (don't forgit ta lock the doors an' turn off his headlights. An' make sure he has plenty o' hay 'n water so's he doesn't blow his radiator cap.) Here we are in the Old West, or at least an Old West themed park. As I look at it now, there should have been some sort of roofing added to the upper left and right. Oh well.

This version of the Labyrinth is located in a modern/contemporary park and is made to resemble a glass factory showroom; like you would see at the outskirts of town near the industrial area. It has a utilitarian feel to it but with enough flair to make it interesting. Often times, I play these scenarios to try out newly downloaded custom content. Here, I was experimenting with FI's Art Deco Set .

Arrr, mateys. This be yer Pirate theme (arrr, again). I like to combine the in-game trees with custom trees (thank you, Old-Spice, n7, and others). The RCT3 scenery is lower in polys than most CS so, less lag. Plus, mixing them up adds visual interest.

Here we are, on a flying carpet, looking down on an Arabian Nights themed Glas Labyrinth- the Sultan's Palace, located in a busy mythical Mideast marketplace of yore. I left the original top of the ride's arch uncovered; the shape and colors seemed to fit nicely with the theme.

And finally, here is the Ice Palace version of the Labyrinth. Made of packed snow and pierced with gleaming shards of crystalline ice. The ride is surrounded by drifting snow and the queue is bordered with icicle railings.
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This is the first topic that I've started here at SGW and I've never posted images before. It's sort of a practice thread for a larger project I'm working on.

Welcome Center / Hello shyguy's World community

« on: June 24, 2018, 04:42 PM »

Hello shyguy's World community! My name's Jim (the J in JB). I'm 65 (Gah!) and I've been a lurker here and at the old Atari site since about 2005. So I know who you are (well, your shyguy's World personas anyway) even though you don't know me (yet).
I play the RCT series of games, mostly RCT3. It's been a while since I've played RCT1 & 2 but I'm sure I'll dust them off again one of these centuries. I've played through all the scenarios from all of those games at least 2 or 3 times. Plus a bunch of user-made RCT3 scenarios. I find that playing the scenarios teaches me a lot about playing the game: what works best, how to do it, and what to avoid (too many polys!). Scenarios provide a pre-made landscape and a set of goals, which gets my creative juices going in ways I might not otherwise think of. And I apply what I've learned from the scenarios to my own sandbox parks.

I've been messing around with computers since the mid 1970s. My first computer was an 8 bit Atari 800 with a cassette-tape program recorder. Man, I hated that recorder; took forever to load/save a program. Around 1980 I moved up to an Atari 130XE (also 8 bit) with a 5 1/4" floppy drive. Much better. I still use that computer from time to time (it still works!). I became quite proficient at making games using one of the souped-up BASIC programming languages (BASIC XE).
My avatar, Ricky Rat (Mickey's unsavory cousin from the wrong side of the tracks), is the title character from a game I made on that old computer in 1997 called "Ricky Rat in The Hedgemaze". The image is a recent photo of him I took from the (nearly) 50 year-old TV that serves as a monitor for that computer. I cropped it, resized it, cleaned it up a bit to make it more presentable, and 'wallah', an avatar suitable for framing.

A year-and-a-half ago, I began thinking about writing a story concerning a family of RCT3 peeps visiting one of my parks, but I hadn't written anything yet. Then, about a year ago, shyguy started a thread called "Why aren't you posting your projects?" in the RCT board. Good question, I thought. Time to give something back to the community. So after a couple of months thinking about plotting, characters and dialog, I began writing. At first it was going to be text-only, no pictures, posted in the Artists Corner. But I soon realized that the story really cries out for some visuals. And besides, the park that my peep family visits is already finished, so I decided to do a complete presentation, to be posted in the RCT Parks & Rides section.
As of now, the story is about half done (including screenshots) and is turning out to be rather lengthy, (think Epic Russian Novel, but with humor... much like this post

). I'm debating whether to upload the first parts of the story now or wait until it's all completed; which won't be for several months. I'm leaning toward the latter because I find myself going back and altering some of the earlier stuff to reflect what I've written recently.
And then there's the pictures; I've never posted an image before

. I know I need to make an account at an image hosting site, but which one? Looks like most people use imgur. (How do you say that, anyway? I've been pronouncing it 'imager'.) Photobucket was popular a while back, but then they changed their website's protocols and a lot of people's pics disappeared. What about flickr? tinypic? Any others? What are their pros & cons? I'm confused.

Anyway, that's part of my life history. I could go on: I like sci-fi and fantasy movies/books/TV (Avatar and 2001: A Space Odyssey are two of my favorite movies. Oh, and Star Wars and Harry Potter and Jurassic Park and...), I've got close to 1,000 music/sound effect files in my RCT3 folder, ideas for lots of CS sets I'd like to make- if I ever learn how, stage 4 cancer (in remission since 2005), an enlarged prostate, and tinnitus... but that would be TMI, wouldn't it

. I know I should've registered here at shyguy's World years ago, but better late than never. I hope to contribute a lot to this community in the years to come. - JB