It Twists And Turns... Like A Twisty, Turny Thing- Planet Coaster

[Dr Wookie]

Planet Coaster is a game by Frontier Developments, who handled Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 DLC, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, Thrillville, Coaster Crazy, Screamride... I think they really like coaster games! They also made Elite Dangerous, which is what I have mostly been blathering on about here for the last ~4 years . 

 

I wasn't too bothered about it for a while, until I saw the first dev diary, which I found to be  both really impressive and also totally charming (a bit of a first for Frontier )

 

 

 

You can use very basic modules in order to get things up and running, such as shops, bathrooms etc., but you can also build them up piece by piece, clone those builds, and share them via Steam Workshop

 

You can also deform the terrain with powerful tools.

 

I bought into the alpha with a 10% discount, available to every Elite Dangerous kisckstarter backer. I've had a lot of fun with the alpha, but it is pretty resource intensive. I very much doubt that VR will be available soon, although it would be amazing.

 

Alpha access is no longer available now, but beta access is, for a bit more than the release preorder. I think beta testing is due to start in November, with full release on November 17. However, the reason I am making this post now is that anyone with beta access before October 6 will be able to access the alpha from October 6 -- October 10 for an event called Party in the Park !

 

Oh yeah, they announced coaster crashes in test mode at EGX... no peeps will be harmed 

 

 

OBLIGATORY DISCLOSURE: I have been a volunteer Ambassador for Elite Dangerous, at E3 2014, and PAX East 2015; I worked like an absolute madman, but all expenses were paid. Since being an ambassador required game experience, and the game was in alpha at the time of E3 2014, only Alpha level kickstarter backers ($300 +) were considered; it also helped that I was hunting black holes for NASA at the time

[SuperBiasedMan]

Nick Breckon has streamed this a ton, and it looks great!

 

Here's the first 8 hours of Nick's streaming, but there's more after this (not currently in the playlist):

[Dr Wookie]

Yeah I really enjoyed Nick's series. There's a lot of other great content too.. people have been amazingly creative!

[Dr Wookie]

It's Beta time tomorrow, with full release next week on November 17th. There were some lovely livestreams in preparation this week and last week, including reveals of wooden coasters and certain types of water rides!

The individual videos were supposedto be going up, but I guess they are busy

 

In the mean time, here last night's livestream

 

Wooden coasters are at around 16 minutes, and water rides start at 40:20. There's also a wonderful demonstration of (newly added) triggered events at around 57:15. 

 

Also Kotaku published an interesting article on the game by UK Magazine Edge

 

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/11/05/elite-dangerous-developer-is-building-the-ultimate-theme-park-sim

[ariskany_evan]

I'm completely and totally not a sandbox gamer, but I am psyched to someday sit through everyone else's creations in VR. Especially those new water rides. All the fun, none of the bacteria!

 

I hope that with the Minecraft generation aging that these sort of programmable world systems will be profitable. We would be over-inundated with walking simulators and I would be in heaven.

[Dr Wookie]

That would be great! I love the fact that Steam Workshop is integated into the game, so it is very easy to download other peoples creations, as I am rather overwhelmed at the moment! I downloaded beta, and there's so much more stuff in Sandbox, which is where I spent most of my alpha time... for example you can now just plonk down speakers for ambient sounds or music; the music can be from the game's sound track, or any mp3 or ogg file put in the right folder! 

 

I think that the career mode might be a safer place to start, with far more guidance and fewer options

[voxn]

hey! bought this when nick first streamed it, and didn't realize it was playable yet. First impressions are real strong. I started with challenge mode ($8k starting cash iirc?) and this is where I'm at after ~4 hours:

 

 

weep, ocd park designers, at my desert labyrinth

 

 

I made all the rides black/orange for an industrial equipment look, and spruced up the desert props with enigmatic black pyramids

 

 

so many great aspects to this game, and every feature you build gives you ideas for others. Already thinking my next park will lean on all the little real-time lighting props -- they look incredible at night (and you can lock the time at any point).

 

worth noting though that this game is heavily weighted towards sandbox rather then sim. I've found it trivial to keep my park in the green, and elaborate coasters are the only thing that costs a substantial amount.

[Jutranjo]

Really neat queue line over bottomless abyss there. But it's ok, there's a meter high guard rail in place.

 

Why is there a gap i the guard rail on the other bridge??

[voxn]

tragically, I discovered you can disable the guard rails entirely only after I'd placed all the paths.

 

and it's a, uh, danger gap!? Polishing your park to withstand street view scrutiny requires rather a lot of finesse. Fixing all the clipping, gaps, and awkwardness could be an hours long process that strides uncomfortably close to a polish pass on an actual game you're working on :-P and same deal with constructing props. A reasonably complex custom building could take hours, because you really are just using 3D modeling tools, except with prebuilt chunks rather then raw vertexes.

 

this game is going to be some peoples 'this is all I need for a decade' creative outlet, but I'm a bit curious how much staying power it'll have for a more casual audience.

 

 

[voxn]

nightlight park! fixed the time at 1am and went wild with ambient lights:

 

 

 

glowing demon maw entrance :B

 

[voxn]

ok the mouth entrance made me want to do a whole park where the theme is going inside a huge monster. Concessions might need to be made however, because the camera seems mighty unwieldy inside an enclosed area. Unless there's a way to make it not pivot around a point?

 

entrance is lookin' mad spooky though!

 

[SuperBiasedMan]

Haha, I had exactly the same idea with exactly the same camera problem. I didn't come up with a good solution.

 

My park was basically hell. A giant underground lit by fire everywhere. And once you enter the first ride, the exit path doesn't connect back to the park entrance, so you're trapped forever. I'll try take pics later, but its very rough.

[Dr Wookie]

I'm slowly getting braver in my experimenting... when I first started the career mode, I felt a bit like this:

 

But I've even made it to the first star without wanting to burn everything to the ground and start again :D. I've also spent a good chunk of time watching yuotubers such as nerd3 for inspiration an tutorial stuff

 

By the way, there have been several updates to the beta, including one that makes the play area 2.5 times larger.

[Dr Wookie]

Planet Coaster is out now, and has generally got a very positive reception. It's currently at the top of the Steam charts, with reviews ranked Very Positive for 2567 reviews; it was Overwhelmingly Positive at one point. 

 

The main criticisms that I've seen levelled against the game are that its management aspects don't go far enough, and that it's not challenging enough. I am a complete noob to coaster games, and am having fun. Are there any old hands out there who have an idea what kind of depths these people talk about? I'm sure it's not in the nitty gritty details, as we can already manage stores etc. to a seemingly ludicrous degree. Maybe it's missing more strategic elements?

[Treasure Goblin]

I haven't been playing Planet Coaster but I've been enjoying watching the thumbs stream it.  
Someone made a Firewatch coaster and it showcases how much detail and complexity can go into this game:

 

[Kolzig]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-01-03-planet-coaster-dev-frontier-sues-rollercoaster-tycoon-world-maker-atari

 

Frontier wants money that the current Atari hasn't paid from old case with Rollercoaster Tycoon.

[DocRandal]