152 replies to this topic

[Silver Swordsman]

Alright ladies and gentle-ladies,

I got a new computer a few months ago at a nice price: 24800 NT (divide by 30 for approximate value in USD). Affectionately, I named her (yes, her) Jane Seymour, in honor of Henry the VIII's wife (which I will be writing a report on for World History), and because she is my third computer as Jane was Henry's third wife. (I only hope that she does not die in labor)

So, now that I have a new wife computer, what happens? Well, good sirs, allow me to illustrate. Here's an example: my in-game recording framerate now is roughly the same as my old computer's gameplay framerate; and in places where the game used to lag to a standstill, I'm still cruising at 30 FPS.


In short, hardware limitations are nil. The only concern I have is that Windows 7 has an issue with large parks (which will inexplicably crash the game), but I don't think I have the time to be that epic yet. And so, with hardware limitations out the window, I can now happily build to my heart's content.


The sudden removal of all hardware limitations (for now) means that I can now create landscapes in much higher detail than before. For example, I renovated Xinchu Milepost 06.

Before Renovation:


Ew, huh?
With Anne Boleyn (my previous wife computer), simply looking at the vegetation in the fields were enough to choke the CPU, even when I unchecked "3D plants". On the other hand, Jane Seymour has no trouble with these pictures:

How about this for an hor-d'œuvre?


Makes a big difference, huh? More debut pics. Let's say I'm tired of hijacking the Best Pics Thread.







Yes, I know. I'm being very taxing on your internet connection with all these HD pictures. You should be thankful that TC-Industries does not permit me to showcase videos. Anyways, I'm being generous with pictures today because this is the debut post for the Aussette High Speed Rail Project.

Little word play, huh?
(Au-sett-ee = RCT?)

Anyways, consider COASTER-net lucky and unlucky at the same time. We are preparing a year-long advertising campaign on SGW and Atari which will involve several music videos and a twenty-part novella, written by me. The downside is, because COASTER-net.com is a small website, I do not think that saturating this place with that kind of attention is needed (At Atari and SGW, it is hard to stay in the spotlight, if you can get any light at all). I will, however, be nice enough to post the links to the short story:

Atari: http://forums.atari....7886#post177886
SGW: http://www.shyguyswo...hp?topic=5629.0

EDIT: Official RCT-HSR Thread (Story Arc 2) is up!

SGW: http://www.shyguyswo...pic,7636.0.html
Atari/Lounge: http://rctlounge.com...ead.php?t=10239

EDIT: I will post the MVs here when they are done.

You may notice that I am not the poster. This is because the novella is divided into several different narratives, each having their own unique perspective, which is another reason why I have decided against posting the story here.

However, you guys are luckier than you guys can imagine. Why? Virtually no one is aware of our endeavor. Save the moderating teams (whom we notified to obtain permission to essentially make four different threads for the same project), no one has any idea of what we are doing. Even the moderators have never seen the full version trains before. This site has been chosen. You have been chosen to receive the most up-to-date information of our plans.

Let's see... how does being six months ahead sound?

By the way, I'm trusting that those of you who frequent other sites will not "leak" any of this. It is still a guessing game out there, and I'd hate it if anyone ruined the fun.


I'll post more stuff later.

Edited by Silver Swordsman, 21 November 2011 - 11:24 AM.

[biZarRo]

Looks great as always Silver, can't wait to see more.

[Ryan Shrout]

Thanks for the advanced release man! These look great, and I'm quite excited for you that you finally got a computer that won't hinder your designing. The stuff looks incredible as always. Good luck on your little (or not so little?) project on the other two sites. Hope it goes well for you.

[Silver Swordsman]

Two comments is not called gratitude, but thanks to those who did reply.

Weilan Industrial's parking lot and cafe. These two shots will play an important role in Chapter 2.

[Vicarious Chair]

NICE. Few problems, though. In the parking garage, find better pillars... actually,thats it. Very nice work; I'd like some better angles of the restaurant... I want some of that 3ds chicken.

[Tyler Carlton]

You never cease to amaze me. I'm pretty sure even the makers of the game would be wow-ed as to how you are using it. Simply epic.

[Silver Swordsman]

Behold... my grandest failure:



It's a failure on so many levels I don't know how to describe it. First, I don't like it: it was meant to be a business building but it looks more like a hotel/apartment block, the cafe on top clashes horribly with the rest of the structure, and the whole thing didn't turn out the way l wanted it to be. Second of all, I spent so much time on it that I can't afford to throw it away. There you go. Epic failure of epic proportions.


By the way, (awwww, poor VC), here are two more shots of the restaurant interior:





By the way, can a mod change the subscript of this thread to "aka RCT3 Cityscapes 2.0"?

Edited by Silver Swordsman, 22 March 2011 - 10:02 AM.

[Daniel Westfall]

Topic sub-title has been changed!

[Silver Swordsman]

Reports have come in that a derailment has occurred on the Xindi test track. The train was conducting a test run and was running at a speed of 283 km/h when it derailed and struck a cemented wall, which caused the 12-car train to jackknife. The initial cause of the derailment has yet to be discovered. Paramedics have already arrived on the scene, although it remains to be assessed how many persons have been injured or killed, although the gruesomeness of the wreck prompts officials to take no chances, and has declared a state of local emergency: all ambulances and hospitals within 100 kilometers are to anticipate patients. RCT-HSR states that the train was carrying no passengers,but had a team of technicians on board at the time of the crash. So far, paramedics have counted five people with severe injuries, and around two dozen with minor injuries to the head, chest and groin. The driver had sustained several severe physical injuries, but is said to be in stable condition.







A survivor who was said to be manning the sensors mounted on the second car remarked from the hospital:

"We were travelling at around 307 km/h when our sensors began to show signs of shaking and standing waves within the car body. The entire car was shaking. We radioed the driver to decrease speed immediately, and when we had slowed to 283 km/h, we heard a large 'bang', and before we knew it, the lights went out, and we were thrown around the room like toys."







Says William Li, CEO of Swordsman Enterprises, Chairman of the RCT-HSR Consortium at an interview: "This derailment marks the beginning of our trouble-shooting. No system is perfect when it starts, but must be fine-tuned to perfection before the public can use it. Today's derailment was certainly 'unexpected', but it also will provide us with much valuable data. If we can analyze this derailment, it is possible to increase passengers' safety in similar cases in the future."



While Mr. Li's predictions certainly are uplifting and positive, certain opponents of RCT-HSR remain critical of RCT-HSR's decision to start high-speed test runs so soon.



"If the system is unready to the point that a train could derail in such a spectacular fashion today," one critic argued, "then why did they run trains at such high speeds to begin with?"







RCT-HSR has maintained that before today's accident, there had been "no issues" with the trains, and that they had successfully run trains up to 350 km/h without any noticeable incidents.



"We thought that we had addressed everything that needed to be addressed. We were wrong." Said Li at a second press meeting later today.







TC-Industries has defended the integrity of its trains with vigor.

"Our products are the result ofyears of research, testing and perfection. Our rolling stock have carried over 6 billion passengers without a single fatality, and have never suffered a derailment during normal operation. It is not the fault of the trains that today's derailment occurred. The cause lies either in poorly constructed track or human error."







This derailment is the second deadliest accident in the history of high speed rail. The first accident occurred in Germany,1999, when a faulty wheel partially disintegrated during normal operations,which resulted in the train colliding with a bridge pylon at speeds of 270 km/h and the death of nearly 120 passengers.



RCT-HSR and the NTSB are currently investigating the cause for the crash.

April Fools News, RCT-Press2011, Sawyer City.

Edited by Silver Swordsman, 01 April 2011 - 11:22 PM.

[Ryan Shrout]

I'm not even going to ask how you did all that. All I will say is that I am ridiculously impressed at your mastery of RCT3 cheats, hacks, and whatever other magic you make that thing do.

[Silver Swordsman]

I'm not even going to ask how you did all that. All I will say is that I am ridiculously impressed at your mastery of RCT3 cheats, hacks, and whatever other magic you make that thing do.

It's not that hard, actually. It was an idea I got when I was messing around one day and the notion never really left me.

I only used four objects.

TycoonCoaster's unreleased 700T (full length) trains
RR Invisible Track
Basic mathematics
Pause button

Each car is 28 meters long. For comparison, a standard RCT3 curve has a radius of less than 8 meters. Since the car orientation is fixed by its wheels, the car will face whatever direction the wheel is currently standing on. To get what I mean, draw a squiggly line, and choose any two points on the line that are a specific distance apart, and make these two points the ends of a rectangle. You will see that no matter how squiggly the line is, the rectangle's vector will always follow these two points, and by adjusting these points, one can get many "interesting" formations for the train.


I know that my explanation isn't very good. I'm tired and sick at the moment, but I appreciate your patronage. It makes me feel special.








EDIT: Oh, and here's my first test using the Bloom Mod. Cheers?

Edited by Silver Swordsman, 02 April 2011 - 10:30 AM.

[Daniel Westfall]

[/sarcasm]

OMG....IT LOOKS LIKE A TRAIN WRECK!!!!!!!!

[/sarcasm]

I know it's a terrible joke.....but I couldn't pass it up....it was too easy.


Now for the serious part....it actually looks pretty awesome....some fire and smoke would make it extra-nice, guess it's too late for changes though since you've already posted the story to the Shyguy forums. For the ammount of time you were able to put into this one, it looks superb.

EDIT: Way to go in and remove the picture of the train wreck and make my post make no sense

[Silver Swordsman]

I PROMISED you guys that this site would get previews before Atari and SGW did. I'm serious.

First batch of pictures using the Bloom Mod.


I'm driving up the detail level up by a lot...


Before the main span


I'm trying to go for maximum accuracy in these pictures - that is literally how viaducts are built! (Proof)


...and this is how you build longer spans.


You're starting to get the idea.


Note that this is still not yet finished. I put this together in little over one week.

EDIT: More pictures.












Some comments would be nice, you know.

Edited by Silver Swordsman, 21 May 2011 - 09:26 AM.

[Reapers Ashes]

Do you make your own cs?

[Silver Swordsman]

Do you make your own cs?

Nope. I'm a Sketchup illiterate.

Oh, so many pictures unlocked by ONE little post!

Edited by Silver Swordsman, 23 May 2011 - 10:02 AM.

[Tyler Carlton]

Seriously man. You do things with RCT3 that are so unbelievably beautiful. Never in a million years did I expect to see something of this caliber (well and of this subject) done in RCT 3 when the game was released. Keep up the amazing work.

[Ryan Shrout]

That second picture is absolutely mind blowing. I really don't understand how you manage to make such realistic looking weather using just the standard particle effects. Oh and that span over the river is just sick!

[Silver Swordsman]

I would say that for the second shot it was simply taking advantage of RCT3's inbuilt weather system with the Bloom Mod: setting the game brightness to max + rainy night + Bloom Mod = cool pic.

On the other note, I would like to remind everyone that one should not be heaping praise on me; I believe it is by the grace of God that I am allowed to build such things--His Creation's creations are still His Creations.

Then again, enough lecturing . So many comments deserve CONTENT.

I spent the last two days finishing the Xindi Milepost 01 (the map I used for the April Fool's Joke) for an AP Environmental Science presentation on High Speed Rail Sound Pollution. I also ended up with a TON of new pictures. Here are the best.









Comments are appreciated as always... although they will be required to unlock more content.

[Reapers Ashes]

I don't know how you do this. Do you draw things out before you do them?

[Silver Swordsman]

nope. I do have like a slight idea of what the terrain looks like before I start (ex. a really deep, snaking river for Alepas Gorge with a bit of highway on the side). Technically, building an HSR isn't "hard" (it never curves; it's only a straight line), the challenge is to beat the obstacle course you have set for yourself.

You can say that I have experience as in what kind of structure to employ under what conditions, but other else than that, it's mostly copying and pasting pre-assembled structures designed for the task beforehand.

[The BeastFan]

Are all these scenes set up in one big scenario or do you just make different scenes from scratch in different park files?

[Silver Swordsman]

Each "update" is a different work bench. RCT3 has a maximum park size of 254x254 units (1016 meters), so I cannot build a 100-mile long span unless someone "hacks" the game to allow larger park sizes. But I'm not too keen on that because RCT3 is awfully detailed in itself. Shadows, individual building and tree placement... I mean look at Microsoft Train Simulator. Everything's on one map, and they had to cut the detail down by a lot to keep the game from crashing. Limiting the span to 1 mile at a time means that each mile can be modeled with much more detail.

[Silver Swordsman]

I know that technically this is a double-post, but I feel that with an update of more than TEN pictures, along with the ever-persisting problem of getting no comments, it certainly shouldn't matter. At least I'm not SPAMPOSTING.


The "Debut" pics of the 700T trainset. Kinda redundant for you guys since you've seen so many operational pics already, but for most people on SGW, Atari and RCTLounge (I'm considering on expanding there too), this will be the first time they will setting their eyes on these new trains.












Some more pictures taken from Xindi Milepost 01.




First shown shot of the interior. I did not use Bloom Mod for this because it actually detracted from the look.


I'm on the verge of being an attention whore and begging for comments. Do I have to???

Edited by Silver Swordsman, 29 May 2011 - 01:28 AM.

[Nessie]

Wow, those looks pretty sweet once again. I love the interior as well.

You are freakishly good at building this railway.

[Daniel Westfall]

Can you explain the "light show" a bit? It looks awesome, but I can't see how I personally would ever want to be in a loading station that looked like a rave party (part of that is that I personally can't tolerate strobe lights with my epilepsy, but that's a different story). Anyways...I'm sure you have a reason for designing it the way you did that is better than "I thought it looked cool" and I'd love to hear it.