Anyone else feel like they are fighting with the controls when building a coaster?

[eqalidan]

So, I just wanted to build some roller coasters and see what I can do instead of waiting for them to all come in the game portion, but just trying to make one was infuriating. I place the track, go up as high as possible, and just want to remake an old coaster I did in rct, it was a failure, but It was fun to test out the limits of what I could make with it.

I went up as high as I could, and then made a spiral loop down. VERY SIMPLE in rct, I went into the game and made it again just to make sure I wasn't imagining how easy it was.

So here I am, I do the same, I curve the rollercoaster down, and i try to make a spiral down, as tight as I can, but the whole way down, the game fought me, every time I clicked I had to readjust the height of the slope, half the time I clicked on the screen it took me to another part of the track, in the end, the spiral looked like crap, uneven, and generally horrible.

So I say screw it, I'll make a family coaster, this time the cars would not go over the top, and I ended up just deleting the coaster out of frustration of trying to make 1 more chain track that just would not happen.

So not giving up, I made it again, awesome. I make a part of the track go straight up after it came down, and i want the track to make a shoe horn like shape, so I go to curve the track, and all it does is twist/bank it, thinking i used the wrong button, i try it on the twist/bank button and it does the same thing.

After that failed, i tried making it not a vertical bit of track and it worked.

So after 2 hours of that, again, I loaded up openrct2 just to see if I miss remembered how easy it was to make a functional if not intense coaster people would ride... took a minute for me to make a design that i wanted to try to make in this game, sans the horse shoe.

Anyone else frustrated at the games coaster creator?

Also, am I the only one who would rather have some sliders or hotkeys to re position bits of the coaster? The mouse feels like I'm not moving it enough or need to move it to far to get the results I want, and even then, I don't know if those results are the max or minimum, some indication in the form of a meter would be nice.

[Player-13]

I agree with this. RCT3 controls, and also for paths, were better as you could see exactly what you were doing and click on an ikon that you can see will put a piece of track down in the configuration you want, not this rather vauge seeming pointing mouse somewhere in the air and hoping the track will do what you want it to do. I know it is a case of getting used to the controls, but I think it needs the controls to be more visually functional, if that makes sense, for instance, I prefer levers and gears and hissing steam and clanks and roars, not waving magic wand and hoping for some unicorn to appear.

[Backstroke of the west]

Yea I made a thread about this same issue a few hours ago, I just had a hard time figuring out how to explain it.

[eqalidan]

Originally posted by Chertyonok:

I agree with this. RCT3 controls, and also for paths, were better as you could see exactly what you were doing and click on an ikon that you can see will put a piece of track down in the configuration you want, not this rather vauge seeming pointing mouse somewhere in the air and hoping the track will do what you want it to do. I know it is a case of getting used to the controls, but I think it needs the controls to be more visually functional, if that makes sense, for instance, I prefer levers and gears and hissing steam and clanks and roars, not waving magic wand and hoping for some unicorn to appear.

Is there an alternate way to lay track down I'm missing? Because the only way I know feels like a step up in function from a rct game, but a step back in ease of use, what you described sounds like rctw's system, and I would probably like that more for roughing in coasters.

[Player-13]

Well, I can see that the new system should be better and quicker, but for my personal preference it is less user friendly than RCT3, which is the only one of the previous games I played. This system is just too odd with sometimes having to move the mouse a very long way from the track to achieve any sort of turn, and sometimes it all happens like I would expect and want. It feels like not having complete control. Of course there is the good aspect that in this new system we are not restricted to fixed radius curves and fixed degrees of inclines as in RCT. I guess in a week or so after playing more, then this issue with controls will be forgotten as we are used to it, I hope...

[XDeadzX]

I definitely agree on the title. And it's not just building coasters, but in general. Controls work, but they aren't uber intuitive and things don't work. They do enable some really neat things though, if you suffer through them.

[Nori]

Yep fighting every step of the way. I've tried all the controls and can't find anything to my liking.

[eqalidan]

Originally posted by Nori:

Yep fighting every step of the way. I've tried all the controls and can't find anything to my liking.

From the pre release builds I seen, the controls for everything else always looked like a 3d program, but not as painful to use, the bit I played so far I can say I was not wrong, it was pretty much exactly what I thought it was going to be there. Easy ish to use, powerful, but nightmarish because I have no where near the level of creativity to really take advantage of it. I was pinning my hopes on roller coaster building, as that would be fun, but the tools don't work the way you expect them to, the perspective makes building the coaster a chore, and to top that off, the tools have a mind of their own so even if you have everything set the way you want, its a crap shoot if they will keep doing what you want them too.

Here is a fix.

1) a new window that has a graph showing all the numbers, the twist in the coaster, the curve and the height change, that way I don't have to eyeball the thing, or move buttons on the coaster itself around as this is frustrating.

2) If its not in already, a way to select multiple sections of track and edit them at once.
example 1) Oh no, I need to bank this curve, but i 7 small bits that need to curve gradually, let me select 2 of the before the curve pieces, 3 of the curve pieces, and 2 of the post curve so it can average out across all 3 the curve I need apposed to doing it one at a time
example 2) OH ♥♥♥♥ this part of the coaster does not work at all, and I need to edit 8 pieces to get it to work right, welp I have to delete those 8 pieces because there is no way to change one piece of the coaster without interfering with the others to the point the move isn't accepted, now I have to find the controls and hope to get the pieces to line up right, but realistically, scrap the whole damn thing and fight the controls again.

3) a big button that when clicked won't let you accidentally click a separate part of the track,

4) When you want to select parts of the track, either a button to go forward track pieces or back would be nice,

I think this is all that I would need, a further improvement if multipart selecting and editing was in the game would be

5) rctw like track placement as an option.

I played rctw the day it went ea and refunded it due to performance, track creation was another reason i did it because you had absolutely no fine control whatsoever, HOWEVER, you had FAR easier controls to place parts of the track. Let's say that this game put a system like that in, and made it so once you were done placing all the long parts of the track, it split the entire thing into 10 meter or whatever the smallest increment is parts, and you selected multiple sections to add banks to, or finely adjust what you want to happen.

I highly doubt any of this would happen, but I like thinking of ways to fix systems... may get use to how you make coasters... may give it up completely and only use pre built workshop things... not sure yet.

[Tero]

All of the controls in the game are unintuitive and frustrating. It makes me wonder what people were doing in beta testing...

[Sir Dookface McFerretballs]

I agree... Love the game but really wish they had an isolinear placement mode or "classic" construction option. It is a pain to make tight and constrained coasters in this game.

[eqalidan]

Originally posted by Teromous:

All of the controls in the game are unintuitive and frustrating. It makes me wonder what people were doing in beta testing...

to be fair, if you want 100% control of the build process, they did just about as good as you can get before it's a full fledged 3d program, the issue is it's still fairly complex, and most people are not creative enough to take advantage of it.

Originally posted by Sir Dookface McFerretballs:

I agree... Love the game but really wish they had an isolinear placement mode or "classic" construction option. It is a pain to make tight and constrained coasters in this game.

I could live with what they have if they put in menus so i can see exactly how much curve, height, or bank a ride has, and how far im able to still push it. No on screen indication is a problem.

[BoNeZ]

I hate the path laying.

[BLÀde]

yeah they suck i like the old rct 3 controls better

[GameOverRIP]

Having only just picked up the game i agree with OP, the controls are a nightmare in general, trying to line things up, trying to lay straight sections, trying not to delete another section of path which then obstructs something else.

[A Fat, Angry Serval]

I don't have any issues with the coaster builder apart from lining up things at the end of the ride (also, even though I'm familiar with both the standard and metric systems, I have trouble with converting directly in my head. Allowing for standard measurements in the height display would be very helpful for comparisons when pretty much every coaster in the US is measured in feet and coaster clasifications are based on US designs), but one thing I do have trouble with is the game "second-guessing" everything I do. Pathway construction off of grids is terrible due to auto-snap, and whenever I try to click on something that isn't visibly clipping through another object but is within the 3D footprint of that object, it sometimes selects the larger object instead, which shows that they're using the 3D footprints of objects for selection instead of the visible geometry of the object.

[BLÀde]

it's also way harder to make coasters. i just finished building the one in the 3rd pirate scenario i thought i did a good job all it basically has is a really high drop, loop, track going through the loop than onto a corkscrew and finished. but the fear is damned 9.0 no one will go on it!! apparently your not allowed to make high drops