Greg's Coaster Stuff

Welcome to my pathetic little page of information about RollerCoaster Tycoon™.

First, there's my RCT Track Decoder Utility, a program to help you build tracks that the game won't build from a saved design (and yes, it supports RCT2 track files as well as original RCT). To install, just unzip the files to the folder of your choice, run the setup utility, and follow the prompts. To uninstall, use Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs. The program will load any track file (except for hedge mazes) and list the segments that compose the track. You can either run it side-by-side with RCT in a window or export the list to a text file so you can print it out (e.g., with Notepad, Wordpad, etc.) to use as a guide to build your track. Note that since RCT2 will only run full-screen, printing out the list is really the only practical way to use it.

Second, I've written an illustrated tutorial that shows you how to build a row of shops inside the loop of a coaster so that they appear to be floating in mid-air. It's a neat visual effect, plus the shops and path inside the loop enhance the excitement rating of the coaster.

Third, here are some of my saved games. They all require the Loopy Landscapes™ add-on pack. Some of them also require you to have Josef Drexler's patch installed to be able to load them. (Sorry, I don't have screen shots of these parks.). Except where otherwise noted, all of the coasters in these parks are my own original designs.

Greg's Oasis is my first serious attempt at building a themed park. Its centerpiece and main attraction is a huge steel twister quad racing coaster. If part of the layout looks familiar, that's because it's based on the "Woodchip-Woodchip" wooden racing coaster from the Crumbly Woods scenario. I split that coaster into two separate coasters instead of one coaster with two stations, then used my track decoder utility to mirror the tracks, then improvised madly on the second half of the run to add more "stunts" including two four-wide head-to-head flybys. Note the use of a "dummy" coaster (actually a wooden wild mouse) to allow synchronizing the separated stations of the steel coasters, making room for entrance and exit paths from all stations while still using full-length stations for maximum capacity. Other interesting techniques in this park include building rides (swinging inverter ships and go-kart tracks, in this case) that extend up into the hollow area beneath the Egyptian pyramids. Note that this while this is a neat way to use the space occupied by the pyramids, it does not make the rides count as "indoor".

Rotting Heights shows how I rebuilt the existing "Phantom" wood twister coaster, preserving all of the original track present at the beginning of the scenario. Note that there's just enough track underground for this coaster to count as an "indoor" ride, so guests will ride it in the rain (handy since this is a fairly rainy scenario).

Volcania shows how I finished the five existing coasters in order to complete the scenario.

Arid Heights contains two racing steel twister coasters of my own design. It also contains the aforementioned "Woodchip-Woodchip" racing coaster from Crumbly woods with a couple modifications of my own. I split it into two separate coasters to increase the ride's capacity and extended the ending a bit to add the water splash sections and provide better synchronization between the tracks (I'm running longer trains than the original, which messes up the timing a bit).

Finally, for those of you who are interested, here are instructions for configuring your system so that you can run Loopy Landscapes™ without needing the CD in the drive.