The Chiller - New B&M Floorless (POSTED!)

So, does anyone even remember that I used to actually design coasters on this site rather than just doing contest ratings? [:p] Yeah, it's been 2 years since I've released a coaster, and a whopping 5 years since I've released one not built for a contest.

In retrospect, the problem was that I was just taking on projects that were too damn big. And I just couldn't find the motivation to build anything anymore when I knew that I had 60+ hours of terrain, support work, and 3ds ahead of me. Is it any wonder I stopped building with projects like "Lava Blast," "The Rockler 2," and "Cataclysm 2" looming over my head?

I figured that it was time to get back to my roots. Back in 2003, I was releasing a new coaster almost every single week. So what was it that made coaster-building so fun back then, and such a terrible bore to me now? The answer was ideas. Back then, I could come up with an idea and churn out the resulting coaster easily within 2 weeks, and voila! My idea was reality! Constant idea stream, constant feedback, now that was fun! While now with all the supporting and technical nitpicking that I was doing, it was taking months or years to get a single idea to come to fruition.

The answer? Time to go back to where it all began. Come up with a layout, build the coaster, slap some supports on it, post it, and learn from others' ratings rather than being so self-critical while building it. Simple as that. So expect me to actually start coming out with coasters on a semi-regular basis again! And with that said, I proudly present to you: The Chiller!



I actually designed this coaster way back in 9th grade. It was the last coaster I drew on paper during the 2000-2001 school year, officially my 49th design since 3rd grade. At the time, I wasn't that happy with it, but revisiting it in NoLimits and tweaking the layout proved to create some great potentials for fun ideas.

The original "new idea" that this coaster was based around was called the "Dive Loop Boomerang," which consisted of an immelman immediately leading into a dive loop. The rest of the coaster was almost identical to the standard B&M element sequence, and thus at the time I thought it was too boring. But as can be seen in the pictures, I found some fun ways to tweak that sequence into something a bit more fun.



The three things that I added to make the coaster more fun were: 1, I made the 0-g roll go directly over the lift hill (picture above). 2, I made the sea serpent element and the dive loop boomerang interlocked (top picture). And 3, I added some splashes of floater air near the ride's end.

Here's some pics of the layout, including the original drawing of the layout from spring 2001. I kept the same basic element sequence, but switched the direction of a lot of the elements and heavily modified the ending of the ride.

For explanations of the numbering in the next 2 pictures, see below.



1. Lift Hill (180 ft)
2. 162 ft First Drop
3. 132 ft Vertical Loop
4./5. Diving Loop Boomerang (Immelman then Dive Loop)
6. 0-G Roll Over Lift
7. 3.6-g rising turn
8. MCBR
9. Diving Left/Right Turn
10. Sea Serpent (interlocked with boomerang)
11. Hammerhead (pops of air on both sides)
12. Tunnel Turn
13. Corkscrew
14. Overbanked Turn (100 degrees)
15. 3.5-g ground turn
16. Elevated Heartline Transition (w/airtime!)
17. Final Brakes / Station


Original Layout Drawing:




PROGRESS:
Trackwork: 100% done
Supports: 0% done
3ds: 0% done


Any coloring suggestions? The original drawings were white track with blue supports, but I was thinking going with the lighter blue track pictured above (although I can't think of a good support color to go with it.) Any recommendations?



(10/9 update:)
Track has been posted and can be found at this link:
http://www.coastercrazy.com/track_exchange/detail/18535

I think I need to do exactly it is that you're doing, my only problem now is the mountain of design work for school I'm always doing, I have no time nor motivation to design roller coasters anymore because I am always in design.
As for your ride I really like the layout, and its almost gurenteed to be smooth since its newtoned, and the 0-g roll looks pretty intense.

Nice handwriting.

Very good looking coaster, all kidding aside. How about medium to dark red track and ties with a lighter red rails, and dark gray supports?

Not understanding the difference between the Dive Loop Boomerang and the Sea Serpent

Also what the hell is #10 on your written draft, lol.

First nice coaster,this looks soo sweet.
And I thought I had a bad handwriting.If my teachers would see it,they'd stop bragging about mine.

Originally posted by GerstlCrazy

Not understanding the difference between the Dive Loop Boomerang and the Sea Serpent

Also what the hell is #10 on your written draft, lol.

1. It's a shaping/feel thing. Sea Serpents are generally more like a cobra roll, fast and containing all positive-g's, while the Dive Loop Boomerang is paced more like a dive loop would be, with hangtime at the apex of both inversions and not as much spinning.

2. Lol, yeah, it says "Enodi." That's my 9th-grade word for a Sea Serpent before I knew that they actually existed and had a name already.

[Coasterkidmwm]

So it's a really lame version of a sea serpent you made to avoid shaping the thre snaps?

Originally posted by Coasterkidmwm

So it's a really lame version of a sea serpent you made to avoid shaping the thre snaps?

I'm really not interested in fighting these battles anymore. Thank you for your opinion, and the whole point of me building coasters now is to try things out and see how people like them. Clearly you don't. That's one opinion, and I'd still like to see what everyone else thinks. Some will probably agree with you, some probably won't. I'll take it. IMO, that's the point.

I'm sure you didn't build that element to avoid certain shaping, however I do agree that I wouldn't class it as a new element, just a differently shaped sea serpent. Either way, it still looks fun to ride.

Support colours that come to mind are maybe dark teal or blue, but that could just be because the track colour reminds me of Leviathan.

May I ask what tool(s) you used to build this?

The shaping doesn't even look bad to me.

Whether you look at it as two sea-serpents or not, it'll still be interlocking which will give it an interesting visiual appeal. If only you could find a way to time it perfect so that two trains passed eachother at that point.

Originally posted by Wing-Over

May I ask what tool(s) you used to build this?

The finished version was 100% Newton 2, mainly for the sake of smoothness and ease, but I built a test version by hand first to plan the layout and see what kinds of g-forces I needed to plug in to get the shaping I wanted. I hoped that this would help me avoid some of the shaping pitfalls that tend to come with Newton. (Plus I made heavy use of a g-force graph from Kumba for reference...)

Originally posted by CKidd

If only you could find a way to time it perfect so that two trains passed eachother at that point.

That would be pretty much impossible, since the sea serpent is directly after the MCBR, while the big one has the drop and the loop in front of it. However, I am planning on timing it so that a train is going through the 0-g roll while the next one is going up the lift right under it, so there is at least some interaction of that sort.

Okay, folks, color panel time!


Here's the paint scheme I was originally thinking of when I chose the light blue rails:


Here's the coaster's original paint scheme from my 9th grade drawings:


Here's disaster249's suggestion: (which could still work with the name if I change it to "chilling" in the scary sense rather than literal coldness)


And here's Wing-Over's suggestion:


What do you all think?

My opinions on all the colors are:
#1: I don't really like this one because it seems too similar to Kraken and is a little bland
#2: For some reason seems really patriotic, not sure why, and no very chilling
#3: I have always been a fan of this type of color scheme but the name would have to be changed to some thing else, my suggestion would be Ripper
#4: I really like this one but it just doesn't extrude a chilling sense.
For a final verdict I would have to say either #3 or #4 but with a name change.

[Metazoanhaddock]

first or fourth schemes...

I like door number 4.

[GavG]

Number 4

Ewww, none of those. It's like trying to pick the prettiest fat chick.

[Coasterkidmwm]

I'm pretty sure they're all default color schemes in Roller Coaster Tycoon

PROGRESS UPDATE:

Did a lot of supporting work, including my first ever time using 3ds track connectors for the looping portion. (I'm not going to do this for the entire ride like some people do, though. I did at least try it, but it took too damn long, so I don't have the patience.)

Also, since color scheme #4 seemed to be the most popular, I took that as a base and tweaked it a bit more to make it look better, as well as to make the teal a more of a "chilling" color.

Support work is now approximately 50% complete.

Once that is done, the last things I have to do are make a 3ds tunnel and add some finishing touches like the lift mechanisms and undercarriage stuff to hold up the lift's chain and catwalks. None of this should take very long. A release date within the next week or so seems reasonable at the moment.


And with all of that said, here are a couple of pictures showing the new color scheme and some of the support work.

Any suggestions or comments would be greatly welcomed. Also, do you guys think that I should bother with phalanges? I'm trying to balance the gain in realism versus the drop in frame rate.

I'm sorry when I say this, but the trackwork looks like a mess. I'm seeing an excess of newton references, and it looks to me that you did not put forth a substantial amount of effort when making the track.

^Okay, such as?

I'm still willing to go back and re-shape elements by hand if you'll kindly point out what looks misshapen to you.

*shudder*...I suggest you don't reshape Newton elements by hand. That introduces a list of potential problems that are very hard to overcome, and the final result will almost never be as good as one that was done right the first time in Newton.

Originally posted by dcs221

*shudder*...I suggest you don't reshape Newton elements by hand. That introduces a list of potential problems that are very hard to overcome, and the final result will almost never be as good as one that was done right the first time in Newton.

Well, then, I guess I'll just release it, take the criticism, and apply it on my next coaster. I guess that's the spirit of this new technique anyway. Rather than nitpicking my rides to death in the hard hat topics, I just post a bunch of coasters and learn from the ratings.

Good idea because we're all good at nit-picking