[NL2] Overdrive - First Project Thread

Hey all!

After plenty of lurking, I've finally created an account and become a member! To celebrate, I present to you the layout of my first NL2 project, Overdrive! I'm using this project as a learning experience, so please feel free to provide any useful tips/critique you may have.

[herman116]

It's hard to review a ride without riding it but this ride doesn't look that bad. Maybe it's a bit stretched out but then again, maybe it's just that the speed of this coaster is really fast.

Honestly the colors are really cool, looks like a good ride too

[mkingy]

Yes to the multicoloured trains - reminds me of RCT!

Does maybe look a little stretched but mostly good - especially for a first project! Do you have experience with any other theme park games?

Thank you! The top speed is 80 miles per hour so that's probably why it seems stretched out. I used to play RCT3 but I never really tried to create a full project until I started playing Planet Coaster. I also have some pictures of the progress I have made in Sketchup so far:


If you wanna see how I got here, I've got some older pictures at https://imgur.com/a/FIKuLB9

[herman116]

That's looking great! This will probably be a great first project!

I'm back! Sorry for not providing an update in a while, I haven't had WiFi for the past few days, but it's all good now, and the good news is that I managed to get in a significant amount of progress! I made an album specifically for this update (https://imgur.com/a/urfcVlq), I didn't want to flood this post with a ton of pictures.




Also, if I want to add lights to my model (in a similar way to the lights in this video https://youtu.be/fLEqctNzmk0), would there be a way to do this in SketchUp, or is this something that's done in NoLimits?

[mkingy]

Lights are certainly done in Nolimits.

Also I'd recommend whilst you are at this stage starting to think about how you divide this model up so you aren't importing a single, huge, model - this will have huge implications for performance. Good read: https://www.jackjkelly.com/tutorials/no ... imisation/

Thanks for the advice. I like the article, but what modeling software would you recommend aside from Sketchup? The article says not to use it, but doesn't provide any kind of recommendation.

[mkingy]

Sketch up isn't quite as bad as the article makes out in my opinion - if you don't have time to learn new software then it's good enough for a coaster with scenery - perhaps less so for a full park. The reason I linked it despite this is for the information around splitting objects and occlusion

That said - the other free software to use is Blender: https://www.blender.org/features/modeling/ It has a steeper learning curve than sketch up but naturally that comes with greater flexibility and power once you have the know how.

Just a quick status update, I'm currently just separating the model into smaller chunks so i can just piece the final product together instead of having one piece of scenery. But in other news, I have uploaded a POV of the coaster in its current stage. A majority of the basic structure is done, so I figured I'd upload a POV to highlight interaction with the scenery. Check it out below:

[mkingy]

Awesome - I really like the shaping you've achieved with this - it feels really natural.

The pacing does seem to lag towards the end but with the fully fledged scenery this might be alleviated.

Yeah, the end's pacing has been a glaring issue to me. The plan is to add some Tron-style lighting to all the tunnels and trenches, so hopefully that'll add to the sense of speed that's being lost.