War Zone

http://nldc.interfix.net/p517

An Intamin Rocket Coaster I'm working on. I'll upload the pictures again tomorrow with a higher resolution so they're better quality.

Anyways, I heard Real mentioning Buster's Gravitator, so I went to check it out on CS.com, and I was amazed. After riding that coaster I upped my standards for myself with building using Elementary, so I'm going to try to make this coaster more complex than I've been building them for about a month or so. Not saying I have anywhere near the skill as Buster does when making tracks, I'm just going to work extremely hard on this.

And no, just because I'm using tools it doesn't mean I'm not spending a lot of time on this track. It gives me much more of a headache to build a few elements in Elementary strung together than just placing nodes by hand.

So check out those pics, and enjoy. My favorite is this one especially:
http://nldc.interfix.net/i2967
You can see how I integrated a brake on this tophat just like Kingda Ka. Be sure to look for more of these when more screenshots are uploaded.

EDIT - This twist is a pain in the ass. There are very small twitches at the end of the heartline that I can't figure out how to remove. It's minor, and frankly I don't care too much, but I'd like to get rid of them. Could anyone who uses the AHG give me any pointers on what to do to get a smoother roll here? Thanks.

Its looking nice so far.

I get those small twitches as well, especially on the smaller turns. I would like to find out how to get rid of them as well.

[Brtnboarder495]

Cant you run the track through AHG or the node smoother? I dont know how to specifically use the AHG, but I am sure someone here does. All in all nice track so far, but don't trim over the top hat - I know KK does it, but it was a little mistake IMO.

To get rid of twitches I turn the Precision down to 5 (4 is usually too little) and I turn the Filter way up. Sometimes over 40-50 but it depends on the roll. Ive only ever really had to do that on a JoJo roll (ha, go figure) but if you get your banking as good as possible before hand, you wont have to turn up the filter that high.

Lots of trial and error. Like said in the tools thread, you wont get it all right on the first try.

Well, I don't bank my track at all before running it through the AHG (except for woodies). I'll mess around with the precision a bit and see what kind of results I get...haven't changed the filter or precision settings yet.

don't trim over the top hat - I know KK does it, but it was a little mistake IMO.

Don't worry. This trim gives INSANE airtime. It might get me a few more points in my adrenaline rating.

How are you banking it then? A tool or letting the AHG?

I would personally bank it as close to 0 as you can get it, then turn the spine pure black and run through ahg. I usually get better results that way since if I want the roll to accelerate or decelerate, etc, I can control that. For a top hat, you want it to get faster as you go up and get slower as you go down. Its a small detail but one that overlooked will take away from the feel of it.

I let the AHG do all of the banking. I never bank the track in Elementary, because I see no need to.

This tophat is a little different than Intamins' though. The pullup turns right, and theres no twisting anywhere else, all the turning is in the pullup. I was going to make it a standard Intamin Tophat, but two reasons kept me from doing that:

1) The AHG doesn't bank vertical track
2) I built the tophat at a 90 degree difference than how I wanted it to be, so the heartlines were at a 0 degree angle, ran it through the AHG, and it worked PERFECTLY, but then when I rotated it with the purg 90 degrees all the banking was completely screwed up.

Which brings me to wonder one other thing: Is there a way to let the purg rotate an element but keep the banking in RELATIVE to the track? For example, the parabola of the tophat I made was banked at 90 degrees because it was 0 degrees with the ground, but when I rotated the track, there was still 90 degree banking on it once it was 90 degrees to the ground. Basically, I just am wondering if theres a way to keep the banking in relative to the track when running through the purg.

The AHG will now bank vertical track as long as its not 90 degrees perfect. Buster updated it a bit ago. It now does up to like 89 which is totally indistinguisable.

http://nldc.interfix.net/pageid-6.html

Heres 3 pictures, all different angles. The thing was totally AHG'd.

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Wow, this AHG is great...now the heartline stays straight when I make angled heartlines and such. I still get awkward wobbles though when making flat heartlines...not sure why.

Give me an example of a flat heartline. I used it to create the JoJo roll which was a dead straight heartline roll. I banked it first myself because I didnt want it to be a constant roll (slow - fast - slow) and all I had to do was crank up the filter and turn precision down. That way is alters my original design some, but not much.

Banking of each vertex from left to right:
0, 0, -25, -90, -180, 90, 0, -90, -180, 90, 25, 0, 0

Each segment is exactly 10m long.

I set the "Main Track Color" to pure black for all segments. And ran it through the AHG. As you can see from the screenshot below, the result was basically 2 perfect heartlines. Problem is, they twitch a lot.

Set the precision to 5 and filter to 50. Make sure con roll is on for all parts you want to roll. Id suggest turning it off on a segment or 2 before and after the roll so the AHG knows where to stop filtering.

If not, send it my way at coasterreal@gmail.com and Ill see what I can do. I did that very same thing with JoJo on Hydra and its sweet.

Worked great! Thanks. It reduced the laterals in the rolls a bit also. It isn't perfect, but it's very close. I'm sure that messing around with the filter and precision settings a bit will get them close to flawless.

These heartlines were just a test though, I'm not going to insert these into my rocket coaster. Just using them to learn more about precision and filter.

IntaimFan looking very good!!! keep up the great work!

[Brtnboarder495]

Ok if the trim adds air let it be, but trim on a top hat is a hit or miss. Either it murders the pacing and provides no air or if it is angled enough it can really be effective in the air department.

could i have a link perhaps to the auto-heartline generator so i can DL

http://nldc.interfix.net/pageid-6.html
Thanks for the comments BTW [:)]

Originally posted by Brtnboarder495

Ok if the trim adds air let it be, but trim on a top hat is a hit or miss. Either it murders the pacing and provides no air or if it is angled enough it can really be effective in the air department.

How can a trim add airtime? I was joking about putting the trim on there. You actually think I'd put a trim on any of my coasters? Just wanted to see what people would say about it [;)]

thanks intamin fan but when ever i try to heartline a track it says ERROR

That's because the input speed isn't high enough.

what do you mean by the input speed?

You'll see a category which you can change the value of the "V in (m/s) " (input speed or better worded the speed that the train is going when it enters the element you wish to heartline) and "V out (m/s)" (speed the train is traveling at when it leaves the element). They have to be in meters per second, so you can use the mph to m/s converter (or kmph to m/s) at the bottom of this page to find out those speeds. On the AHG download page that Real and I linked to you can find out more information, or you can read the notepad file that the AHG came with to learn more about the program.

thanx intamin!

[Brtnboarder495]

I actually think trim could add air or at least sustain it, it is hard to explain, but I believe it is possible. Of course the track would have to be edited too.

no problem PumpMeUp.


Brtn, yeah I see what your talking about. For example, if a hill had -1.5g average over the parabola, but a trim reduced that average force to -.5g it would be sustained longer.

http://nldc.interfix.net/p517

Three new pics of the redone tophat have been added.