Cobra Simulator

[Peter]

Since October I’ve been learning C programming for my course at uni, got fed up of creating useless “hello world” programs and so ended up doing a lot of research and learning at home.

Just before Christmas I found DarkGDK a “free professional gave development environment” for use with C and C++ programming. I played around and made a small breakout game (you know, the one where you control a bar along the bottom of the screen and there is a ball bouncing around. You have to hit floating blocks and they disappear when you do…)

Anyway, after Xmas I wanted to expand my programming skills further and decided to develop a small coaster simulator. I’ve been working on it most days in my spare time and its finally ready!

So after a month and a bit of work (with an average of an hour or so a day) and with over 5000 lines of code, I’m proud to present, exclusively to CoasterForce, the Cobra Simulator!

Cobra Simulator

You're an operator for the day on Cobra, a Gerstlauer Bobsled coaster at Paultons Park. Opened in March 2006, Cobra is the largest investment at Paultons Park to date. This family ride uses 5 car operation, with a maximum of 4 guests per car. The Cobra takes guests on a thrilling ride at speeds of up to 31mph along its twisted 450m course.

Your job is to operate Cobra for one whole day. The park opens at 10:00, but you're given 15 minutes before opening to start testing the ride and familiarise yourself with the controls. Keep an eye on the queue line and aim to have an empty queue at the park's closing time of 17:00 - it may be necessary to close the queue early to keep ahead of schedule. You don't want to be caught up still loading guests hours after closing!

Aim to maximise the ride's capacity and minimise queue length, whilst keeping guest safety as your top priority.

Notes

First things first:

YOU WILL NEED DIRECTX 9.0c AUGUST 2007 OR MORE RECENT

If you do not have DirectX 9.0c SDK Aug 07 or later, the game will not run, and will throw up a error message saying “cannot find file d3dx9_35.dll” or similar. If this is the case, you need to download the latest version of DirectX, which can be found here. (Vista users should already have directX10, so should have no need to download that.) From my experience, alot of people don't have that version or more recent on their PC, so alot of you might get that error. :?

Besides that, the program *should* run fine of most PC, as long as your running Windows. I’m currently unsure if it will run on other operating systems, such as Mac or Linux. I don’t know anyone who actually uses one at home to test it on. ( I very much doubt that it will work since it uses a windows installer. If someone has another operating system, I might be able to transfer across the raw files and give you instructions to install it manually, but still the chances of working are slim.)

All other notes, controls, explanations and help e.t.c are included within the ReadMe file, which you can find within the download.

If the admins/mods want to, I’d love to have the simulator put up for download on the main site, as no doubt within a week this topic will have drifted to the bottom of the forums and everyone will have forgotten about it. If the admins wish, I can edit the program so it’s “made exclusively for CF”.

Finally, although the program has been extensively tested (by me and a few others) there may be bugs that pop up or problems with installation/running. If you find any bugs/problems or something you think would make it better, please drop me a PM or post it here. I already have plans for a v1.1 (unless I make another simulator for a different ride), so if anyone spots anything that needs changing, please say!

Download!

The download is a simple installer file. Download and save it to your disk somewhere, then just double click and follow the standard windows installer wizard, then your ready to roll!

File size is 7Mb download, and requires 10Mb of disk space to run. (I should hope everyone has atleast 10Mb of space! )

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Special Thanks

Cobra Simulator (v1.0) was designed and created by Peter Gibbons (that’s me!) 2008.

All the rights of the elements used in this simulation, belong to Peter Gibbons, except for the name, design and logo of Cobra which belongs to Paultons Park. This simulation has no commercial base and is just for fun.

Special thanks goes to Mark Slade (Slayed) for helping me with the coding, ideas, testing and general support, and Owain Davies (Ploddish) for providing images and again, ideas, testing and support.

 

[Anonymous]

I thought Rich helped you a lot with it?

 

[Hixee]

It looks good. I'm not on my own PC so I cannot download it, but I will do it later if I can get on my own PC.

 

[Peter]

I thought Rich helped you a lot with it?

If you mean richy_t, then I only sent him the (basically) finished game to try out a few days ago, that was all.

 

[richy_t]

Yeh, I also helped get the realism for the tyres & queue line. Also described what the touch screen computer showed about blocks etc.

 

[Deano]

Hey.
Great sim.!
I had to download Direct X Latest version, But that didn't take to long
Its really good. Better than thoose ones on that website you sent.
Well-done!

 

[Ploddish]

I really like this actually, and I'm not just saying that cuz I drew the people in the carriages

From not knowing *any* programming at all, to making this was *very* impressive. He made a little breakout game for christmas too, and that was (albeit more buggy) also very fun. Thank god he let me change the guests though... they all looked like some sort of deformed pumpkin headed screaming people (he left the ride op as they all used to look like, but he just looks like he has a combover now )

While not too complicated in mechanics, I think this could be a stepping stone to things yet to come, so I think a cheer to Peter is due.

Woooooooooo!

 

[DjTommyB]

That was pretty good! Great work.

 

[Ollie]

Downloading this as I post.

Edit:
I've downloaded all the programs you've said that I need to. and after I installed it and clicked on the icon to start it I got a pop-up message saying...

"This application has failed to start because d3dx9_35.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem."

I've tried re-installing it but keep getting the same pop-up. :?

 

[A-Kid]

^ Install the DirectX update and it runs.

It was very good! I have sat here for half an hour playing with it!

 

[Peter]

Thanks for the comments guys, glad you like it and it hasn't crashed and burned on other peoples PC's .

To Coaster Ollie:

The "d3dx9_35.dll" is a directX error - You need to upgrade your directX to the one I posted. Seems like you downloaded it, but did you install the directX as well as installing the simulator?

Try going Start -> Run and type in "dxdiag" and press Ok. That should show you what version of DirectX you are running.

Also, what operating system are you on? If your running Vista then you should already have DirectX10 and won't need the update. If its a non-Microsoft system, then chances are it won't work at all.

 

[Slayed]

I've downloaded all the programs you've said that I need to. and after I installed it and clicked on the icon to start it I got a pop-up message saying...

"This application has failed to start because d3dx9_35.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem."

I've tried re-installing it but keep getting the same pop-up. :?

Make sure it really is the latest version of DX 9.0c (November 2007 is it?), as Microsoft didn't bother updating the version number...

 

[Ollie]

I have windows xp on my computer.
And I have directx version 9.0c.

But I did download directx and the sim at the same time but I didn't install the sime untill after the directx had finished downloading.

Also when directx had finished downloading it asked where I wanted to save it's contents, so does it matter where I save it?

Thanks. This looks really good and would like to give it a go.

 

[Slayed]

OK, you've downloaded the DirectX 9.0c, but have you run it?

Sorry if that seems a dumb question but it's not clear from your post .

(Doesn't matter where you save it to, as long as you then run it).

 

[Ollie]

I ran it afterwards yes.

Edit:
Works now. Don't know what the problem was but I downloaded the file you needed from here instead.
http://gdk.thegamecreators.com/?f=downloads

Anyway the sims very good, well thought out and shows that you have taken your time with it.

And if it's the first sim you've ever made then it's exellent quality.

Well done.

 

[nealbie]

I liked that, it was rather fun!

Congratulations

 

[NASHER]

Hi,
I'm running Vista, and it still throws up that same error? Anyone know what could be wrong?
*EDIT* turns out you need to download the latest directX even if you are running vista. Ignore my question. *EDIT*

 

[Peter]

Glad you like it guys, hope it gave some entertaiment.

The directX problem can be a bit annoying, different people seem to need different versions of it for it to work.

I've got 14 weeks off during the summer, which I think I might try and tackle another more improved version of a rollercoaster simulator. If anyone has any suggestions of rollercoasters that would be interesting to try out, or any other features that they would like to see in a rollercoaster sim, just post below or PM me and i'll see what I can do.

 

[Ollie]

Blackhole could be rather interesting.
Or you could try doing a non-coaster ride that allows for maximum user control. Kind off like the Ripsaw simulator on Towerstime.
Good luck whatever you do though.

 

[Rob]

^ ^well, I can't get the Cobra one working as I can't solve the problem with Direct X. (I'm using early XP)

As far as new sims go, I'd love to see a Rush one. Ideally, with an SFX panel so you can play the launch announcement, use 2005 or 2006 music, play loading announcement, ride end etc. (But always include an off button, lots of people like to use different music, like FN or whatever). What would also be good would be if you can dispatch the ride empty, operate 1 swing only etc. Also, ride ops which walk around and check restraiants would be good. Just some suggestions... :--D

EDIT: Some more ideas, basically using the same sort of functions as above, but ride type suggestions:
> Wooden Rollercoaster, never been done before and would be nice.
> A good accelerator recreation (again, never been done)
> Reverchon Wild Mouse

I still prefer my Rush idea, but I hope I've given ou some ideas to play with there.

EDIT (2):
After pratting around with direct x for a while (like an hour) I've finally got it to work. The Cobra sim is good, but I have the following nit-picking problems;
1. The mouse is hard to control - its quite a challenge to close/minimise the game
2. I'd love the ability to take trains on/off
3. It would also be nice if you could choose the park open/closing times, or eben be able to just turn the timings off.
4. It would also be good if you could choose how busy it is, ie: quiet, normal, busy, so you could give yourself the challenge of a huge queue.
5. I hate the way it gets to the end of the day. It would be nice if you could turn that off. Maybe also a daytime/night time mode and lights would be good.

But, very well made and one of the better ones out there, keep up the good work