Specialized Studios - Parkitect - Final release!

[Pokemaniac]

I already posted this park on the Parkitect Reddit, but I guess it will find a broader audience here. And Parkitect deserves a bigger audience, because it's turning into quite a good game! Originally, this park was intended as an experiment to see whether a pay-per-entrance strategy with free rides would work in this game, but I later found out that it did, and I started building more for aesthetics. I will spare you the details of profit reports and monetization strategy, and post only the pictures documenting the state of the park itself. So please join me in my quest to build a nice, profitable park in Parkitect, and prepare for countless comparisons to RCT2!

This is the park at the start of the game. Again, I was testing a new monetization scheme, and I wanted as few restrictions as possible. Therefore, I started out with flat land, so I could build a compact park. A compact park requires little infrastructure and few staff, keeping costs down.

For those of you unfamiliar with Parkitect, the gray building with the yellow roof is the Deliveries pad. In Parkitect, shops need to be supplied with goods, and litter bins have to be emptied. Goods crates will be delivered at the Deliveries pad, and this is also where garbage bags must be transported. It is usually a good idea to place the Deliveries pad somewhere near the park's entrance.

The next step was to set goals and rewards. For comparison, the value of money in Parkitect is approximately the same as the value of money in the RCT series. Flat rides can be bought for $350 - $1000, most stalls cost around $250, and staff are paid roughly $15/month. When I made this park, there was a bug in the game that lowered research costs to $25/month, but I think it is intended to be at least 10 times that. The main difference in cost from the RCT series is the cost of coasters. In RCT, you pay only for the coaster's track. In Parkitect, you pay a base cost and for the cost of the track. The base cost varies between $600 (kiddy coaster types) and $2000 (Giga coaster types). Because of the high costs, it will take a while before this park gets its first proper coaster.

After a couple of play sessions and in-game years, this is what the park's entrance area looked like. I had enough money to buy a few thrill rides and shops, but not enough to spend on themeing yet. I splurged on a single fountain for the park's main square, and benches for tired guests to sit on, but otherwise the park is quite empty.

You may notice a small building with a yellow roof behind the lineup of shops to the right. This is a Depot, which is connected to the Deliveries pad via underground conveyor belts. Haulers (you can see one standing in front of the Drinks stall, but the picture is too zoomed out to give a good idea of what they look like) can pick up goods crates from a Depot and deliver them to stalls, either over the desk or through a back door. Janitors can drop off garbage bags at the Depots as well. They act like miniature Deliveries pads, but are quite expensive to build and maintain, so you better not build too many of them. The green-striped paths behind the shops are "staff only" paths. The stripes are actually white by default, but colour coded to fit the colour of the park zones. I have no good picture of zones yet, but they are a close analogue to the patrol zones for staff in RCT, just colour coded.

The green-roofed building is a Staff Room. Staff will go here when they are too tired to work. Those should be built close enough to the main path for staff to reach them quickly, but I don't like them to be too obvious to guests either. The art of hiding utility buildings in plain sight is one of the funniest parts of Parkitect to me!

Beyond the entrance zone, the path splits and shows more rides. The Top Spin and the Jumper were meant to be placed there temporarily, just to widen the lineup for guests, but ended up as permanent features (more on these in parts 4 and 5). I also decided to add a new area to the park, and for the sake of convenience, I expanded in the direction of the Deliveries pad.

Building shops next to the Deliveries pad saved me the cost of another Depot, which is $2000, or approximately as expensive as the three flat rides in this high-thrill section of the park. It was later named the "Soaring Zone", and remains unthemed to this day because I have no idea how to make a theme out of that. The Turbine, seen on the left, is one of the most thrilling flat rides in the entire game, and helped draw a ton of guests to the area. You may also notice a Vending Machine in the middle of the picture. Those little things are easily the highest-performing stalls in the game financially. They are dirt cheap ($150), require no staff other than haulers to refill them (so they are much cheaper to run), and guests will happily pay almost three dollars for a drink or a bag of potato chips crisps gold.

This picture kind of sums up my financial strategy. Rides are clustered around a small court, where guests can buy food, drinks, and (eventually) snacks and souvenirs. Note that all benches are placed next to a food court. The logic is that hungry guests will buy something to eat, sit down, have their meal, and then realize they are also thirsty, while they are still close to a stall where they can buy drinks. I'm not sure if it is working, but it looks nice. It seems that some benches have already been vandalized. Luckily, Mechanics will fix that in this game. Also notice the colour of the staff paths behind the stalls, as they are placed right on the border of the zoned area.

A quick look on the budget, showing the park in dire straits. I took out a loan in February, Year 2, to get some cash for investments. Will it be enough to save the park? And if so, how? The answer to that can be found in the next episode... uhh, in the pictures above. The loan was what paid for the park expansion. As you may see from the "Park Admissions" budget post, it certainly helped. Unlike in RCT, loans in Parkitect are paid back automatically. Once you have taken up a loan, money will be paid every month, until it is paid back, with interest. So even though it looks like the park did not earn more money after the expansion, most of it actually went into paying back the loan. Once that was done, profit increased greatly.

Last, an overview of the park in the middle of year 2. It is pretty bare-bones, but the foundations are laid down, and the future looks bright. Watch out for the next part, which will follow immediately! After all, I have already released four parts of the story on Parkitect's Reddit, so copying them over here takes very little effort. Thank you for reading, feedback would be welcome!

 

[Pokemaniac]

Welcome to part 2! Thanks for coming back! Or scrolling past the first post, I guess, since these two parts are posted back-to-back. This part continues to show the humble beginnings of the park, and its eventual expansion.

As the expansion area started pulling in more money, I had enough left over to start themeing, as well as adding a couple of attractions. Guests really don't want to ride many rides when it's raining, so I added a 4D Cinema and a second set of Bumper Cars. Hey, TusenFryd can get away with two sets of Bumper Cars (at least it could some years ago), so why can't I? I also started work on a Monorail connecting the two areas, and eventually the rest of the park. Unfortunately, a shuttle mode is not yet implemented in Parkitect, so the Monorail will remain useless until the circle is completed. I also added some buildings to the main street. Themeing remains sparse for now, but more iwill be added gradually.

For instance, here's this behemoth. Haunted Elevator actually consists of two separate Drop Towers, housed in the same Art Deco-style building. It is not inspired by anything in particular (not at all, I tell you! Shush!). I also enclosed the Car Ride, and gave the 4D Cinema a nice facade...

...which is pretty hard to see, because the game uses isometric perspectives and Haunted Elevator is so dominant in this area. Whoops. But the flower beds are nice, or what?

Oh well. That issue will be resolved in time (part 3 or 4, I think). In the meantime, I decided to add a kiddy area to the park. The Monorail is extended to the new land (still useless, until the circle is closed), which is also given a Carousel, duelling Teacups, and a Calm River Ride named "It's a Dull World". It is not inspired by anything in particular either. Also note that a couple of new buildings have sprung up around the entrance plaza.

The area also needs some infrastructure. I decided to add two food courts, one for the kiddy area and one for the road going there. To save money, they utilize the same Staff Room and Depot. Luckily, those things have unlimited capacity!

And that concludes part 2. It is year 11, the park has 500 guests or so, but still no coasters. Or, actually the game currently counts all tracked rides as coasters, so technically the Car Ride and It's a Dull World counts. But Part 3 will bring some actual coasters, so tune in next time! Thanks again for reading!

 

[Hixee]

This reminds me of some of the older posts we used to have in the RCT forums. Interesting to see how you're building this up from scratch, and whilst I don't play Parkitect myself, it's interesting to see a bit more it and it's mechanics. I particularly like the depot/staff room features.

 

[Pokemaniac]

This reminds me of some of the older posts we used to have in the RCT forums. Interesting to see how you're building this up from scratch, and whilst I don't play Parkitect myself, it's interesting to see a bit more it and it's mechanics. I particularly like the depot/staff room features.

Thanks for the reply!

I'm posting this park because it's one I have documented the construction of, so it fit well for a part-by-part series. I have a few other parks where the map is filled up too, and maybe one or two of those could be worth posting. I think the game could use some more exposure on here, so some more content could at least be expected in the future.

I think I'll put up part 3 later today.

 

[GuyWithAStick]

Looks like a lovely park! I haven't really gotten into Parkitect, but I might open it up because of this.

Keep it up!

Sent from my VS820 using Tapatalk

 

[Pokemaniac]

As promised, here is Part 3!

Last time, I had added a small kiddy area to the right side of the park. It was equipped with a few flat rides and some shops, but not yet themed. That was quickly fixed:

Yes, that's a third Bumper Cars. Guests love them, and who am I to protest? I also added a second 4D Cinema. They have several different movie settings, so it can be excused. This one is showing the movie "Finding Sharky", and sports a snazzy blue colour scheme (unfortunately, the colour of the building itself can not be changed). The area next to it is set aside for future developments.

By the way, some of the pictures here are taken a little out of sequence. A small hint in the image shows that this is taken way after the area was themed (which happened more or less immediately after I had built the stuff shown in Part 2). Can you see what it is? I'm not saying I have a prize for the winner, but it couldn't hurt to submit an answer anyway.

The entrance plaza got a facelift too. None of the buildings do anything, strictly speaking, but they look nice nevertheless. Gives guests the impression of a small town square, instead of a randomly paved lot on a huge grassy field. At some point, the colours of the Wave Swinger were changed slightly too, but I'm not sure when.

I left room for an access road between the entrance plaza buildings and the warehouse containing It's a Dull World (again, inspired by nothing in particular), for realism's sake. I like building such backstage areas, despite being non-functional they give me that extra bit of immersion.

Now, for the park's first real roller coaster. Say hello to Cloud Surfer, the B&M Invert topping off the lineup of Soaring Zone. It accompanies the Inverted Double Swing and the relocated Turbine, both of which feature a suspended seat position. It is a little short since I only had a limited amount of space and money, but the ending was later rebuilt. Because I haven't yet come up with a theme for Soaring Zone, the area sadly remains unthemed to this date. Suggestions would be welcome!

...but wait! What is that thing you to the right there?

It's the Haunted Hotel! The tall, beige dual Drop Tower that was also inspired by nothing in particular. It was moved away from its previous location because it overshadowed everything, and its front facade was on the perpetually shadowy side. Here it is a little more out of the way, and in a much more spectacular location too if I may say so myself. Moving it cost me some $6000, but I actually had that much money to spare after Cloud Surfer pulled in waves of well-paying guests.

Now the Art Deco street - named Roaring Twenties Boulevard - is a lot easier to see, and the full splendor of the front facade of the 4D Cinema can be adored. Too bad there aren't any RCT2-style signs in the game yet. I'd plaster movie titles all over the building if I could.

The area formerly occupied by the Haunted Hotel now houses a rather large diner and the station of Oldsmobile Assembly Line, a Wild Mouse coaster planned to eventually be enclosed in a building. It also gave me room to run the Monorail through the area, finally closing the loop 15 years after the first station was built. The fourth station is located in a new area at the upper edge of this picture. We will return to it shortly, because I know I have certain expectations to fill first...

Having seen the first glimpse of a roller coaster, I'm sure you were all dying to see what the building next to it looks like on the inside! I hope this picture satisfies all your expectations. Again you can see the zoning system at work with the staff only paths.

Here's the full layout of Oldsmobile Assembly Line. The Wild Mouse coaster is surprisingly cheap to build, letting me create this long and meandering layout without having to take up a loan. Instead I took up a loan to build more rides!

The old Top Spin was turned around and given a companion. Top Spins are perfect rides to place front-to-front and synchronize, since the arms move exactly in synch while the seats rotate seemingly at random. This gives the impression of two duelling combattants exchanging blows. I've decided to call the two Hector and Achilles, after the famous foreign, old, dead duellants.

Finally for now, the area at the back of the park. It is dubbed the Astronaut Training Center, and will receive some themeing and a centrepiece attraction in the future. The two synchronized gravitrons of differing intensity are not inspired by anything in particular either, by the way!

Thanks again for reading! Part 4 will probably follow tomorrow. Until then, it's time for me to work on more stuff to put in Part 5!

 

[GuyWithAStick]

Nice update! Maybe you could theme the Soaring Zone to some sort of Aircraft/Airplane-type area? Maybe even give the Invert a Top Gun-type theme with fighter jets and a hangar.

Also, my guess for the kiddie area is that the staff path is now orange.

 

[Hixee]

My guess is something to do with the sombreros that some of the peeps (?) are wearing.

 

[Pokemaniac]

Good guesses, both of them, but no! The staff paths change colour when you zone the area - which was done while themeing - and sombreros have been available from the Souvenir stall on the main street since the first few minutes of the park.

For reference, I think the picture is taken around year 21. I had the area themed by the end of year 12, I think. Certainly before I finished the entrance plaza or started work on the Inverted coaster or the new areas.

 

[Pokemaniac]

Oops, this took slightly longer than I had anticipated. Oh well, it means you won't have to wait as long for part 5.

So... Part 4. This is where themeing steps up a little notch, as money starts to become a trivial concern. I'm still not quite finishing any areas, but the fraction of rides standing blandly out in the open is sharply decreasing.

To start off, here are some additions to the new area shown in the last picture of the previous update. The 4D Cinema blends in for once, but I enclosed the dual Gravitrons. Not too fond of the colour, but it's meant to be futuristic.

You may also be wondering about that coaster in the back:

Mission: High Orbit was meant to be a Kingda Ka look-alike, but Parkitect's Excitement/Intensity/Nausea algorithm goes a little bananas for coasters faster than 150 km/h or so. This thing, therefore, goes 150 km/h, and is 72 meters tall. I know it bears more than a passing resemblance to Zaturn at Space World, but as long as I'm not pointing that out directly, I don't think anybody will notice. The ride's exit passes a small court of souvenir and food stalls.

Here are Mission: High Orbit's stats. Divide by 0.8 (or multiply by 1.25) to get roughly equivalent RCT2 stats. You may also see the Disorientation Simulator in the background. The ride type is called a Tourbillion, and is a sort of three-axis Top Spin. I know it exists at some park in real life, but I can't quite remember where. I also put up a little transfer track and storage shed for the coaster. The decoration atop the Overtime Pizza stall is poking through the roof of the building, which isn't ideal, but so far the Parkitect developers have declined the requests to implement options to remove the decorations.

Bridging the gap between the 1920's boulevard and the futuristic space land was not easy. I decided to build a "time machine"-esque dark ride between them. This building layout was the result of messing around with walls for a few minutes.

Er... I'm not sold on the colours either. The idea was to give the roof a sort of mint-green colour, but the metallic texture kind of spoiled that. And I had forgotten how little deco there is available for diagonal walls. This building is due for some work with the paintbrush, and I've made some feeble attempts for Part 5. More on that in due time.

I then went and tried to fill the gap next to the entrance plaza. What better to put there than a movie studio? This is a studios park, after all. However, I wonder if it's a little too dominant compared to the entrance itself. Maybe a smaller, lower building should be put there instead? By the way, I have also added some hedges and trees to this area after the picture was taken, it looks less bland now.

In the middle of the park, the Wild Mouse called Oldsmobile Assembly Line has been enclosed. I also moved and recoloured the duelling Top Spins called Hector and Achilles. Now they seem to resemble those old boxer toys instead of heroes of Greek mythology. Maybe they're due for a name change? And a dedicated janitor, to clean up the mess left by exiting guests? Buildings to fill the empty, grassy area to their lower left will be featured in Part 5. Same goes for the area further up the main road, on both sides. Despite the huge and plain warehouses dominating the area, the facades along the road should be much better to look at they are currently.

The edges of the park needed some filler too. They can't just stay empty and field-like. However, my PC's outlet vent would set fire to my desk if I tried to fill the map with rides, trees or rocks. I decided to put in more studios and a little parking lot of sorts instead. The day they add customizeable signs to this game, I'll put up numbers above the studios' main doors.

The Cloud Surfer inverted coaster also got a bit of a makeover. I changed its ending, and put some nice pathways underneath it where it is low to the ground, tracing the path followed by inspection crews and gardeners every morning. Some catwalks were also attempted, with passable success. The station building is just temporary. Once I figure out how to theme this area, it will be given a makeover too.

That was it for this time! Stay tuned for Part 5 in the coming days/weeks!

And I still haven't got any correct answers on the question of what little detail in this image gives away that the picture is taken in Year 21, and not immediately after the area was themed in Year 12:

Spoiler

Zooming should not be necessary to find the answer, but a keen eye would still be of help. The answer is pretty much spelled out in the text somewhere.

 

[Pokemaniac]

Whew, this one took a while too! But finally... here is part 5!

Let me start off this time by introducing an entirely new area to the park. To the right of the Main Street, there was a large, empty field sitting unused and unproductive. But not anymore! Welcome to the land of Frost!

After the last update, I had a lot of money to burn. The park sat comfortably at 950 guests or so (a number which increased by a couple hundred once this area was built), and their accumulated frivolous spending had put nearly $90,000 in my bank. Clearly, it was time to invest in a proper coaster, and a whole area surrounding it. And while I was at it, try out a snow/winter theme. The next few pictures document the building process of the coaster:

I started by creating the coaster layout, then the paths through the area. The track weaves through the pathways in a fashion inspired by Taron at Phantasialand, a coaster I've neither ridden nor seen good overview pictures of. So actually, it might be that I'm basing it all on a misunderstanding. A few flat rides were plopped down wherever there was room for them. I also had to reroute the Monorail through the area. Sadly, I could not make it work well without an elevation change. On the other hand, I suppose that could be incorporated into the theme.

The coaster quickly got the name Frost, it is the centrepiece of an area themed to the fictional family movie "When Winter Came To Timbertown", and its hit franchise I haven't bothered making a full backstory for. Just assume a plot involving two children, a charming village which gets biting cold winters but has never seen snow before, and... er, something... magical found in a... uhh... you figure that out. It's probably the plot of a TV series already.

The idle plots between pathways were then filled with buildings. The all-white roofs are meant to portray a layer of fresh snow. It's a shame with the inevitable texture on the steepest roofs, though.

The ride station is a little too big to work as a single building, but hopefully it can look decent as a cluster of buildings. Maybe the guests will even see a sort of forced perspective, making it look like the village continues up a mountainside or something. If not, the stacked houses could be a feature of the movie. It's fictional, so I'm free to make up details as I go on that one.

Frost runs two trains (I know three are visible in the first picture, but I took one out later), which have a little maintenance shed in the back of the area.

Example of a decorated building up close. This one contains stalls where guests can buy (licensed, overpriced) Pretzels, Burgers, and Hot Drinks. I've also crammed a Depot and a Staff Room in there. Shout-out to "pete4live" on the Parkitect Discord for decoration suggestions.

I've criticized the Spiral Slide before, because it has such a low capacity (seeing as only one guest is permitted inside the gates at a time), and guests will pay so little to ride it. But I have to admit that it works really well as an out-of-the-way attraction in a free-to-ride park. It provides content to a quiet corner of the park, and enough guests seem to ride it to make it worth keeping there.

Frost's station building(s) up close. The start of the ride is slow and meandering, until the train hits the lift hill. The first drop is quite a plunge, and the ride is low and fast from there on! Online enthusiasts debate fiercely over whether or not the overbanked curve seen at the bottom right counts as an inversion.

The station has some themeing on the back side, since it is so clearly visible from the lift hill. The maintenance shed is a little bland, though. The clearance of that tunnel was checked and improved after this picture was taken.

As I was building themeing, I realized that the futuristic style of the Monorail would clash rather badly with the rest of the area. So in retrospective, it's a good thing that its station was placed underground. On the right, you can see the Power Surge called Blizzard. I have to say, I'm very happy with the placement of that one! The Jumper that was initially added as a temporary ride at the very beginning of the park, has also been incorporated in the area.

A glorious mess of track, rides, pathways, buildings, foliage and rockwork. This is where Parkitect really excels!

The entrance to the area is a little weak, but I guess it works well enough. Guests would want to see the first drop and hill of the coaster, after all. Some of the invisible goats this franchise is so known for, are grazing in little enclosures outside the gate. How do you like the frozen fountain, by the way?

I also added some more themeing to the Main Street. The duelling Top Spins have been placed in a boxing cage to duke it out. It is somewhat inspired by Futurama's Madison Cube Garden. I also added a Double Ferris Wheel, and a few buildings which probably need some more decoration. The ones in the bottom left are fine enough, though. The colours are ugly, but it works somehow. The blotchy, purple patterns on the roof of Oldsmobile Assembly Line (the indoor Wild Mouse) are just parts of a small bug in Alpha 16.

The food court on the way to the kiddie area has also been enclosed, at long last. I think it still needs some decoration, but it's better than the bland stalls that stood on open ground before (it can be seen in the second picture of this post). I liked the idea of having a single open-air Depot in the park, so the one in the back stage has not been touched. Speaking of back stages, it's amazing how some ground textures and chain-link fences can add some atmosphere to them, while maintaining an absolutely minimal polygon count.

As much of the park as I could cram into a single picture (while keeping the perspective nice). It surely has come a long way! And yes, there are some (modest) plans for the bottom and upper right as well, they won't stay empty. The Soaring Zone, glimpsed on the left, will also be themed. I think I have some ideas to start playing with now.

And lastly, here's a slide of technical information. As you can see, the construction of Frost did little to relieve me of money in the long run. I've got 50 % more of it now than when I started! The gate price numbers are fluctuating as wildly as ever, but I make a tidy profit even in bad months, now. I haven't touched the gate price since it hit $60. It's a sum seemingly all guests can afford, and they don't seem willing to spend more than $100 on average anyway - so I might as well keep the gate price a good deal, then have them fork out for goods, food and drinks instead. The park is starting to really heat up my PC now, but I think there is processing power left for a couple more attractions and areas. I'm trying to take it really easy with foliage and rockwork, then maybe I can finish this without setting fire to my desk. Look forward to something new and big in Part 6 as well!

 

[Hixee]

Another great update. I like the close-up details of the buildings around Frost - they look really nice.

The large zoomed out image also shows how far this park has developed! I'm not sure of what else to comment on, but don't be discouraged, I'm thoroughly enjoying this.

 

[Pokemaniac]

Whoa, it's been two and a half months already? This update is long overdue! Without further ado, Part 6!

By the end of the last update, Specialized Studios was almost finished. However, some areas around the edges of this picture still needed to be worked on. This penultimate update will add the last few attractions to the park, and some backstage areas. Then the last update will be a round of polish for the entire park, since there are many areas that could need some improvement.

First off, I wanted to add a Junior Coaster to the kiddie area. A coaster would draw more people to this quiet corner of the park, and also fill out the corner of the map quite nicely.

Then it got some themeing. I wasn't quite sure how to theme it, so I decided to play around with shapes until something reasonably interesting popped out. "Reasonably interesting" eventually manifested itself in the form of a primary school geometry lesson, of all things. Think something along the lines of "The Magic School Bus", then pretend that it was an original idea I came up with. The ride starts in a school building, then takes the riders through the Magic Tunnel (R)(C)(TM), to the Land of the Wizard in the Math Castle (R)(C)(TM), and a wild ride through the abstract concept of Geometry (R)(C)(TM). The planned gift shop at the exit was not built due to copyright issues.

This was built just before Alpha 17 added geometric shapes as separate objects, so the shapes are made from walls and roofs. The studio next to it also received a total makeover.

I felt like filling in the idle space in the corner, so I added another backstage area. These low buildings house some offices for the park's technical staff. I might improve their detail level at some point in the future.

Speaking of backstage areas, I also started work on the park's main maintenance area. After all, building or servicing attractions and themeing requires a small army of cranes, lifts, delivery trucks, forklifts, excavators, and more, and they need access to the park. It's not like you can drive them through the front gate. The same goes for eventual emergency vehicles too. A park would also employ gardeners and people to hose down and sweep every path after closing time, and they need equipment for their jobs. This little area contains some sheds and warehouses for facility management services, and containers full of spare parts.

This is what the kiddie and maintenance areas currently looks like. The coaster was dubbed Imagination Explorer, a vaguely suitable name I'll keep unless I come up with something better.

Next up, a new attraction on the completely opposite side of the park. The game would have to treat it as four different attractions, making it somewhat unreliable in terms of breakdowns, but it's a very high-capacity ride when everything works. Not to mention, four new rides pull in more guests than one new ride.

The idea is dastardly simple: Four mechanized pods are synchronized to a video shown on a large screen. Maybe even in 3D.Those who have been to Universal Studios in Orlando will of course know that this ride is inspired by nothing in particular. It's a completely original concept ride themed to... I don't know, an animated sitcom or something. I call it The Nonsons Ride.

It all fits in a very compact building. It takes up a little more room than a Star Shape with a queue line, but not by much. It's certainly smaller than most coaster layouts.

Of course, mild attention to detail forced me to move the queues one tile to the right. The previous lack of symmetry was quite jarring.

The ride is placed near the end of the main street, just across from the last remaining unthemed Monorail station. It makes that end of the park look a little less barren. It was eventually moved a little from its initial position, a simple feat thanks to the blueprint feature. As can be seen in the corner of the picture, Specialized Studios had almost 1500 guests in it at this point, and with all the themeing it approached the limit of what my PC could handle. Thus, I decided to cap off the main street and not expand the park any more. This meant that only a few attractions were left to be built. I felt that I had tried out everything I wanted to within the constraints of this park, and it is time to soon move on to a new park with new concepts. So I needed a way to close off this end of the park, and wrap the whole thing up nicely.

This is a thing I've wanted to build for a while. Not a ride, or an interactive feature for the guests, just a stage show, which are ubiquitous in real-world parks. Mechanics-wise, it's just a slightly raised section of closed-off paths with two Entertainers wandering around. There is a Staff Room behind the stage. With the upkeep for the Staff Room and wages for the entertainers, the stage show is costly to run, but the immersion is too great to pass up. Besides, the park is practically printing money at this point, it's a cost I could handle comfortably.

With some well-placed benches, you can even make it look like the guests are enjoying the show. New littering mechanics in Alpha 18 also meant I needed to place a few more trash cans around too. Previously, guests hardly littered at all, but now they went busy throwing wrapping all over my park. The Cleanliness rating took a huge hit, so now I make sure there's always a trash can nearby.

A little further down the road lies the area known as the Astronaut Training Facility, including a full-scale replica of some rocket. It appears to have got a couple new rides introduced to it...

This currently unthemed station building houses Mission: Red Planet, the highly anticipated sequel to the launch coaster Mission: High Orbit (barely visible in the lower left corner). It's a Flying Coaster incorporating VR technology so I don't have to them-, er, to represent the wonderful evolution of new technology in modern amusement parks. The thing in the foreground is the Advanced Multi-Axis Centrifuge, specially built to prepare riders for a complex mission to Mars.

As you can see, The Nonsons Ride was moved slightly to fit better with the rest of the area.

The monorail also got a station building (which really needs some further work as of this picture). To the right you can see another access road to a backstage area. Since this area is surrounded by paths on all sides, it needs an access route through the park itself. It is obviously fenced off during operating hours.

At long last, Soaring Zone was themed. To what, you ask? I must admit, I got lazy. I took the Six Flags route, gave up all creative thought completely, and went for a comic book superheroes theme. I have to admit, though, it was fun to make buildings playing with large, clean surfaces and sharp, distinctive lines! After thirty-five years of HSE/OSHA complaints, the Turbine finally got some covering for its queue line. It should save the park some money on lawsuits from guests hit in the head by dropped mobile phones.

It's a litte hard to take good pictures of the area, since Haunted Elevator keeps getting in the way. I guess tall rides don't mix well with an isometric perspective - which was part of the reason why I moved Haunted Elevator from its initial position in the past too.

In the middle of working on this, I suddenly noticed I was losing more money every month than what I spent on building. The park's operating budget (balance before construction costs) was plummeting. Shop profits were high as usual, ride costs were stable, but upkeep costs were high and ticket revenue struggled to keep up. In short, not enough guests entered the park to keep it profitable.

Apparently, Alpha 18 had brought a slightly lower guest count ceiling, and the aforementioned littering mechanics afflicted the park's Cleanliness rating. However, even after fixing this, I was losing money. Had I finally built a bigger park than I could afford to run? Would new rides only bring the monthly costs up without affecting the guest count? With a sizeable buffer in the bank, I had enough money to keep the park afloat for years, but would it be living on borrowed time? Could this be a sign of the end of Specialized Studios?

Whoops, spoke too soon. Turns out that the guest count at the gate is just as unpredictable and fluctuating as always. I still make a lot of money most months, but there can be streaks of unprofitable months from time to time.

As mentioned earlier, this is not the final episode. The park can be considered feature-complete, with all the rides and shops and facilities in place. But it needs some finishing touches, which will be covered in the next episode. I hope to get it out before the release of Alpha 19 in late October. Thanks for reading so far!

 

[Hixee]

Cool! It's cool to see it coming together - I quite like the simulator ride!

 

[Pokemaniac]

This took a month and a half longer than intended, but lots of stuff at work has eaten up my spare time these past three weeks. Anyway, Specialized Studios is finished and ready for release! So let's gather up for a final tour of the park!

(Oh, and have a download link)

Welcome to Specialized Studios! The Carousel of Merriment is the first sight greeting visitors to this little park among the film studios of Specialized Pictures. Unlike other movie companies, whose Intellectual Properties' imaginative universes and broad audiences allows them to build amusement parks based on their works, Specialized Pictures makes niche movies with a rather narrow appeal. They therefore rely on the profits from their amusement park to secure funding for their movies.

A short walk up the entrance street leads to the park's Central Square. This square houses the oldest of the park's many fountains. Visitors can hop on the Monorail for quick and comfortable transport around the park, or seek thrills on the Transformer ride. There's also a set of Dodgems for those with weaker stomaches and stronger inclinations towards head-on collisions. Well-labelled paths lead to the park's various themed lands.

West of Central Square runs a street themed to the golden years of the 1920s (which is to say, all of them but the last one). Specialized Studios wasn't around back then, but the creative designers still had a vague impression of what the age looked like. Guests can take a ride in period cars in the building in the foreground, or try a little more realistic depiction of the age before traffic law enforcement in the buildings in the back - they house a Wild Mouse coaster. Those who make way more money than you and I do, and know someone who knows someone, can also enjoy some spectacular private facilities on the upper floors of the building overlooking Central Square.

Further dow the road is a classic-ish cinema and a rather large diner. The park's Food and Beverages division has its offices on its upper floors. The Monorail was also routed through the area using various dirty tricks of architecture.

This pair of buildings cap off the Roaring Twenties boulevard as it widens out and becomes Roaring Twenties Square. To the right is Time Machine, a dark ride depicting a ride through history. In the middle left is Haunted Hotel, a large building housing twin Drop Towers. Behind them are some sound stages owned by the studios.

South from that square lies the Soaring Zone, a land themed to comic book superheroes. The buildings are carefully constructed to look like the architecture in the background of low-budget superhero comics. This annoys the Rides and Attractions staff housed on their upper floors, whose offices have no windows, fire escapes, or ventilation system. Guests like the area, though: the Turbine is the most popular ride in the park, the Inverted Double Swing is a real crowd-pleaser too, the Dodgems always have a small queue (even more so on rainy days), and of course there's...

...Cloud Surfer, the park's twice-redesigned Inverted Coaster. After the remodelling with the longer ending sequence and the addition of a train storage shed (barely visible in the foreground), the ride has become even more popular with guests and staff alike. Some of the maintenance paths underneath its tracks still follow the old layout, but as a steady stream of mobile phones, shoes, and hats are dropped from the ride, there will undoubtedly be trodden paths underneath the new layout before long!

Up north from Roaring Twenties Square lies the Astronaut Training Facility. It houses, among other things, Mission: High Orbit, the park's tallest and fastest coaster. A life-size replica of a rocket looms over the square.

The rest of the area mimics a real space-agency, with rides posing as training facilities. Visitors can watch educational films in the Planetarium, feel high G-forces in the Gravitrons (one is more intense than the other, but exactly which is which is a common topic of discussion among park enthusiasts - in truth, the settings are swapped every now and then to keep the debate lively), or try out the Disorientation Simulator. Guests often need to be led by hand to find the exit after taking a spin on that one.

Recently, a sequel to Mission: High Orbit was constructed. Mission: Red Planet is a Virtual Reality-enhanced flying coaster depicting an expedition to a non-specific red planet. You can see the booth where VR goggles are handed out in the upper left. Less brave guests can try out the Advanced Multi-Axis Centrifuge in the bottom right instead. (Sidenote: the lack of supports on the Flying Coaster is due to an acknowledged bug in Beta 1).

A detailed model of the non-specific red planet is displayed near the coaster's exit. Fun-gineers have also modelled its landscape in front of the coaster.

This is the full layout of Mission: Red Planet. The VR feature saved the park a great amount of money, as they did not have to pay to theme it all.
(Sidenote: the picture is actually a little out of date, but since 90 % of the ride's supports are missing because of a bug in the most recent version, I decided that using an old picture would look better than a new screenshot).

Mission: Red Planet has its transfer track and storage shed quite far from its station, at the bottom of its lift hill, because of space restrictions. It works well, but makes the mechanics a little grumpy, since they have to walk for quite some distance whenever a new train is put on the coaster.

The mechanics keep bicycles handy for when they have to inspect the launch mechanism of Mission: High Orbit or put new trains on Mission: Red Planet. These lengthy trips can also be described using the word "Mission", but the mechanics are very tired of jokes about it at this point. They will punch in the face anyone who thinks phrases like "Mission: Coaster maintenance" have ever been funny.

Let us jump back to Central Square and continue our trip from there. The eastward street contains the park's largest restaurant, the aforementioned Transformer ride, and some other things we'll pass by later. Guests riding the monorail from Central Square may be able to catch a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes operations of the park, including the deliveries pad for the restaurant (which absolutely tanks the monorail's Decoration stat, but oh well).

Kid Zone houses the county's largest collection of pastel-coloured buildings. It also contains a family coaster themed to, of all things, basic geometry. Specialized Studios created a miniseries of educational videos a few years back, and the geometry episode achieved so high ratings that a ride based on it was built in the park. The coaster is a big hit among guests, although the national interest in geometry remains as low as ever. In the back, you can also see the offices of the park's central management, Marketing, Sales, and HR departments. The area's 4D cinema is playing the short film Finding Sharky.

Guests may enter the park through Central Square, but most logistics comes through this east gate instead. Every morning, and throughout the off-season, trucks, forklifts, trolleys, lifts, cranes, path sweepers, lawn tractors, and the occasional bicycle are put to work to bring the park up to shape for a new day. The backstage area contains a number of garages, storage sheds, and workshops, as well as the offices of Maintenance and Mechanics.

The Kid Zone also houses a carousel, a pair of duelling Teacups, a little boat ride (It's a Dull World), and more bumper cars, because the guests' apetite for vehicle collisions is insatiable. The stalls sell candyfloss, candy, balloons, ice cream, and other sugary stuff with no nutritional value. Toothbrushes are also available upon request.

The Kid Zone is another dead end, so let's jump back to Central Square once again and follow Main Street north. Duelling Top Spins are duking it out in a large glass cage. They are popular among thrill seekers, but even more people turn up to watch them. Two types of Ferris wheels also duel on opposite sides of the street. The traditional wheel offers better views, but the novelty factor of the Double Wheel makes it more popular with guests.

Some of the more gripping scenes in Specialized Studios film history are acted out on the big stage at the end of Main Street. The Square Fountain with chamfered edges has been called a lovely homage to the circular fountain of Central Square, but we're pretty sure that's just the designers fishing for some award. Rumours say that the head of Specialized Studios built an apartment for himself in the tower seen in the middle. That is absolutely true, and the reason why the Double Ferris Wheel is facing the opposite direction. The apartment is mostly used in the off-season, since having a monorail train pass underneath one's kitchen floor twice a minute makes it kind of hard to enjoy breakfast.

We briefly pop westwards again, where a street themed to Specialized Studios newest franchise, The Nonsons, has just opened. This monorail station is themed to the Nonsons' house, and the little building next to it is meant to resemble the garage where Mr. Nonson works, and hijinks ensue every day.

This large building on the opposite side of the steet is the largest cinema in the park, using moving vehicles and visual effects to tell a story of The Nonsons in a true 4D experience. The Fun-gineers originally wanted to market it as a "6D ride", but was told by the park management to go back to high-school physics before reconsidering that statement.

Another path off Main Street leads into one of the most elaborately themed lands of the park. It's based on a franchise that made quite a lot of money from being released at just the right time before Christmas. "When Santa came to Winter Village" became a smash hit, and a large area of the park was immediately set aside for development.

The roller coaster Frost is the centrepiece of the area, and the most popular coaster in the park. It is complimented by a handful of other rides, such as the aforementioned Ferris wheel, a spiral slide, a Power Surge (named Blizzard), and a little Jumper ride.

The snow is fake, and the biting cold winds depicted in the movie are only simulated with cleverly hidden loudspeakers, but guests still feel a chill when walking through the Winter Village. This helps drive up the sales of warm pretzels and hot drinks from the area's many cozy stalls.

Frost's track weaves through the area, above and under ground, between the buildings and over paths. Just like the character of the same name in the movie.

Frost's station is meant to create an illusion of a town on a high hill. The tallest tower has quite a view, and is available for closed arrangements. Contact the Sales division for more info.

A herd of invisible goats is central to the plot of the movie. The merchandizing department calls them the biggest mistake in movie marketing history. Kids love them, parents tolerate them, and their lines are extremely quotable, but you can't make plushies of them, nor print their image on a lunchbox, being invisible and all. They were incorporated in the themed land anyway, with this enclosure where they can be heard (and smelled) grazing. Winter Village also got its own fountain, which is permanently frozen over. It saves a fortune on the water bill, but keeping that much ice frozen in the middle of summer makes up for the savings a hundred times over.

The Jumper is technically outside the border of Winter Village, but themed to it anyway. The land proved so popular with guests that a new themed ride had to be added, but Frost's complicated layout made it impossible to find room for expansion. The ride has a handy secondary function of pointing guests towards Winter Village's entrance.

That should be all of Specialized Studios! We thank you for your attention and for not interrupting this tour with questions, and wish you a nice trip home. Welcome back on another occasion!



Thanks for following the development of this park! For those wondering what was up with this picture, indicated that it was taken way after the areas was created:

Spoiler

The answer is:

Spoiler

The Monorail is running, which could not happen until its circuit was enclosed - which happened much later in the building process. I would also have accepted it if anybody pointed out the Entrance Square buildings barely visible in the top left corner, as these were also added much later.

Now, the amount of feedback I've got on this suggests there isn't that much interest out there for Parkitect, but I think I'll post more of my projects in the future anyway. Those who do follow it seem to be interested enough to make it worthwhile. I hope to see some of your creations here in the future too!

(Another download link, in case you missed the first one)

 

[Hixee]

Definitely chalk me up as impressed. Whilst Parkitect seems to be less popular (not just here on CF, but wider afield too), I think the graphics look nice and you've created an engaging series of posts which I've enjoyed reading. So thank you!

I don't see myself buying the game, to be honest, but I am struggling to find time to do anything that it's work at the moment, so maybe that will change in the future!