It seems as though the will of the people is to revive the TNPP, our once-great RCT park competition. So let's consider this the brainstorming thread. Post your suggestions about the TNPP, how you want it run, what kinds of rules, your feeling on prizes, any idea you have on how the TNPP should be. Staff members such as myself, Kyle L., and Phil will keep an eye on this thread and take any and all ideas into account for the new TNPP.

So let's see some suggestions.

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Aaron Cedoras: Thrillnetwork Story Editor
"Dead men tell no tales..."

Im not too good at making parks, so i think there should be a beginners and experts areas. I will think of more suggestions and post them later.

1. Keep the avatar prizes and think of another prize that will attract more parkmakers from the other kind of small sites. We know we can get people like Drew, so we can probably get people like JKay, and so on.

2. Bring back ride6. He was one of the best here until he left here. I think he can come back just as easily.

3. Talk with Atari about licensing the competition. If you got Mad Data to officialize the No Limits Coaster Contest, then you can get Atari to do the same for Premier Parks.

That's all I've got right now. I'll get more later.

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THIS ISN'T NORMAL. I'VE GOT TO GET OUT OF THIS HORRENDOUS PLACE.

I'd say that if you bring it back, just actually do it. There was always talk of when the next contest would be or when the current one would end, then it would be drawn out and never actually come to a conclusion. For instance, the Coaster Contest. It got to week 4 I believe and just dried up. Get somebody that is actually gonna do it and not just walk away.

As far as Atari officiallizing it, that might be rough with RCT3 coming out. They probably don't want to promote their old versions with a new one coming out.

I wouldn't worry about prizes, but the avatars and maybe a page with pics and a description of the top 3 parks would be nice. Then maybe once a year, we have a run off of the top finishers for park of the year or something.

RCT and RCT2 may not be the latest in gaming anymore, but they still have great potential for lots of fun and creativity. I personally don't think RCT3 will be as good as RCT and RCT2. I think it'll try too hard to be 3D and such and ruin the ease of use that the first two had. Anyways, I think there will always be a market for the first two, as shown by the popularity of NE.

If you restart it, they will come.

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Pleasantly missing since 2006

the real big thing is as drewbie said, the people running it have to keep it running. even if we dont have a lot of parks in the first few contests, if the contest keeps going, it will become more popular and more people will enter.

i think a real good way to hold the contest is the way rct2.com does their monthly competitions. the way the big sites like NE and rct2.com has their very popular contests is that they have a lot of members. if it takes at least 3 or 4 months to complete a nice big park, since they have so many members, there will be a good 7-10 people finishing their parks for each month. since we dont have as many people, we wont be able to get as many big parks in for each month so thats why i think we should do the small monthly competitions. heres what its like:
october: 50x50 holloween themed
december: 50x50 christmas themed
february: 50x50 valentines day themed
april: 50x50 spring break themed
june: 50x50 summer themed
august: best themed hyper coaster
as you can see i skipped every other month. for those other months they do something called a road rally which is themed to a differant part of the world each month. also, they have rules like for a certain month you must have a verticle coaster and side friction coaster in the park.

of course you (the mods) would have to come up with your own original themes and ideas but a general outlines contest like that would IMO work very well. then maybe ever few months we could have a contest where we enter our custom themed big parks.

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I'm Back
I was once TN's top poster!
2007 Gadv Count: Kingda Ka-6, El Toro-6, Nitro-4, Medusa-2, S:UF-2, R:TC-1, B:TC-, GASM-0, Skull Mt-0, B:TR-0, RMT-0, RT-0

I stated before, we really do not want to focus on bringing back members, especially when the members here want a dedicated, full contest that continues through. We feel the continuous contest would be better for the members.

Also, Atari is a MUCH larger corporation than Mad Data, and as Drewbie said, even if we did want to get a sponsorship, they would want us to promote RCT3.

Prizes! Avatars will as always most likley be given out, but I am also thinking of maybe giving away some copies of RCT3, or if it isn't out, a pre-order of RCT3 would seem most appropriate, especially for this contest. However, this is simply a idea, no promises.

Keep the ideas coming!

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Thornton to Heatley all day, every day.

I think you should be able to give out stuff from the TN store? just an idea

Oh yeah! I'm all about the thong!

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Pleasantly missing since 2006

I'm all for bringing this back...

I think mini-park/themed coaster contests are the way to go for now. With the small community here, not enough full sized parks would be submitted.

I like SFGadvKing's ideas... or maybe you could alternate between months, such as having October for a themed mini, November for a coaster, December for a mini, January for a coaster, etc. This would make the contest more regular and active with more variety.

As far as prizes go, avatars are a good place to start... and maybe every 2-3 months there should be member voting on the best entry from those competitions for the free RCT3 (or RCT1 or 2 if they don't have them).

Thanks to Aaron, Kyle, Phil, Drew, etc. for working on this.

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"Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.... now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." -Ecclesiastes 2:11, 12:13

We definately want some member involvement. At the moment, I think the best voting system is a simple poll, staff members and regular members each cast their vote for the best park, and award prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
I like the idea of having contests with a specific themes but we don't want it to be too restrictive either. I'm not big on having specific size restrictions, maybe we should do something like "50x50 to 100x100", or something like that.
The TN store seems like an interesting idea, though. I know how much you all like the thongs. I think Valpengeist had a good idea, maybe a minor prize for each winner, then a "Winner's Circle" kind of idea every three contests or so in which people vote on their favorite winner, and then they get a better prize.
As for the avatars, those would be a nice thing to bring back, but I personally think we should update them.

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Aaron Cedoras: Thrillnetwork Story Editor
"Dead men tell no tales..."

I wouldn't like a huge park to do. It would take way too much time to complete and over that time the contest would be 'dead' until the entry's were submitted. I love the idea of having a smaller sized park and then a themed coaster contest switching every month. But maybe 2 or 3 weeks would be good if it would be a smaller park. Anything though will be fine with me because I would definatly participate.

The only thing is if a lot of people have custom theming and on some computers that do not have them, the parks wouldn't work.

About the prizes, can someone explain to me about the avatars?¿?

We gave away special avatars last time saying what the member had won. I don't think they would be as big of a deal anymore now that we have custom avatars.

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TV/Event Guide Editor

You can choose to export custom scenery with your parks. Go to the disk, click Options, and select "Export custom objects", or something like that. When people open up the park, it automatically uploads any custom objects in the park that aren't already on the computer. So custom scenery isn't a problem.

As for the avatars, special ones were given away to the winners. I've posted a picture of the 1st place avatar. The 2nd and 3rd places were the same, except the track changed to silver or bronze and it said "Silver Premier Park" or "Bronze Premier Park" instead of "Golden Premier Park"

Attached Thumbnails

 

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Aaron Cedoras: Thrillnetwork Story Editor
"Dead men tell no tales..."

Oh, I've seen those before. Now I know what they are for! I think they still would be a cool idea!!

Thanks for telling me that beacuse there are a lot of parks that I haven't been able to see because of this.

EDIT: I just tried that and it a park still didn't work.

We have a conflict. What about those who don't own some expansions, but a member submitted a park with Wacky Worlds and Time Twister Content?

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Thornton to Heatley all day, every day.

The problem is that very few people really have TT or WW. I know I don't have either one. I think we'll have to restrict it to solely RCT2 or even RCT stuff if you want.

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TV/Event Guide Editor

we either allow the expansion packs or we dont. you as the contest leaders have to make that decision. i personally think it should be allowed (i dont own either of them) but the members who use them have to remember that if its user voting, a lot of the voters dont have WW or TT so its up to them.

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I'm Back
I was once TN's top poster!
2007 Gadv Count: Kingda Ka-6, El Toro-6, Nitro-4, Medusa-2, S:UF-2, R:TC-1, B:TC-, GASM-0, Skull Mt-0, B:TR-0, RMT-0, RT-0

I'm guessing the person who made the park didn't click "Export Custom Objects". In that case, the only thing you can do is to ask them to load up the park, click "Export Custom Objects", save the game, and send it back to you.

As for expansion packs, I think whether to allow them or not depends on the type of contest. If we're doing these smaller themed parks with specific rules, I would say that expansion packs shouldn't be allowed. If, however, we're doing a contest with full size parks, I think expansion packs should be permitted. If someone was working for a long time on a park, using an expansion pack, it'd be grossly unfair to disqualify them because of it.

However, there is a question I have. I know, using "Export Custom Objects", you can attach custom rides and scenery files to your park, which are automatically put on the computer of someone who opens it. The expansion packs are just scenery and rides, no path or real programming changes. Is it not possible, then, to export those in the same way custom scenery and rides are exported?

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Aaron Cedoras: Thrillnetwork Story Editor
"Dead men tell no tales..."

In that case though (if you used expansion packs) it might be difficult to get enough votes to make it fair. (becasue not enough people will be abke to see it).

Instead, maybe instead of voting, the best parks should just be decided by TN staff?

As far as I've ever heard, that's not how it works for the expansion packs. It must encode something into the save file to tell it that it's an expansion pack.

My feeling on that subject is you layout the contest with what you can and can't use and just go from there. Maybe for one contest you just lay it out as an old school RCT 1 park only. Stuff like that.

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Pleasantly missing since 2006

drew, many of us dont have or dont play RCT1 anymore (i dont have it anymore, lost the disk). aaron, its impossible for someone who doesnt have WW or TT installed to open a saved game with at least one WW/TT object being used in the park.

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I'm Back
I was once TN's top poster!
2007 Gadv Count: Kingda Ka-6, El Toro-6, Nitro-4, Medusa-2, S:UF-2, R:TC-1, B:TC-, GASM-0, Skull Mt-0, B:TR-0, RMT-0, RT-0

Oh, well.

As things stand now, we're going to admit both RCT1 and RCT2 parks. Perhaps for one contest we'll do a "classic style" mini that has to be done in RCT1 or something, but at the moment, consider both games as acceptable. I know there are people who won't use RCT2, and there are some who won't or can't build in RCT1, so by allowing both, it makes it fair for everyone.

And Skye, as things are now, we're not planning to have the voting done by staff members, it's not like we have all the expansions either. It'll probably be a poll, open to both staff and regular members.

We'll try to bring up all these ideas in our discussion this weekend, and we'll let you know how it goes.

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Aaron Cedoras: Thrillnetwork Story Editor
"Dead men tell no tales..."

Well, this is the suggestion box thread, so how bout some of these ideas for other months themes?
-Video game park (themed to any console, game company, character, series, etc)
-Music themed park (themed to any band, genre, etc)

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ThrillNetwork Moderator
The user formerly known as WildeFyre
UOIT Mechanical Engineering Student

Ok, so far we have

Halloween
Roman/Greek
Winter/Christmas/New Year
Six Flags
Movie/Hollywood

Suggested:
Video Game
Music

how about...

Decade (i.e. 1950's... 1980's... etc)
Other holidays (Easter, Independence day, etc)
Location-specific
Sports/Teams

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Holy CoW! - another NoLimits project

RIP Geauga Lake 1888-2007
F CF

Those are all pretty good ideas. We'll probably continue doing holiday themes every now and then, but we're trying to diversify a bit. Video games and music are two themes we're considering, and time-based parks (decades, centuries, etc.) are another thing you might see soon. As for sports teams, that might be a little more difficult, but it's certainly something we'll keep in mind.
Concerning the location-specific parks, I've been thinking about, for July, a country-themed contest. Instead of taking the standard Independance Day/patriotism route, it might be a better idea if we let people pick any country in the world and theme a park to that. However, the July contest won't be announced until May. In February, we'll decide the themes for March, April, and May (Round 3), and in May, we'll pick the themes for June, July, and August (Round 4).

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Aaron Cedoras: Thrillnetwork Story Editor
"Dead men tell no tales..."

here's some other ideas...
Superhero park
Cartoon park
Movie Specific park (instead of saying "base a park after any movie" give us a movie)

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ThrillNetwork Moderator
The user formerly known as WildeFyre
UOIT Mechanical Engineering Student

maybe make a waterpark, i dont know how that would go over with rct2 or rct (dont know how much water stuff are in those), but once soaked comes out in summer, i think itd work great

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Dirty Tramp

I like the idea of a superhero/cartoon park (those are pretty similar, those ought to be combined into one), and maybe a movie park if we can think of one that'll generate enough interest.
A waterpark might be difficult to do, even with Soaked, because we'd have to make sure enough people had it. In RCT1/RCT2, the trouble with waterparks is your options with them are kind of limited. If enough people get Soaked, though, it shouldn't be a problem.
We'll be discussing the June/July/August themes next month.

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Aaron Cedoras: Thrillnetwork Story Editor
"Dead men tell no tales..."

although i dont like to recreate parks, that could work - judged on how well the park was recreated

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Dirty Tramp

You could have one month where its just to create 1 coaster and the landscape around it based on a specific theme or ride name... I.E. Build the best coaster with such-and-such name/theme.

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Holy CoW! - another NoLimits project

RIP Geauga Lake 1888-2007
F CF