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Parkitect - Specialized Studios returns!

Pokemaniac

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With the imminent release of Parkitect (one week or so from now - get it while it's still in Beta and priced accordingly!), I figured I'd step up the pace of a park I've been working on. I managed to get it finished in time for the game's release, so I can start on version 1.0 with a blank canvas, so to speak. It's played on the same scenario file as my previous Specialized Studios park, but the end result was something quite different entirely. Without further ado, let's begin!

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Welcome to a new Specialized Studios park! The niche film company had great success with its previous foray into the amusement industry, and decided to branch out with a new park. This time, the thrills are bigger, the theming is prettier, backstage operations run even smoother, everything is more expensive, and there's only a nominal amount of film production going on!

Above, you see the park's entrance area. This friendly plaza contains the Welcome Machine, as well as a few stalls selling various food and beverages. The gift shop in the background could unfortunately not be open for this tour, as the contractor declared the plans to be impossible to realize with current technology. In the very foreground, some of the park management's offices can be seen.

(Any non-narrative comments will be offered in brackets)

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Just out of Welcome Plaza, we enter Fountain Square. Specialized Studios has always prided itself on its fountains, but this park has fewer traditional fountains than the original park had. However, the non-traditional fountains need to be seen to be believed...

Fountain Square houses the entrance to three rides. On the left, guests can take a tour of the Toymaker's Factory, a recreation of the location featured in Specialized Studios' obscure 1973 silent film. At the very right edge of the picture is the entrance to Festive Flight, we will come back to that later. In the middle, the entrance to the park's iconic monorail. Our tour will largely follow its course around the park. So let's head down the left road, and see what the building with the blue roof is about!

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The coaster that greets guests heading out of the European-themed entrance area and to the more exotic lands to the right of the entrance is fittingly called Mountain Expedition. Extensive rockwork is used to decorate this mine train.

(Sidenote: I may have exploited the wonky collision detection of the Mine Train coaster a little, that first helix looks like it'd cause some head trauma, for instance. But it looks really good as long as you don't pay attention to it.)

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On the other side of the road lies the park's largest restaurant. It's a large tavern where weary wanderers can grab a bite on their walk from West to East. Large tavern brawls are staged regularly.

(OK, it's another enclosed set of Bumper Cars and not a proper restaurant, but I thought the building would look better if guests queued up for something. Anyway, food is served and there are benches, so that qualifies in my opinion.)

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Down the road, we enter the set of the famous move "The Golden City" (Specialized Studios, 2014, VHS only). Guests can visit the fireworks factory, take a car ride through the accurately revised history of the City, hop on the monorail, or ride one of the park's most thrilling coasters. The Platinum Tree from the movie can be seen on the left. It stands in a secluded garden where no foreigner may enter, on penalty on being thrown out of the park by the security guards.

(Sidenote: I'm really pleased with how the aesthetics of this area turned out!)

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Said coaster is named Steel Dragon, it's an LSM launched multi-looper from one of them fancy manufactuers that used to make pretty bad rides until they changed their track style and learned how to make proper turns with CAD programs. The ride is unfortunately not decorated, as it turns out someone blew the entire decoration budget of the area by covering the roofs in gold leaf instead of gold paint.

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(For those who wondered, the Fireworks Factory is really just four Wipeout rides bundled together in a really big building. Clustering rides together like this makes it appear as a single, much bigger ride. Some inspiration was taken from Mission: Space at EPCOT, but it is far from the only real-life example.)

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We continue down the path, outside the walls of the Golden City. As we walk, it is as if the temperature and humidity keep rising, and we find outself in a sun-scorched bazaar. This area also represents a fork in the road, so let's head back to Fountain Square for a second to have a look at an area we missed before we continue to the more spectacular stuff.

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This jolly area straight ahead from Fountain Square is the heart of the park, where guests are brought back several hundred years to that fantastically uppity time in English history. It is called Ye Olde Towne Square, where a midsummer festival is celebrated every day. Guests can take a spin on the Festival Flyer or ride A Spot o'Tea. The building in the upper left corner also houses a thrilling attraction.

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(Or rather, four thrilling attractions. I regret not saving any pictures from when I built this, because I think it's an amazingly compact little concept that provides a huge guest draw. On a rainy, cold day, this building can contain up to 200 guests.)

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Ye Olde Towne Square transitions nicely into Ye Olde Towne. A comedic stage show plays continuously on the main stage. The buildings mostly house shops and restaurants, but the upper floor locales are sometimes used for closed parties. A gate at the back of Ye Olde Towne takes us straight back to the bazaar.

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This scene is what the bazaar opens up to. A grand castle in a far eastern style, used to shoot the siege scenes in "Help, I'm a Maharaja!" (Specialized Studios, 2015) just weeks before the coasters were delivered.

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We need to zoom way out to fit the entire castle into one picture. Notably, this area features the second largest fountain in the park. It takes up roughly a third of the area, and is entirely closed off to guests, as it would have taken a small army of Janitors to keep all those stairs clean. No flat rides could fit inside the castle, but it does house two coasters.

(Sidenote: building this area cost around $100,000 in-game, a significant percentage of which went into those triangular ridge pieces on every wall and roof.)
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Maharaja is the largest coaster in the park, and also the one with the most inversions. Its lift hill and first drop were initially meant to be enclosed, but the designers found no way it wouldn't look ridiculous. (And also, it would have blocked the view of the area from so many angles.) It's pre-lift section and two final inversions remain enclosed, however.

The water coaster, Brahma River, dives in and out of the castle. It is mostly a scenic ride, but packs a real punch near the end. In the background, some of the sound stages of the site can be seen. They are mostly there so the park can call itself a "studios park"; in reality, very little film is actually made there.

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Maharaja's giant turnaround looks majestic, but it's taken at a rather slow pace. In the background, you can see the park's staff entrance. A service road passes under Maharaja's structure and into the castle.

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This building is closed off for guests, but sometimes used for exclusive parties. More information will be given exclusively to those deemed worthy of it. As a general rule, you need to be filthy rich, and willing to become rather less so, to be invited. In the background, we see the tunnel exiting the underground Monorail station, as well as a small service area.

The back entrance to Ye Olde Towne Square is just outside the right edge of the picture.

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After the smashing success of "When Santa Came To Winter Village" (Specialized Studios, 2013), it was only natural to give the movie a land in the studio's original theme park. That became a success too, so when Specialized Studios branched out, it was quickly decided to bring the Winter Village franchise to the new park as well. To the right, one of the park's major service roads is blocked off with temporary fence during park hours.

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Stargazer Tower looms over the entryway to Winter Village. This big Topple Tower is completely encircled twice by the area's signature rollercoaster, Frost.

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This is the second coaster built and themed to the character Frost. Unlike its original incarnation, this coaster is launched. However, they both dive into and out of the pathways of their respective Winter Village areas. Frost features two launches propelling the train up to 110 km/h.

(Yes, I'm aware that this shot contains some chimneys that aren't in the other pictures. I didn't bother to re-do all the pictures after discovering that I had forgot to outfit Winter Village with chimneys, by then everything was uploaded and ready to be made public.)

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The clearance between Stargazer Tower and the surrounding buildings is very tight, but sufficient. Riders frequently try to leave footprints in the snow on the building roofs, but they never reach it. Not that it would have helped; for fire safety reasons the "snow" is actually a type of mortar, hard as concrete. The ride's queue takes riders through the tower's basement, themed as accurately as possible to the movie. The studio is considering shooting scenes for "Winter Village 2" in this basement to save money on soundstage sets.

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In addition to Frost and Stargazer Tower (and a small Top Spin near the second entrance), this area of the park also features a sing-along show. It is a fairly major stage production, especially for a film studio.

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Because of the complexity of the show and the number of actors involved, Winter Village Sing-Along is located right next to the Staff Office building, and it has its own backstage entrance. The building is cleverly decorated with the Winter Village theme from the side seen from the park.

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The backstage areas of Specialized Studios can be glimpsed from Stargazer Tower. The monorail also runs past it, but its trains are all decked out with viewscreens on the inside, so riders won't notice what they are passing by. To the upper left, you see Winter Village's monorail station.

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The next area seen on our tour is called Day of the Dizzy, themed to an obscure holiday from Mexico, which formed the basis of a recent Specialized Studios movie ("Day of the Dizzy (TM)", Specialized Studios 2018). For reasons nobody is able to explain adequately, it prominently features a lot of skeletons. Those with keen eyes can spot the Monorail zooming by, it unfortunately doesn't stop in this area.

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The central coaster in this area is called Trailblazer, for lack of a better name. It is a big hit with guests, and provides a stepping stone for those not yet brave to take on Steel Dragon, Frost or Maharaja.

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Trailblazer is themed to a thrilling chase through the scorching desert. Only meters away lies Frost, themed to the icy wind howling over the tundra. A wall separating the two was considered, but eventually found unneccessary. Guests are instead told to appreciate the contrast.

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Another attraction in Day of the Dizzy is called River of the Lands Beyond. For the purpose of this tour, enjoy an artist's impression of what it would look like if the building's flat, grey roof was taken off. The area behind the ride building is used for short-term storage of goods, food and beverage. Since this area is surrounded by park pathways, it can only be filled or emptied outside of park hours.

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Further down the road, we finally reach the largest fountain (technically speaking) in the park. This is the Waterfall Gardens from the movie "Help, I've traveled through time!" (Specialized Studios, 1962). In addition to a Calm River Ride, the area also features more thrilling attractions inside the large buildings.

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Waterfall Gardens is really a very small area, but it's still popular with guests. Despite its name, it doesn't actually contain any waterfalls. However, the ride inside the left building features a pretty accurate simulation of going over a waterfall!

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The Monorail's final stop before it heads back to the entrance lies at the end of Moneymaker Street. In the early days of the park's construction, this street contained several pay-per-ride attractions whose revenue was used to construct the rest of the park. Said rides have long since been demolished, but the spirit of the name is kept: The street is regularly decorated with advertisements for the park's various sponsors.

(Yes, I played this park with money enabled. It went so-so at first, but eventually the money started rolling in.)

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Currently, the Flying Theater shows a sponsored movie by HappyTire. The exciting movie "Happy Tires Make Happy Cars (TM)" (Specialized Studios/HappyTire co-production, 2011) draws large crowds during the winter months. The G-Lock named Festive Flight is another crowd pleaser, probably because it's the thrill ride closest to the park's entrance and guests tend to jump on the first exciting thing they see.

(For those wondering, the Flying Theater is really just two Inverted Double Swings side by side. Hence the tall building).

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Moneymaker Street's headline attraction is a family inverted coaster named ____ Soar!, where a new sponsor's name fills in the blank every year. In the event that no sponsor is found, its decoration is taken down and the ride named only Soar! that season. At the moment, the ride can be seen in this sorry default state.

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This old picture shows Moneymaker Street the way it was before the sponsor make-over. Of the rides that lined the street back then, only Festive Flight remains in service today.

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We finish our tour with some of the backstage areas. Here is the park administration building, and two soundstages that mostly are used to shoot commercials nowadays. However, their operation is crucial in the technical accuracy of the park's marketing. They really do make movies in the park while it is open to guests.

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Between ___Soar! and Waterfall Gardens lies the park's main delivery area, as well as the service depot for the Monorail. It can hold all its four trains for service at the same time. This entrance also provides access for emergency vehicles and construction equipment; the park's main entrance is too low and narrow for that. The large buildings house warehouses and workshops.

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This area was originally intended to serve as emergency vehicle access, since the tunnel under the great castle (behind the tower) provides a way underneath the Monorail. But then it was found out that the county emergency vehicles were low enough to pass under the Monorail anyway, so the extra access wasn't necessary. A Spiral Slide was built in the intended location for the emergency gate, and the area used to bring in supplies for the Bazaar and Ye Olde Towne instead. It is also used as an entrance for staff in costume. When heavier equipment has to pass inside the Monorail, a section of its track can acually be dismantled by crane. This rarely happens except in the off-season, however.

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Here is the entire park seen from afar. If you want to have a closer look at details that weren't featured in this album, head over to the Steam Workshop to download it! Click here!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to check out Parkitect, so we'll be more people talking about it in here!
 
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Very nice work. First time I've actually looked at a Parkitect park and it's interesting to see the different style.
This caught my eye the most (other than the great inside jokes):

What's that sexy looking element top right? I'd kill for stuff like that in RCT.

Also topple towers <3
 
What's that sexy looking element top right? I'd kill for stuff like that in RCT.
It's a regular turn overbanked beyond vertical, straightening out before a drop. Sort of a reverse Stengel Dive.

And I agree with your assessment of Topple Towers. One of Parkitect's biggest advantages over RCT is the amazing variety in flat rides. RCT 1/2 were quite limited by the sprite graphics, so most of those games' flat rides are variations on the Twist (11 out of 23 thrill rides total, I did check). Parkitect has a much wider selection of flat rides with rotations around every angle. Hopefully, the developers will fix the possibility to add custom flats through mods, then there'd be no end to the variety.
 
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