User Guide

BUILDING A CUSTOM RIDE
The standard designs for tracked rides are good enough for a start, but the time will soon come
when you want to design and build your own exciting rides. In fact, you must custom-build all
transport rides, so it’s likely you’ll need this information in your very first park. The process is
not as complex as you might think it would be, so let’s get to it. (Those of you who have already
gone through the tutorial will find most of this rather familiar.)
What’s in a Name?
Please note that throughout this section, we use the word ‘track’ to mean whatever structure
determines the course of a ride–tube, rail, boat path, overhead wire, and anything else that
provides a fixed course for a ride.
The Stations
First of all, click the
New Ride button.
• Select the type of ride, then the specific ride you want to build.
• Click the Build This button.
• For most types of rides that you can customise, the Select Track Design window opens. Simply
click the Build Custom Design button. (If you’re building a transport ride, you skip this step.)
• The Construction window opens.
The Station Platform is pre-selected as the first item to be built. Every tracked ride must have at
least one station; some types allow as many as four. The stations are where passengers board and
disembark from the ride. On the completed ride, every station has an Entrance and Exit adjacent
to it. Positioning the station first is not imperative, but it’s certainly good planning.
• Move the mouse pointer over the landscape. The cursor is a one-square highlight with a
yellow arrow in it. The box marks where the first piece of Station Platform will be built, and
the arrow determines both the direction in which the ride will run and the one in which the
building process will proceed.
To change the orientation of this arrow (in quarter-turn increments), use the Rotate
button in the Construction window (not the one on the Toolbar). Unless otherwise
specified, all of the buttons you use during this process are in that window.
• When you’re satisfied with the location and orientation, click the Add This button. Note the
price you pay for adding this section of track. The first section is now built, and the potential
next section is shown in place, flashing.
• Continue clicking Add This until you have as many sections of station as you want.
If you change your mind about a section,
use the Demolish button to undo construction.
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Selecting a Section
If you have a particular section of track in mind for a change, and it’s not the latest one you
built, you can get to the section you want.
• Use the Previous and Next buttons (the red arrows) to move along the track one section at
a time until you reach the one you want to change.
• Right click on any section of track to make it the currently highlighted section.
Station Platforms may only be built in a continuous, straight line. The length of your station
places a limit on the length of the vehicle trains you can run on this ride–after all, if the
passengers couldn’t reach them to get on, the extra cars on the train would be useless. A station
length of four to six sections suffices for most rides.
• At any time during the process of building the track, you can begin building another station
(if the ride specifications allow it) simply by clicking the Special button and selecting Station
Platform from the list. Remember that you must create an Entrance and Exit (and the
associated Queuing Line and footpaths) for every station on the line.
The Line
When your first station is complete, the logical next step is to start making tracks. You can
proceed in either direction, forward or backward along the course of the ride, but the procedure
is the same in either case. For the sake of clarity, this explanation assumes that you’re building
forward along the direction the cars will move.
For each section of track you build, there are a few decisions to make:
Use any one of the Curve Arrows, near the top of the
Construction window, to determine the direction of the
next piece of track. Your options might be limited
depending on the situation. If you do not want any of the
standard trackcurves, check under the Special button to
see if what you want is there.
You set the slope of the next piece of track by choosing one
of the Incline buttons. Once again, your options might be
limited depending on the situation.
If you’re placing the starting rise of a ride–the length of track in which a motorised chain
pulls the cars up an incline to set up the rest of a gravity ride–click the Chain button to
add the pulling chain to this section of track. Note that transport rides do not need and
cannot have starting rises, and roller coasters and other rides can be designed not to need
one. This option is not always available, depending on the situation.
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