Have you ever had a game error that caused the game to do something visually extreme? Has your RCT3 installation gone wacky lately? Post images of your outlandish game errors here. I’ll start

OMG they're walking diagonally. IT'S A MIRACLE!

I’ve taken the pool complex from Marina Towers Spa and Resort, dropped it into a workbench and experimented with the scenery. I’ve done this with various areas of Marina Towers as this has helped me to know my CS sets and I believe it has greatly expanded my knowledge of how some of the different sets can work together.

I’m just about there now with the pool complex and thought to test the rides to see what sort of a feel the guests would get while enjoying them.

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The first I tested was the body slide.



Except for a single guest named David Walsh there are no guests in this particular workbench for now and as a matter of interest the test mannequin can be observed slightly above the center of the image. The body slide usually appears very shallow but this is the first time I’ve noticed how deep it appears while actually riding it. Note the H2O slide funnel at the top right of the image. I tested that slide later and will be referring to the funnel later in this post.

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It was while testing the H2O slide that I noticed some oddities. This next shot turned out to be one of those rare occasions during which cam took me to the bottom of the pool rather than simply dropping me onto the surface. I observed that after the ride mat had left the funnel at the end of the ride, when the mat makes contact with the bottom of the pool the game creates a cloud of dust at this point of contact under the water.



I wouldn't call it spectacular but I would call it an error or at the very least a programming oversight. What a waste of game resources.

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For some reason I’m only now discovering nose cam and switched to that to see the difference this would make to my ride. As can be seen in the following image nose cam literally puts one below the layer of water in the slide and the resulting view is completely at the level of the mat. It's really noticeable in this image how deep cam distorts the slide while in POV.

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I also observed that at times nose cam will take the view out through the bottom of the slide. This generally occurred at the point where a downward slope in the ride levelled out.

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It also occurred while inside the funnel.

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I was not expecting what happened next. After continuing off the funnel, rather than cam settling at the surface of the water or at the bottom of the pool it continued below the level of the pool and presented me with this underground view of my pool complex.



I thought to take some screenshots while the camera was descending and this was the lowest it went. If I was above ground level and excavated a hole as deep as it would go in the park the view in this image suggests I’m down at about that level, at the lowest excavation point possible.

If one switches off the background in RCT3, sometimes it can be noticed that if you’re really high up in your park, right out at the farthest edges of view where there is no landscape left to blend into the horizon this shade of gray will display. This image indicates that that layer of gray is always on display in our parks regardless how high we are in them.

At this point rather than switch the camera to the next mat on the ride as the game would usually do it seemed the game was prepared to let me view my pool from this angle as long as I wished. While preparing this shot for web I noticed in this image that when I took these screenshots I had forgotten to turn off gridlines and from these gridlines it can be observed where the owned property ends in this workbench.

In the upper right of the image is further confirmation that beneath the pool decking where no one can see it the game engine is expending game resources to display the teak cladding.

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Following is an image of Marina Towers Pool Complex where this occurred. The H2O slide funnel exit can be seen at the bottom right. I’ve placed red “X”’s on the previous and in the next image as a reference point, the X being at the same location in the pool in each image.

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Work on Marina Towers Park and Spa Resort is still ongoing.

These images show some of the errors that took place while I was building Marina Towers Tranquility Tea Room.

Following is an image in which the error may have already been noticed by some of you. This is probably more of an anomaly than an error.



The image is a detail increased to 100% taken from the first image I posted here

http://forums.rctgo.com/thread-8248-post...#pid103713 (post#24).

I’ve shown enough images in that post and the subsequent post that we can determine that the items making up those white dots are not really part of the park scenery, in other words, when I zoom in close to the staff complex and take screenshots there there is nothing there that’s visible where the white spots can be seen in this zoomed out image. Close up there are invisible artifacts there because if I were to place something in that park in the location of the artifacts and then attempt to delete that item there will be anywhere from one artifact to 40 or more that need to be deleted first before I can actually get under/behind the artifacts to get to the item I want to delete in order to delete it.

To delete, as is standard I right click on the item I want to delete and what we expect to happen is the little round window to appear at the bottom right of the RCT3 display inside which is an image of the item about to be deleted. When selected this anomaly displays a round window with nothing but background in it and when I select to delete it the amount of refund drifts away in the game display indicating that something invisible got deleted.

Sometimes if I revolve the camera I can get around the artifacts and get directly to the item to delete it. Other times revolving won’t work and I need to zoom in real close to the object or sometimes place myself directly inside the object in order to delete it without bothering with the deletion of these artifacts. I have no idea what they are but I do notice they appear more and more frequently in a park the more structures I place in the park. Unfortunately Park CleanUp will not get rid of them.

For quite some time I have come across the occasional invisible artifact which has only taken from two to four deletions to remove. The tea room park marks the first time I have actually been able to see these artifacts – although I have to be clear across the park to see them. This park is also the first time it has taken more than thirty deletions to remove most of them.

I never had this problem until I started using invisible scenery so I think at some point I’ll go into the program folder and replace the invisible texture with the visible texture that came with the download after which I’ll reopen this park to determine if the artifacts can be seen that way, and if they can be seen hopefully from there I can find out what they really are.

What concerns me the most about these artifacts is that if we assume each white dot is a simple item about the size and shape of a path tile square, and if most of them require around 40 deletions, the white dots in the image represent thousands of polys that are unnecessarily in the park.

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This second image is a result of my attempting to get a screenshot that doesn’t show the artifacts so that I could replace the first screenshot that did show the artifacts. I was experimenting to see what would and wouldn’t make a difference and I believe I had just switched from freelook to advanced and forgot the camera is controlled differently. I moved the mouse and at first all I could see was blue sky. Although I was trying both the map and the mouse to find my way I don’t remember how I got here but this is what showed next:



This park is 254x254 with the staff administration complex at the south east corner and the tea room facility at the north west corner of the park (opposite to the view which is shown here). My guess is that we’re up somewhere well over 5,000 feet above the map, the highest I’ve ever been in a park, and I appear to be above the clouds which I know for sure are set to show. About halfway up the blue at the top of the image I can just make out what appears to be wisps of clouds seen edge on but this could be wishful thinking on my part.

In my video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFoJd2kOiVE

there we’re up at about 2,500 feet, that park is 128x128 and while the clouds show in this video, presumably because of the height we’re at they appear to be just a bit squashed from top to bottom. The cloud wisps that I believe I see in the above still image of the tea room park seem to also be visible in the coaster video so maybe the ‘wisps’ are only the way the sky is shaded.

What I wouldn’t give to be able to get rid of that dark gray section of background which is the bane of my existence when attempting to take screenshots high up in a park without any skybox scenery in place. Note the gray section of background does not show in the video, probably because it’s hidden behind the hills skybox scenery so if it’s hidden behind the skybox when there is one and is unattractive when there’s no skybox I wonder what all that grey is there for?

I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do with the sky when it’s time to take screenshots of Marina Towers Main Island from the towers structure. I would consider putting a skybox scenery in place but none that come with the game are suitable.

Also, looking out through the rooftop restaurant, out through the Solarium, out through the Conservatory, and out through one of the ride surrounds some of the Marina Towers shots will need to be through glass and while I’ve considered setting up green screen I’ve found that green screen does not work through glass in RCT3.

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This third image shows something that happened after I had expanded the tea room park map from 128x128 to 254x254. I did that so the facility and the complex could both be on the same map and in that way one could be seen from the other. After I expanded the park size the elevator was suddenly not working and it later turned out that the reason was that a few path tiles were inexplicably unaccounted for. One of the missing path tiles had formerly connected with the upper elevator exit and because the guests couldn’t exit the elevator no new ones could get on which is how I noticed the problem. In attempting to fix the elevator before I had identified the problem I switched off most of the LOD’s so I could see what I was doing. I don’t remember exactly what I did but the next thing I know this staff member from one of the elevator’s invisible entrances fell gently onto the water and started moving around on the surface, rowing with his hands as if they were oars. He never stood up straight or sat down but stayed in this crouch position rowing himself along with his hands.



I suppose I could have taken a video of this but I was at the time severely involved in building the park, was already trying to solve the elevator problem, had ten design decisions inside my head that I wanted to make a reality and didn’t want to be sidetracked. I know this is a vendor from the an elevator invisible station because windsurfer and rowboats hadn’t yet been added, the only vendors who wear the default red uniforms in this park are the invisible ones and all the stall vendors were still in place

After solving the elevator problem I went back a few park iterations and fixed the elevator there. Going back several iterations is something I do quite a lot while building and placing structures – saves a lot of time making deletions or remembering exactly what changes I have made. I’m afraid this floating staff member was deleted when the redundant iterations of park were deleted.

A few minutes ago I opened the park iteration where I had first noticed the elevator problem and tried unsuccessfully to duplicate this floating vendor error. This is a good case to support why I should start saving a corrupted park for later analysis so that an anomaly could be looked at more closely (or filmed) at leisure.

As a matter of interest all the paths, stalls and stations in Tranquility Tea Room are invisible.

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This happened during the deletion of a path tile over a body of water with guests still on the path tile when it was deleted:



I wouldn’t call this an error but it seems that when paths over water are deleted the guests who are located where the path’s been deleted will sink right to the bottom of the sea. I checked and they’re lost. Although this is the first time I’ve noticed anything like this, this is something I can easily duplicate and is probably something many of you have already noticed in your parks.