How to design good park?

1: Creativity.

2: Custom scenery.

3: A good computer.

Well, you're gonna need some CS. This includes supports, path covers, the whole nine yards. Also, you'll have to know if you want to make a small family park, or a big thrill park like Cedar Point.

For what purpose you want to do it?
You should have some basic knowledge about the designing software also the creativity of mind is most necessary in designing field. So develop your mind level and use natural concept for your work.

Each park I create I find it helps if I pull in the reins and not be too anxious to open the game and start using the mouse in the menus before I know what it is that I want to go where. Planning is very important at all stages of park building, particularly at the beginning when you've got that big empty lot staring back at you challenging you and your ideas.

The first thing I like to do is decide where I want the entrance, then where I want the paths in relation to the entrance, the pool complex (there's one in all my parks) and where I want the food courts. If you want hills, valleys, lakes and ponds, now is the time to consider and/or place those.

I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't make any sense to put paths all over the place anticipating that strategic placement of no entry signs will get the guests to cover all the paths you've created. It seems the more paths are placed the more paths the guests will ignore. And more paths need more path extras and more staff which mean more of a drain on the game engine and less other things you can get into the park for your enjoyment. Make one path that travels directly through your park through all the attractions one time. A single circuit route will do. It does not need to be an exact square or an exact rectangle – just a single circuit. This will also minimize lost guests.

I have a suspicion that the larger the park is the less guests you can get into it regardless how slick one is with park design: makes sense that the game engine can only handle so much. My first park was the default 128 x 128 and at one time there were around 8,000 guests in it – mind you this was at the very start of CS and I only had one set installed. The most I've ever gotten in a 254x254 park is 6,000 guests and that was before all the coasters & rides were placed and I had not even considered the scenery. It seems the more I add to a new park, the smaller the amount of guests are sent into the park by the game engine. I don't know though if it's because my park's getting older and less attractive to the guests, or if it's because the game engine was only doing what it could with everything else I was throwing at it but at the point where that park became clogged it was only topping out at 2,500 guests.

Up until recently my parks always started out at 254 x 254. Now that I'm seriously using CS and even a few CTR's I've had to cut the park area down. I've attempted beginning a 182 x 182 but that was just not big enough and it never got past planning. I could just get by with a 210 x 210 but that's a park that's only about 20,000 tiles smaller than a 252 x 252. It might, just might work but I'd be worried about getting thoroughly into enjoying that park and it eventually becoming clogged.

I put anywhere from 8-10 enclosures in all my parks so next the animal enclosures are sketched out. I do this by placing scenery (usually a chess board square painted white) at the corners of where I want the enclosures, which are always rectangular although you may want more complicated shapes for your enclosures. I use the chess board square because when I consider my layout I can zoom way out away from the park and still see the squares, and they're easy to delete later. Whack up all your graphics options at this time so you can see everything while you're zoomed out like this.

The final positioning of the pool complex is in direct relation to where I want the food courts, where I hope the paths will go, where I want the pool shops plaza, how the entrance plaza might look, all of which need to blend into the path system and all this needs to work well with the enclosures (which need to take into consideration where the zoo outbuildings will go) while leaving room for the aquarium, the dolphin & orca shows, the park shuttles, the coasters & rides and areas with only park scenery.

The food courts are sketched out with the scenery I will use after the shops and stalls are placed. I will place the food court scenery, which has already been saved as a structure, and gives some indication where the path will be, because it's easier to 'sketch' with than placing twenty shops & stalls on trial. In this way I will see if I'm happy with it's location, happy with where the paths are, where the pool is and the animal enclosures. At this point I will make a final consideration if the paths are where they should be and can finalize where the aquarium will go.

This isn't a fail-safe process as I have at times gotten to this point and have had to scrap a park and start over but this is where planning is important because if this happens all I am scrapping is the plan for the park, not a park I have slaved over for oh-so-long.

And always save your games before making major changes. If I don't like where the pool is or where I've put the food court I can simply go back to the last iteration and try again rather than spend time deleting the items which will then only leave traces for Park CleanUp to eradicate. And save areas of scenery as structures. This way each successive park will be that much easier. What a shame staff patrol areas or paths can't be saved in this way.

Because I've really gotten into CS now, I can no longer have a 252 x 252 park with over 50 coasters & rides , a hundred shops & stalls, more than twenty toilets, a dozen information booths, ten first aid stations, some 400 staff and a path system where guests and staff pass themselves already coming on their way back.

If I want my next park to work with loads of CS until I get tired of it rather than it working until it gets clogged, because of planning I know it will have to be around 200 x 200 or smaller, with only about a dozen coasters & rides, smaller animal enclosures, no more than 50 shops and stalls (just love 'em), around a dozen toilets, maybe four first aid stations, and a simple path system (requiring less staff and less path-extras). I simply refuse to do without enclosures or reduce the size of my pool complex.

I hope some of this helped.

You just need to be creative and have a good idea of where everything goes pretty early on. None of that CS stuff is needed, but it can help.

None of that CS stuff is needed...

Lol.

I usually draw everything I'm going to make out on paper first so I know what I'm aiming for and if it'll look good or not.

I agree, the drawing on paper can save a great deal of frustration and wasted labour. There was one park I just couldn't figure out that way. I recreated to scale in Photoshop what I had drawn on paper, dragged the shapes around and quickly found out that park wouldn't have worked. Scrapped that mess and moved on to my latest and final 252 x 252 park.

Now I'm spoilt for all the great CS available I couldn't imagine a park without it.