Stacking Stalls

With this same Options.txt flag, any number of stalls can be overlapped on the same terrain tile which makes it possible to have a huge number of stalls in a small park. We can achieve this in the same way that we stacked the ride entrances and exits above.

Although it's possible to stack any stall type in multiples, for appearance’s sake it's better to stack stalls that all look the same whenever stacking stalls on the same terrain tile.

When stalls are stacked, guests will acknowledge one stall or the other regardless of how many stalls are stacked there because Guest AI only enables them to perceive a single stall to be there in any one spot. If there are four overlapped stalls all attracting a number of customers, the guests will only consider the one stall they’re actually going to use before determining if that area as busy or not.

Let's say, for example, that we've stacked four coffee stalls in our park and that there are four guests stood there getting coffees at each of the four stacked stalls making a total of sixteen guests at our four coffee stalls. The next guest who wants a coffee (we'll call him guest Z) isn't going to add together all the guests accessing all four of the coffee stalls, perceive a total of sixteen guests, and then conclude that the area is too busy. Guest Z is only going to see the guests at the individual stall that he himself is headed for and will determine only from the number of guests who are stood there at his intended stall whether or not his stall is busy. What this means is if there is one guest at his intended stall and all the other four are each serving five guests, he won't see the area as busy because there's only guest at the stall that he's headed for.

The challenge in stacking several in-game stalls is that if we stack five of them there will also be five vendors there all in the same place. To get around the problem of several different vendors performing varied activities in one spot I’ve created an invisible custom stall with an invisible vendor. This is handy if, say, I want five Drinks stalls in the same place. To achieve this I’d place one in-game drinks stall and then overlay that with four of my invisible stalls with invisible vendors, setting each of the invisible stalls & vendors to sell drinks. Outward appearances would suggest that the vendor that comes with the in-game stall is serving all those guests but he'll only serve the guests visiting the in-game stall. Although we can't see them, each of the invisible vendors will serve only the guests who come to visit their respective invisible stalls.

If we use one in-game stall and one or more invisible stalls with invisible vendors, the invisible vendors will ensure we don’t have several visible vendors in one place giving the appearance there’s a single vendor there with several heads and lots of arms in different skin tones.

The download link for my invisible stall with invisible vendor can be found at the end of this article. While we prefer the same stall types in the same place, this publicly released version of invisible stall with invisible vendor enables several different types of food, drink, & merchandise to be sold from one spot.

Most gamers are aware that when we place two stalls in our park and those two stalls are both accessed from the same path tile that guests arriving at one of the two stalls will get glitched up in an endless loop of walking from one stall to the other. Because guests caught in this loop leave it each time a new guest arrives at the stacked stall, in busy areas of the park this glitchy loop is hardly noticeable when considering the sheer quantity of guests who are approaching each stall in the stack. Glitchy loops at stacked stalls in such parks can simply be ignored.

For appearance's sake, with in-game stalls we couldn't overlay one Hot Dogs stall, one Drinks stall, and one Coffee stall on the same terrain tile because this would create an unattractive stack.

So that our stacks look better we'd place several of the same in-game stall type in the same spot, or using the invisible vendor with invisible stall, place one or more invisible stalls with invisible vendors in the same spot that each sell different items.

Both the stalls and the facilities can be stacked although when using the above method of overlapping facilities, regardless of how many in-game and how many invisible stalls with invisible vendors are used, the glitchy loop remains a problem when several Information Booths are stacked in the same place.

Stalls that are animated need to be stacked all at the same time while the game is paused. This will prevent chicken stalls from animating eight-legged chickens, or pretzel stalls with several pretzels revolving out of sync.

Stacking Facilities

Facilities can be stacked in just the same way we stack our stalls. This makes it convenient to place several toilets in one area of a small park without it being essential to spread them out some distance apart. In A Woodland Clearing there are nine toilets in three stacks of three. Technically I could have made a single stack with nine but I thought a group of three just looked better in this park.

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Stacking Rides

I've used this same Options.txt flag in A Woodland Clearing to place Golden Odyssey and Magic Carpets so that they slightly overlap Pool Complex. The way the guests use these rides makes it clear that the overlap is not an issue for ride access.

This integrated appearance is due to a combination of rides overlapping the pool decking, using stacked access, building some of the access paths underground, placing terrain covers and vegetation to blend underground access, and re-texturing with TexMod to match the appearance of the pool decking to ride baseplates. All of these result in rides look like they've been built within the pool decking and that guests access these rides directly from the pool.

Pool Complex Changing Rooms

In large parks several changing rooms all lined up in a row against the pool decking do look impressive but in a compact park we'd want to stack our pool access points. A Woodland Clearing was certainly not the park in which to place rows of changing rooms. In the image below there are four stacked ship themed changing rooms and four stacked whale themed changing rooms.

When I first stacked the pool access in this park the challenge that arose was in the duplicated particle effects that resulted while creating the stacks. These stacked particle effects are either blown out or too heavy, something that can be seen in this next screenshot where there are four stacked ship themed changing rooms at the left and four stacked whale themed changing rooms at the right.

To get around this I simply deleted the associated particle effects from the game's installation folder and then imported custom particle effects. This way I can have several pool access points in one spot with only one custom particle effect in each place.

The fountain particle effect that comes with the in-game whale themed changing room is overkill, and because it appeared to me as if the ship engines were running on low quality diesel I never liked the smoke that came out of the in-game ship themed changing room. My own changing room particle effects are more subtle than those that come with the game so from now on I shall use the ones I've made whenever I include these two changing rooms in my parks.

When initially stacking our changing rooms each of the changing rooms should be completely set up the way we want it before we move on to the next. Should you choose to stack your pool changing rooms do remember that after you've done stacking them the pool complex should never be closed. As expected, if we were to close our pool every changing room in each stack will also be closed.

However, while RCT3 does make it convenient to view all our shops, facilities, tracks & rides, and animals listed in their own display there is no one place in the game where we can view a list of all the pool complex changing rooms. Ordinarily, in a park without stacked changing rooms we'd mouse click on each changing room and bring up its display to make our changes in that way. This isn't possible with stacked changing rooms because when we mouse click on the stack only one of the changing rooms in the stack will ever display. Further, when re-opening the pool the game engine will only re-open one of the changing rooms in each stack so if we've closed our pool and then wish to re-open it later, because there's no way to access individual changing rooms in a stack we'd have no option but to delete our changing room stack and replace it with another stack, again opening and setting up each changing room the way we want it as we go along.

Viewing Galleries And Animal Houses

It is also possible to stack more than one animal viewing gallery in the same place. This is handy if we don't want the appearance given by multiple galleries, if we want to reduce the number of paths that several individual viewing galleries would need, if we would prefer to have a few small galleries rather than a single large one, or if we only want paths along one side of our enclosure but would still like to have more than one gallery. In the following screenshot I've stacked all three sizes of viewing gallery to demonstrate.

As you see the animal houses can be stacked too. This will enable a larger number of sufficiently fed and watered animals in smaller enclosures.

In the example screenshot the stacking was deliberately placed in this offset manner to demonstrate that such stacking is possible. In our own parks we'd certainly want to stack the animal houses all in the same place and to stack our viewing galleries all in the same size. In this next image are two animal houses and three medium-sized viewing galleries which have been properly stacked.

Enclosure inhabitants will be more tolerant of smaller enclosures provided all the animals within are of the same species and there is plenty of food & water, so when stacking items in our enclosures we'd want to be sure and set things up so our feeders attend often to our animals' needs.

We do need to exercise moderation when stacking primate houses as the glass can easily become opaque and present a blown out appearance.

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So those of us who enjoy building small parks need no longer be restricted by the petite dimensions of our park's real estate. These options for getting more into bantam sized parks will enable us to present mini parks that can pull the guests just like larger properties.

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FTA's Invisible Stall With Invisible Vendor

FTA's Invisible Stall With Invisible Vendor is now available for download at File Transfer Database. Click below to visit the webpage where you'll find a little information about this unique custom object along with the demo video and the download link.

  FTA's Invisible Stall With Invisible Vendor