Spinning Coaster Cars

If you've followed some or all of the suggestions in previous sessions you'll find that making a Spinning Coaster car is not much more difficult than making a standard coaster car. The main difference with Spinning Coaster cars is that they need to be made in two parts.

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Part A which is the base part, the part with the wheel effects that hugs the track during the car's travel.

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Part B which is the top part, or the spinning part of the car with seats in which the guests ride.

When modeling Part A you will need to include these bone effects:

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carfront

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carrear

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wheelfl

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wheelfr

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wheelrl

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wheelrr

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pivot

The pivot bone isn't one to which we've referred in any of the previous articles and is required as the axis upon which our spinning car will turn upon its base. The game engine itself will make our Part A the Parent to our Part B so we don't need to set up any Parent/Child hierarchy in the Importer for the pivot.

Part B's bone requirements are:

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camerafront

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camerarear

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nosecamera

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carfront

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carrear

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peepXX (as many Peeps as required)

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pivot

The game engine will link one pivot bone to the other pivot bone so our Part A pivot should be centred at the top of the base in its center along with our Part B pivot being situated at the bottom of the car in its center. When your model is completely ready for exporting to ASE, if you were and move your Part A and your Part B together in SketchUp to test the positions of your pivot bones both pivot bones should be in the exact same spot.

Part A and Part B will need separate ASE's and will need to be Imported separately into two OVL's. Notwithstanding that, they'll be processed as a single unit when creating the car OVL with CTR Creator.

Finally you'll need to set the ForwardBackFreeRotationFlag flag value to 1 in the BahnDaten_.

The WagenDaten_'s TurnaxisType flag setting should remain at its default setting of 4. Higher values cause errors. Lower values disable any spin regardless how each track section is set up. We were further unable to make any difference to the spin of our car by flagging either the TurnaxisMomentum or TurnaxisStability keywords and based only upon our lack of success with this we recommend they are left at their default settings.

In previous sessions we've already covered how to import custom cars, the creation of restraints, and assigning bones and meshes. After you've followed these steps CTR Creator may be used as usual to create your spinning car.

For our track we've used TrackCTR_ML03FamilyRCProfileH along with one of SwissCheese's stations. For our car we've used Peep Seating Position 1=Sit. As you can see in our video we've also opted into using a sled for the base of our Spinning Coaster car, just like we did for our Robotic Coaster car.

An alternate way to create a spinning coaster car is to import your car model all-in-one as a standard Part A Car_ and to effect the spin with a single ik_robotjoint instead of two matched pivot bones. With this set-up a different angle for each spin can be selected and as with the Robotic Coaster, smaller angles and longer distances between enabled track sections will result in a more sedate 'spin'.

Categorizing Your Ride

Nearly everyone finds it easy to discern between a steel coaster, wooden coaster, a suspended coaster, and a water coaster. Sometimes it can be a fine line between deciding if our track is a Transport Ride or if it should be included with the Other Rides and Attractions. On the other hand, if we've created a track that behaves as a flat ride, deciding which RideCategory the flat rides display in can be difficult without launching the game and looking through the menus. We created this Category reference sheet so that without launching RCT3 one can tell at a glance into which RideCategory we should include our creation.

  Table: In-Game Ride Categories

Adding Your Own Icon To The In-Game Menu

If you choose to make your own icon for your custom track you can create a logo for yourself and use the same logo for each track you create, or you may make a new icon for each track.

Our downloads includes a folder called Logos & Icons Pack. Inside that directory is another folder named

Icon_Dummy-CSO (Style OVL).

This is the folder required to make your own icons. This directory contains two OVL's and a THM file. These files have been created and saved like this so it's convenient to use copies of them to import our own track & ride icons as if we're starting the Importing process from scratch. The process of creating our own icons is a simple one that will not even require that we use the Create OVL dialog - the person who created the Icon_Dummy-CSO (Style OVL) files for the community has already done this for us.

The first thing to do is to make a copy of this folder and put it somewhere safe so it may serve as a backup copy. Always work with the copy in case you make an error that can't be undone. You may follow the instructions below to create your icon in any folder convenient to you but the two OVL's that you eventually create need to be placed in the same folder as the BahnDaten_ you're using to create your track.

To start, create an icon sheet as you usually do for Importing. It should be 512 x 512. An icon texture map like this will permit sixty-four icons, each at 64 x 64. Create a single 64 x 64 icon and put it in the top left position.

Launch the Importer and go to File>Open Theme File.

Navigate to the location of the Icon_Dummy-CSO (Style OVL) folder and open the THM file there. An error will display indicating that the contents of the folder have been moved. As these files were created on one computer and we're attempting to use them on another it is not surprising that the Importer has flagged this caution message. Those familiar with the Importer will also get this message if they've simply re-named or re-arranged the top-level directories in which they store files for Importing so this is only a routine message of caution.

The Importer will next offer to fix the paths to our files so that it may work with them and will ask you to locate the DummyIconModell.common.ovl file. All you need to do is navigate to it and select it. The Importer will do the rest after which you may proceed. Because you're working with a copy of the Icon_Dummy-CSO (Style OVL) folder you can save a new THM file over the existing one so you don't need to again locate it at a later time. You might find it convenient to place a copy of the Icon_Dummy-CSO (Style OVL) folder inside each of your BahnDaten_ project folders.

Add the icon sheet into the Importer as you'd usually do when Importing CSO's.

Once you've closed Texture Manager, in the Importer's main window click Install. Without saving anything close the Importer. Our work with the Importer is now completed.

Locate the two OVL's you just installed. They'll be inside a newly created folder named CTR_Icon. The files to locate are

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style.common.ovl, and

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style.unique.ovl.

They'll be in there alongside another folder called Diesen Ordner loeschen - Delete this folder. This is an incidental folder created by the Importer so we may process our custom icons. Then move these OVL's into the BahnDaten_ folder containing the files for which you've just created these OVL's.

Open the BahnDaten_ TXT file. On line 9, where it says RideIcon, enter the word Style in this field.

Now you're ready to process your BahnDaten_ through CTR Creator as you ordinarily would. Your icon will display in the game when you scroll to your track or ride.

Drag the above toggle to a

convenient place on your screen.