I've been asked COUNTLESS times, "How do you make these rides?" This tutorial will attempt to finally -- and FULLY -- answer that question. After studying this tutorial, you should be able to create ANY animated ride that your heart can dream up...within the (sometimes severe) limits of RCT2. The previous title of this tutorial was "RideMaking for Dummies," and was thus rather misleading. This is NOT something for "Dummies."
- You'll need some artistic talent. RideMaking requires a very specific set of images, hundreds...sometimes THOUSANDS of them, and each one MUST be custom made. Unlike scenery or static (non-animated) rides, you will NOT find the pictures you need floating around on the 'Net or in another game somewhere. These must be made from scratch.
- You'll need to have a handle on basic Geometry and 2D Graphing...that means MATH!
- You'll need patience. It may take days, weeks...even MONTHS to create a ride and get it working properly. You're not going to sit down and make a ride in an hour or two. (Actually, you probably won’t even read this whole tutorial in an hour!) RideMaking takes time...and LOTS of it.
- One final thing you will need is experience. You may be new to RideMaking, but you should NOT be new to making Custom Scenery...ANIMATED Custom Scenery for RCT2. Those who have slogged through the arduous and frustrating tasks of getting a wall to align or fixing an animation pixel-by-pixel are welcome here. If you've never made Scenery for RCT2, I STRONGLY urge you to turn back and return when you're ready, young Skywalker.
Notice that the title of this piece is "How I Make Rides," not "How TO Make Rides." I'll attempt to give the basics of how I personally do it. I'm no expert by any means (and I'm SURE there are probably much better ways of doing things), but this is the process that has worked for me. I'll not be holding your hand through every step, either. You'll get all of the basic information, but will still need to investigate, experiment and discover a few things on your own.
This will NOT be a simple Tutorial. I will try to make it as painless as possible, but if you’re looking for a quick "Do A, B, C and D" type of thing, this ain’t it. Yes, I’ll be telling you to do A, B, C and D, but I’ll also be telling you WHY you need to do it. Every ride is different. A separate set of instructions would need to be written for everything you’d ever want to create! I have no idea what your Dream Ride might be, so that’s impossible.
My hope is that by doing it this way, you’ll not only understand the necessary steps, but WHY they’re necessary and HOW you might need to change them depending on your project.
For those brave souls who STILL wish to follow me into this RCT2 Jungle, let's move on.
We'll go over the process from start to finish in the following sections.
Chapter 1) Tools - What you'll need to get started
Chapter 2) How Rides Work - Behind the screen
Chapter 3) Your "BASE RIDE" - Making an informed choice
Chapter 4) Design - Making your ride work WITH RCT2
Chapter 5) Modeling - Part One - Creating happy little Riders
Chapter 6) Modeling - Part Two - Creating your Ride
Chapter 7) Bitmaps - What images will you need?
Chapter 8) Construction - Putting the ride together
Chapter 9) Testing & Troubleshooting - Making sure it works
Chapter 10) Finally - It works, now what?