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NL Competition 4 2013 - Adventure Time Results!

Antinos

Slut for Spinners
And here...we...go!

In 8th place, with 15.5 points, is DeepMountain Railroad by Hixee!




Obviously quickly thrown together, but a track is a track!


In 7th place, with 31.6 points, is Defender by Kimahri!




It felt a lot like Adventure Express, which is a plus. The long lifthill was a pain though.


In 6th place, with 34.0 points, is Toothpick by TomahawKSU!




Tom, your rides continue to improve. Your transitions are getting better. Your main issue with your track was keeping the radius of your helices constant.


In 5th place, with 35.0 points, is Gaia's Revenge by Youngster Joey!




I can basically say the same thing I said about Toothpick - your transitions are improving, but work on your helices. There were also a few parts where the ride felt a little out of control.


In 4th place, with 37.6 points, is Mined Over Matter by SFOGRICH!




What a massive track! While nothing out of the ordinary aside from being massive, the layout was great. Certain elements could be shaped a bit better. The theming is awesome, but once again the focus is on the track.


In 3rd place, with 38.8 points, is The Really Really Safe Roller Coaster by Treeis!




I absolutely loved this ride. Out of every ride entered, I could see this built in any amusement park. In addition, it felt like an Arrow mine train. Very nicely done.


In 2nd place, with 39.7 points, is Little Inferno by Jer!




You were the only person who didn't use the auto supporter, so I have to applaud you for that. Very nice layout and good job with controlling your track. The finale felt very much like a mine train coaster.

















And the winner, with 40.7 points, is Oddysey by VooDoDe!




The most striking thing about your ride was the transitions. In addition, the layout was very long and flowing. It was also, in my opinion, the most picturesque ride of the bunch. My only complaint is that there were points where it felt like the ride was meandering, but all in all, a very solid ride!




I was originally worried about how this contest would turn out, but it ended up being awesome because of you guys! Thank you so much and congrats to all who entered. Now go build your rocket coasters for the next contest! :p
 

SFOGRICH

Roller Poster
Thanks as always for such fun comps, as well as for getting the results out so fast! Considering the attrition we had, congratulations go to everyone who finished, and especially to VooDoDe for his winning entry!

When the comp started, I got the idea of making a "hyper" version of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Expedition Everest, and also saw it as a chance to finally make good, in some way, on all the botched or unfinished model railroad layouts from my childhood. I Googled “railroad bridges” to see which ones would be fun to make, and then tried to pick the ones that might be possible with the types of supports we have. The first one, for the lift going from the station level to the midpoint elevation, is based on cable-stayed bridges, like this double-level car and railroad bridge, opened in 2000, that connects Sweden and Denmark:
Oresund-Bridge-Linking-Denm.jpg

For the lift from the midpoint to the summit, I tried to do something like the 1911 Soo Line High Bridge over the St. Croix River, between Stillwater, Minnesota and Somerset, Wisconsin:
Soo_Line_High_Bridge_7.jpg

That one probably jumped out me because the camera perspective made it look like an inclined lift bridge, even being the same support color I happened to be using. And in case anyone was wondering “What was ol’ Rich smoking when he did that bridge over the water,” I was trying to make the Forth Rail Bridge in Scotland, opened in 1890 and going over the Firth of Forth:
001.JPG

Couldn't make the structure as wide as that one, with it being right at the edge of the map! I thought by taking most of the wooden supports out of the lifts and airtime hills and putting in steel bridges I could save frame rate, but I don’t know how much that helped. Too bad I didn’t get around to making a gigantic single-span concrete arch bridge, like the one near Hoover Dam that just opened about two years ago:
ae6ebedd-a563-4199-adc1-ee7c9f0f717f

Guess I'll have to save it for the next terrain comp...be that whenever it may! :--D
 

VooDoDe

Roller Poster
I know it probably sounds cliche by now, but I'm surprised by the results. There were lots of unique entries thanks to the openness of the comp which I thought was really cool. :) One thing I don't get though is that my track is as laggy as yours, SFOGRICH, yet yours is 4,000 feet longer and has all of that scenery (which is pretty awesome BTW : D). I guess nolimits just doesn't like me.
 

SFOGRICH

Roller Poster
VooDoDe said:
One thing I don't get though is that my track is as laggy as yours, SFOGRICH, yet yours is 4,000 feet longer and has all of that scenery (which is pretty awesome BTW : D). I guess nolimits just doesn't like me.

Thanks for your good words! :--D I think all those trees you have - several hundred, just at a glance - might be cutting down on the frame rate just as much as wooden structures do. Come to think of it, that's what trees are, in a manner of speaking! I usually don't use those, or if I do, maybe just a few sprinkled around here and there, and even then I try to avoid having them anywhere near the track - something else to worry about causing collisions. At any rate, I figured if there were ever any trees on those mountains, they all probably had to be used for the ride supports, station building, windmill, water tower, etc.! I still think the frame rate on mine would have been a lot worse if I hadn't substituted the lift bridges. Before I did the second one, it was just about like Son of Beast's lift hill!

Does anybody know if there's something that gives the ride duration, either in Editor Mode or Sim Mode, that I've never found before? If not, I could probably just use a stopwatch, if NL coasters are in "real time." The reason I'm curious is because I wonder if I might have had one of the shorter ride times, in spite of having the longest track. I don't know what the railroad expression is for "pedal to the metal" - "highballing" or "firewalling" maybe? - but those locomotive boilers really get "hot" in several places, maybe unrealistically fast for a mine train ride!
 

VooDoDe

Roller Poster
^Iv'e tried deleting all of the trees and supports but strangely it had very little effect on the framerate. And I don't know of any way to see how long a ride is, but I'm sure a stopwatch would be accurate enough.
 

BBH

Giga Poster
VooDoDe said:
^Iv'e tried deleting all of the trees and supports but strangely it had very little effect on the framerate. And I don't know of any way to see how long a ride is, but I'm sure a stopwatch would be accurate enough.
If you're talking duration, then I don't see why not. With MOM, my frame rate was really fluctuating quite severely, I was getting 53 in some places, and 4 in others.

Just realized what that sounded like. :lol:

But congratulations nonetheless to the winners, and to everyone who entered! I tried, but... when you have -5.6 laterals, it's time to give up.
 
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