Warning: This program is not user friendly. If you are unfamiliar with Dr. J's Object Editor or Henry's DAT Maker program, do not attempt to use this program. You could seriously mess up your copy of Rollercoaster Tycoon Two. Neither Mike Young nor Interactivities Ink take responsibility for incorrect use of this program.

If, when following these instructions, you have a question, STOP. Do not continue. Ask your question in the forums of RCT2.Com. I check there regularly and will update these directions to make them clearer.

How to Create A New Flat Ride

Introduction

First off, it is important to note that you cannot create an entirely new flat ride in RCT2. Many things, such as how the ride animates, its capacity, and the amount of land the ride takes up, are hardcoded into the game. We can do what the folks who made Wacky Worlds^TM did: take existing rides, change their animations, and make what seems to be new rides.

That's how we did The Swinger. We took a twist, disassembled it, changed its graphics, and rebuilt it, tweaking it a bit to make it a gentle ride instead of a thrill ride. Sound complex? It is! It is a long, difficult, complex procedure, and I only recommend it for the especially devoted or insane.

Step 1: Disassemble the Ride

We are going to make the simplest of flat rides, one that doesn't animate. Once you get into animated rides, you can produce hundreds of frames of animation and that can take a long time. We are going to convert a crazy house into a laser tag area.

It is very important that you not distribute your laser tag arena or even use it in parks you plan to distribute. Why? Because everyone is going to make one, and if they are different by one letter, then the game will barf. There is a completed Laser Tag Arena at the end of this document.

The first step is to disassemble the Crooked House file. Copy (not move) the file, CHBUILD.DAT, from your objdata folder to a folder in which you plan to build the new ride. Every ride in progress should be kept in its own folder. We will call that your ridefolder.

Use these instructions to disassemble the Crooked House. Go ahead and extract the bitmaps, too. When you are done, your ridefolder will look like this:

Let's talk about all of those files:

CHBUILD.DAT: The crazy house data file.
OUTFILE.BIN: This is the disassembled ride file.
PIC0.BMP: This is the preview graphic.
PIC1.BMP, PIC2.BMP: These files are not used.
PIC3.BMP, PIC4.BMP, PIC5.BMP, PIC6.BMP: These are the actual graphics for the crazy house.
POS.TXT: Every graphic in a ride has an offset from the center of the base. This file lists the offsets for the crazy house.

We will need to modify and replace the picture and pos.txt files to create a new ride.

Step 2: Replace the Pictures and edit their positions.

To create a new ride, we need to replace the pictures with new pictures with the same name. Since we will not, at this point, be replacing the PIC0, PIC1, and PIC2 bitmaps, we can delete them from the directory. The ride creator will only replace the pictures that are in the directory. Otherwise, the original pictures from the ride are used. Delete PIC0.BMP, PIC1.BMP, and PIC2.BMP.

Now we can replace the remaining pictures with our own. The ride creator is very picky. It will only accept 8-bit bitmaps with the same palette as used in the game. You can get the palette from a game screen shot. Click here to download the replacement pictures. Copy them over the pictures in your ridefolder. When you make your own rides, make sure that your pictures have the correct palette. The ride maker does not check for palette and the wrong palette will cause problems. Further, the pictures must be 256 color (that's 8-bit, not 16 or 24).

Now take a look at the contents of pos.txt:

0,0
0,0
0,0
-46,-58
-49,-56
-50,-77
-51,-64

These are the offsets from the center of the brown square ride base to the upper left hand corner of the picture. Because our arena is a different shape than the crazy house, we need to use different numbers. You need to find these numbers using trial and error. A good first start is negative half the width of the picture, by negative 3/4 the height of the picture. Let's try them to start with:

0,0
0,0
0,0
-60,-80
-60,-80
-60,-80
-60,-80

Copy the list above to your pos.txt file, replacing the lines that are there with the ones above.

Step 3: Compiling the file.

1. Now we are ready to create our new ride file. Open up ridemaker.exe. We have already decompiled file, so we only need to set the directory. Click the "Set" button, and select any file in that directory.

2. We need to change the file name for the new ride. File names cannot be longer than 8 characters. Enter "RIDETEST" in the "Build File Name" box.

3. We need to change the name we'll see in the game for the new ride. Change it to: "Laser Tag Arena" in the "Name String:" box.

4. We need to set the ride description. Change it to: "Players run around in the dark trying to shoot each other." in the "Description:" box.

5. The crooked house is a gentle ride, but we want the Laser Tag arena to be a Thrill Ride. Select Thrill Ride from the "Ride Type: Base:" Drop down menu.

6. It's always nice to have a special preview for a ride work in progress. Select the "Invert Base Image" checkbox.

7. NOW click the "Build" button to build your new ride.

You will know it is done when the word "Finished" appears in the "Decode File Name:" box.

Step 4: Testing the file.

Making a new ride is an iterative process. Copy your new RIDETEST.DAT file to your ObjData folder and start RCT2.

Using the scenario editor, create a new scenario that uses the Laser Tag Arena. Make sure that it's already researched and that the guests prefer less intense rides.

Then load the scenario, open your park, and test the ride.

As you can see, we didn't get our exact adjustments right on positioning. Take notes, and update your pos.txt file accordingly.

Or, use these values:

0,0
0,0
0,0
-61,-77
-60,-77
-60,-77
-60,-77

Step 5: Conclusion.

Now you have created your own ride. Again, this was just a test ride. Don't distribute it.

To create a preview image for the ride, follow the same steps as you do for a shop or restroom.

Click here for a working Laser Tag Arena.

Thanks to lazyboy97O for the Laser Tag Arena graphics.