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1- What is your involvement with the Rollercoaster Tycoon games and the Atari forum? I worked as QA Supervisor on RCT3 and the upcoming Soaked! Expansion pack. I’m also an official moderator on the official Atari RCT3 forums. My role on the forums is to provide technical and game play support as well as keeping track of any ideas or problems arising from the community discussions.

2- Do you have any information on Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Soaked and other expansion packs?

What we wanted to do with the expansion packs was to give people more brand-new coasters and rides, more themes, and importantly brand-new gameplay features that sit logically in the RollerCoaster game world. Soaked! brings the thrills of water parks to RCT3. Another exciting aspect is the extra features for the MixMaster, allowing you to combine firework, water and laser shows.

It has also allowed us to take feedback from the fans and introduce some commonly requested features as well. Some examples of this are separate load and unload stations for tracked rides, being able to save scenery with your coaster design, improved peep AI, for example better use of transport rides, and other features like jumping fountains.

3- What are you thoughts of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3? Do you think it is better than the others? What are your favourite features?

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 is definitely a project I’m proud of, and I do believe it has brought a much respected series forwards. Moving to 3D from 2D ‘pre-rendered’ is a big step and there are obvious trade-offs to be managed – with limited polygon-count 3D objects being displayed by the game ‘real-time’ rather than ‘pre-rendered’ display of very high polygon-count (i.e. lots of detail) models in 2D our challenge was to keep the detail in the new 3D RCT to a high level, whilst then exploiting the clear advantages that a 3D world has, such as being able to ride the rides, good lighting etc., and I think we achieved this very well and the game looks fantastic. I also think the new focus on peeps as groups, rather than a mass of individuals has added another challenge for the player. One that I have enjoyed on my many play throughs.

I have a few favourite features, being able to view the rides from a peeps point of view being one of them. Watching the peeps interact is another, such as a young couple walking arm in arm, or a toddler arguing with their parents. It all adds further depth to the park you spend so much time creating.

Perhaps the best thing about the game is seeing what some of the fans have created; some of the parks that have been built are quite amazing. And as for some of the videos that have been made…

4- Are you looking forward to the release of Soaked? If so what are you most looking forward to?

I am, of course, looking forward to the release of Soaked! it’s the culmination of months of hard work for the people I work with here at Frontier and at Atari. I think what I’m looking forward to most is seeing how the fans use all the new features.

Soaked! is pretty much like an additional game in terms of new content. There are some very cool new features and the water effects look superb ‘in the flesh’ – screenshots just don’t do justice to how it looks. We’re very keen to make sure that all the expansions for RCT3 push things forward from the great foundation that the main game provides.

5- Do you listen to the Atari community forums and what they would like to see in the game? If so what idea do you like best which may be added to the game?

I and many other people from Frontier visit the Atari forums on an almost daily basis, not just to check for any problems people might be experiencing but to see their thoughts on what they would like adding to Rollercoaster Tycoon, or anything that people think might be better if done differently.

Some of my favourite features as a result of this process are actually quite small, but do make the game more fun to play. A good example of this is the automatic training of staff when playing in Sandbox mode. In fact Sandbox mode itself is the result of fan wishes dating back to RCT2. For Soaked!, I think the improved peep behaviour, particularly on transport rides and some of the new rides are particular favourites.

6- What do you think of the thoughts and ideas coming from the forum?

As with any forums ideas range from the sensible to the not so sensible! Many of the ideas are good in an ideal world but just aren’t practical to be implemented in a game that runs on the majority of today’s PCs – for example making the inside of buildings ‘dark’ is absolutely what should happen, but we’re still thinking up a ‘clever-devil’ way of doing it without it hitting frame-rate too much. The most important aspect is to see what people think is good with the game, what can be improved and the direction they’d like to see the series take. Even if an idea isn’t practical for the current technology, it can always be resurrected for use in the future.

One type of suggestion that will always be hard to answer is quibbles about specific details of a ride. When someone says ‘the such-and-such ride in my town has four seats across each row rather than three’ or some other subtle change to a ride in the game – of course they are right, but it is not practical to offer every possible variant that could be imagined.

7- From some of the screen-shots there seems to be a new station layout. Do you have any info on this?

Because the pool slides are connected to pool complexes they have a different station layout to existing coasters and rides. The layout you mention in the screen shot only applies to pool slides.

8- Will we be seeing real life rollercoaster's and theme parks in any of the expansions? Which parks and rides would you like to see?

Currently there are no plans on using real life parks in the expansions, although for Soaked! we do have a deal with Hershey which enables us to include some of their rides. But who knows what else the future may bring?

9- When were you appointed your job? How did you get it?

I’ve worked at Frontier now for two years; I saw a position for tester advertised on the website (www.frontier.co.uk) some time before and applied for a tester’s position. The position had already been filled and then, out of the blue I received an email asking if I was still interested and would I come in for a chat. And I’ve never looked back.

10- If people want to get into designing, game programming, what advice would you give?

For programmers you need a good grounding in Maths and a common programming language such as C++. There are many colleges and universities that provide game specific courses that would provide a good basis for a career in games development.

For artists probably the most important thing is to have a good portfolio and show reel to demonstrate your skills. A good technical grounding in as wide a range of modelling and art applications is also beneficial.

Perhaps most importantly, you have to love games. You have to live, breathe and sleep games. Not just playing them, but understand how they work.

Frontier’s web-site contains details on what we’d expect to see from applicants for various art and programming positions.

11- Will we be seeing Tunnels is Soaked?

Yes, no, maybe – wait and see. Tunnels is a feature of the previous versions of RCT that some people care about very much, and would be ‘nice to have’ for others. We are working on it. Whether it makes Soaked! is not yet decided – we have done some work on tunnels already, but the decision will come down to quality and usability of the result, and the ‘supportability’ going forwards.

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