Thread: Welcome To My Worlds

Hello peeps and tycoons,

"Atmosphere" music.> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXbHOnHAG-g

One of my long-time hobbies is the Rollercoaster Tycoon series of games, I have been playng for about ten years now and to tycoons like myself it's a regular art form.

(Grandpa had his train set in the basement, I've got my RCT3, lol)

Here is a build I've been working on since last summer: The Plaza, so named for the large glass shopping center/indoor amusement park.

Still very much a work in progress, but I have a lot of screens so far, let's take a small tour.



Here is the entrance to the Plaza Mall...





The Plaza park is not just an amusement park, but a whole community of resorts, restaurants, theaters, office space... a wonderful world of beauty and efficiency and FUN!



I can only post a few pics at a time, but there is much, much more to come.




Thx

You should go into engineering if you aren't already!

Originally Posted by starchild

You should go into engineering if you aren't already!

Thank you very much, much appreciated.

I actually did engineering some years ago, but it was robotics and industrial automation, not civil engineering. I would love to be an architect or a civil engineer.

This building got some notice...

Something new has been added to The Plaza build skyline: The Wedge.

In the next few posts I'll cover the process of putting this latest building together, I think it's been more than a week, maybe ten days from beginning concept to placement in the park, so here goes...

I wanted a condominium for permanent residence as opposed to another resort, something under 2000 sg. feet, here is the beginning...



Modern, split-level, the wedge shape was bold, but would prove challenging to lay out a workable interior...



Fortunately I can save structures and lay out a bunch to mess around with, here is a typical if not neat and organized build site, this building took two separate ones...



Finally you have the floor plan all figured out and set the windows and lighting and maybe a few ornaments...

I still don't have much in the way of custom interior scenery like furniture so I have to improvise as much as possible. (And that can be of one of the fun aspects if you look at it that way, there will always be some scenery you need but don't have, lol.)

Here I tried to build from the "inside-out" as much as possible to include a kitchen, mock furnished living room, master bedroom/bath floorplan with room to add another bedroom and bath over the kitchen...



While the wedge shape was selected with the exterior foremost in mind, I knew that the large angled glass would afford breathtaking views from every room...

Two of these units would be joined together in pairs and then a number of pairs stacked upon a lobby...



Inside there is room for the resident elevator and two enormous Lexan truss rods depicted here in red...



The truss rods are sunk deep into bedrock, two enormous bolts at the top of the building put tension on the Lexan rods and keep the whole building rigid and not just sitting on top of a foundation, but firmly fastened to bedrock.

Now we are ready for a platform to build the stack upon, here is a shot of the lobby with the roof off...



Inside we have a couple fountains, some plants, a few vases a lobby desk and a full buffett, coffee and soda bar, compliments of the house.

Here is the finished lobby, ready to start stacking...



But wait a second there Hoss, we're not quite ready yet... what's going to go on the very top of the skyscraper?

I could have just capped off a pair of condos at the top of the central joining member and put a red light on that, but I really wanted a structure at the top and considered several shapes including a star-like pointed structure, a lightning bolt shape, but finally settled for... another wedge.

The Skybar...



A semi-glass roof and stratospheric view do more to put you in the clouds than even the generous drinks they pour. Don't worry, a sheet of that armor glass could easily support two elephants jumping up and down on it as though it were a trampoline. (Even pink elephants...:wink )

Here is the Skybar with the roof off...



Another buffet table for happy hour, some tables without chairs, (no good chairs yet :/ ) plants, the same ol' large vases and a small bar with the best view around.

So, we put the Skybar on the top and start stacking pairs of condos... (the bar is not depicted in this screen, so you are not going crazy, lol)



After a number of levels you finally put the whole thing on top of the lobby...



Instead of building from the ground floor up, in RCT3 you build from the top level, save it, then put down another level, what will end up the next lower level and stack what you have saved on top of that... then save again and repeat as often as you need, with this technique you can build much higher than the old method of 5 or 6 stories, I can go 100 if I want.

All the way into the sky...



It almost resembles a vertical windmill and one idea is that the winds can rotate the entire structure on an enormous thrust bearing and turn a maximum of onece every 15 minutes or whatever is most comfortable. In times of calm a motor could drive the building... but, this particular one is pretty much stationary.

I decided seven levels and the Skybar would be tall enough, I had originally planned on ten levels but thought that was too tall for this park in the end...

Even though there are only seven levels of condos, remember they are two-story and spaced twenty feet, so altogether you are about 300 feet up at the Skybar...



And of course we have a wedge-shaped swimming pool in the back built over steep cliffs...



I really wondered where I could put this tall structure, I sure didn't want it in the front blocking our view of other buildings like the Trocadero, so I flattened a hill and put the Wedge building among the steep hills in the back of the park.



So there we have it, from concept to finished building...



Thx