So just how do you build the ultimate coaster? Firstly, it depends on what you're trying to do. Trying to complete one of the scenarios with limited money and space is different from building your dream ride in your own park with lots of space and spare cash. Building coasters in scenarios is covered later. However, all coaster designs aim for the following:

    Keep the intensity low.
    Keep the excitement high.

The first is the most important. Whilst your peeps will ride a coaster of intensity of more than ten, they will usually only do so if they've been on other rides.  Additionally, the higher the intensity, the lower the excitement. A high intensity also means a high nausea rating. Whilst this may not be a problem if you have Handyman #32 patrolling the area, pukey people don't go on rides (so you don't get their cash) and they aren't as happy as they could be. If you keep the intensity low, you don't need to worry too much about pavement pizzas.

Once you've got to grips with designing a low intensity (i.e. less than ten) ride, you need to concentrate on problem number two; exciting rides. The more exciting the ride, the more people will go on it (and eventually turn into Captain Chunder - but hey, at least they enjoyed themselves and spent money). Even more importantly, the higher the excitement, the more your peeps will pay for the privilege of being scared s**tless. I know, I've been there.

If you're playing one of the scenarios and space/time/money is tight or building your own park and just trying to fit an extra coaster in, then you only need to worry about intensity. Your peeps will ride it regardless of the excitement, as long as the price is right. However, if you want to design the ultimate thrill ride (and/or make more money) then you need to look at the excitement factor.

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Look at the pre-built coasters that come with the game. Build one of them and follow the train round (in the coaster window click on 'overall view' and change it to train 1 or 2 or whatever). Different rides have different tolerances and by watching the train go round you can get a good idea of what sort of things that type of coaster can do and how you can design your own basic scream machine. 

Next, check out the graph tab. By clicking on the various options, you can see the altitude, velocity and various g-forces that the ride offers. We'll come back to this later. You can also find out what people think of your coaster by clicking on the tab with the peeps on it. That way you'll be able to find out if it's priced too high or is too intense. Don't worry if they complain that they won't ride 'Shiny Coaster by Me' in the rain. Unless your ride is new or you get repeat rides they won't. But make sure you've got plenty of rides that they will go on (see the mega park guide). The same applies if your peeps think that "'Shiny Coaster By Me' looks too intense to me'. Their intensity tolerance will increase after they've ridden a few gentler rides.

One more important thing to keep an eye on is the queue time. If people are queuing too long for your ride, they're not getting any happier (and you're not getting their cash). Shorten the queue or change the ride timing so that people aren't hanging around. Try to build the ride entrance near the front of the ride so that your peeps can just jump straight on instead of spending time walking down the platform. Don't worry about the exit too much (but see mega park guide for some cunning strategies).

If your coaster seems to be breaking down too much you can change the 'inspection rate' under the cogs tab. See *)disasters for details and how to cope with the "not *that* many people have died in an accident on 'Shiny Coaster By Me' but my park rating has plummeted" problem.

*)A Note from Maurine: disasters: Sorry, somehow the Tutorial for the Scenarios got lost. But I will try to find it somewhere, if possible.

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Slow down!
Trains can go up as well as down hills. A coaster going too fast causes the most problems. Put a hill in before a loop or change a curve into an upward helix. If you really have to you can put a brake in, but that's no fun for the riders and is bad design.

Always use banked curves.
The main exception to this is at the start of a ride when the train is coming out of the station or just coming into a station (you did use up all the train's speed on the ride or put brakes before the station to avoided crashes didn't you?)

The faster the speed, the larger radius of curve you should use.
Even better use a cobra roll.

Don't go through loops and corkscrews too quickly.
 Try to hit small vertical loops and corkscrews at about 35mph. You can get away with 50mph, but not very often. In-line twists and half loops can be taken at about 50mph, but the slower the better. The large loop on the steel twister needs to be entered at about 50mph too. Of course the speed will vary depending on the length of train you are using and the layout of the track just before and after each inversion. Watch the train go round the loop. It shouldn't be going more than 20mph at the top.

Don't change direction too quickly.
Don't hurtle through a curve at 80mph and then throw the riders round a bend in the opposite direction. They will definitely throw up!

Reduce the number of cars on each train.
This decreases the momentum of the train so it will go a bit slower. Be warned though, as it may mean that your coaster won't get through all those carefully designed loops!

Build your coaster a section at a time.
Put in a few bends or loops and then send the track right back to the station. Test your ride and look at the stats. If the intensity has shot up from 6 to 16 then you'll have a fairly good idea where the problem is. Follow the train round and watch the speed. You should be able to pinpoint the problem straight away. If not look at the graph tab in the coaster box. Check for rapid changes in lateral g's or long periods of positive g's. That means that your riders are been thrown about too much or being pushed into their seats for too long and they won't like it. Negative g's - 'airtime' is generally a good thing so unless they're off the scale or there's a lot of quick changes between positive and negative g's you don't need to worry about them. Once you've spotted the problem you can redesign your ride - you'll only need to do the last couple of sections because you're building bit by bit! Building slowly also allows you to spot problems before they happen. It's no fun if you've just built the world's most exciting ride only to discover that your train won't go round a loop or up a hill.

Practice!
The more coasters you build, the better you'll get. It's not as if it's a terrible chore is it? You'll soon be building rides with 10 inversions and 80-foot drops, all with an intensity of 8. Once you get the feel of each type of coaster you can build longer and longer sections of track before you test. Eventually you'll be building rideable coasters in about 10 minutes and only testing them before you open them. Trust me!

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Cross the track.
Making your coaster dive in and out of the structure will make the ride more thrilling for your peeps, especially if the track passes just underneath another section. It also gives them a chance to see other parts of the ride. Design a section of track to go through a loop, or better still, have a 'loop through a loop' . Generally there needs to be about 4 levels of difference between the two loops. It's also advisable to have a few other things happen between the loops. That way not only do you avoid extreme differences in drop and sharp curves, it also gives your peeps something to think about! If the double loop is the main feature of your ride, you can experiment with the ride timings to ensure that you have a train going through each loop at the same time. You can also design knots (see below) into your coaster to give it the feel that it is racing itself. This can be as simple as a couple of helices or as complicated as your warped mind will allow. 

Cross the track with other rides and paths.
Have the track dive underneath a queue or loop through another coaster. I often design rides with loops near the station so that I can build the queue line through the loop. Build a loop that goes through another coaster's loop (tricky!)

Use the land.
Build some (or all - see below) of your coaster underground - essential for a mine train coaster (otherwise you may as well just build a wooden twister!). Make the train dive off a cliff or swerve to miss a rock face. Try to use the land, rather than build against it. It's cheaper but it looks better too. If you do have to raise or lower land, try to lower it - there's nothing worse than seeing big chunks of land sticking up everywhere.

Use scenery and themeing.
Careful use of trees will hide the rest of the track from your peeps. Themeing adds a lot to a ride's excitement value. Don't overdo it though - and try to be consistent. Building a mineshaft next to a pyramid won't affect the excitement factor but it will look a bit stupid. Not that you can't mix themes; a few dinosaur bones in an Egyptian desert or some mine barrels in a Roman Villa will look good. Don't forget that you can alter the type of the terrain too. Again, it won't alter your coaster's stats, but used consistently it will make your ride look great.

Keep the speed up. I know I've said that you should take it slowly, but the faster the ride, the more exciting it is. Just be sure that it won't make your coaster too intense.

Plan ahead.
What do you want your ride to do? Where do you want it to go? I often build the main feature of the ride first and then work backwards and forwards from that. Where do you want the station to be? You might have designed the world's most intertwining coaster, but if you then need a long, boring straight section of track to get the train back to the station then it's not the world's most exciting ride is it?

Build the ride 'feature by feature'.
Think of it as designing lots of smaller coasters in a row. So you want an interlocking loop or a large knot? Well build that part of the ride and then test. Not only do you ensure that you keep the intensity down, it also allows you to plan ahead by looking at the speed of the train after each 'mini coaster'. It's also the only way to build a single racing coaster that works. Once you've completed each feature section you can leave it alone, knowing that your 'must have' set of helices that you're going to build a roto-drop in later can remain intact. Whilst you'd like to have each 'mini coaster' intertwining with previous ones, it's not a disaster if they don't - each of your 'coasterettes' is a ride in itself. You can even have different sections underground or separated by mountains, with each feature surrounded by different themeing.

Improvise!
Of course, nothing ever works quite how you planned it! Think of it as an opportunity to improve your ride. What if the train comes bombing out of your last set of features at 60mph - a bit fast for the triple corkscrew you had planned? Well you could have the train go up a hill before the corkscrews, but even better, you could use the train's speed to send it into a large loop. Train going too fast for the 90-degree turn you need? Use a half cobra instead. 

Make it look good.
Usually, if a ride looks good it will be exciting too. A path going through the middle of a loop, a suspended coaster that has people's feet skimming a rock face, a mine train bombing into a hole or a big woodie that dives in and out of its supports not only makes the ride more exciting, but it looks great. Try and have the boring bits of your coaster go underground or through other rides. If you can't avoid a long, straight section of track, have a couple of other coasters loop round it or send it underground. If that's not possible, surround it with trees and theming. All will make the ride more exciting.

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Corkscrew U-turn.
Build two half corkscrews in the same direction to perform the coaster equivalent of a handbrake turn. It's quite intense. Even better is:

Cobra roll.
A half loop followed by two half corkscrews in the same direction, followed by another half loop. Combine two of them to make a simple ride.

Half cobra roll.
To turn through 90 degrees build a half loop followed by a half corkscrew.

Half boomerang.
Basically a half cobra roll but build a half corkscrew followed by a half loop.

Boomerang.
A sort of inverted cobra roll. Half corkscrew, half loop, track up, half loop, half corkscrew.

Heart loop.
Track ends up 4 levels below where it started, but going the other way! Track down, small helix down, two banked wide turns, banked medium turn, small helix down, track down.

There are lots of others, but these are the main ones that I use, although I often add in extra bits (such as an inline twist half way through a cobra roll). The flying coaster is a good coaster to use of this since you can build the track 'upside down' too.

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Firstly there's a simple dueling coaster, which is basically two (or more) separate coasters built side by side. Secondly there's the single racing coaster, where trains leave one station and arrive at another and so on until they arrive back in the first station. 

A true racing coaster will run parallel to the other section of the track all of the time, but it is common (and easier to build) a dueling coaster which goes and 'does it's own thing' sometimes.

Don't forget that for a dueling coaster to run efficiently you'll need to make sure that trains are leaving all of the stations regularly. It's no good having a long queue of people waiting at station 1 because the train in station 1 can't leave because it's waiting for the train in station 2. Make sure that all stations have a maximum wait time for their trains, or better still ensure that people want to ride from all stations. A good way of doing this is to have the end of the queues form a crossroads on either side of a path. You also need to make sure that you have the same length and number of trains for each coaster/station.

The easiest racers to build are ones that are mirror images of one another. Just make sure that each separate coaster stays on one side of the 'mirror' and then either build an exact mirror image of it on the other side or use the TD4 mirror utility here to do it for you. This method works best with smaller coasters such as the wild mouse rides or the single rail coaster.

The next easiest dueling coasters to build are separate coasters that don't cross track. They simply run parallel to each other for most of the way round. If coaster A goes round a tight bend, coaster B follows a slightly wider turn. The only problem here is that you need to even out the turns to ensure that the coasters are actually racing. You can of course always have the rides go and 'do their own thing' for a while to correct the timing. Any or the woodies look great when this method is used, but it also works well with the smaller steel coasters.

The hardest racers to design are the coasters that cross each other and occasionally loop through each other. It's difficult to keep them 'racing' when they are together. The only tips I have for this is to use a lot of trial and error and if you get really stuck separate them for a while and let them wander off until you can get the timing right. I usually build a big section of racing track for the coasters (with maybe a few simple crossings) and then design the rest of the first coaster and try to fit the second in around it. Once I've got them synchronized again I go and build another racing section. You could build two separate coasters, but I think that if you're making the effort to cross the tracks you may as well build one coaster with two stations - the single racing coaster. It takes longer to test (because you've got to wait for the first train to complete a circuit before they can start racing), but the 'wow' factor you get when it works is great!

A note on single racing coasters: Building two separate coasters and joining the track will not work! It will just cause a crash. (Though of course this could be the aim...) Build a simple loop to get your two stations first and then you can treat each station as a separate coaster - just remember that track from station A must finish at station B. Don't forget that you still need to synchronize the stations and have an even number of trains (this is one of the disadvantages of the single racing coaster - having to cut back on the number of cars means long lines!)



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You can even combine the ideas of the Rollerbus and racing coaster to create a really exciting transportation system. If you do this, be sure to use more than one coaster. As I've found out, two sets of two synchronized stations is too much for the game to handle! You'll also have very long lines.

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The scenarios are great fun to play and building coasters in them is a real challenge. Usually you have limited space, time and money. Just how do you build 'Ultimate Thrill Ride 67' in a scenario? Simple answer: you don't. So what do you do (copyright Adam Ant)? Hopefully by now you know how to build a shiny new coaster. If not, go and practice some more. Remember that you don't need to build the world's most exciting coaster. Your scenario coaster might not set the world alight, but as long as it's not too intense, peeps will ride it. In the scenarios you won't have much time to experiment and test new bits of track - guest#409 is lost and wants to go home. You should already know what does and doesn't work.

Try designing a few small, cheap coasters yourself in an empty, flat park and save the track. Here's a few points to bear in mind:

Keep the price below 10k.
Otherwise you'll spend ages waiting to save up enough money to build your coaster.

Make it exciting without going underground or using any other tricks.
Remember that when you build saved designs they just get plonked on top of whatever bit of terrain is already there. For this reason you should also:

Keep below the maximum height allowed for each coaster.
In the scenarios you probably won't be building on flat ground; as a result some parts of your ride will be higher than normal. If part of your coaster is too far off the ground you won't be able to build it. The higher you go the more expensive it is too, so your cheap coaster on the flat might cost a fortune if the highest part is in the sky when you build it on the side of a hill.

Keep it compact.
Not only will it be cheaper, but the less bits you have sticking out, the more likely it will be to fit into the space available.

Use 'powered launch mode...'
... and 'reverse incline launch mode'. These are especially useful for building small coasters, as you don't need to design a complete circuit. You can just have a few loops and knots.

Once you've got a set of 'scenario coasters' you can use them, together with the pre-designed coasters from the game to get your scenario off to a flying start. You can build them instantly to attract more peeps to your park. More peeps brings you closer to your goal and also brings in more money to build decent coasters later.

Not all coasters lend themselves being pre-built - the mine train is a good example as it benefits from going underground (copyright The Jam). Some coasters, such as the mini steel or single rail ones are better if they are built from scratch since they are ideal 'fillers' which can be built to meander through and around other rides.

Eventually you'll want to build a custom coaster anyway. Perhaps the terrain is difficult, you need to build underground, have limited space, you're bored, or whatever.

The first thing to do is save the game! - especially if you'll have to alter the terrain (which costs a lot to do and costs even more to undo). Things will probably go wrong, so it's useful to be able to start from scratch if you need to. If you want you can save the game as you're building - perhaps you want to see if something works or you're about to spend a lot of money bringing the diggers in. Either way, you might want to save it under a different name. As you're building, particularly if it's a big coaster, periodically check on your park. It's easy to get carried away trying to work out how best to fit coaster A through coaster B, but you still need to make sure that the puke's being swept away. Often you'll be sat around waiting for extra cash to build a loop anyway, but don't sit there idly - have a look around! Don't be afraid to take a break from building your coaster. If your research department has just designed a new thrill ride then go and build it... It won't cost much, it'll keep your peeps happier than a swine in mud and while you're faffing around with that you'll be earning money to build your new coaster.

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