cant wait for the squirrel stream! :)

Stream was great guys and the final project was great considering the time and various other restrictions!

Element 115 posted on January 9th, 2019
After some brief discussions over on the NLC discord this format of event seems to be extremely popular. Due to this i have decided to begin preliminary planning for a much larger, community driven event in which multiple teams compete head to head on the same template and time restrictions. Exact details are not thought out but if anyone is interested and wants to team up with two other community members to either make a track, 3d model scenery, or edit a video then head over to the discord and let us know! Expect more details in the future.

I would LOVE to be a part of this! Seems like it'd be a fun way for the community to get together. I know that the idea of bringing back three blind mice has been thrown around. Would there be a way to integrate elements of that contest into this idea? Maybe randomizing the teams from different pools of track makers, modelers, and editors?

^Sounds like a cool event! I'd be down once more details are known

EVERY STORY HAS A BEGINNING

A long time ago back in 2015, i made an Intamin Megalite esque coaster called Aether, at the time of conception I had lots of convoluted ideas but no practical skills in NL2 to make them come to life. In fact it took me about 2 weeks just to figure out how on-board audio worked. The end result was a fairly average coaster full of support based scenery that certainly did not age well.

Over the next few years i moved on working on dead project after dead project and began to make coasters that stopped following the styles of certain manufacturers. Most of these coasters were designed as a fictional coaster manufacturer which eventually coined the name “Aether Systems”. A name inspired by the original ride I created back in 2015 which in turn arose from my somewhat unhealthy obsession behind the hidden story-line of Call of Duty's zombie mode.

The whole idea behind developing this custom manufacturer was to ultimately complete a project that I had been trying to pull off since the day i bought NL2. A complete redo of the original Aether coaster, featuring a much more complex and deep story, taking various elements form the games and bringing them to life around an immersive ride area and layout.

Around this time i had teamed up with Thomas (Coasterguy246) and Tom (iSatnav) to work on a collaboration project for roundup 200 called Paragon, this ended up being the first Aether Systems coaster to be released fully, at the time I was a fairly big noob (still am tbh) when it came to modelling and scripting. Where optimisation was concerned…. Lets just say I took my attention to detail a little too far.

After paragon ended up taking 3rd place in roundup 200, we decided to stick together and make more Aether Systems coasters, focusing on hyper realism and detail while keeping the general theme and area simple. The next ride to be released signalled the proper evolution of Aether Systems as its own unique style of ride. Cyclone featured fully custom trains, and a unique track system modelled from the ground up, with fully wired up transport wheels, sensors and every other component found on a real coaster.

Around a year later, while multiple projects were being worked on, (most still to this day) i had finished updating all of our trains and track with more optimised models and created a brand new 4 seat wide train style and a wider gauge track system for the larger trains. My original goal had laid dormant for a while. With potential designs ranging from hybrid coasters to launched vertical lifts, all of which died.

The dawn of a new project

Almost a year ago, the concept for the Aether redux came to me. I wanted to retain the combined loop and tophat from the original coaster, but this time integrate it over a main entrance plaza to the ride area. So i took the idea and just ran with it, I kept the project secret for the first month or so while figuring out a layout and how to adapt it to potentially the most convoluted story ever written. The end result was a double load/double unload station setup running up to 8 4 car trains with minimal stacking, 2 preshows, indoor sections as well as a maverick style lift hill and second LSM launch, this bad boy could hit a capacity of almost 2200 pph running full tilt.

This layout features forces that push the limits of what's safely possible, peaking at negative forces of nearly -2g, positives of up to 4.2, combined with laterals and hang time. The two main features are of course the loop-tophat combo. and the huge wave turn that rides along a cliff over the ride plaza itself. Combined with the lighting and effects the layout was designed to make riders question what direction they are facing, with the strongest negative g forces occurring when the train is banked at 90 degrees.

Then came the hard part, creating the immense station building to house not only part of the ride queue, but 2 full 30 second pre shows, 8 stations and the bag storage and exit shop for ride photos.

Modelling Madness

So with fairly limited modelling experience, off I went. No planning whatsoever, i just winged it. Six months of screaming, cheering and stupid large doses of pure luck that things lined up the way they did, i finished the interior and exterior models for the main ride building.

I would like to add that i will never EVER attempt to make a coaster this complex and intricately themed ever again in my life. the only things that even made my finish this was the need for a made to thrill poster, my love for the story line and Thomas's constant "motivation" in the form of a horrid list of bugs and shouting. I had almost given up at this point, bitten off more than i could chew that's for sure. But over time, with vital help from both the AS team, and all the great members of our discord server and the NL2 community at large. My overambitious project was finally taking shape. and the full extent of the ride area was almost entirely modelled. Here are all of the separate files imported into one model.

So before the blender users start to cry (I don't blame you, that's for sure) I will move on. As absurd and fantasy esque the rides area is, i wanted to make everything as believable as possible. This ride is by far the most detailed coaster i have ever created. Every sensor, wire, camera, bolt and motor is present throughout the entire ride. Evacuation routes have been created from every point and the ride features a fully accessible backstage area with everything from working elevators to a fully detailed maintenance bay. Custom trains come complete with electrical connections, bus bars for charging on-board audio and LEDs. The ride features a fully fledged on-board audio system with custom sounds for dispatch, unload and load stations and a soundtrack for the rides layout. All the audio was created ground up from the games source files and tailor made to fit the ride experience.

The story that started it all

The premise of the rides story-line takes place in a location i invented based on the original lore of the game. Known as Dimension 115, it is a fractured dimension within the multiverse, originally created during a failed German teleportation experiment using the newly discovered Element 115, a bizarre unnatural element not found on earth that crashed down in a meteorite over a remote part of Russia, during what is now referred to as "The Tunguska Event". During the accident the daughter of the lead professor behind the project, Samantha, became trapped between dimensions in a mysterious world known as Agartha, She unwittingly became bestowed with the power to manipulate space and time itself. With no knowledge of these abilities she accidentally created chaos in her panicked attempts to escape, causing 100s of different dimensions to merge into one. The resulting carnage left the German research base trapped in a mishmash of strange architecture ranging for alien looking wooden towers to an american diner straight out of the 1950s. The only way to undo the multiverse and free Samantha is to open the gateway to Agartha and allow her to return to her original dimension. Following her guidance from above, you are to embark on a journey through space and time to open this gateway. Using a repurposed military jeep fused with element 115 and intercepting a teleportation test at the facility in a last ditch effort by the scientists to escape, you are to enter Agartha itself and follow the steps, travelling through multiple dimensions to charge the gateways that allow the agarthan Rift to open and restore order to the multiverse.

After claiming second place in Roundup 300, it was time to clean up the file from recording and carry out the final bug fixes and detailing to make this project (at least somewhat) releasable. Special thanks to Thomas for going full psycho and custom making every single ride panel for each of the 20+ blocks this behemoth of a coaster has, as well as adding in the last details such as CCTV cameras and remodelling the op cabin.

Project Manager’s notes from Thom

Well it's been an interesting year or so for us three, between me getting a job at an actual park, Tom diving into the world of civil engineering headfirst and Jai making the project of a lifetime with us two tagging along to help out. There were a couple points where I was starting to worry about this project falling through and never reaching completion, but we managed to pull through eventually (with some kicking and screaming along the way). I'm glad I was able to help out steering some decisions in the right direction, and also making sure we learned from our mistakes made with the likes of Paragon and other projects that never surfaced in the end, and also putting some of my basic operations knowledge to use. While some things on the ride are not perfect, I'm still extremely happy we even made it this far and that we got to a stage where we can finally call the ride complete. I hope you all have fun exploring the world of Dimension 115, and hope some of you take the time to fully explore the backstage parts of the attraction as well as experiencing the ride for yourself.

R300 Video notes from Tom

Lmao idk what I'm doing but the video turned out alright I guess. There have been worse NL2 projects to be a part of so I'm proud of the result I suppose, it's been a good laugh. Thom told me I didn't write enough and to talk about how this is different to the paragon video. Well, firstly, we have a POV in this one, that's a start. We got bollocked last time when we didn't bother. The editing is also less crap, owing to premier pro being better software than Sony Vegas. Furthermore, the ride is better, that's a bit of a bonus too. Let's see where we go from here, gonna be a bit of a pain to top this one.

Wrap Up

One year from conception, it is finally ready for release. So please fire up your liquid nitrogen cooling on your dual RTX 2080ti Graphics card and enjoy the chaos.

Don’t get lost out there, you may never return....

NLC: https://nolimitscentral.com/exchange/park/859

Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1932851125

Madlads

It's been an absolute pleasure to have a small part of this project and being able to watch it evolve from the beginning. Fantastic work lads, all of you!

Wow my computer shuts down the second the train is dispatched when I'm onboard, it doesn't throw an error or anything, just black screen and starts to reboot.