Note: Everything you see is still very much a work in progress, nothing is complete.

Introduction

Hey everyone! Welcome to my newest large-scale project. I had a thread for this going on the NoLimits-Exchange, but as many of you know, that ceases to exist. I've also been posting updates to Facebook, but I feel it's time for a thread here on NLC. After The Twililght Zone: Terror Tracks last year, I wanted to try a longer, more light hearted, and faster-paced experience. Most importantly, I wanted to create a concept that wasn't an already existing IP. I wanted to focus on building the world and characters for the experience before creating the ride itself, unlike Terror Tracks.

Cherry Bomb

Speaking of characters, allow me to introduce you to our main character, a high school sophomore named Chelsea. She's a clumsy dork, but in her own head envisions herself as a complete badass. In an effort to try and showcase her true self to her peers, she can transform herself into the costumed vigilante Cherry Bomb, fighting crime throughout her town.

I found a wonderful artist on Twitter (@MooMehMoo) to help design CB's costume, she did a fantastic job of translating my vision into visual artwork, while also adding her own creative flair! Eventually, I intend to create a physical version of this costume, and find an actress to fully portray CB throughout the ride experience.

Additionally, I've hired an artist by the name of Rob Yeo (@robjyeo) to design logos for the ride, as well as some other artwork like the poster below. The logos he's designed (ride logo at the top of this page, and the "CB" logo on Chelsea's costume) turned out wonderfully, as did the poster. What do you guys think?

Ride System

I'm using the same ride system as Radiator Springs Racers at California Adventure and Test Track 2.0 at EPCOT. Something that I really want to capitalize on throughout the experience is interaction. To achieve this, I've created the story in such a way that you'll be interacting with another car for the entire story, in unique and interesting ways. More on that as the project evolves. This project wouldn't be worth anyone's time if I didn't try anything new. With Terror Tracks, it was my first attempt at a FULL project. From preshow to POV to exterior buildings, I feel it was a 100% complete ride experience. With The [OMITTED] Misadventures of Cherry Bomb, I want to attempt animated screens that you see on Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and in Dumbledore's office. I will be combining practical effects with physical sets with projections of live actors, so that this whole experience can feel as real as possible. I feel it'll be a challenge to film/integrate actors into this 3D environment, but a fun challenge nonetheless.

How Far Along Is This Project?

Well, considering I've been working on this ride since January, I've come a long way. There's a TON of pictures I could show you all, but I'll try and keep it short and concise, showing only the important stuff. First off, here's the entrance to the attraction, Mountain View High School. Guests will enter through the school's locker room, travel through the hallways and into classrooms before boarding the ride.

Additionally, around the front of the ride, we have what I consider to be the main facade, which showcases the beachside town and gives the feeling of a boardwalk atmosphere.

In the picture above, you can get a glimpse of the ride vehicles, which were brilliantly modeled by TheCodeMaster to fit my specifications. They are supposed to mimic the styling of old 80s/90s beater cars, donated to the school so the computer science department can outfit them with self-driving technology. These pics were taken a little while ago, so the scenery has been updated, but the vehicles are still as they're shown below.

Lastly, this is a dark ride after all, so the important part isn't the outside, but what's inside. I could go on all day about what's going on indoors, but I'll spare you the speech. It started with a "paper" model, shown below.

Since then, I've been spending the bulk of my time on this project making sure the inside looks as good as it can. Here's a few previews.

What's Next?

Obviously, there's still a LONG way to go, but I'm getting there [very] slowly but surely. Right now, I'm working on finalizing the finer details of the story, and trying to finish the interior of the ride as soon as possible. Once that's done, I'll order the costume for the Cherry Bomb hero outfit, start filming the projection screens, and go from there. I'm also entirely open to bringing on help in the 3D modeling department to help push the progress of this project forward, so if you're interested let me know.

So, lay it on me. What do you all think of the progress so far?

Looks totaly awesome ! I really mean that. I know progress goes very slow if u making details.

Update

Time for my first real update on NLC, and it's a pretty big one! Over the past couple of weeks I've been putting a ton of work into the exterior of the attraction and the area surrounding it, really trying to capture the feel I'm going for. Unfortunately, I wasn't totally able to capture the tone I was going for with the environment, because I wanted it to feel like a beach, and beaches are open and endless. A ride, however, is the exact opposite. It's extremely limited and enclosed. So with those parameters, I tried my best to compromise and retain what I could of my initial vision.

In this first image, you can see I've made some changes to the lighthouse, making it a bit more realistic and cute. I've also added a pier that juts out from the mainland, allowing offride viewers to get close to the action while retaining the theme.

Here's a couple of better views of the interaction between the ride facade and the rest of the park area.

From this view looking north from the pier, you can see where the commuter rail will go. The train will pass between two layers of the rocks, separated by a chain link fence which may or may not be totally visible here.

The ride takes place in the fictional town of Mountain View, completely unrelated to any actual cities with the same name.

As you can see, I've fully furnished the surrounding area with lamps, trash cans, benches, the whole 9 yards. The buildings take a bit of a dip in quality because they aren't the focus of this ride, they're really just background props within the scope of the project. A lot of the scenery you see is inspired by Big Thunder Trail at Disneyland, Grizzly Peak at California Adventure, and the cities of Oceanside, Carlsbad and Long Beach, CA.

And to cap things off, here's the cave that brings guests into and out of the area. It travels north, under the railroad tracks. Ideally, this is where the area would connect to the rest of a theme park.

Wrap-Up

With all of that out of the way, I have a few more things to finish on the exterior (on the high school side) before wrapping it up. After that, I'll move back to the inside (where RCW is currently working), to finish and polish all of that scenery. Once that's done, it'll be time to get the Cherry Bomb costume made for our actress, and film the live action scenes to really bring this ride to life. After that, I'll mix the soundtrack and we'll be all set!

..it's a bit easier said than done.

So what do you all think of the outside?

Long Beach? Oh hey, I know that place.
But for real, this is turning out amazingly. I appreciate how much effort you're putting into this project. Can't wait to see the finished product.

Why is there a censored word in the ride title?

Easily one of the most ambitious projects I've ever seen come to life on NL2. It's insane to see how well this project came along from the early concepts and designs to where it is now. I'm really excited to see it when it all comes together.

How's optimization as of now? Curious if I'd be able to explore this in the Rift with even a somewhat decent frame rate, of course I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't priority. I just can't help but ask haha.

Are you also going to release it for us to play or is this just a showcase?

Replies

@Jetcoasterfan: Because this is a family friendly space!
@Mrcrolly: Right now optimization is nonexistent, aside from built in LODs from the NL2 assets, and my own modeling shortcuts to keep things low poly. I'll probably put some occluders on the show building to keep the inside and the outside of the ride rendered separately. Once the screens are in, I imagine the frame rate will drop quite heavily, unfortunately. While you're correct, it's not a priority, I do try and keep it in mind throughout every step of the process.
@D4ieGZNe: As of my writing this, yes, I do plan to release the entire park for everyone to mess around with. However, I also plan to lock the NL2PKG so that assets cannot be modified, added or removed from the file.

Update

In this update, I'm here to show you that the exterior of the ride is [pretty much] DONE! What I mean by that is that the meat of it, all the big important stuff, is finished. Anything that will be added from here on out are details that aren't really update worthy, but will be present in the final release and video. In the pictures below, I'll be showing off the exterior of the main entrance, the high school. (Click images to view larger versions)

In this photo, the entrance to the queue is just to the left of the ride logo on the side of the maintenance shed.

Here, we see the nearly complete entrance plaza. The area was designed to be the pick up and drop off area for the school, where families will be arriving for tonight's science fair. I hope to add "hand-made" posters advertising the event and welcoming parents/families, as well as some basic road signs for the parking lot and drop off areas

Over in the parking lot here, I plan to have some signage as part of a display for the self-driving cars that passengers will embark on their tour of Mountain View in. When TheCodeMaster was modeling the ride vehicles, he went all out by even modeling the chassis! I couldn't help but show that off here.

Lastly, here's an overview of the entire exterior, in it's nearly completed state. The scope is certainly a lot bigger than I initially imagined!

Wrap-Up

Now it's time to finish up the inside with RCW. Once that's nearly complete, I'll get a costume made and film the show scenes, and we'll be on our way to the finish line! What do you all think of the high school exterior?

1 word: AMAZING!

I do feel like you should be getting more feedback on this, but you're probably not because all we have to say is that's amazing keep it up.

So... that's amazing keep it up.

Yeah at this point I feel most of the members have given their fair share of compliments haha. Great as always though.

Let's have every user on this forum appeal this project daily in a round-robin manner. Here's is my contribution to express amazement:

This looks better than Disney.

Replies

@CoolioJoe: Thank you! While I would really appreciate more feedback, I guess this is a good silence?
@Emonadeo: That's... really high praise. Thank you, that means the world to me. I'm not sure I agree, but thank you, that's awesome.

Update

Well well well, it's been a minute! ...I mean a month. Sorry guys, I'm not neglecting the forums, but work is slow! Because of the pace I'm forced to work at with school and life's other responsibilities, I usually only work for maybe 20-30 minutes a day, aside from weekends when I can sometimes do more. This means that when I make progress, it's minimal, and I feel it's not worth sharing. Then out of nowhere, suddenly it's been two weeks and all of my little progress has added up into something big, but I fail to realize that until I look back at what the last thing I posted here was, and realize how far I've come since then. If you're ever particularly wanting an update, just drop a comment here and I'll post pictures of what I'm working on.

That said, here's what I've been up to! First off, I've just about completed the main street area, which is either the first or second show scene, depending on which track you ride on. The vehicles don't spend all that much time in here, they move pretty quickly, so you'll notice that details a rather spares, but I've been worried more so about the overall framing of the scene. Believe it or not, this is the 8th design of this portion of the dark ride, it was nearly impossible to nail down. For some perspective, I'll show three of the iterations.

1. The first iteration, an apartment complex with shops on the bottom. This is common in many southern Californian beachside "main street" areas.

2. The third iteration, which was closer to what I was going for, but still just didn't feel right.

3. The final iteration, which is very close to the feel I had initially hoped

Additionally, I finished another show scene, where riders meet our villain in his "lair", a mechanic's garage. The green/red will eventually develop to be a projector video screen. The two pics below will be first entering from track 1, then track 2. Both vehicles will meet side-by-side in this room for the first time since the seatbelt check, and they'll watch the screen together before track 2 races off.

Aaaand just a quick shot of the foliage outside of the garage.

Here's a preview of the first redo of the "sky" walls. This was a test to see if we (my roommate and I) could achieve an accurate look, trying to combine realism with fake stuff to try and make it look like a nice painting. All of the walls in the rest of the ride will eventually have these updates skies, but for night time (see: all the bright blue bars in some shots).

And here's the start of the station. Not much to report on here aside from the railings.

Lastly, here's a preview video of the exterior, with a beautiful train that jpaufsc created for me.

Wrap-Up

Modeling is slowly coming to an end, my hope is to have everything finished modeling by the end of this month. After that comes lighting tweaks, then shooting the live action stuff for the screens. Then it's music and video time!

That train reminds me strongly of Canada's GO trains. Looks great!

Thanks! They are based on the same type of cars and locomotive that GO Transit runs.

This project is easily becoming one of the best dark rides I've ever seen on NL2. Of course it's been said plenty of times, but the amount of detail you're packing into these scenes is phenomenal and looks very immersive, even with the ceiling.

The skies look great, but my concern is still with the blatant cutoff to the ceiling. Have you thought of any ways to make it less blatant? I could see a play on lighting effects to have it kind of fade out of sight could work, or just revamping the scenes to be more late in the day so you can blend it a bit better. Very minor critiques but it's the only thing that sticks out to me. Great work as always.

Replies

@Bolt789: Those are completely the work of jpaufsc, aside from the design ideas which came from me. The train itself is based on the Coaster that runs within San Diego, but as jpaufsc explained, those are also the same cars and locomotive as GO Transit.
@MrCrolly: Why yes, I have found a way to make the cutoff less blatant! More on that below.

Update

So this update will be short on the text, but high in images. The ride is really beginning to come together in my opinion, and it's really cool to FINALLY see things shaping up and looking more complete, in alignment with my original vision for the ride over a year ago. First off, I should show you all that I've went through and updated all the skies for the interior, making them feel both more realistic and more dreamy than the solid color gradients I had prior. You'll notice that they have lots of color, ranging from yellow to pink to purple to blue and green. It's a wide color range, but I think they all work quite well with each other.

Here, "outside" the school, you can get a good view of one of the gradients, going form orange to pink to purple.

Heading towards The Waterfront, we're now on the opposite side of the sunset, so once again the sky fades from orangy pink to a deep purple. Pay no mind to the terrain sticking up through the road in the pic below, that's been fixed.

Later in the ride, we have a more somber blue and green hue, which, again fades back to the neutral purple as we approach the next scene.

Speaking of the next scene, that's almost done too. It's a parking garage for Track B, A.K.A. the "villain" track. This scene serves as a transition scene, meaning that meaning vehicles move quickly through to get to a more important set, which you'll see at a later date. There's still more to be done here, such as a "car coming right at you with bright headlights" gag on the ramp.

Wrap-Up

There's about 4 rooms left to be designed. Two bomb diffusal rooms (which will be nearly identical, one for Track A and one for Track B), one more transition room (Track A), and I have to spruce up two other rooms that are each about halfway done. After that comes lighting tweaks, then shooting the live action stuff for the screens. Then it's music and video time!

I remember when you first presented the project. This was bold, and like those many projects that would never see the finish line. And look at where you are now! So close to finishing! Congrats.

Replies

@KingRCT3: It took some time, but the finish line has finally arrived!

Update

Now that this project is FINALLY completed, after just about 3 years, I figured it's time to bring this thread to a proper close. I know I really dropped off the face of the Earth in terms of updates, but surprises are fun! ...right? First and foremost, I have just a couple updates to share before showing the video.

Here's an overview of the parkfile as a whole. Obviously, this is with the roof and ceiling of the show building ripped off so you can see inside. Additionally, the lighting in rooms for the second track is turned off at the specific moment the screenshot was taken.

Secondly, here's a shot from the studio we shot everything in! The green screen was gigantic, but we needed all the space to be able to film two actors several feet away from each other, then coming together to interact. In the shot are JAKool and Nicholas Laschkewitsch, who you may know for his Legacy of Arrow and Road to Railblazer documentaries.

I could go on for a while, but I'd rather just cut to the chase and give this thread a proper sendoff. Here's the final video!

If you haven't already, check it out and let me know what you think!

Wrap-Up

This project was not completed alone. I had TONS of help along the way, so I implore you to please watch through the credits at the end of the video. Without these people, Cherry Bomb very likely would never have been finished. I can't even begin to count the lessons I've learned along the way, and I'm excited to implement that knowledge in whatever comes next. I'm thrilled we've made it to this point, and I'll see you all next time!

I wonder if the [OMITTED] part of the name is supposed to be an obscenity.

Amazing project!! Love it! Will it soon be available for download? Would love it to have a look around for myself =D (and I guess other people would love it as well)

The only question is if my pc will love it... Awesome work, one of the best projects in Nolimits.

I'm glad you finished it. Amazing work!

Hello, anyone? Downloadlink?

Crazybitch30 posted on December 5th, 2019

Hello, anyone? Downloadlink?

It hasn't been released for download yet, Joseph will release it when/if he wants to. Be patient!