Atlantis Map???

[proudcanadian]

Okay, I've heard this map mentioned a few times over the time I've been a member here at this forum. However, it seems that, like the lost continent itself, it's almost disappeared from the community, and is only mentioned every so often. I'm sure there was a topic about this at the old forum before it got hacked, but since there's been no topic about it here, I decided to start one.
It's mainly just a few questions I have. Firstly, Nedfumpkin, are you still working on the map? If so, is it anywhere near completion, or is it still in the beginning stages? From what I've heard, it sounds like a pretty large map, with lots of events, which is my kind of scenario.
If it's not too much to ask, I'd just like to know a little more about this map. I'd really hate to see this project go into the deadzone of RRT3 scenarios that never were.

[nedfumpkin]

I wouldn't call the idea for the map dead, but I am going to wait and make it part of Rail Mogul. I'll explain what happened....

My computer is an old piece of junk that technically should not be able to run RRT3. I have win98SE and I have been able to get the game to run, and I can also edit maps. It can get really chuggy at times though. The utilities that Coast to Coast produced need at least Win ME to work. I tried installing ME on my computer and it killed RRT3 for a long time. I have just recently been able to get it to work again.

The idea behind Atlantis was something I came up with during New France. In that map I came up with a simple idea where the player had a risk of getting stabbed in the back, and that risk was affected by the different choices that they made during the game. In New France, I wanted to offer the opportunity to take different paths with entirely different issues attached to them. Atlantis was to expand greatly on this idea.

The biggest problem that I had was that the power plants can't be used to affect the operation of the rail road. I'm hoping that we can overcome this in RM. What I wanted to do was have it so that you actually produced the power to operate your electic trains, and their performance was directly tied into the energy produced.

I decided to do a work around and came up with fuel cells. The amount of track determined how many cells had to be produced to run the trains....there you have it folks...Atlantis was run on batteries. :) But there were tie ins with the manner in which the cells were produced, and the method had an impact on the environment.

So as the player went through the game, there was a cumulative index that kept going up and the increases were based on the decisions that were being made. So fuel cells made by windmills had a lot less impact than those produced by fission. There was also the problem of waste, and then I began introducing social problems into the mix. There was a huge problem with the teens and "crystal rice" and you had to buy the rice farms and bulldoze them in order to eradicate the problem.

The idea was to complete the goal of connecting the continent before is sank into the ocean. The could part was that it was going to be something that you didn't know the precise time because a range would be set based on tests, and then when you loaded the game, the doomsday number would be a random number generated within the range. When your degradation index exceeded that number it was game over.

The map had a lot of new cargo, industries, buildings and locomotives. There was a temple that had a 1:1 for passengers, and consumed certain goods.

The main problem was that the new cargos seemed to have an effect on the old scenarios. The way to fix it was to rename them with an x or z prefix so they ended up at the end of the cargo list so they didn't affect the order.

But alas, my computer died so I wasn't able to go through and rename all the events etc. So now I am hoping to be able to try again in Rail Mogul. The main theme of the scenario was that every decision you made had a positive and negative effect, and it was their cumulative effect that determined when the game ended, and you just never knew when it was going to be. :)

[Gandar]

I am surprised again at the depth of the scenarios that are envisaged here. I remember playing New France and it was very enjoyable ' It sounds as though you are taking things to a whole new level if you are using that as a jump off point, and then introducing more variables into the game. I look forward to playing it on RRT3 or RM whichever one it comes to first.