PRELUDE

This is my RCT3 biography- And it’s long. Skim it if you want or read the whole thing if you want to. I wrote it for you RCT enthusiasts and for myself… a kind of RCT3 diary I can look back upon in the future. 

PROLOGUE

My RCT3 life began when RCT3 was released. I never played RCT1 or RCT2. I always played (and still do) first-person shooters. But let me first start by giving you a little background info. I was born in Florida and spent my early childhood there. Disney World had just opened up and I remember spending a lot of time there. My Dad would bring my sister and I there on a Saturday and we would stay all day. If we got good grades, we’d spend the weekend there. My Dad took me on lots of vacations to amusement parks all the time. A typical family vacation would be to go to Disney World, Sea World, Bush Gardens and Six Flags over Georgia. Thanks Dad! I grew up loving theme parks. I eventually moved to Connecticut, where I went to High School, attended college in Boston and now live in Arizona.
So, a few years ago, my wife bought me SimThemePark as a gift. I thought it was a pretty fun game. I always eyed the RCT series but never bought them. Eventually I saw the teaser trailers for RCT3 and I just had to get it. Man did it look great.
All I wanted to do is build my own theme park. I could care less about the game portion (scenario). In fact, to this day, I’ve NEVER played the actual game. It didn’t take me long to decide to build a “dark” ride. I love thrill rides, but I just adore slow dark rides. I always wanted to ride a mix of both elements and I thought RCT3 would give me the opportunity to build one. I started to build Thrill’s Canyon – Time Racer.

THRILL’S CANYON – TIME RACER 

I believe that I had a question about the game so I logged into Atari. If I remember right, I wanted to know if there was a way to place roofing tiles without having to raise them from the ground each time. Thank God for that CTRL key patch! I placed hundreds of roofing tiles the old way to finish Thrill’s Canyon… yikes.
I was already a member of Atari for other reasons (Since 2003). I had never been an active member of any message board. The whole idea behind it was totally new to me. In fact, I was confused as to why anybody would “hang out” at a message board at all. But then I noticed people sharing their work. I decided to share Thrill’s Canyon. However, some people couldn’t get it to work because it used block brakes to speed up the coaster and that would only work if you downloaded the current patch! That’s when I looked into filming the ride, something I’d seen someone else do.
I had no experience with Movie Maker. I read all the tutorials and figured it out and produced the video for Thrill’s Canyon. I already owned the website putmeonthenet.net. I was going to use it to sell basic 3-5 page websites for small businesses, but never did. I decided to post my video there.
I was surprised that people seemed to enjoy it. I had fun making it and decided to make a couple more. I also started building a park called Cirque Mystique. I put a maze in the middle using bushes (I was already experimenting and pushing the game to the limits). In the park, I built The Lost World, a cheesy Dinosaur ride using the Tram. The other ride was Pirates of the Mediterranean. In Pirates, instead of spreading the ride out, I stacked it about 5 levels high. I also used some rides as scenery. At the time it was inventive and people took notice.
Those were the days weren’t they. Remember the onslaught of music videos??? Bitter Jeweler, CK The Fat… what happen to music videos. Remember the Thriller video??? That was amazing with all the peeps doing the Thriller dance. Anyone have this??? I want to put it up at my site.

SKI JUMP

So anyway, I started thinking, why make something in RCT3 and film it if all you are going to release it on Atari as a video? I might as well make a video and use RCT3 as the tool. My first experiment with this was Ski Jump. I had the coaster slide down a hill, jump the track and land on it 100 yards away. It was all video editing. People were dumbfounded by how I was able to do this.

HAUNTED HILL

That’s when I decided to use this concept on a larger scale. That’s when I built Haunted Hill. I remember people were confused as to how I was able to make the coaster go forward and backward in the same track. Haunted Hill was the first video that really had people take notice. I remember Milkdud, Bitter Jeweler, Mickeyca, Marnetmar, Vodhin, Tikitiki and others giving me praise. I was officially hooked on RCT3 and video making.

THE SPELUNKER

I remember thinking that it would be cool to be able to place a coaster in a cave. Tunnels were not possible yet in RCT3. I knew that I could form all kinds of mountains and stalagmites, but I could never have a top. But I noticed that you can raise a mountain so high that you could not see the top in coaster view. That’s when I had the idea of flipping it all upside down. I knew that there was a coaster that could flip 180 degrees and the game would still allow turns and inclines. I knew I would need to use booster brakes to shoot the train up the incline, to mimic it going “down” when flipped over. The only problem was that I wouldn’t be able to bank the turns as it would seem to bank to the outside when flipped.
It really confused many viewers as to how I did it at first. Of course, some of the smart ones, like Mickeyca, picked up on it. I wish I had Sony Vegas then. It would have made the transition from outside the cave to the inside (flipped over portion) so much better.

FANTASMIC

I felt like I needed to go BIG… really BIG. The idea of doing Fantasmic The Ride started taking shape. I knew I was making a movie, not just a ride. I knew that it didn’t matter what the parts of the ride you didn’t see in the video looked like. The ride would become the façade for the video.
I would listen to the music and try to figure out how I could incorporate RCT3 scenery into the scenes. I remember jotting down the different scenes and figuring out what could go where. I remember sketching out how I could splice various sandboxes together into one seamless ride. I experimented with the fireworks and figured out how to sync them to the ride. Most people hadn’t even sync fireworks to music yet, let alone inside a ride. I figured out how to time the music and put it all together. To this day, I can’t believe I made that in the original RCT3 and with only Movie Maker.
I remember the entire buzz from just the screenshots. I created a preview for the ride. I found that fun to do. In fact, I believe I was the first one to make a preview video for a ride. I kind of became determined to create new things and new ideas. Before it was even released, Fantasmic was being talked about all over. There were tons of sites all talking about it!
I couldn’t believe the response. It was incredible. People absolutely loved it. In a way, it revolutionized RCT3 video making. People like Bitter Jeweler, Mickeyca (who had just released the amazing Night on Bald Mountain- inspired me a ton), Marnetmar, Vodhin, Tikitiki, Shyguy, DarkSim, CK the Fat, Joetomnj, Jcat (Pumper), Dean(AU), CoasterSim.Fan just loved it. You know… I think CoasterSim.Fan maybe my oldest fan. Thanks man!
I remember that I was completely intimidated and scared of Mickeyca. He would pop up at Atari with some of the most artistic designs and release a video so crisp and beautiful. I really envied his style. At the time, I didn’t know what he thought about my crap.
You might have only seen Atari, Mods to the Max and Vodhin’s site, but I traced the video to at least 50 discussion boards from around the world. Many weren’t even in English. Dreamworks, a Belgian who rarely posts over at Atari, interviewed me for a Belgium message board. For some reason, my videos became especially popular there. To this day, they still keep in touch.
People wanted to know how I did it. People wanted to make their own. I had to post a backstage “tour” of the making. Fantasmic put me on the map.
Now I go back and look at it, and it looks like crap. I see so many problems with it. It was good at the time of release, but now, yikes. Maybe someday I’ll remake Fantasmic and bring it up to date.

JEDI ASSUALT

Three months later came Jedi Assault. I noticed that I hadn’t seen the invisible track trick used much. The newest Star Wars movie was coming out and I was inspired to build something with a story… a mission. This was to be mostly a movie and not a ride. On a side note: I remember that it was around this time the RCTPlayers movie was being created and released in parts.
I had downloaded FRAPS and was eager to use it. I knew I could record video footage from other games now. I filmed the fight scenes using the Star Wars games. I decided to name the characters after the Atari members that were supporting me at the time. If you want to hear some old names; go watch Jedi Assault, that will bring back memories.
JA was more difficult to do at the time than people might think. Producing the lasers was a huge pain. Lasers weren’t invented yet for RCT3. Those were modified fireworks. Aiming them took so many tries. Syncing the dogfight was a huge pain. I was using Movie Maker still and had several layers of sound effects which meant having to render, edit and re-render again many times over.
This was really the first, that I know of, video to come out that was made to tell a story. Of course, the best storybook video was finally released… RCTPlayers to this day, has to be the best RCT3 non-ride video ever made.

THE AMERICAN ADVENTURE

If I remember right, I was going to do the American Adventure after Fantasmic. However, the idea for Jedi Assault came to me and I jumped into that. That is a good thing because Soaked was released after Jedi Assault premiered and I had finally gotten Sony Vegas. Before I started AA, I had to learn Vegas first. I went on several sites and downloaded many samples learning along the way.
The American Adventure was pretty straight forward. I had the script from the show and I just jotted down what scenery I wanted to use for each scene. The cheats for track intersect were just being discovered. Again, I believe that I was one of the first, if not, the first to have a double station platform. A lot of people were amazed at that concept alone.
I wanted to keep with the sync events like Fantasmic. I even put a firework show in the video where the ride stopped. The whole concept was very much like Fantasmic. However, in Fantasmic, I wasn’t able to have a picture on picture. I had to break away from the shot. With Sony Vegas, I finally had the opportunity to display video on screens. The screens came from some of the first CS sets ever for RCT3. I wanted to create a ride you would find at EPCOT. Something that turned to show you sets at different angels. I knew that the wild mouse spun and that you could stop the spinning using a special track piece. That’s when I decided to try to “tame” the wild mouse coaster.
At the time, The American Adventure was a pretty innovative ride video. There are a lot of people who still think this is my best ride I ever made. I like that it was fun but educational. I liked the racing car scene. The tribute to 911 came out tactfully good. I thought it told a great story. I even had someone say they showed it in their History class!

THE REVENGE OF THE MUMMY

Now that I had Sony Vegas, I wanted to see what I could really do. Wild was released. This was the expansion pack I remember going and checking on the boards everyday to see if there were new developments. Some got to beta test it. We couldn’t wait to see screenshots and I couldn’t wait for it to be released! I immediately wanted to do something with the Egyptian set. I came up with The Mummy.
This was the first time that I started a thread for a ride I hadn’t built yet. It became a very popular thread at Atari. I held contests along the way. It was kind of fun. But the video became a convoluted mess. Half way through building, Marnetmar generously offered his Egyptian CS Set before he released it at Atari. The Mummy became an experimental canvas for all the new things I was learning with Sony Vegas. Video effect after video effect- some really good; some really bad. I was diligent in some places and lazy in others. I admit that I didn’t even know where the story was going half way through.
I think it really hit me when I got a certain review. The review really hit the nail on the head and I began to understand what it takes to create a really good video, not just a special effects extravaganza.

"big budget film that went absolutely nowhere, and confused more than corrected". -N747

Yep, n747. It was his review that made me change the way I look at RCT3 video making. To this day, it stands as one of the best critiques I’ve seen. I was getting used to the fanbois comments of Awesome, Great, 5 million stars, etc… I really came to appreciate n747’s critiques of RCT3 material. He has a very good sense of the game.
I learned that I was just a video guy and not an artist. I lack that artistic eye that many of RCT enthusiasts, like Fisherman, have. A year earlier, I discovered Thornshadow Castle and was amazed. I offered to host the video for Fisherman. A few months after the release of The Mummy, I saw that Fisherman was working on a new production. I remember I posted a tip in the Cirque Phantasmagorie thread. That lead to me offering to host his new creation.

VOLTRON

I decided to take more time with my next video. I even decided not to frequent the Atari boards anymore and never mentioned the project. I started working on Spiderman. But I should point out that at the very end of making the Mummy, I started an experiment on battling coasters. I figured I was pretty good at syncing stuff and I hadn’t seen a good coaster battle video. Plus, I knew I had the capabilities with Vegas to show all the coaster views on one screen.
Voltron was just a small experiment that kind of turned into something a little bigger. It was really all just thrown together. It was a fun piece of junk. Unfortunately, some of the near misses were hard to tell from the coaster view. The 4 coaster perspective (Black Lion) was kind of neat to see though.

SPIDERMAN – THE ULTIMATE RIDE

It had been nearly a year since the release of The Mummy. I never posted anything about Spiderman until I released the preview. It was the first time I released a preview when the ride was already completed. With this ride, I used the Robo-coaster to replace the Wild Mouse coaster concept used in The American Adventure. I also used video billboards, an effect that most people didn’t/never used.
I took my time with Spiderman. For someone without that artistic eye, I thought it came out nice. I thought it had a great mix of special FX too. Of course, there was one guy who was mad because it wasn’t the IOA version of the ride!  To this day, I rank Spiderman as one of my best videos.
For some reason, ride videos were starting to disappear over at Atari. Everything was about building a new park with all the new Custom Scenery. Sadly, Spiderman got the worst response in viewership. The thread faded within a few days. One of my favorite videos died.

INERTIA

Again, this was nothing but an experiment. Originally, I was just going to test the concept of a coaster going back and forth on a track and work it into something bigger. I really put my editing skills to work on this one. There was no story here. There was no real theme. I filmed the video when there was nothing but track. The test worked and I decided that maybe I should release the video.
I have this fear that when I come up with something new, that someone else is going to do it first and release it before me. So I decided to jazz up the sandbox. I just placed objects to fill in the gaps where I had already built the coaster.
I made this ride in just about a week. Can you believe that? And it turns out to be the favorite for many people.

DESERT MOUNTAIN EXPRESS

This is the latest publically released ride video and perhaps the most exciting.  Again, I took my editing skills to the extreme.  I won’t go into much detail here as I don’t want to spoil the surprise effect in the video.  You need to see it to believe it.  A lot of people loved the closing credits as you get to see the progression of the ride being built.  Out of all my rides, DME is one that I can go back and re-watch without it feeling too dated.

CONCLUSION

Desert Mountain Express was nearly 2 years ago. Wow. It’s been two years since my last video. Of course, I dabbled a bit with a couple parks. Themeville: A park I created with a coaster inside a giant pyramid. I started another park with another coaster inside a giant cube. But these just didn’t do anything for me. I started Monopolyville and created the Stock Market Crash ride. Never filmed it though. That’s when I started to look at CS. 
I saw that Mickeyca had created some. I figured I’d look into it… I got hooked. I created the game board pieces for Monopolyville. However, I had a newborn to take care of and other obligations got in the way. Monopolyville faded away.
I got back to RCT3 at the end of the summer and started to experiment with CS and started Planet Earth. I always wanted to build just a park. I was just the video guy remember.  Of course, I can’t just make simple scenery.  JMAinAZ is all about the extreme and the special effect.
I’ve release a few sets of scenery including Recolorable Animated Flags and several sets of animated fans, misters, vents and more.
Over the last couple years I’ve actually been extremely active with RCT3, building CS, rides, and communicating with many RCT enthusiasts in the community, but I have yet to release anything.
THAT MAY CHANGE HERE SOON.
SO STAY TUNED…

-JMAinAZ