Thursday, September 21, 2006

Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 (RCT2) – 22 Tips and Tricks

Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 is a Real Time Strategy (RTS) Game, very much like any other tycoon game (see Lemonade Tycoon 2 NewYork Edition).. but different in a way that it has no competitors. The player plays against himself/herself as a competitor. The player has an objective to achieve and that makes it very challenging (although I do prefer tycoon games like Transport Tycoon any day!)

I think Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 (RCT2) is much better than RCT1 and here are some of the tips I would like to share with you. Many of them have been collected from different sources, but I’m stating them out of my own experience.
  1. Make a gentle ride sitting besides a big roller-coaster. That will make the guests feeling nauseated feel better.
  2. Keep benches and food/drink stalls near the exit of rides.
  3. Don’t keep all the refreshment stalls at one place. Spread them at different places so that they do not compete with each other.
  4. Keep on tracking the profits of each stall time and again. Consider changing the position of loss-making stalls.
  5. Keep more of merchandise stalls (T-shirts, hats etc.) near the exit and crowded places. They can command higher prices there.
  6. In a scenario with a park-entrance fee and no ride fee, keep more of merchandise stalls with a high price (about $3-5)
  7. Keep a lot of benches near refreshment stalls allowing guests to sit and eat.
  8. Frustrated guests break benches and cause vandalism. Keep them happy to prevent vandalism in your park. Keep the paths clean. Keep some security guards roaming around. Assign ranges to handymen so that no path stays un-supervised.
  9. Keep scenery or theme-objects under the tracks of the ride. That will increase the excitement rating of the ride by a little.
  10. Make a footpath or queue-line go from under the rollercoaster track to increase excitement rating.
  11. Take as much loan and build rides.. It is the rides which will attract more customers.
  12. The excitement rating of the rides directly affects the park value. Also keep the loan taken affects it a little. Pay-back the loan in bits and pieces as fast as possible.
  13. While setting the entrance fee of the park, give some time to it. There will be a price at which every new guest coming will leave from the entrance seeing the price. So decrease the price by $5. Again observe. Keep on decreasing the price till all 5 out of the first 5 enter the park. At this rate all guests will enter the park. Even at 4 guests entering out of 5, you will earn a few dollars more per guest, but you will lose out the huge entry fee the one guest not entering would have paid.
  14. Keep on advertising. That’s a requirement. Use all the modes of advertising possible at a time. The combined effect is good.
  15. Research on stalls first – with maximum funding. This way, you can avoid situations where guests start running out of cash and you still don’t have it in researched.
  16. Build wider paths. This allows free movement of guests around the park, and their happiness rating goes higher.
  17. Make use of the No-Entry banner wherever you don’t want the guests to enter.
  18. One trick is to keep the no-entry banner on the Exit of the park so the guests won’t go outside the park. This is a crude trick, but it works especially when the game is during its last few months and you have a target to achieve. Mind it – this can have a negative impact on the rating of the park because of the guests who want to leave and are stuck because of it.
  19. Replace any part of a ride when its popularity decreases. By doing this, guests are fooled to believe that you have made a new ride and they start moving to the ride again.
  20. If the ride is very popular, and the queue line is very long, keep a TV near the tail-end of the queue of keep an entertainer with a range near the tail-end to keep the guests happy.
  21. When placing any object, select where you want to put it, however before you click, hold [Shift] and move the mouse up or down. Click when you have the preferred height.
  22. Charge 10 cents for all bathrooms and they can sustain themselves without reducing the favor of your park.
That’s it! Do post in if you have any other tips/tricks. Keep reading for more tips on games.

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Friday, September 15, 2006

Chinese Restaurant in Pune - China Gate - A Review

China Gate
Food - 7/10
Service - 7/10
Ambience - 7/10
Price - 8/10

Overall rating - 7.25/10

I recently had dinner at China Gate...
located on JM road.. just besides Smokin' Joes, opposite Portico's Icecream..
Overall, i would say it was a good experience... excellent food... good ambience... best thing - not very crowded.. even on weekends...

What i had - ... Read more on my blog on Pune Restaurants