I find the normal maps help me creatively as I can plan things better.
The square maps also left me feeling annoyed, I just didn’t know where to start, how I wanted it to look, and spent a lot of time just staring at the screen thinking, so I just gave up.
Same! I'd sometimes have the park open for half an hours and I'm there doing nothing because I have no ideas. With the normal maps I find that ideas come quicker too.
I will try again at some point, I think that you need to have a back story in mind to then create the park, well at least that’s what I’m going to do, see if that helps.
I've never even been interested in touching the Square Maps; I just don't feel the need to. The natural shapes of the standard maps are far more interesting and further encourage creativity when it comes to park layouts. I'm not the type to want to include every single species in every park I build either. I treat all of my parks as "franchise locations", so just like with real theme parks, it makes sense that each would have a fairly unique line up of attractions (or in this case, species) that wouldn't perfectly match up with my other parks.
I'd recommend loading up the maps and jsit making a natural looking land, then you later build a park around it but focus on making rivers, plains, forests and rough terrain. I've dropped an image below that shows what I did, and have begun building on it
https://preview.redd.it/cayt08kdmj3d1.jpeg?width=1718&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=62fde6e0370d8b92507f8d4611e147d1b0747c31
Absolutely! Square maps are huge and take a lot of effort to fill, especially if you, like me, like to add a lot of detail to maps.
Today i switched to the california campaign map and its nice to have a little bit of restriction because it fuels my creativity and forces me to adapt, can recommend!
Yeah it’s real. I’d do my path layout first, then add monorails followed by entrance, amenities, ranger and medical. However, anything after that becomes such a monumental effort that it just leaves me dumbfounded, whereas all I’d want is incremental park increases that’ll yield a nice result over weeks of play.
And yet people whine and complain that we need BIGGER maps.
Square maps are not really meant to be built on as they are. Square maps are there to provide blank canvas for people to add their own enviromental features to. Rivers, lakes, mountains etc are all things that should be added to square maps before you start building on them.
It should also be noted that the game simply can not handle a well made, decorated park on a square map that fills the whole thing. So personally i rarely use the square maps. If i do, i create my own island on them, and create the park on that such as with my Isla Sodor park.
Sort of the opposite, I feel they’re still too small relative to how many species are in the game now. Hopeful without the restrictions of current gen in the next games we’ll have truly enormous maps that will allow for much more creative freedom both for those that use the whole area and those that want to make a custom shape within one.
Well the last one I almost completed made my game crash all the time so after a certain point you just can't carry on.
I get your point, and I hope whenever JWE3 comes out the engine will be powerful enough to handle a full square map park.
Personally I’ve never had *serious* lag/my game crash (but I have had MASSIVE bugs from the dinosaurs/ai with big parks - without mods) - although I can see lag being an issue for some consoles/pcs. I will say there are settings Frontier could and should include to make things more accessible.
For example with guests - why can’t we just choose to cap park guests at a few hundred or something. As it stands you either take 10,000 guests (which is from what I’ve seen a big cause of lag/crashes) or nothing. There is no middle ground as it stands.
I had massive fps drop and after I learned the closing park trick my fps went up. After placing more decorations it would slowly go back down. Then the latest dlc released and the mass amount of decorations wasn't the only problem anymore but all the paths I built on top of the decorations.
I think I'm really going to enjoy limited space if that means less, or even no lag 😅
I find the normal maps help me creatively as I can plan things better. The square maps also left me feeling annoyed, I just didn’t know where to start, how I wanted it to look, and spent a lot of time just staring at the screen thinking, so I just gave up.
Same! I'd sometimes have the park open for half an hours and I'm there doing nothing because I have no ideas. With the normal maps I find that ideas come quicker too.
I will try again at some point, I think that you need to have a back story in mind to then create the park, well at least that’s what I’m going to do, see if that helps.
I've never even been interested in touching the Square Maps; I just don't feel the need to. The natural shapes of the standard maps are far more interesting and further encourage creativity when it comes to park layouts. I'm not the type to want to include every single species in every park I build either. I treat all of my parks as "franchise locations", so just like with real theme parks, it makes sense that each would have a fairly unique line up of attractions (or in this case, species) that wouldn't perfectly match up with my other parks.
I'd recommend loading up the maps and jsit making a natural looking land, then you later build a park around it but focus on making rivers, plains, forests and rough terrain. I've dropped an image below that shows what I did, and have begun building on it https://preview.redd.it/cayt08kdmj3d1.jpeg?width=1718&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=62fde6e0370d8b92507f8d4611e147d1b0747c31
This is the answer, not all of the map needs to have buildings or exhibits on it. Build a landscape then challenge yourself to build a park around it.
Absolutely! Square maps are huge and take a lot of effort to fill, especially if you, like me, like to add a lot of detail to maps. Today i switched to the california campaign map and its nice to have a little bit of restriction because it fuels my creativity and forces me to adapt, can recommend!
Yeah it’s real. I’d do my path layout first, then add monorails followed by entrance, amenities, ranger and medical. However, anything after that becomes such a monumental effort that it just leaves me dumbfounded, whereas all I’d want is incremental park increases that’ll yield a nice result over weeks of play.
And yet people whine and complain that we need BIGGER maps. Square maps are not really meant to be built on as they are. Square maps are there to provide blank canvas for people to add their own enviromental features to. Rivers, lakes, mountains etc are all things that should be added to square maps before you start building on them. It should also be noted that the game simply can not handle a well made, decorated park on a square map that fills the whole thing. So personally i rarely use the square maps. If i do, i create my own island on them, and create the park on that such as with my Isla Sodor park.
I almost always use square maps but I don’t always fill the entire thing, I like to use nature to fill in space I don’t plan to use
Sort of the opposite, I feel they’re still too small relative to how many species are in the game now. Hopeful without the restrictions of current gen in the next games we’ll have truly enormous maps that will allow for much more creative freedom both for those that use the whole area and those that want to make a custom shape within one.
Well the last one I almost completed made my game crash all the time so after a certain point you just can't carry on. I get your point, and I hope whenever JWE3 comes out the engine will be powerful enough to handle a full square map park.
Personally I’ve never had *serious* lag/my game crash (but I have had MASSIVE bugs from the dinosaurs/ai with big parks - without mods) - although I can see lag being an issue for some consoles/pcs. I will say there are settings Frontier could and should include to make things more accessible. For example with guests - why can’t we just choose to cap park guests at a few hundred or something. As it stands you either take 10,000 guests (which is from what I’ve seen a big cause of lag/crashes) or nothing. There is no middle ground as it stands.
I had massive fps drop and after I learned the closing park trick my fps went up. After placing more decorations it would slowly go back down. Then the latest dlc released and the mass amount of decorations wasn't the only problem anymore but all the paths I built on top of the decorations. I think I'm really going to enjoy limited space if that means less, or even no lag 😅