RollerCoaster 2000


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Welcome to the RollerCoaster 2000 project page.

News

2009/11/10 RollerCoaster has been ported to yet another platform thanks to Yann Droneaud. Yann ported the OpenGL ES version of rollercoaster2000 to Windows Mobile. Thanks to him for this very nice contribution. This version has been tested on a HTC Touch HD, a Toshiba TG01 and a HTC Diamond. This port of RollerCoaster2005 to Windows Mobile is available as a Visual Studio project. You can either compile it from the provided source code or try directly the exe file available in the archive on an OpenGL ES enabled Windows Mobile device.
2006/12/20 Gerhard Brunthaler sent me a very original track, made of mathematical curves. This track has two superimposed circles in the center and 4 flower shaped parts linked to the circle. Two blueprints show the shape of the track from above, and the positions of the control points used to create it. The track was added to the download page, and to the windows screen saver archive.
2006/08/06 Ken Ives posted his fifth track on the forum. As always, this is an excellent one. It was also added to the download page, and the windows screen saver archive.
2005/03/16 Good news for the yearly update. I took second place in the Demo/Special FX category of the Khronos OpenGL ES Coding Challenge. My entry for the challenge was a an OpenGL ES version of rollercoaster2000 running on symbian s60.
2004/05/19 I made a new track this week end. It's the 12th track of the collection on the download page, called SunnyWE. Everyone who wants to learn how to create a new track for rollercoaster2000 should read the excellent tutorial added by Ken to the forum.
2003/09/23 After I received a few requests some time ago, I've finally set up a forum. It is powered by the phpBB free bulletin board package, which looks quite good. Feel free to use it and talk about roller coasters or whatever you prefer.
2003/09/10 Two news today. Thanks to Ken Ives a new track is available. It is called Brainstorm because if you try to figure out where the track goes while you ride it, you will have a brainstorm. Indeed, it is very complex and compact. The other topic is a new version of the MacOSX RollerCoaster screensaver made by Etienne Petitjean which fixes some bugs. This new version of the binary and sources have been put on the download page.
2003/08/28 Thanks to Etienne Petitjean RollerCoaster2000 is now available as a screen saver for Mac OS X. You can download the package to be installed or the source code. Etienne even made some enhancement compared to the windows screen saver like a random mode for track selection. Unfortunately I can't enjoy it because I do not have any Mac OS machine, but if you are a happy Mac user, you can go and download it here.
2003/08/05 Justin made 2 new tracks. The first one is a nicely recreated classical wild mouse coaster model. The second is the same wild mouse on drugs, as Justin says :) To enjoy a ride go on the download page.
2003/07/28 Two roller coaster designers, Justin Barrett and Stoeps sent new tracks today. Their creations, Dizzy Butterfly and Speedy Loops are available on the download page. Also, the windows screen saver source code as been updated so that when compiled with lcc, the executable can run on any version of windows.
2003/06/09 Third track by Ken Ives available on the download page. This great track is called Devil's Tower. The track goes a vertical lift and drop along the tower, and has a very nice tunnel effect. It is very fast, and really huge both horizontally and vertically.
2003/06/04 Thanks to Rodrigo Damazio, who added support for C.A.V.E. display device, release 1.1.0 of the portable version of RollerCoaster2000 is available. The principle of the CAVE display mode is to render multiple images from the same camera position in 6 different directions. This screenshot shows a track with 6 views which are from left to right, and top to bottom: left, front, right, rear, down, and up view. Then with the ircombine program those views can be displayed on the screens of a CAVE system.
2003/03/26 Ken Ives sent me a new track called QuadraPhase which is available on the download page. I find this one really crazy, it's made of 12 loops and there is never a straight line where you could forget you are in a washing machine. As this track is quite long, it needs a bit more computation power than the other to have a smooth animation.
2003/03/03 Ken made a refined version of Hangtime which is a bit smoother and more realistic. This track replaces the older one on the download page.
2003/02/25 There is a new track called Hangtime, sent by Ken Ives. This terrific track is almost 33 per cent of the time upside down. At one point you may even think you will keep hanging this way, without finishing the track, but that's not the case. To enjoy a ride go on the download page.
By the way, since November 2001, this site had more than 125000 hits. Quite a few actually.
2002/07/11 Wow, it's been a while. Thanks to Kevin Ellis, a new awesome track is available. The track goes through a vertical loop, and it also has a horizontal loop. Downloadable here. I've also added freestyle.trk and this new Midnight_madness.trk in the windows screen saver archive, so that people downloading this zip file get all existing tracks.
2001/11/23 I have made a new track, and as you've already guessed, it's available on the download page.
2001/11/05 Marcelo E. Magallon sent me a patch which turns RollerCoaster 2000 into a graphics hack for xscreensaver. This patch is available on the download page.
2001/11/01 Source code for the windows screen saver version is available on the download page. It includes Makefiles for lcc-win32 and vc++. The binary version has been updated with a version produced by Visual C, because this executable works better with Win2K than the one compiled with lcc-win32.
2001/10/30 A screen saver version for windows is available on the download page.
2001/10/16 Version 1.0.0 source code for linux and windows is available on the download page.

Features

Actually, the curve is described by many control points and their tangents. So to create a curve you have to write all the control point's coordinates and tangent's coordinates in a file. It would be easier to create a track with a graphical editor. Other nice features that may be added in the future are sound, or other amusements around.

History

The initial goal of this project was to create a rollercoaster ride animation. As I can't be bothered designing a nice and detailed rollercoaster track with a modeling tool, I wrote C code to be able to generate a rollercoaster track from a curve's definition. First version was available from NeHe's web site in June 2000, but it wasn't possible to completely change the track. Now (16 months later), a parser has been added and it's possible to create new tracks by writing a text file which describes it.