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A long time before I became an enthusiast, I had a dream that I was riding a coaster. The dream sticks out so clearly in my head because I was riding Millennium Force before I even knew that Millennium Force existed, yet alone, what the layout was. I guess I was destined to be a coaster enthusiast (and Millie Fanboy!)

Let's see how this ends up...

Little spoiler: It's not the only ride in this (...)

You know that moment when in your dreams your rollercoaster ride is about to start and your dream ends? One time that did not happen on a Volcano-esque Inverted Launch coaster. An omen that it was going to be removed?

Puss in Boots @ Jubilee Park
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Next guess :

Hint #1 : голова медведя в поезде

I for one had a blast participating, even though I learned the valuable "you definitely, definitely need more than 20 minutes to support a 6000' long coaster" lesson the hard way. In my defense, I meant to leave an hour and a half to get that done but... well, the coaster wasn't long enough or connected by then, so... woops.

Super stressful, super fun comp. I think if I'd had a FitBit on it'd have been like "Congratulations! You exercised for 5 hours today!" Only thing I'd change is... well I for one don't want to wait for next year to do it again! :D

No need for hint, it's Rollercoaster Wikingów @ Majaland Kownaty
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Next guess:

Me and the gang

I've got one in the works.

Me!!!

Me!

10 weeks from today your Roundup 300 videos are due! Who's working on one?

-Ride_Op

I am sorry for the FVD comments - I was trying to give some ideas to make it more open for some users, but reading back through they came off as almost whiny.

As difficult as it was this year, it was a very unique and great challenge - was definitely fun to give it a go. I wouldn’t really change anything about it - the template, though hard, worked well and it was a blast to participate. Looking forward to next year and whatever build awaits us!

I think this year people that went to high and were going too fast also caused themselves problems since they could not turn around or change directions quickly inside the blue area. That required multiple exits and entrances, longer coasters overall, which needed more supports in areas that didn't count toward the track length.

Good news is that next year the challenge will once again be totally different!

-Ride_Op

that support challenge here was indeed super frustrating, I was like uhm okay I'm going to make the supports for the highest tracks first and then build them around the lower tracks making sure they also connect to those, something like the supports from the Xpress platform 13 ride at Walibi Holland, but after the first 3000 ft of track I just couldn't fit in more and after struggling so long to get a mile of track in the blue area I was left with just half an hour to support the whole thing haha, even forgot to add catwalks to ride due to me finishing support work and clearance testing just 2 minutes before the end of the contest. The contest's never been this stressful before haha

I definitely appreciate the variety! I especially like year 3's challenge, that sounds so stressful.

^^

Thanks! We've tried to vary the main challenge year to year and disguise the way it was making you have to think on the fly. As we've gone along, we've also tried to put in new challenges that prevent people from practicing or coming in with a plan ahead of time.

1: Inaugural year, this was a first run of the contest. Main obstacles were a small build area, water you had to jump over without touching, interesting terrain, and trees to work around.

2: We used paths to restrict where you could place footers, and real rides that you had to work your way around, making you think about how you can place a ride over a lot of fixed existing infrastructure.

3: Wooden and shuttle coasters were previously disallowed because they would be too quick to build in a short time (wooden coasters get over 90% of the structure work done for you and shuttles are only 1/3 the length of a full coaster normally). So we required one of each, plus forced you to cram them through a small gap in the terrain. After that we intentionally left the build area wide open so freedom of choice would be a paralyzing element of the contest.

4: Capacity challenge. We required engineers to factor in lots of trains moving to hit a high capacity, requiring multiple trains, multiple block brakes, and time between blocks to be carefully controlled to ensure the trains kept moving without stacking. Other than restricting where the station went, we left the build area wide open to again paralyze with too much freedom. Narrower build areas tend to help people to build since once they near a border they are forced to turn, which helps them out more than wide open space.

5: Mile of Spaghetti. By forcing a lot of track in a small area, we snuck the main challenge in: lots of supports that can't go straight down because there are lots of tracks stacked up. This was designed to make the players their own obstacle as they forgot to think about the multiple layers of track that all needed to be supported as they kept adding in track.

6: Mwa ha ha ha ha. We have our idea in mind, and it's something that no one has done much of at all.

-Ride_Op

That would double the work for the judges as we'd have to separate out the two and have different criteria for how well the track is shaped. Plus, a lot of what's going into the judging is the overall realism, so even if your track shape is perfect, if you only put in 1/3 of the needed supports, or your supports weren't realistic enough, no amount of FVD++ can help you with custom supporting quickly.

I still haven't heard a compelling reason for this other than the FVD++ people who like math building over hand building really just want to do it their way. We get similar complaints from people who want to bring in their own custom trains because they had in mind they wanted to build one very specific coaster type in the style of (fill in the blank style NL2 doesn't have native). There are other contests for these approaches where you can build anything you want. And sometimes a contest restricts you to one specific style only. I apologize to anyone not happy about it, however I'm not going to change the rule because some folks didn't like it and refused to enter because they couldn't build using FVD++. The contest is open to all and is a lot of fun, and there are FVD++ people who go with hand building just for this contest because they want the challenge.

As for this year, I'm looking for feedback about this year's challenge specifically. I've more than answered the question about using FVD++, which isn't feedback specific to this year.

We welcome all to join next year to see what diabolical challenge awaits!

-Ride_Op

I thought this was a great challenge and definitely would have participated if I were a better hand-builder. I liked how it pretty much purely focused on creativity, while last year's focused on a more technical aspect (capacity).

I definitely have my own thoughts on why FVD++ should be allowed, but I'd be very interested in organizing some kind of FVD competition - any folks interested, please message me! Maybe we can set something up. I have some ideas already on challenges/criteria.

Ride_op -
what if next year, we had two categories of entry: Handbuilding and FVD? This would allow FVD users to participate using the same challenge as handbuilders, but they would not be judged against the handbuilt rides - this would avoid the advantage of having FVD track shaping.

I totally get the stay within NL2 part - the contest was great this year. Thanks for hosting another great contest!

-Sometime before Kentucky Flyer was announced, I dreamed that KK had announced a 50 foot tall B&M invert with orange track, and it was called something like 'Daily Dog Sled'. Despite the height, it was not a family invert since the screenshot (for some reason there was no video) showed the typical drop followed by a vertical loop. I remember feeling insanely disappointed by both the announcement itself and the name.
-Countless dreams about a bizarro version of Kings Island where Son of Beast was still there, Banshee sprawled all over the park, and the Beast looking more like the Louisville Zoo train ride in terms of station area and general layout. Probably not too out of place for something XYZcoaster would make.
-Countless dreams about a large scale B&M coaster at Kentucky Kingdom under construction. Also for some reason Mile High falls has a lot more theming and generally more elaborate than IRL.
-Last night I dreamed that Six Flags had announced an RMC similar to Twisted Cyclone called Twisted Twister. That same dream somehow also involved me riding Skyrush and I thought I was going to be riding it backwards but for some reason it had a 180 degree turn out of the station. Once we crested the lift hill I began to catch on to the possibility that it was a dream despite the vividly realistic feeling of the drop.