How do guests pick their favourite ride in RCT2?

[@MarcelVos]

Apologies for the bad audio at two points. I had to rerecord those bits to correct mistakes, and I haven't soundproofed the office in my new home yet. Also sidenote: The satisfaction is also used in determining the happiness the guest gets from riding a ride, it wasn't created purely for the favourite ride, it just happened to already be there.

[@michaelwautraets7126]

Hopelijk is de verhuis goed verlopen.

[@Bibibosh]

are you making a video about the "tutorial" ? i would be curois is ther is a way to "make your own tutorial" in the files hidden somehere in the computer folder?

[@nthgth]

Congrats on the new home

[@scose]

I feel like this is an important point. Everyone comments in amazement that Sawyer implemented something so intricate for no game-mechanical purpose, but it wasn't like that

[@verve1858]

Milk crate + soundproofing panels on the inside walls. Place microphone in centre

[@AuraOfANobody]

"I am in the woods with a man in a tiger suit." -Tom Scott

[@RatelHBadger]

Tom decided to recreate moments from Calvin and Hobbes comic strips.

[@adambyte256]

I read that in his voice! 😆

[@jaenonfernandez6052]

You’re gay.

[@SpaceMissile]

sounds like a pretty good friday night to me

[@wraithcadmus]

"I'm inside a 22-year old management game. Well to be more precise, a modern recreation"

[@notmuch_23]

"This seemed like such a good idea six years ago when I planned this. Like, actually being here, actually being in OpenRCT2, uh, that was a problem for future me, and now I am future me, and this sucks."

[@killerzed2]

"but anyways, in the simulation guests like me can pick their favorite rides by a special set of rules. Wich an expert named Marcel vos is going to talk a little more about."

[@killerbee.13]

@@killerzed2 unrelated but I had to do a double take at your name because it's so similar to mine lol

[@heartysquid]

​@@killerbee.13 you know what happens now...DEATH MATCH.

[@krysavasilisa2088]

Why am I reading this in Tom Scott's voice? Get out of my head, now!

[@Timbeon]

"I thought this would be an easy topic to get back in the groove... and that was how I discovered a 9-year-old coding error"

[@amethyphoenix]

That was recently fixed by an OpenRCT2 contributor, so... yeah

[@jasper265]

​@@amethyphoenixI suspect it was fixed because of the research for this video. Marcel noticed the bug and with his help, the contributor found the cause. Or maybe I'm wrong and the two events happened simultaneously but were completely unrelated.

[@amethyphoenix]

@@jasper265 Your theory does make sense in a way...

[@MarcelVos]

@@jasper265 I discovered it while writing the video.

[@jasper265]

@@MarcelVos I understood that. I speculated that it is fixed now _because_ you found the problem, rather than that someone else _also_ found it independently. Which I think is probable, but it's not something you actually confirmed.

[@Zekromus]

Tom Scott with a red shirt, amazing 😂

[@ZaphodHarkonnen]

Glad I'm not the first person to spot that. 🤣

[@Scudmaster11]

Didnt he ride a Rollercoaster recently?

[@chrisjones5411]

@@Scudmaster11 Last year, yep. A day at Alton Towers

[@Scudmaster11]

@@chrisjones5411 there was a podcast about it recently as i remembered

[@gizoginjr]

@@Scudmaster11He did make a video about overcoming his fear of rollercoasters, but that was a while ago.

[@anamoyeee]

"I am in the death maze" - Tom Scott's last words

[@pigfish99]

"I am currently falling into a void underneath forest fronti-"

[@WackoMcGoose]

"DONT GET LOST was nice. Would I consider it my favourite? No, not really."

[@canaldohector]

"I am currently riding Mr. Bones' wild ride"

[@davidthecommenter]

"I am currently being drowned in the park's water tile."

[@digitaldeathsquid3448]

And the death maze's name? XNOPYT

[@Muttson]

Chris Sawyer writing an in-depth code in Assembly using a ton of different factors to calculate a value that ultimately doesn't really do anything besides providing a fun detail:

[@StormyBuckets]

thats how it is with games, isn't it? tens of hours spent writing code to set up a cute little feature that some players won't even notice. But all those little details add up!

[@purplegill10]

@@StormyBuckets That's probably why Tom Scott wanted to head to the park so bad: something something Compass Spin.

[@Ultimaximus]

Pinned comment says "The satisfaction is also used in determining the happiness the guest gets from riding a ride, it wasn't created purely for the favourite ride, it just happened to already be there", so the code was actually for something useful

[@manender1020]

I doubt it was written in ASM

[@Ultimaximus]

@@manender1020 Chris Sawyer says "It's 99% written in x86 assembler/machine code (yes, really!), with a small amount of C code used to interface to MS Windows and DirectX."

[@TigerCyberian]

1:00 Weirdest gig I ever took up but it paid well so I can't complain.

[@Awws1e]

And you got to meet Tom Scott. It's a win win!

[@nengelen]

😄 for both

[@TheCyborgLord]

​@Awws1e Tom Scott: I am in Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 and I'm with a furry.

[@Porygonal64]

Too unhappy? TO THE FURRY SQUARE WITH YOU

[@dusklunistheumbreon]

100% accurate simulation :3

[@jasmijnariel]

We will force you into happiness! FORCE YOU , I SAY!

[@mynameiskrysta]

Mr scott you’ve been found guilty of unhappiness. Your sentence is forced attendance at the nearest furry convention.

[@Heshla_Biea]

I find it amusing that some guests are less satisfied when a ride isn't nauseating enough.

[@Ails1234]

Guests are truly mysterious creatures

[@Boltscrap]

Makes sense when you remember that nausea adds to ride value.

[@urzaserra256]

Can look it nausea rating as kind of a stand in for things like top speed and g forces.

[@StarlitWitchy]

​@@urzaserra256 but that's intensity though isn't it? I suppose both stats sort of apply to those factors

[@filiaaut]

I like the fact that no matter how little you charge for a ride (and even if you don't charge anything), they'll still find it a little too expansive for their taste.

[@digitaldeathsquid3448]

"I'm at a theme park in The Netherlands, currently under the merciless control of the being known only as Lord Marcel"

[@crowhaveninc.2103]

I could hear Tom Scott say that he was in a KZbin video narrated by a Dutchmen and that he was going to figure out how he decides what his favourite ride is gonna be.

[@Izolus]

"I am in a theme park, narrated by a benevolent Dutch man. Today we're going to find out my favourite ride, and how I reached that decision. But first, I must spend an hour with this man in a tiger suit."

[@InnerTurbulencia]

All Tom Scott fans know how he feels about rollercoasters!

[@henke37]

He kinda likes them now that he got over his issues?

[@aaaaanotthebees]

If I was trapped with a dancing tiger for hours I would change my attitude real quick, to appease the omnipotent park owner

[@theghostofthomasjenkins9643]

it's called the "roman coliseum method"

[@aaaaanotthebees]

​@@theghostofthomasjenkins9643 Guest 420: "I am not entertained right now!"

[@JB-bl8mb]

Of all the "whoa, I didn't realize that was so complicated" things about RCT2 I've learned from this channel, this might be the most ridiculous and impressive. Great video!

[@Highraven]

💯 agree

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

the springs and the ducks were already quite a thing, especially since they influence each other. But this.... Chris Sawyer really made the game he wanted, with the features he wanted, no matter how unnecessarily complicated features are.

[@ericlaska4748]

".... but none of that matters because it's merely cosmetic and affects nothing." LOL

[@PhoenixStriker1]

We were gonna sit through the whole video anyway, but it did really feel like a rug pull to mention this in the last 2% of the video’s length

[@DeadlyGrim]

I love how everything in RollerCoaster Tycoon is more complicated than is strictly necessary. Did the game really need to have a formula that keeps track of several factors (some of which aren't visible to the player), calculate that result every time a guest rides a ride, and then store that individually for each guest? No. Not at all. But having the type of mentality that cares about simulating an entirely cosmetic feature so intensely is what makes the game so good.

[@michaelmoses8745]

It's also written in assembly.

[@SuperSpy00bob]

I fell like this is par for the course with a lot of games around this era. SimCity could have just done a quick coordinate subtraction to figure out traffic, but IIRC instead it basically made every sim travel down the road to an industrial and commercial tile to approximate the sim going to work and shopping before returning home.

[@OwlTowel]

I'm happy Tom Scott decided to make videos again

[@maxiemusic123]

So glad someone made this comment before me

[@frtzkng]

PS: those 'whole numbers divided by 100' for the Excitement, Intensity and Nausea is also why the cutoff values for the Rating are what they are - they are always multiples of 256: • 0-255 = Low • 256-511 = Medium • 512-767 = High • 768-1023 = Very High • 1024-1279 = Extreme • >1280 = Ultra-Extreme Curiously enough, the cutoff value for high intensity/nausea penalties as well as marking "too high" intensity/nausea values in red is 1000 rather than 1024. This is why you may see something like "10,12 (Very High)" in bold red text.

[@frtzkng]

PPS: Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 even has the mythical 'Uber-Extreme' rating for rides whose intensity manages to exceed 50.00 (5000 as integer). As far as I know this is not present in RCT2, however.

[@ieuanhunt552]

If it was teally Tom Scott he would start out as hating anything even remotely intense to being a massive adrenaline junky. That video was fun. Watching Tom go from completely terrified of rollercoasters to having the time of his life in real time.

[@Ultima2343]

I always have trouble deciding between Corkscrew Rollercoaster 5, Corkscrew Rollercoaster 17 and Corkscrew Rollercoaster 24 myself...

[@HECKproductions]

"but all of them are the same microcoaster that is just half a corkscrew" - "THEY ARE DIFFERENT MOTHER"

[@StarlitWitchy]

​@@HECKproductions yes mother, but recency bias makes it so hard for me to pick which one is my favourite favourite!!

[@PsychoKama]

I always like how you breakdown information and make it easy to follow with simple text and graphics. Wish I had someone like you to explain life to me. 😂

[@CJ.1998X.Y.Z]

I cannot believe that 25 years later this game is still such an unsurpassed masterpiece that in-depth analysis of its most intricate pieces of code can still prove entertaining and interesting

[@KernalGohd]

Man the amount of work put into this mechanic that 90% of players dont even know exists is wild. Also I cant believe there is still stuff to talk about with RCT2. Genuinely great video, welcome back.

[@affabaffa4393]

Tom Scott being the guest is hilarious

[@DogsRNice]

"I am riding Merry-Go-Round 1, the first ride built in the world famous 'Build your own Six Flags Park'"

[@jonasklose6472]

It's so cool that you spotted the bug and fixed it. It would otherwise have been left there forever.

[@Z3tona]

The favorability rating being limited to 255 answers some questions I had for years. I always wondered why rides with a crazy excitement rating didn't always become everybody's favorite, and why newer rides tended to become guest favorites even when they were less exciting than older rides. Now I know: when any ride with 8+ excitement has a decent chance of getting to that 255 number, anything much above that isn't going to matter, and when the last ride a guest rode with 255 favorability becomes their new favorite, any new ride that can reach that mark is going to become the favorite for everyone who swarms to the shiny new ride.

[@gautam-narula]

Looking forward to the Marcel winning the next Fields Medal for successfully calculating Tom Scott’s favorite ride

[@awerelia]

you know despite the fact that I will probably never play this game or any one like it for any extended period of time, if at all, it's still just nice to watch and listen to something that someone is clearly passionate and knowledgeable of, even if it's something that might seem uninteresting on the surface. which yeah it on its own it is probably incredibly uninteresting, but the presentation, the charisma, and the care put into showing it off is what always makes it great to watch your; or anyone elses; videos covering games in this way, even if I'd realistically never play them myself. basically thank you for making these videos that make some part of my brain happy every time I watch them.

[@thekilla1234]

"I am standing on a single dirt tile in a theme park with a man in a tiger suit." - Tom Scott

[@SemiHypercube]

I always love how deep this game is mechanically and you barely even notice it when playing

[@RaynmanPlays]

Honestly, 255 being the max value stored is so on-point. How many times have you said or heard someone say, "I forgot how much I loved" something? It's a great--if most likely accidental--way of representing our memory of outlier experiences (this on the higher end) fading.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

32 byte ought to be enough for everyone

[@jovi_monet]

​@@HappyBeezerStudios 32 bits (4 bytes) would even be overkill. but it would be enough, true. i reckon 2 bytes (up to 65,355) would be sufficient

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@jovi_monet good old 16 bit pointers

[@DoomDutch]

Tom Scott: "I am at Six Flags Holland back in 1999 inside an isometric videogame" 0:19 "I am going on a merry-go-round" 0:29 "I am with a furry" 1:03 "I am again going on the merry-go-round" 1:10 "I am at the Goliath" 1:18 "I am being talked about by some other worldly being" 10:15 "I am going on the Space-Shot. I am outta here!" 11:39

[@jasper265]

Nah, Tom would do his research and know there was no Six Flags Holland in 1999... (It's a theme park that has changed names a lot. It was known as Six Flags Holland only from 2000-2004. Both before that and since it has had names like Walibi .)

[@carltonleboss]

Chris Sawyer worked miracles with assembly code.

[@TS_Mind_Swept]

I don't care if it's a useless function, I always appreciate the depth you go into with these, and I'm kind of glad it wasn't just the short video you were expecting it to be at first :p

[@forgettablePyromaniac]

I'm g glad Tom got over his fast off roller coasters so that he may appear for this wonderful cameo.

[@cleanycloth]

1:23 “I have the strangest feeling someone is watching me” Hahaha, that’s great lol

[@jacobsmith42392]

It's not useless. I love when the peeps have one of my rides that I worked really hard on as their favorite!

[@TheFlapjackofFury]

11:09 Hello everyone, my name is tomatoanus, also known as the low excitement high nausea thrill ride, and today we're going over a 100% speedrun of explaining mechanics in RollerCoaster Tycoon.

[@nonna_sof5889]

8:30 I see Coffeezilla enjoyed the death maze.

[@PROTONPIG]

He's on the case of the biggest scam park in the nation (a maze with one tile of walking)

[@Xkeeper0]

1:20 "I have the strangest feeling someone is watching me". wonderful

[@plackt]

Wow, it’s like Ahoy’s video on Chris Sawyer / the history behind RCT spawned yours!

[@Darilon12]

11:35 If you'd pushed to far, it could have been a Linkin Park lyrik. But in the end it doesn't even matter.

[@davidromeroblaya7920]

What your favourite ride says about you? The monorrail: you are dead inside.

[@theghostofthomasjenkins9643]

if a merry go round is your favorite ride, water has to be your favorite drink.

[@trevorperkins4585]

The kind of person who finds mayonnaise spicy

[@griffinbastion]

TFW you don't want to drink liquid calories

[@thethunderbird4844]

i genuinely thought the favourite rides of guests were completely random, like: *guest rides ride, will it become your favourite? if yes, it overwrites, if not it just doesnt do anything. anywayy this is why this game is fantastic

[@SciFiDude79]

Welcome back, Marcel. It's great to have a new in depth explanation of yet another game formula that's way more complex than I thought. Chris Sawyer is truly a master code writer.

[@velvetbutterfly]

I was wondering about the seemingly long gap between videos but seeing this after a horror story about an amusement park feels like I can't escape the story

[@lerondgattenor]

Red shirt Tom Scott lmao

[@fis9836]

Massive! Excited for the quarterly upload 😂 ❤❤❤ love you, marcel!

[@JunafaniFIN]

Tom Scott really got over his fear of roller coasters if his favourite is Goliath

[@RatelHBadger]

1:05 Tom Scott does seem like the kind of guy who would have read Calvin & Hobbes as a young fella, and would appreciate being entertained by a man-tiger in the woods.

[@peperoni_pepino]

Hey Marcel! You should link the [Tom Scott plus -- I'm scared of rollercoasters. Can I get over my fear?] in the description, it would be funny! Groetjes

[@S0ulGh0st]

The amount of details programmed into this game is incredily large! Each video like this awes me on how much goes on under the hood.

[@Infarlock]

TOM SCOTT??? "I am in a roller coaster tycoon park"

[@rubenvanbelzen1217]

It js crazy to see how much effort went into the favourite ride, like so many other aspects in the game that actually do not matter. This makes it such a fun game for me

[@Aderalls]

I appreciate all the different camera angles of the park every time new information is put on screen.

[@MarcelVos]

Thank you! It's great when people notice the effort I put into setting up the shots as best I can.

[@bandjolyn]

It's been a very stressful week and i just discovered this channel. I feel much better. I need to get back into this game. Very calming for some reason.

[@kykipz]

Your videos have brought me a lot of joy, I like learning about video game mechanics! I plan to get this game to play once I get internet at home. These videos are great, thanks, Marcel! 😊

[@sodapone]

I mean, it makes sense-my local amusement park has the oldest surviving rollercoaster in Canada, and it has not significantly changed operationally since 1958. That means it's entirely mechanically-operated with only a single train, resulting in miserable throughput and queue times easily exceeding an hour even if you arrive early. But my god, that coaster is so much fun that it doesn't matter how long I waited, it is beyond worth it for the ride itself.

[@MaxArceus]

I had no idea there was so much insanity going on for such a simple and ultimately pointless feature xD But very nice, and even more so that the bug was found cause of this

[@veggiet2009]

Ok, so i assumed the favorite would be randomly chosen 😂 It's so much better than that

[@themopie]

I have been dying to know this for years!!!! You're the best, Marcel

[@faceurhell]

Thank you Marcel for again teaching me about useless nothing that changes not if and does nothing in a 10 year old mod of a 25 year old video game. I appreciate it and I appreciate you!

[@TrumpLester]

This type of humor is why this is one of my comfort channels

[@Ivo-t6n]

After this short absence in my youtube feed I now realise how much I've missed these briliant video's. And what a great comeback, discovering a 9 year old bug in OpenRCT2! After following this channel for some time I can truely say both Marcel Vos and Chris Sawyer are now quite high on my list of people I'd like to meet for a chat in real life 😅 Keep up the good work Marcel, I hope you are OK.

[@MrShoward73]

Glad to see you back, Marcel! ☺️

[@simoncodrington]

Now that's support fascinating, great visual breakdown mate ❤

[@hannahd7207]

These are such fascinating videos. Kudos to you Marcel for the effort you put into them!

[@RaynmanPlays]

The Tom Scott reference is how you know this video is going to be gold. Relative to Marcel's other videos, of course, which are all gold otherwise.

[@carlstenger5893]

Great video, Marcel! Thanks. I’m glad they fixed the code on that function.

[@ThatBigJeep]

I needed this right now. Thank you Vos

[@mach186282]

The fact that the ideal nausea-based satisfaction range can have a lower bound is funny to me--like, that ride was OK, but it didn't make me feel sick enough; it could've been better. Or maybe it just represents the thrill of that leaping feeling in your stomach when you undergo negative G's or the like.

[@mrpolarbear420]

The big guy schlatt name drop lmao

[@TheHylianJuggalo]

My man dropping more RCT content after Ahoy's documentary. Good christmas :D

[@jackattack5928]

Welcome back Marcel, I’ve missed your videos!

[@Gui101do]

Marcel Vos the Boss

[@mopsnuf]

Welcome back Marcel, it's good to see you :)

[@omerhikmetarslan8424]

1:03 "to make him happy enough we locked him up with a furry"

[@Arjay404]

It's crazy that the calculation to find this is so complicated, but then again it's not really crazy when you consider all the other crazy things that this game does behind the scene. This is cool though, seeing how there is actually a way to make a certain ride more likely to be people's favorite ride means that if the game was to allow you to check for it, that you could have a scenario where the goal is for X ride to be the favorite ride of Y percentage of your guests. Though you would need a easy way to track what the favorite ride of the group is, like having it listed in the actions/thoughts window.

[@SpaceMissile]

this is some awesome work. I had no idea so much went into it.

[@PKMNTrainerKelly]

an Ahoy video on RCT and THEN we get a new Marcel? yippee!!!

[@lilwyvern4]

A new video by Professor RCT, combined with a new Ahoy video on it too? We rollercoaster tycoons are eatin' good today!

[@marijndevries2654]

I also felt that the guests favorite ride was different in openRCT compared to RCT2. I noticed this when running a park I made in RCT2 for an hour or something in OpenRCT2, since the amount of ‘guests favorite ride’ per ride was completely different in OpenRCT2. But I never knew if this was true upon till now.

[@geuzeg]

Happy to have you back🎉

[@ericpeterson6520]

My favorite real-life coaster is also called the Goliath, at Six Flags over Georgia :)

[@familybroakajonny]

And some people pick their favorite KZbinr, YOU!

[@stocks_9750]

Marcel is finally back ❤❤❤❤

[@17Grampa]

All of those codes and calculations go through my brain within milliseconds when I’m at Busch Gardens after a ride.

[@nottrevorallen]

a tom scott video where he visits a rct2 park and details the mechanics behind that hook that picks up guests and drowns them would be insane

[@CheesecakeMilitia]

Huge thanks to DuncansPumpkin for all their contributions to OpenRCT2 over the years (and to you for finding these discrepancies between OpenRCT2 and vanilla behavior!)

[@spinba11]

I was just thinking today? Isn’t it about time for another video

[@jttech44]

Honestly incredible that chris sawyer put so much detail into these games, even when things seem so sinple.

[@PaulCashman]

The moment I saw "Tom Scott" I knew this would be great. His awesome content is much-missed.

[@xRGTMx]

gg on finding the calculation error on OpenRCT2!

[@PhilipMurphy8]

Interesting timing on Marcel's return as RCT Classic comes out on the Nintendo Switch soon

[@StarlitWitchy]

It is so funny how in real life if a ride is someone's favourite it will cause them to ride it more often, but rollercoaster tycoon approximates that by having casaulity flow in the opposite direction: if someone rides a ride more often it causes them to be more likely to have it as their favourite. Either way, someone riding a ride more often and having it be their favourite ride are correlated, but for the opposite reasons hahahahaha XD

[@ItzMiKeKirbY]

I just bought Roller Coaster Tycoon for the 2nd time on the Switch and I’m probably going to rewatch all the old videos for tips, trick and fun little exploits for my modern play-through. 😅

[@titaniumvulpes]

"I'm in a Marcel Vos video on how guests pick their favourite rides in Roller Coaster Tycoon and I am walking toward the Merry-Go-Round."