Lego Cuuso Rollercoaster Tycoon Proposal

[allanp]

After reading the lego minecraft thread, it seems they got 10,000 votes withing two days to make a liscenced minecraft set. This sounds all well and good at first glance, I mean, the two worlds are surely very compatible. But as a fan of both Lego and minecraft the more I think about it, the less excited I get. The draw of Lego is more in the details and the quality, whereas the draw of minecraft comes from exploring vast worlds, so maybe they are not so compatible after all. However it did get me thinking of another idea I had which gets me more exited the more I think about it, Lego Rollercoaster Tycoon. Think about it, you could have many different, large track pieces (like lego trains but many more different parts to choose from including twists, corkscrews, loops, half loops, different radius corners, level to backed pieces and so on), supported by simple constructions made from technic axles and snapped together just like the pieces in the original 2d rollercoaster tycoon game. You could have the large rollercoaster sets plus many smaller add on sets like a station with motorised gates for the passengers and other rides like the swinging ship and so on. You could have add-on track pieces and different train designs and much more. This theme could be absolutely massive! You could even have a motor in the rollercoaster train to help it round larger tracks as well as a small video camera thingy (could be shaped liuke a very large and fat minifigure!) that lets you ride the rides! What do you think?

[Thego]

Indeed, but why spend money on the license for Rollercoaster Tycoon when they can just call it something else and bring the price down? The idea of building a theme park isn't exactly exclusive intellectual property. Sounds good though and I think it would be popular. Make it system scale and it sit well with City too.

[allanp]

The liscence would be good because of the way the track pieces fit together in the game like Lego pieces.

I think with a motorised train, the track could be standard ABS moulded pieces, no harder to make that the tracks for lego trains. The rollercoaster trains themselves would have to be more sophisticated to run on that kind of relatively inexspensive track. I'm thinking that it could have a motor with some clever electronics and a couple of sensors in it. It would have a tilt sensor so that the electronics could tell the motor to speed up or slow down to create the illusion of proper, to scale speed when going up and down inclines. That would be much better than a train zooming down a supposedly large hill in less than half a second only for it to not get up the next hill that's only half as high. It could also have a colour sensor on the bottom, so that placing black 1 by x tiles on studs on the track would be like having a chain lift (the colour sensor would pick up the colour of the black tiles and tell the motor in the train to drive slowly at a constant speed). There could even be a little speaker to play the chain lift sound at this point, and it could play other noises like screams when there is a drop and so on. It may sound cost prohibitive but it's two or three cheap little sensors, and cheap little circuit board and a little motor designed for mass production so I don't think it would be that expensive for Lego to produce. Having those electronic would also enable the use of fairly unsophisticated track. As long as it's moulded as accurately as any other lego piece it's all good. The tracks could also be made much longer if the consumer wished to buy more track without fear of the train not getting round. So even with all of that tech in the trains, I don't see any reason why a large rollercoeaster set should be much more expensive than a regular lego train set.

[Omicron]

Lego doesn't need a license to make a roller coaster set.

-Omi

[lightningtiger]

I totally agree with you 'Omi', they don't need a license for such a creation.

Wouldn't this be a better discussion be held in the Special Themes forum ?

[CorneliusMurdock]

Wouldn't this be a better discussion be held in the Special Themes forum ?

I don't know about Special Themes but the Train forum sounds like a slightly better fit. :wink:

[Sokratesz]

Track that flexes in three dimensions would be nice ;)

[kyphur]

For there to be any Roller Coaster Theme TLG would have to go back to the drawing board for the motors, wheels & tracks.

Roller Coasters are nothing if they can't loop which means that they will need powered wheels that are both above & below the rails and the rails need to be rounded (tubular) so the drive wheels always have a surface to connect with.

That doesn't even take into the consideration need for the motor to change speed automatically at certain parts of the track.

I doubt it would ever be feasible...

[JopieK]

For there to be any Roller Coaster Theme TLG would have to go back to the drawing board for the motors, wheels & tracks.

Roller Coasters are nothing if they can't loop which means that they will need powered wheels that are both above & below the rails and the rails need to be rounded (tubular) so the drive wheels always have a surface to connect with.

That doesn't even take into the consideration need for the motor to change speed automatically at certain parts of the track.

I doubt it would ever be feasible...

A good roller coaster doesn't need an extra engine of course (I have never seen a roller coaster that does, although there are some coasters that have boosters somewhere in the track).

Knex: click

Link: http://knexinnovation.net/showthread.php?92-Roller-Coaster-Booster

[kyphur]

A good roller coaster doesn't need an extra engine of course (I have never seen a roller coaster that does, although there are some coasters that have boosters somewhere in the track).

I never said a Coaster would need an extra engine...

What I said was that a Coaster would need components that are unlike TLG's current offerings.

Of course you could build the wheels, motors etc using technic & PF Motors but it would get heavy fast and with the twists & curves of a coaster that would make it unstable.

[harnbak]

I do not think this will ever be a TLG product. Although it is very cool it is too specialised and cannot really combine with existing lines.

By the way, there are quite a few very nice Lego roller coaster project on the web; a simple search gives more than a dozen hits some with instructions even.

[Duq]

I think this thread just shows what has gone wrong with Cuusoo; it's turned into a suggestion box for future licensed themes instead of a platform to get really good MOCs turned into sets.