Many people ask me questions about my indoor
pools, this page should help to both answer those questions,
and provide help with general pool-building related
techniques.
For this tutorial, I will be building a
basic indoor swimming pool with one flume. However, this is
not a building tutorial, this page only contains tips for
pool construction.
Separate the changing rooms from the actual pool area
In a real swimming pool, there is always
some space separating the changing pools from the water,
this gives people an area to meet. Although it is not
actually necessary to do this in RCT3, it does make things a
bit more realistic. This is also a good area to put showers.
This way, the peeps can easily shower before getting
into the pool, and again before leaving.
Remember the ladders
If you forget to place these, the peeps find
it a bit more difficult getting in and out of the pool.
Again, these make things a bit more realistic.
Place Spa Pools in more realistic areas
In this example, I have placed two
spa-pools. The spa-pool on the top left is right next to the
showers, and the pool area. Imagine if you were in this in
real life trying to relax, you would have water being
splashed on you from the showers, and very little space
between you and the main pool. You would also have many
people walking past you.
The spa-pool on the right is in a much
better place, it is away from the showers, in it's own
"relaxation area" with sun-loungers. There is plenty of
space to get in and out on each side, and it is away from
the main route to the changing rooms.
Separate the diving pools
A lot of swimming pools in real life do not
allow people to dive into the main pool, some of them have
separate diving pools just for this purpose. In the above
example, I have constructed a separate diving pool with
diving boards, and a few ladders. The high-diving boards can
be built to extreme heights! I find that usually a height of
3-4 is more than enough. To build high-diving boards this
way, press shift as you are placing them, and raise the
height to the desired level.
Separate flume landing pools
I have seen many swimming pool designs
online in which the flumes empty into the main pool. In real
life this almost never happens. However, this is RCT3, and
an extremely annoying thing about this is that even if you
do build separate pools for the flumes to empty into, peeps
will still swim in them! Never mind though, as it still
looks a lot more realistic this way. In the above example, I
have constructed a separate flume landing pool, it is
completely separate at the moment, as I have not yet build
it's access corridor.
Try building your waterslides backwards
This sounds unusual, but it does seem to
make things a lot easier. Simply place your flume end first,
then build your flume in reverse. In this example, I have
started to build a single body-slide flume.
The main disadvantage of
building this way is hat you have to wait until
the flume construction is finished before you
can test it, but if it does not work, you can
easily make modifications.
Water does not flow uphill
This one really bugs me! Water does not flow
uphill in real life, and yet RCT3 allows you to build flumes
that go up as well as down. The obvious exceptions here are
the aqua-blaster slides (that have booster jets) and of
course, waterslides with lift-hills.
This is the reason that I no longer
build flumes this way.
When building a flume, make sure not to
have any sections that go up, this is very unrealistic!
Use Closed flumes outdoors, and open flumes indoors
This only really applies to indoor swimming
pools. If you want to build an indoor pool, remember that
the whole point is to enclose everything. You really don't
want the peeps to be exposed to the elements. For this
reason, if any of your flumes go outside of your flume
building, replace those sections with closed flumes.
Enclose the areas where the flumes exit and enter the
building
The best way to do this is to use the Wall
with wide arch from the "Sultans Palace Walls" set, under
the "Adventure" tab. Although it does not provide a perfect
seal, and it does not always match the scenery set you are
using, it still does a convincing enough job of sealing the
wall.
Spiral staircases should not directly connect to flume
stations
Spiral staircases may look good, but there
is a slight bug with their design in that the peeps will not
queue on them properly. The best way to overcome this is to
build a section of pool-path between the staircase, and the
flume station, the peeps can queue on this instead.
The bug does not seem to apply to this
style of spiral though. To build one of these, simply
build a normal pool path, make it go up and turn a
corner at the same time. Repeatedly do his until you
have a spiral of sufficient height.
Don't place too many lights
If you place too many lights, dark areas
will appear, and some areas may start flickering. Try to
evenly space out the lights, so that you can illuminate the
pool.
Test Everything
Make sure everything works properly, if not
then go back and make changes. I usually make many changed
to my flumes and water slides before opening them, checking
the ratings, and making sure everything looks realistic
enough.
If you follow these tips, your swimming
pool designs should more realistic.
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