Pre-ECTS: EA Unveils SimCoaster

Though Electronic Arts decided not to exhibit at this year's ECTS show, the company held a pre-show party at its new UK offices today, during which it quietly unveiled one new PC game. Known as SimCoaster in the US and as Theme Park, Inc. elsewhere in the world, the game will be a true sequel to SimTheme Park, as it will improve the graphics and add a whole new level of gameplay. Clearly influenced by the massive commercial success of Hasbro's Roller Coaster Tycoon, SimCoaster will focus players' attentions on the business side in the new single-player campaign. The game also re-emphasizes the rollercoaster-building component and makes it easier to customize your rides.

In the new campaign, you play as a theme park assistant manager who is being trained by the company's aging president as his replacement. Naturally, you'll need to prove your worth by completing a number of long-term growth objectives set by your mentor. But it won't be easy - all the departmental directors passed up for the position will present you with frequent challenges along the way. These pressing requests relate to the respective director's obligations. For instance, the human resources director will push you to increase staff morale and avoid strikes, while the safety director can require you to keep a spotless safety record for your thrill rides. If you neglect to complete the request, the directors will pull rank to make your job that much harder. Yet successfully meeting objectives and challenges can open up new areas in the theme park. Each of the park's three theme areas contains wide-open areas to be tamed and developed into prodigiously profitable rides.

As the name indicates, SimCoaster redoubles the game's emphasis on designing fast and fun rollercoasters. There are 16 types of coasters you can choose to build from the ground up, and you can also select from a number of pre-built coasters. A simple drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to customize a coaster's twists, turns, loop-de-loops, and corkscrews. SimCoaster also provides the option to export and trade your coasters with other players on the Internet.

A few engine enhancements since SimTheme Park add a new level of graphical detail to SimCoaster. The most striking improvement is the zoom feature, which now lets players zoom far out to see nearly an entire section of the park. Because displaying all the extra area requires a fast computer, SimCoaster will adapt to a player's system such that slower PCs will display about the same area as before, while mid-range systems show much more, and high-end rigs get a true birds-eye view. Level-of-detail and texture optimizations also let the developers include more detailed graphics for better PCs, which is most noticeable when the camera zooms in to show individual park-goers. However, the little people are still sprite-based. EA considered moving to a fully-3D engine like the one used in the PlayStation 2 conversion of SimTheme Park, but reportedly that would have jumped up the minimum requirements beyond acceptable levels.

SimCoaster is currently one month from going alpha. Nevertheless, what we saw of the game looked very solid. You won't have to wait long past Christmas to play Bullfrog's latest - the game should be complete in January.