Planet Coaster Anniversary Update brings new content and game updates

Frontier has released more free content for Planet Coaster to celebrate the game’s anniversary.

The major addition in this new content is the Scenario Editor which allows players to create their own challenges and share them with the community. New rides have also been added including three new rollercoasters called Hop The Gaps, Cascade and Zenith. Two new rides are also included, the retro Weisshorn and the Monte Leone.

No Planet Coaster update would be complete without more scenery and there’s a new Staff Management Building, new billboard scenery and branding, and new picnic tables.

The update comes with changes and improvements to the game which can be found in the patch notes below.

New Features

• Staff Building – a new facility for maintaining your staff
  • Staff now have energy which is lost over time, especially when working
  • Staff must go to the staff building to rest and regain energy
  • Staff buildings can have perks that staff gain when having rested there
  • Staff will now go the staff building when being trained
• Scenario Editor – create your own scenarios and share them via Steam Workshop
  • Control what loans and research is available
  • Set the kinds of guests you want to have in your scenario park
  • Create objectives with multiple conditions, including time limits
  • Lock scenery, adjust the park boundaries and place guest spawners
  • Set profiles for staff and control park settings
• Underpaid Staff Go on Strike – Staff who are very underpaid will now no longer do work
• Staff Re-Hire – you can now re-hire staff who have quit, for a fee
• Vendors now leave their shops – keep your shops staffed!
  • Hire vendors via the Park Management screen
  • Vendors take breaks like other staff types
• More Extras for Shops – added a larger selection of extras to shop items, with differing effects
• Picnic Tables – construct your food courts
  • Some guests leave trash at a table after use and janitors will clean it up
  • Guests will prefer to sit at picnic benches to eat and drink
  • Guests will be attracted to food and drink shops when they sit at picnic benches
• Sign and Information Booth Advertising – advertise your attractions
  • Link signs or the information booth to your rides and shops
• Guest Traits – guest groups now have more individuality
  • Guest groups now have a chance to spawn with one of over 20 traits
  • These traits incline groups to particular rides, tolerances, money or interests
  • You can control the types of traits that spawn in your own scenarios
• Change Cars on Tracked Rides and Coasters – create new coaster and tracked ride combinations
  • You can now swap out coaster and tracked ride cars with a selection of combinations
  • The coaster or tracked ride car will still conform to the original track restrictions, so you can create entirely new ride experiences
  • Cars not designed to invert will get a fear and nausea penalty
  • There is an option to increase the possible combinations in the Game options, but this may have visual clipping and a default audio experience for tracks
• New Trigger modes and Trigger Duration – even more flexibility for spectacular shows
  • The duration of triggered effects is now part of the trigger source, so you can set a different duration each time you trigger an effect
  • Multiple effects now have options to play on set intervals, all the time on a trigger
  • Triggerable objects
• Toilets now need cleaning – keep them tidy with janitors
  • Dirty toilets have a negative effect on guests
• Tracked Rides can now also be dueling
  • Set your tracked rides to duel, just like coasters
• Disable Track Limits option – Game option to loosen track restrictions on coasters
  • Cars not designed to invert will get a fear and nausea penalty
• Background Swap for Custom biomes – the background for custom biomes can now be changed
• Custom Text on Coasters – most coaster cars now have the ride name on the chassis
  • The text colours inherit from the car
  • There is an option to disable the text if desired

New Rides

• Weisshorn – Inspired by 1920’s ‘Caterpillar’ rides The Weisshorn is another addition to the growing number of retro theme park rides. This ride is in essence a circular tracked roller coaster which travels up and down hill as well as generating a centrifugal force that pushes the rides outwards. The unique part of this ride is the folding cover that encompasses the riders midway through the experience; this is designed to add more thrills. The Weisshorn looks fantastic at night with a beautiful animated lighting display.
• Monte Leone – Due to much community feedback after the Weisshorn’s reveal at FX17, we created The Monte Leone. This is a smaller more compact and open version of the Weisshorn. It has the same mechanical cover and sequences as it’s bigger brother but has no roof and a smaller control booth to allow players greater customisation to create their own look and feel to this ride.

New Coasters

• Cascade – The Cascade is a water coaster, this is a new type of roller coaster that combines the high speed thrills of a roller coaster with the dramatic splash sections and gentle meanderings of a log flume. The roller coaster track is a beautiful behemoth that will create an awesome silhouette in any park and the accompanying water sections have splash downs and lifts as well as being flexible enough to integrate into any dark ride scenario you can imagine. The theming is light but elegant for maximum reuse. We’re hoping this coaster will make a real splash with you!
• Hop The Gaps – Hop The Gaps is reminiscent of some of the world’s oldest wooden roller coasters. The main features of these types of coasters is the way the track is constructed, they are commonly referred to as ‘side friction coasters’ because the train sits in a wooden trench with steel strips for the wheels to ride along. The car has no ‘up-stop’ wheel so cannot invert and the track has little to no banking. The ride is very bumpy and the restraints look inadequate but Hop the Gaps is a beautifully crafted and well aged coaster that perfectly complements the wooden coaster family.
• Zenith – The Zenith is a master class in roller coaster engineering; it’s a hydraulic launched coaster with a top speed of 175mph that roars vertically up an enormous ‘Top Hat’ element that’s been custom made with a complex support system to include vertical incline and drop rolls and twists for the ultimate thrill for your guests. This is a real status symbol for any park that want to show the world how amazing their park is with a 137m/450ft high top hat as a centrepiece. With all this record breaking speed and height you’ll need a train to impress and the Zenith delivers, it’s sleek, high speed design makes this the complete package.

New Scenario

• Gulpee’s Island Paradise – Gulpee wants to turn this remote beachfront into a theme park, but he has no idea how to go about it. Can you help? It’s going to take skilful management and a full staff roster to keep everything running smoothly.

Blueprints

• ‘The Acropolis’ – Cascade Coaster blueprint
• ‘Altitude’ – Zenith Coaster Blueprint
• Added 4 staff building blueprints and over 40 blueprints of buildings from previous scenarios

New Scenery

• Added kerbs and barriers in 3 different sizes, perfect for influencing guest navigation
  • Kerbs will influence guests not to walk over them
  • Barriers will stop guests from walking through them, under any circumstance
• Added 6 picnic tables and 9 canopies for all themes, plus some alternate bench styles
• Added a new bench and picnic bench for Spooky Pack owners
• Added 13 Autumnal trees
• Added some new variations of scaffolding from the 1.3 Summer Update
• Added 2 Frontier Expo Coin statues for everyone!

UI

• Added a locator button in Staff info panels to highlight where they are going
• Added a status to broken rides to indicate a mechanic is en route
• Added a status for shops to indicate that a vendor is en route
• Improved the representation for fear heatmaps
• Added heatmap contrast for colour blindness
• Added sorting to the Park Management Interface
• Added a Fences sub-category to the scenery browser and updated some names so they are called ‘Fence’
• Added an Audio category to the scenery browser
• Added an icon to quickly see staff thoughts in the Park Management screen
• Added animation on the HUD when in negative cash
• Added links to all the segments of the overview tab of the Park Management screen
• Improved the settings button for notifications
• Added tooltip descriptions for extras for shops
• Added a toggle for the ride data panel in the ride camera mode
• Added tooltips to guest and staff happiness bars in the Park Management screen
• Improved notifications for declining guest happiness
• Improved notifications for staff status
• Improved the representation for Steam subscribe and unsubscribe buttons
• Added a status in the Park Management screen to indicate what staff are up to
• Added a new hotkey to focus the camera on the currently selected scenery. The default is ‘H’

Audio

• Added a default experience for track audio when using more interchangeable coaster and tracked ride cars
  • For example using a car with magnetic brakes on a track with friction brakes will use the car’s default brake audio, or a hybrid car using a wooden coaster track will use the hybrid chain lift
• Supporting audio for new game content and features including:
  • Staff building audio per perk
  • Guests using picnic benches
  • Scaling toilet cleanliness
  • Hiring and maintaining vendors
  • Water and side friction coasters
  • Weisshorn and Monte Leone flat rides

Guests and Scenarios and Ride Improvements

• Added 11 new shirt patterns for avatars and guests to wear
• Triggerable items triggered by rides now enhance the ride EFN score
• Added guest thoughts for rides with very bad EFN ratings
• Guests now react to scary scenery, while walking around and on rides
• FX17 Digital Goodies are now available for those who attended
  • You can also sell these balloons and hats at Looney Blooons and Hat’s Fantastic shops
• The number of guests in a group now affects how long it takes for a vendor to serve them
• Added scaling cash rewards for completing objectives in Challenge parks

Ride/Coaster Bug Fixes

• The Huntsman and Manic Mouse rides now take spinning into account for EFN values
• Adjusted the penalties incurred for having multiples of the same ride in a park
• Increased the scoring penalties on the Pioneer coaster
• Fixed an issue where coasters would not save their custom friction settings in blueprints
• Made the Bakasura Lift Hill towers easier to click on
• Fixed an issue where transport ride stations would not open again after they had been repaired
• The Stingray station mechanisms are now colourable

Scenery Bug Fixes

• Made the Village Heart path extras colourable
• Fixed an issue where a pop-up was not displayed when placing Spooky path extras
• Spooky Wall Lights are now triggerable
• Fixed an issue where the Display Sequencer would not retain its music when duplicated
• Fixed an issue with the normals of the Stone Slab Queue

UI Bug Fixes

• Removed the ‘Edit Speakers’ step when connecting Display Speakers
• Cancelling scenery duplication now selects the previously selected object
• Fixed an issue where completing parts of a priority pass would de-select the ride

Staff and Guest Bug Fixes

• Stopped guests from watching fireworks immediately after leaving a ride
• Improved the AI for mechanics picking destinations
• Added a cap to how much happiness bonus staff get from being overpaid
• Fixed an issue where Mechanic workload was always low even when there was plenty to do
• Fixed an issue where guests would only queue for one facility despite a shorter queue being next to it
• Mechanics no longer wander to park entrances
• The size of the guest group now has a greater effect on how long it takes a vendor to serve them
• Fixed an issue where guests would react in sync to changes in G-Force

Audio Bugs

• Fixed some issues with crowd reactions after fireworks displays
• Improvements to audio quality of Rival and Black Falcon
• Added audio to coaster train collisions during testing
• Added audio to Gnarler lap bars
• Fixed an issue where video billboards would have an audio pop when they looped
• Fixed an issue where the volume of music on transport rides was not saved