posix - 1/3/11

Kumba: From what I have heard you were following RCT online since the D-Net days and of course a part of the start of New Element (NE). How did RCT find its way onto your hard drive and what are some of your memories of those early days?

Posix: Actually, I have never seen D-Net's RCT days. I discovered the RCT community shortly after NE went online. RCT found its way onto my hard drive because I had seen it in a magazine and then played the demo for quite a while, despite the time limit.

I remember how after beating the original RCT1, I was fed up with the scenarios and was pretty early on drawn to the aspect of creating something with the game that would look beautiful. I searched online for months but never found anything. I did find a German community called loopylandscapes.de though, where I made contact with some people who were setting up a group park I decided to join. Three of the guys involved were Sanctuary, Benni and CoasterBOY, of which latter was active at D-Net and introduced us to NE when it went online. That's how it started for me.

Kumba: I think it is pretty well know you were highly influenced by parkmakers like Schuessler and natelox. How much of their style would you say went into your parks and designs and how much was your own innovation?

Posix: Natelox? I would disagree. I've enjoyed his parks a lot but I never wanted to imitate his style. Much unlike Schuessler of course, who I've copied endlessly and with relative success I'd say. My own innovations weren't so many.

Kumba: One thing I noticed quickly once joining NE was that you are were thought of by many as a fairly grumpy poster who did not hesitate to criticize parkmakers. At the time the NE Awards had a category called “asshole of the year”, an award you won three times. I think after all this time most people have realized this was a little unfair, but do you think you were that annoying back then and how much do your forum posts reflect your true personality?

Posix: Hah, I think it's just two times, no? I don't remember well. The problem was that I had a too strong opinion. I'm German after all. I don't think it was unfair at all really. My motivation when posting had become rather selfish and presumptuous so I can see where the awards came from. Real personality? I don't think there's much of a link. My real life is very detached from anything I do online, so I would say there's not much of a link.

Kumba: One thing you have always been great with is helping within the RCT community. It’s not rare that you’re the first to reply to an “ask the experts topic” with the solution to a problem or to point someone in the right direction. Your first big contribution to the community was your rctll guide. Do you have any additions planed for that guide or even any all-new guides?

Posix: There's not much you can add about LL now. Sure, if a new version of Windows comes out I will probably want to get LL to run under it and then maybe post my experiences again. What I'm happy about is this resolution hacking I stumbled upon the other day that might work as another add-on to the guide as it improves the playability of the game on modern systems. My motivation to help people is usually not altruistic though. I want to enable them to play the game so that they will at some point produce RCT works that can entertain me. This is also my major motivation for running the site.

About new guides; by now I've come to believe that guides usually don't work because they require people to read too much. In the case of a website, the ideal for me now is thus to design things in such a way that they are intuitively done the right way and make things easy but yet with sophisticated results for the user. So any big guide writing I do not see very likely, no.

Kumba: You have always played a key role in H2H. What can you recall from that first season? Also in H2H2 and H2H3 you got to be a team captain. You even won the championship in H2H3. You missed H2H4, but were the commissioner of H2H5. What are you best memories from those seasons and is there a good chance you and geewhzz will host an H2H6 at NE soon?

Posix: I knew you were going to ask that last question. But let's talk about the boring stuff first.

I was still relatively new at NE and had no idea how the contest worked. I don't remember ever voting for one of the two parks, I just downloaded them and looked in awe. I remember being blown away by Fatha's "Streets of New York" because the idea of the park was something I had never seen before, combined with having no idea of hacking.

My best memories from the seasons. H2H1 would have to be "Tales of Camelot" because the park was just so beautiful to me back then. From the other seasons, I remember RRP's Khalma Cove which I liked a lot. The most important H2H park for me was probably slob's Sierra Glen though because it was the first time ever that I saw it was possible to build the atmospheric and concentrated-on-aesthetics style parkmaking in RCT2, as before people's early RCT2 stuff was more technical and playing around with stacking objects as the main goal because that was so new of course.

H2H6 ... . Well, I can't say too much, but I'll let you know that geewhzz and I have talked about it one to one and chances for the contest to happen could definitely look worse. But there hasn't been a clear decision made yet. It depends mostly on geewhzz whether he decides to push the contest or not.

Kumba: You seem to be the first parkmaker people think of when LL is brought up. You have played it almost exclusively aside from one RCT2 design (Cannonball). Why do you prefer LL to RCT2 and how would you compeer the two games?

Posix: Compare, right? Well, I like LL so much more because RCT2's way of making buildings never appealed to me not once. I remember creating a workbench when I had just bought the game and experiencing what essentially is stacking fences in LL made handy, and was majorly let down. I could not see myself take the hours and hours for just a mere few buildings and never really played again until Cannonball, which was fun in a way, but I felt that LL has a certain type of atmosphere that RCT2 took away and that I find most magical in parks. As mentioned above, slob made me rethink this, but as there have been so few parkmakers to follow this style, I saw it as proof that RCT2 won't allow it. Then it had a few technical issues like the loading times which upset me greatly. Another thing was the bench making and limiting oneself with the objects available. I don't like the idea of custom scenery to begin with, but that's a different story. So yeah, not a great fan of RCT2.

Kumba: During the summer of 2008 you became half of a duo that has run NE since then. With the help of geewhzz you created the fourth version of NE, or "NE4" complete with an amazing amount of useful new features including a full database of NE parks. What was it like to gain administrative control over a website you have visited for years and what future plans do you and geewhzz have for NE4?

Posix: It was rather overwhelming because the organisation of the site was so manual and thus weak. But becoming an admin of NE was something I had wanted for a long time and I deliberately downplayed my enthusiasm when I offered my help in your infamous topic about "Who wants to own NE?" So when it happened, I was dead serious on the job and still am today I would say. I am generally serious and very strategic with the things I do in life. Maybe my statement above that my personality has no link with "posix" isn't so accurate.

Future plans, I have too many of them. The problem is that I can't code them myself. It doesn't make much sense to nag geewhzz to do it because obviously he will have different goals. This is a problem we've run into countless times but I'm generally happy with the percentage of my ideas that made it into NE4. I just hope the site will continue to do well and not dwindle down because too many people lose interest or too little new features are implemented.

Kumba: In September your LL NE Design Carnivore was released ending a nearly 5-year-long inactive streak. Was this because you found time to finish an old project, or was it a new venture? To ask it most simply, "is posix back to parkmaking?" and if so, what could be next?

Posix: The welcoming message of Carnivore basically sums it up. I finished the project because of NE4 which has made me view too many parks when fixing missing downloads in the DB and made me see all the enthusiasm and effort that people have put into their parks. I also hope to push my building style to some more popularity among the community, although I suppose that's not going to work too well as it's too oldfashioned and boring now that people overdetail everything in RCT2. In fact recently, I've been tempted to build again, however this will end soon when my next term at uni begins. So no, I'm afraid I'm not "back into parkmaking" in that sense.

Kumba: In all the years I have been a member of NE I have never really been able to pinpoint exactly what makes you like what when it comes to parkmaking. I would think you like Germans since you’re a huge Schuessler LL fan and seem to love what Beagle does in RCT2. Then you also are big on natelox and sloB who are from North America, so again I not seeing a trend. To make it a little more apparent could you please list some of your favorite parks and parkmakers?

Posix: Kumba, Schuessler was a North American guy whose ancestors were probably German immigrants ages ago. I have never liked "German" work much at all. In fact, I've disliked it quite a bit, and often still do today, because I find it more noobish and wannabe than that of American parkmakers, because Germans have to imitate the big floorless looping Beemers we simply don't have, or other huge Disney parks with their overkill of theming. Beagle was an exception, because he had an astonishing ability of guiding the viewers eyes through a park and also built European style, not trying to imitate American parks. But he has never really happened as he didn't finish that one park. Again, I've never been as intensive a fan of Natelox' work as you make it sound in this interview, and I would hope you can make a connection between the styles of schuessler and slob, no? I've preached this countless times, to the extent that I'm pretty sure it bores people to no end, but since you're asking I will of course repeat myself, that what I like in RCT creations, if they are realistic, is the clever combination of rides, objects, terrain and foliage design in such a way that the outcome will be as aesthetically pleasing as possible, evoking a calm, subtle, soothing, naturalistic, native and very elegant atmosphere. This, I consider the highest good in the game.