A somewhat more technical entry this week - I’ve been working on intersection checks against coaster tracks to make sure that the tracks don’t collide with anything else:
This is done by creating a “virtual corridor” along the track that marks the clearance required by the coaster trains. If anything overlaps this corridor, it can’t be build. Here’s a debug view showing this corridor for a section of the track of the steel coaster (in light green lines):
The width and height of this corridor is dependent on the type of coaster you’re building, so for example for a wing coaster it would be much wider than for the steel coaster above and you’d have to make sure that there are no obstacles in the way to the sides of the track.
This method is pretty precise for ensuring that nothing clips through the tracks - for example, while you’re able to build a track over the balloon shop like this…
…you can’t go over it inverted at the same track height:
(Yes, the supports currently clip through inverted tracks, but that’s a different story)
It also allows to build quite compact coasters with near misses:
(Editor screenshot, not in-game graphics quality)
On a related note, building through wooden coaster supports is working now:
