Last week we revealed the new scenery system and explained how we’re using it to create scenery ratings. Here’s what we’re doing with them. Guests now have an “Immersion” stat that’s influenced by their surroundings and that affects how fast their happiness decreases. Additionally, their immersion can decrease if they encounter a Hauler carrying crates, so ideally the shop supply routes should be kept somewhere behind the scenes.
Guests also leave a scenery rating when leaving the park, which factors into the overall park rating and thus has some influence on how many guests the park can attract. Rides receive a scenery rating too (notice how the parts that are just going through rocks are rated lower because they block the view of the nice scenery outside):
It has an influence on how exciting the ride is. Especially for dark rides this can make a noticeable difference. And as a nice bonus we can use the visibility data to determine whether a ride is covered or not, so covered rides continue to be used during rain as you’d expect. As an additional fun detail guests close their umbrellas on covered paths :)
Lastly, the question that has come up most since last week: won’t all these visibility calculations slow down the game? No, they are running in the background on a separate thread and are only done in areas where the scenery changed. Tim optimized them a lot to be very fast too! So most of the time there’s nothing to calculate, and when there is you won’t notice.