March 16, 2005

The return of our site - the return of RCTM!

The RCT Masters Club is by now a staple of the RCT community. Founded back in October 2001, it was the organization that started the club concept, which by now seems to have expanded into the dozens. The club started off small, with about eight or nine members, and without a website...in other words, at first, it was a very abstract concept. In an attempt to organize the club and make it more real, I took it upon myself as a member with marginal html abilities to create a site. That feeble attempt started in December of that year, and we've essentially been online since.

Over the course of years we've released many parks, had many members come and go, come back, and go, etc... All the while though, the website still nagged at me. I don't have the personal knowledge on how to code more complex/sophisticated pages, or the artistic ability to create fancy graphics. My arena is playing RCT (and perhaps managing the club), not coding in html. The first versions of the site were templates based on the lycos/angelfire hosting we had at the time. Once I decided to get my own domain name and hosting, I called upon fellow member The Judge to help me with the graphics while I tried to code everything. This was when I had time, before Gavin was born. After a while, the format became cumbersome, The Judge retired from the club, and I had no time to do any of it.

A bit over a year ago, with the help of member RCTNW, we shut down the site for 2-3 weeks and reworked what we could with bits and pieces of The Judge's graphics, but in a way that RCTNW could manipulate the coding easier, as he was going to take care of the html work for me from now on. The overall site look didn't change too much, though it did load faster and certain content was more readily available. Much of last year was spent on making parks, before he took a break and I moved from Maryland to Georgia. The club was in hiatus (it seems) for about six months, some thought we'd folded.

That was then, this is now...the new version built by RCTNW and myself (he did the coding) is now online and ready for you to visit. True, the familiar aqua/green look is gone, replaced by a shiny silver and blue facade, and much of the inside is almost completely new. The NAV bar is now on the upper left, and with more options. New to the site is an expanded Links section, an ongoing (work-in-progress) History section to chronicle what we've gone through, and an Awards section to show you the highlights of the club, our club parks, and even individual member awards. While some of the material is offline, it will be up soon.

Member pages are expanded to break out parks by game format, club parks, and projects, with either an aerial or preview image to accompany it. Club parks are still organized by game format, but the selection pages now feature aerial previews. The About page has been modified to inform you that we are now looking for new members, so feel free to send us your parks and apply if you think we're what you're looking for, and visa versa.

Finally, Projects are still accounted for in one place, with links to screens of our ongoing works. The RCTM Showcase, Vegas Strip and Universal's Hollywood Hills projects are still going strong. The overdue Masters Palette is about 2-3 sections from being completed, and we are looking at it being a Spring 2005 release. Last but not least, we have a new project to announce. For the first time in our history, the club will be sanctioning a project to tackle the unique style of fantastical realism, and by that I mean Disney. RCTM is proud to announce that we've commenced work on Disney Downunder, a RCT 2 park set to capture the true spirit of Walt Disney parks, and especially the magic of Disneyland. There are two screens for this park at this time, and dozens more for our other upcoming projects.

Thanks for visiting, enjoy the new site and come back soon!!!

Kai

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