Review: Oldpman's Carnival/Amusement Set

So it might seem a little unfair to some, but I'm going to be reviewing another of Oldpman's products.  He produces a lot on a consistent basis and much of it isn't stuff that's really up my alley but is of frequently very good quality.

I noticed he hit an abandoned amusement park pack and before it was even complete as a kit, I already hit buy.  I was pleased to notice between the time of that purchase and now I've been gifted with a few extras.  So there's a lot here to review on what is a very well priced kit.

Now I'll admit as I've said in the past vending machines, arcade machines, and amusement parks all capture my fancy.  I personally live near a major east coast USA park (Hershey Park) and spent much of my youth there so I have many fond memories.  There's also a few abandoned ones in the area.

Almost immediately the pictures he had up reminded me of another park.  Specifically the infamous Pripyat park, in Chernobyl.

Looking at some pictures and comparing against what he'd posted, it was a pretty close match.

I see similar looking yellow bumper cars.  I see the strange Soviet-esque architecture.

I see the copper floor model.  Yep, looks right. Definitely Pripyat.

One thing bothered me though - In many of the pictures, I saw a red cart as well.  And this kit didn't come with a red cart.  Well, nothing copy, paste, recolor (hooray for paint.net) of the DDS file couldn't fix.







Behold, my addition to the kit.  I'll send it over to Oldpman and ask him to add it in.

 

Variety is the spice of life, after all, even in former Soviet Russia.

So on to the kit itself.  It contains a wide variety of objects.  There's walls, wall corners, a coconut shy, a full set of bumper car items, a ferris wheel, a round-a-bout carousel, two hanging chair carousels (one is animated), some flower planters, benches, etc.  

Overall, it's a hell of a value for $4.50; initially when I purchased this it had about 6 items and I was playing around with trying to get regular objects to fit with them well.  So it's refreshing to see him add walls and what not to help round out the kit.  Let's see what we can do with it.

As you can see I've begun assembling your regular run of the mill amusement park.  I decided to try to use as many free assets or stock assets as possible to help setup this park in a meaningful way.  I did however use the 'Wizard of Id' Sci-Fi Wall kit, but only for an entryway because the stock entryway is a bit simple.

 

This is just a little bland for my tastes.

That's more like it; parks should be grandiose on entry!

So basically I found the park actually worked exceptionally well with stock assets.  Here's a list of some of the preferred ones that I used:

• Blue/Brown Port-a-potties
• Barbed wire chain link fence
• Tent (canvas) - used for creating a custom amusement, a shooting gallery: 
• Standard wooden boxes with wooden crate palette as an improvised countertop
• Dumpsters
• Structure (Building A and B)
• Some free tree-lines from Belidos
• Some free picnic tables I snagged a while back from Valuable Assets
• Other basic assets I am failing to remember.  Nothing major though.   Just your usual signs, boxes, crates, etc.  

So let's fix that entrance and really give it the proper treatment for a busted down amusement park.

There we go.  Notice the simple signage, mountain being added as a backdrop, broken chain link fence, etc.
Continuing on, obviously it needs detail work.  I want to see how this is going to look in a near finished state.  Here's the 'final' version:

 

At this point that treeline encircles the entire 'zone' and the mountain is very detailed now, lots of ridges, chimneys, chutes, etc.  Unfortunately when I went into the game the graphic settings were clearly too low.  So I put on an overcast sky, added fog, tweaked lighting as I've done a hundred times before... Added my 1024px High Quality Road Set and some dried vegetation. 

Here's some snaps in no particular order:

It's surprising how just a little lighting change, the right elements, and configuration can really bring a scene together, eh?

 

The Bottom Line:  If you're in the market for a really superb kit which matches a lot of the stock pieces, has great mood and represents a good value for the price  - then this is definitely a buy.  I will say it's pretty contingent upon your 'need' for a kit like this.  For my upcoming game there's an abandoned entertainment zone so this suits very well.   Oldpman's work continues to impress.

Updates to the set have been done in response to this article, read the update HERE!