The second item I have been busy with is paths.
FreeRCT could use a little bit more variety in paths, in particular, it needs queueing paths that you put in front of a ride for quests to wait for a chance to experience the attraction.
The first step was to add different types of paths. The Path build window was extended. As you can see we now have up to 4 different types of path (4 rows). The second step was to denote each path type as being a normal path to walk on, or a queueing path. This is denoted by the two columns. The gui can probably be reduced a bit further by merging some rows.
Adding different types of path, and saying it's a queueing path is one thing. Making it actually work that way is another.
If you build a number of normal path tiles next to each you get a nicely fully covered area as you can see at the left of the picture. It's great for making a grand entrance of the park (although something less dull than grey could be useful :) ). For queueing in front of a ride however, you don't want areas, you want a long path, or in technical terms, each path tile should be connected to at most two other path tiles.
This is what the blue queue path tiles do. They connect to at most two other tiles, preferably other queue tiles. As a result, if you build such a path from the bottom left to the top right (first the bottom lane and then the top lane), you get two separate paths rather than one big area.
Now that you can build queues quite easily, I need to teach the quests about queues. The need to walk behind each other, and stop walking when there is no room in front of them. Finally rides must pickup the first guest from the queue until the ride is full, and deliver the quests at the exit afterwards.
