Let me begin by apologizing to any Catholics in the room for the title of this post (and to everyone else for the bad pun). Sometimes I just can't help myself. ;)

Ahem. This is a post in the spirit of "The Sins of the Mansion Builders", but with the opposite theme: this time, I want to point out things that I really like and appreciate when I see them in a mansion and invite others to do the same.

Good Hints
I just love it when mansion builders find clever ways to hint at the presence of things. Some examples:

• when you enter the room, you hear a money bag drop, although there are none visible onscreen.
  
• One used frequently in Catacombs is that you are able to see the secret but not the means to reach it.
  
• Snakes can be completely hidden because they make noise. Wingy did this a lot in the second part of Volcanis, and it really cheesed me off at first ( >:( Wingy) because I wasn't paying attention. I learned to listen soon enough, though, and appreciated the cleverness. MM's great stereo sound helps with this sort of thing too.
  
• One aural hint that I've not seen used is the torch sound. Place an invisible torch to mark the entrance to a secret room. Alert players (myself not included :P) will stop and wonder what on earth is making that noise.
  
• Sometimes a monster can be a hint. One of the built-in mansions uses this to great effect (can't remember which - nightmare mansion maybe?). There is in a certain place a spider that the player does not have to pass beneath at all. I looked at that and wondered what purpose it served. So I walked under and, sure enough, there was a secret on the other side. Clever!
  

Remember when composing hints that you have three senses to work with - sight, sound, and "touch" (movement). A subtle hint rewards those who notice them and garners accolades from your players.

Detail and Coherence
What would Midnight Mansion be if stripped of all background work and all decorative sprites? The gameplay wouldn't change a bit, but I for one wouldn't enjoy it as much. Atmosphere and ambiance are so visceral and unquantifiable that I won't attempt to describe them in much detail, but I know that I enjoy mansions that possess them.

Another really nice touch I've seen used is when the mansion is actually built like some kind of structure. Good examples of this are Cathedral Towers, Wingy's Midnight Pyramid, and Matt and Joe's Sphinx (in Mummy's Revenge) and Space Station (in Dominator). This is more than just putting a roof on top; the entire mansion is shaped like a real structure, and has numerous features that reinforce the theme and make the experience more immersive and enjoyable.

The almost polar opposite of the above is the archetypical Freddy mansion. Freddy seems to me to focus almost exclusively on nifty puzzles an cool tricks when building, to the detriment of things like background/foreground detail and atmosphere. There is something to be said for this style. MMaM is an astounding achievement and likely would have been impossible if he had put more effort into decorations.

I prefer shorter, more detailed mansions myself, but I think the MM world would be impoverished without designers like Freddy to add diversity into the mix.

Clever return routes
I love it when mansion builders recognize that passing a difficult challenge more than a couple of times is more tedious than enjoyable. Building quick return routes that are only accessible after completing the challenge is a very nice and appreciated feature.

And uh...I'll think of some more stuff later, but right now I'm sick of typing. I hope others will add to this as well!

It's been awhile since you said this, but hey, I never looked over here in the designing section, really. I get all mine stuff from "inspiration" ;) Do not forget that I love mansions that have a structure. My Castle for the contest, for example, looks like a castle with two towers, and a keep in the middle, a and wall going around. (Even painted a picture of it! :P) Do not forget Volcanis, the biggests bestest-linear mansion ever! ::) (If you let me say so, cuz I heard linear could be bad in the way Vern sees it.) It has the perfect structer of a volcanoe. But it's missing that haziness. The haziness that all valcanoes have with the odd sides. I had to make it so you could climb it! :D Anyways...

I must admit. Making a place have a decortive structure is what I do. Making a puzzle that's hard and fun and frusterating ( >:( Freddy  ;)) is what Freddy does. I love his decoration of the animals. Just love it. I tried to do one in the background of a room in Volcanis, the grey room in the castle at the very back. (and it's a secret)

Funny you mentioned my name alot in this, I relate to the subject a lot, (with the struture and the things you hate about my mansions) and because I must say that I am Catholic!  :o I wonder who els here is...

Sometimes putting together a "structure" has earned me the old "it's not a mansion and I only like mansions" purist attitude but I agree that overall structure and design adds enormously to the experience (IMNSHO) and I LOVE putting them together. Just a personal design tendency I guess. I also try to push the envelope with backgrounds that reinforce the structure. If I was as good with backgrounds as I am now (yes, ego speaking here) Mummy's Revenge, Temple of Tombs and even Dominator would have been more of an experience. Ghosthunter was a BIG step in that direction especially with the XP environment effects and although my next release will be pure MM the one following is going to have a VERY high level of foreground/background integration .

:) Looking forward to ... five (???) mansions!  8-)

Freddy,

Yes 5 mansions in various stages of completion:
Ghosthunter in beta (and insirational testing)
Search for Jack (would have been my contest mansion, 80% done)
Escape from Ghost Mountain (300 or so rooms, in design)
Dominator II (Deep Space Nine type station with very little outside activity, rooms completed and ready for detail)
Hillybilly Heaven (almost totally OUTSIDE, complete with shacks, moonshine, guard dogs, and Pole-eese, working on the critters, and design)
I'm gearing up for the "But it's NOT a mansion with Jack running around!" comments. No it's not, but I am going for comedy relief with it......

:)

joeb

GH on the Easy and Hard mode, its good. Or?

Another BUG I experience in this forum software (and I see it happen a lot longer than that post-vanishing thing), is the fact that often old threads are marked as NEW (to me) as if there was a new reply to it. But when I open the thread (like THIS ONE which has been marked new today, Sept. 9....before I wrote this) the latest entry is several weeks or months old !!!

:-/   Fuxxer drives me crazy...    :-/

joeb wrote on 29.06.2007 at 02:56:48:

Freddy, Yes 5 mansions in various stages of completion: Ghosthunter in beta (and insirational testing) Search for Jack (would have been my contest mansion, 80% done) Escape from Ghost Mountain (300 or so rooms, in design) Dominator II (Deep Space Nine type station with very little outside activity, rooms completed and ready for detail) Hillybilly Heaven (almost totally OUTSIDE, complete with shacks, moonshine, guard dogs, and Pole-eese, working on the critters, and design) I'm gearing up for the "But it's NOT a mansion with Jack running around!" comments. No it's not, but I am going for comedy relief with it...... :) joeb

Dominator II? Wow, that sounds nice! Is it going to have new music? Is it for the expansion?

Looking forward to your mansions. Oh, and by the way, since I was on the contest list and everything, I played Ghosthunter. It was nice! But I did find some bugs. (LOTS) and yeah. I forgot them though! Guess I'll have to play it again.
Wingy

P.S. I think that GH was normal mostly, (MOSTLY) and a hard room here and there that sucked up my lives.

AND- I think its safe to say here in public - I got most Game Overs between the 2nd and 3rd save platforms because there was a like 50-100 room gap between those two! It would help if you put a save point in there, because the dark areas there are hard. (Unless you find the lantern)