DISCOTHEQUE OF DOOM  Release Statement:

Later today DoD will be released.... but before I'd like to give you the story, a few tips and other remarks.
Even if I didn't find the time to design all of the custom graphics I had originally planned (it got far more work than I could handle....and I didn't want to delay the release any further), there are enough custom graphics in the game to create the effect I was after. And although it is possible to play DoD with the standard sprites set, please don't. It just doesn't look good. Please take the exra second to replace/add the graphics, sprites and music files. It's well worth it.....

The Story:

On his way through the teenage wasteland, Jack has met some creatures of the night  who told him about a mysterious place:

Into the caves of a hill, a rich lunatic has built a discotheque.

Only few wanderers have ever reached it, the path is long and full of dangers.

It's the Discotheque Of Doom, and Jack will try to find it...

Jack doesn't fear the dangers that await him, so he put on his fancy nightlife outfit -
for he is sure that one day he, too, will be one of the chosen few
who ever danced at the Discotheque Of Doom.


Tips & Advices:

DoD is not an easy mansion. Its difficulty ranges from normal to (occasionally) very hard.

You should especially keep in mind:

Be alert at all times.  There might be secrets hidden where you're not expecting them...and occasionally there might be dangers where you're not expecting them.

DoD contains quite a number of secret rooms or areas.
You got to know that some secrets are hidden more than others, so you might only find them during later, repeated plays. This is done purposely to keep the replay value high. So PLAY AGAIN !

Take care  at the edges of the rooms: Is the floor really going all the way through?  
Sometimes it is required to JUMP from room to room.

Some zappers are quite hard, but only if you head straight into them. It's always advisable to first wait and watch.... soon you'll see the pattern and it will be quite manageable.

One thing is unique to DoD: at several points on your route, you can suddenly be "propelled back" to a spot much earlier on your way !!
This can be good or bad, depending on the situation:
Good:  sometimes the "exit" out of a certain area is via such a "shortcut" to an earlier part and sometimes it is a means to get out of a hairy situation alive. It might be unnerving to have to do mileage again you thought you had already mastered, but at least you are alive...so it's good !
Bad:  there are other occasions where you simply make a wrong step (say instad of jumping, you're walking into a gap in the floor) and instead of dying you are landing in an earlier room. Again: you didn't lose a life.....  but you have to walk....and walk...

But don't panic: if you take care and watch your steps this shouldn't happen....

Always remember: the goal for Jack is to find the central  big dancefloor.

About the music:
In a discotheque the music is always important, and even more so in the Discotheque Of Doom. So please play with music ON.

The mansion starts out silent, though..... and more often than not you'll come through silent areas.
That could mean several things:
- Suspense level is rising
- Keep your ears open..... the sound of critters, footsteps or other things might help you
- you're obviously not close to a dancefloor if you do not hear any music.
- you're in a secret area. (In most secret areas of DoD the music is off)

All tracks have been written, played and produced by me... some specificially for DoD, but the majority for other projects (but even those have been re-edited for DoD). Please DO NOT distribute or share the music tracks on their own.  Respect the copyright. Thx.


Have Fun !

(And don't hesitate to post any questions you might have).

aquaMat

I can't wait! ;D ;D ;D

Quote:

And don't hesitate to post any questions you might have

So how much disco floor time did you actually have in your life?

:D 8-) 8-) 8-) :D

Congratulations on your release and Matt and I look forward to playing it!!!!

Matt & Joe B

:) It is on!!

Go to the Lists for downloading and ... be patient. The zip-file has a size of 18,6 MB. So that may take a few minutes.
Push back the furniture, roll up the carpets and ... start to dance! [smiley=2vrolijk_08.gif]

Thanks everybody.....!!

And now..... the music is on !!  :)

Wow. Leave it to aquaMat to out-aquaMat aquaMat! This mansion is so...weird. I don't know what to say, I've only made it a few rooms in.

Momma always said that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, so... :-X

...OK, that was probably meaner than what I was going to say. ;) From the few (~10) rooms I've seen, this mansion is the epitome of the aquaMat style--it's unlike anything else out there (in a bizarre way). It's full of devious (and sometimes unfair) traps for the unwary. It frequently forces you to search for hidden clues just in order to continue. It often penalizes you for leaving a room without making clear it was going to do so.

I'm showing a pretty strong negative slant here, so let me be absolutely clear: aquaMat's mansions seem technically excellent on almost every level. I just don't enjoy his style, and given the punishing difficulty of all of his mansions, I haven't been able to force myself to complete any of them except SPoG.

I'm willing to put in the effort to try and like it on the hopes that it will reward the investment with a sense of achievement or something, because fun it is not. Still, a musical analogy is apt for this mansion. Some albums (and bands) take a while to grow on you. The first few times played a CD of one of my now-favorite bands (the Squirrel Nut Zippers), I was thinking the whole time, "What on earth did I just buy?" But since I had spent the money and couldn't get it back, I tried to like it. And, with time, began to recognize how truly wonderful their music is.

Or will it be like Pearl Jam, who, having released two stellar (and one pretty good) albums at the beginning of their career, have been cranking out mostly-unlistenable dreck ever since? I tried really hard to like post-Vitalogy Pearl Jam, but I just couldn't. I'm still saddened by this...

Ahem. Sorry to get off track. Anyway, aquaMat, I'll try to keep my opinions to myself in the future as I have in the past, but, having a rather loud mouth, was unable to silence it on this one. And, after all, I've only played ten rooms (and died...twice...); maybe I'll get into it eventually.

I wouldn't worry about keeping your opinions to yourself. It does say "Talk" at the top of the screen, and not "Praise". I don't think anybody minds the occasional opinion essay, as long as it's not aggressive or insulting. When I get a chance to play this one, I'll chime in. Maybe we can even get a discussion going.  8-)

Played a bit more. The jury is still out, but I thought I'd report that the game crashed on me. I don't have a room number (unless I open in the editor...:P), and unfortunately the room in question is rather nondescript. I think it may have had a green door in it, and it definitely had around four eyeballs. The room before it had a bunch of platforms oscillating up and down before the entrance. The game actually crashed with jack in midair (I jumped through the boundary).

Console just reports the crash, and that a crashlog was written. I got no error message.

aquaMat,

I'm about 20 rooms in and just died. Very cool and devious so far. I like the look and layout so far but I want to see more.
Haven't seen any JS or what I would call cheap deaths although others might because you have to look before you leap. I'll see if I can get some more play in over the weekend but I'm looking at Church as well.

Talk to you later,

Joe B

Ryos,

even back when you wrote your arguable "Sins Of The Mansion Builders" I felt you had a special disliking of my mansions......
of course I have no problem of your saying so...as long as it is on reasonable grounds and within certain confines of politeness.
To be honest... I really like a good discussion. But I'm not sure if this is one, but it might become one....

In this case I have the feeling you already disliked the mansion after the first couple of rooms, judged by the speed of your post....
I'm not sure why, though.

Why don't you see it  (what you call "devious and unfair traps") as a challenge.... as I do.

'Cause unfair is something that is "not right" or "unjust".... which is definitely neither what I had in mind, not what I have actiually done.

Just because I have the principle of hiding (some) secrets more than others, doesn't make me u nfair..... there is still almost always a hint somewhere...even if it's not the "usual" hint (of using crooked bricks, for example). We've discussed that one before.

I have tried to avoid really cheap deaths and I think I managed to do so.
And just because a mansion is HARD doesn't make it UNFAIR. I can't begin to tell you how many times I had to replay the same sections of ACO time and again, 'cause they were so unbelievingly hard...to a point where I felt it was....well... a bit unfair that it's so hard. Yet I realise it's just very hard...and I never would accuse Psychotronic of unfairness....and haven't heard anybody else do so either.

So tell me..... where do I penalize you for leaving a room....?
Why do you feel I "force you to search for hidden cclues in order to continue"...when this is simply part of the game, a challenge..... just a means to make it more interesting (even in repeated plays).

As I said before: DoD is designed in a way so you cannot find all secrets during your first game.....  why don't you see it like I do, as a positive thing, that you can actually play it more than once and still find new things.

If you don't like that style....why don't you play  -say- The Swiss Mansion Easy, where you get a basic, simple, straightforward gameplay that you can finish in 10 minutes.

And rest assured:  you are rewarded for your efforts to play through DoD. You are rewarded by:
- finding secret areas and getting a triumphant feeling from it   ;)
- finding the central dancefloor at last, and many new rooms along the way
- at the end you'll find -as usual- a gold chamber

Because that is how this game works.

If you do not consider this fun...well.... then maybe you simply have a different taste...... I can't please everyone...and I never set out to try.

ryos wrote on 23.03.2007 at 12:30:30:

Played a bit more. The jury is still out, but I thought I'd report that the game crashed on me. I don't have a room number (unless I open in the editor...:P), and unfortunately the room in question is rather nondescript. I think it may have had a green door in it, and it definitely had around four eyeballs. The room before it had a bunch of platforms oscillating up and down before the entrance. The game actually crashed with jack in midair (I jumped through the boundary). Console just reports the crash, and that a crashlog was written. I got no error message.

Sorry.... I had never a crash in DoD, and since you can't tell me the room number I can't figure out what the potential reason might be.
But I tend to think it was a singular incident, otherwise we would have witnessed that one before (during the 3 months of testing DoD !)

I'll have more to say (and an adequate response) when I've had time to play the whole thing, and with another round of midterms this weekend that isn't looking likely for a while (unless I hit a mental brick wall with studying and have to take a break...;D)

I'm mostly just writing to agree that the crash was probably an isolated incident, but I like to report such things just in case something can be made of it.

P.S. "Midterms" is a misnomer at my university...they roll around every 2-3 weeks, for a total of 5 midterms per class per term.

Great job, aquaMat, as usual. So many different places to explore, the replay value will be high.

I found a Jack stuck, though, in 21712, in the top left corner. Jack thought there would be a treasure up there to find, or another secret room, so he kept jumping up and up and up. Now, the poor guy is stuck, nowhere to go.
:'(

Semi-Native,

where exactly are you in the top-left corner of 21712 ?

If you are standing on the dark brown bricks there is a way back out (back onto the "elevator platforms"). Or did you go even higher from there ?!?  If so.... there is a way out from there too (even if of course you're not "meant" to go there.... ) unless you are so high that only you're feet are visible.... from there it migjht not be possible to return back down !!

I had tested it specifically with adventurous players in mind.... whether someone daring to jump up there might get stuck...
and... if you keep going down facing the left side it is possible to get back...it's a bit like stairs, even if it doesn't lokk like it....

BUT I simply forgot to test it from the uppermost little caveat, simply because I thought nobody would really go that far up.....(to hide a secret door up there is even "too sick" for me.... :D)

I can't do an UD specifically for this... but I will stuff the uppermost hole in the next UD.

BUT: congratulations that you've already come this far in DoD !! That's quite an achievment...!

I want to give this mansion another shot or two before I give you a whole lot of comments. I got pretty solidly slaughtered a little ways past the second save point. But I will say this: the music is fantastic. It really suits the mood of the mansion very well. In a way, it justifies some of the visual choices, because the abstractness of the room design makes sense with the understated rhythm of the music. In a way that I can't quite explain, it seems. But good job there.

EDIT: Found a Jack-Stuck in 21306. I got up there without a yellow key, and there doesn't seem to be any way back down. Unless there's some flippin' false floor or something I'm not noticing.

yes, I found also this Jack-stuck. Would be glad if it it would recover!  :)

aquaMat wrote on 24.03.2007 at 05:59:32:

Semi-Native, where exactly are you in the top-left corner of 21712 ? If you are standing on the dark brown bricks there is a way back out (back onto the "elevator platforms"). Or did you go even higher from there ?!?  If so.... there is a way out from there too (even if of course you're not "meant" to go there.... ) unless you are so high that only you're feet are visible.... from there it migjht not be possible to return back down !!

Yes, I was all the way up, in the topmost opening above where the key was. You should know that if there's a way to get Jack stuck, some player will find it.  ;) 8-)

Anyway, I started over from the last save point. I'm loving this mansion. And I like the music, too.

lol  the music... I have anyway the own. Christina Augilera and so...  ;)

The music is pretty sweet...  Do you have a guitarist in that? I diddn't hear one... :(

In which of the songs do you mean now whether it a guitarist thereby have?

Psychotronic wrote on 24.03.2007 at 12:43:31:

Found a Jack-Stuck in 21306. I got up there without a yellow key, and there doesn't seem to be any way back down. Unless there's some flippin' false floor or something I'm not noticing.

Yep, I just found this one, too.
:-/

To those of you, who found a Jack-stuck in room 21306:

I can't follow you there ??!!  Do you really mean room 21306...the one with the brown passage and 1 yellow door ??
This room is accessed from the room below...and I don't understand why you shouldn't be able to get back down to room 21506 and return to previous rooms to go looking for the yellow key ??

I just checked it, and all platforms (in 21506) are still moving, if you return into that room...so I don't understand how you can get stuck there ???
How did you access room 21306 ?

As for the other JS that Semi-Native mentioned:

Semi-Native wrote on 24.03.2007 at 20:52:12:

You should know that if there's a way to get Jack stuck, some player will find it.  ;) 8-)

Of course I know that.... but in this case it was simply an ovbersight...!!

About the music:
Sam, I use guitar in many of my tracks (guitar was my first instrument), but I'm not sure right now, whether there's guitar in one of the DoD-music tracks. But there's definitely electric bass, Fender Rhodes, Percussion and a few other  "acoustic" (="hand-played") instruments in the mix.....

Thanks to everybody who complimented on the music !!  I was going for a "compromise"/mixture between suspense-type music and a dance-beat (because of the Discotheque theme) and I think I kind of achieved that.

Chippy wrote on 24.03.2007 at 20:56:38:

lol  the music... I have anyway the own. Christina Augilera and so...  ;)

Ahem.... what does that mean, Mikee ??

You don't destroy my mansion by putting some dreadful Christina Aguilera crap in it, aren't you ??!! ::)

PS...Semi-Native:
I have already "repaired" the JS you found in 21712.....  (much to my dismay....dosn't look as good now  :'() ... however, as soon as someone finds anything else I'll post an UD to the boards !!


>What do I learn from that:

Freddy was right, when he once (half-jokingly) remarked "You gotta leave some mistakes in, to give the people something to talk about !".     ;) :D

aquaMat wrote on 24.03.2007 at 21:46:54:

To those of you, who found a Jack-stuck in room 21306: I can't follow you there ??!!  Do you really mean room 21306...the one with the brown passage and 1 yellow door ?? This room is accessed from the room below...and I don't understand why you shouldn't be able to get back down to room 21506 and return to previous rooms to go looking for the yellow key ?? I just checked it, and all platforms (in 21506) are still moving, if you return into that room...so I don't understand how you can get stuck there ??? How did you access room 21306 ? As for the other JS that Semi-Native mentioned: Semi-Native wrote on 24.03.2007 at 20:52:12: You should know that if there's a way to get Jack stuck, some player will find it.  ;) 8-) Of course I know that.... but in this case it was simply an ovbersight...!!

I got to 21306 from below, but when you go back to 21506 and go across to the left on the moving tiles, you fall to your death when you try to get down lower.

And I know it was only an oversight in the other JS, it wasn't a criticism.  8-)

Edit: Just saw your post about the update. Thanks for the quick fix!  [smiley=thumbsup.gif]

Semi-Native wrote on 24.03.2007 at 22:02:01:

I got to 21306 from below, but when you go back to 21506 and go across to the left on the moving tiles, you fall to your death when you try to get down lower.

Oooh... what ??!!  I didn't know that !!  Give me a couple of minutes.... I'll try myself and see if I find out what you mean exactly !!  ***

BTW:  I realised (in the meantime) the real problem lies somewhat deeper:  I wonder how y'all manage to get to that yellow door without having a single yellow  key??!!   'Cause "normally" you should arrive in front of that yellow door having 2 yellow keys (!!) which are given out much earlier in the game....and they're not really hidden eithet... so I wonder how you could miss them.

'Cause due to poles complete backtracking (to where those yellow keys are) isn't possible anyway..... so my feeling is you must have missed an entire section earliuer in the game !! (Is that possible ?)  So probably you haven't much choice anyway, than to go and restart from, say save pedestal 2 and see what you might have missed.  Sorry !!

EDIT: I have just checked it.... Indeed..there's a problem in 21506 to get back down, in the left upper corner. Sorry about that, I didn't realise that (I probably never had to get back down there).... but:  as the stuff I said before applies anyway, it doesn't help much too change that. You still have to go searching for that early section you probably missed.  It might be an imperfection in the mansion that you can't get ALL the way back..... but it simply isn't possible.... I would have tpo change 20 or more rooms !!

I'm terribly sorry.....

aquaMat wrote on 24.03.2007 at 21:53:18:

Chippy wrote on 24.03.2007 at 20:56:38: lol  the music... I have anyway the own. Christina Augilera and so...  ;) You don't destroy my mansion by putting some dreadful Christina Aguilera crap in it, aren't you ??!! ::)

If you think she's bad, listen to fall out boy!!! ;D You have a lot of instruments in that music, that's cool. I'm trying to form a band but I can't find a singer (and doubting I need one...)  :P

Does not become impudent!  ;) ;) ;)

aquaMat wrote on 24.03.2007 at 22:23:02:

BTW:  I realised (in the meantime) the real problem lies somewhat deeper:  I wonder how y'all manage to get to that yellow door without having a single yellow  key??!!   'Cause "normally" you should arrive in front of that yellow door having 2 yellow keys (!!) which are given out much earlier in the game....and they're not really hidden eithet... so I wonder how you could miss them. 'Cause due to poles complete backtracking (to where those yellow keys are) isn't possible anyway..... so my feeling is you must have missed an entire section earliuer in the game !! (Is that possible ?)  So probably you haven't much choice anyway, than to go and restart from, say save pedestal 2 and see what you might have missed.  Sorry !!

It seems like the path split on me at least once. I don't know the room number now, but at one point Jack can jump off a falling platform to get to a blue door on his left (there's a sign in that section saying that that's a secret section.) or go to the right and go through a green door. I did the blue door first, and then I don't think I was ever able to get back to the section behind the green door.

It's a problem if you expect Jack to pick up keys early in a mansion in order to unlock a door much later. It's easy to miss an obvious key, especially with a mansion as complicated as this one. I've found several shortcuts that may or may not have been intended - a chance jump onto a pole or vine that maybe was supposed to be out of reach - and although I might have been able to work my way back immediately, I usually prefer to explore forward first and try to figure out what my goals are before I go back and look for keys. That means if I reach a one-way pole that leads me out of an area, I feel like I've finished that area, and I can take that pole without fear that I've left anything but secret treasure behind.

I may be telling you something you already know, of course. My, I do go on.

Oh, and why are people talking about Aguilera and Fall Out Boy? Whyyyyyy?

Because it sings much good?  ;D

:P

Psychotronic, I know what room you mean...(where the path splits)...and I have suspected already this was where people missed a section. (It's room #20313, BTW)

We have talked about this during beta-testing.... as of course we saw the potential problem of people being able to head for the lower blue door first.  I considered putting up a BBB (saying 'do the red door first'), but I figured having
a) put up coins which signal the route to the (higher) red door  and...especially

b) the fact -(for everyone obvious to see) that the blue door section is LOWER than the red door section....and there are only falling platforms there.....  (so you can't get UP on a falling platform)

was enough indication to the player to DO THE RED SECTION first.  And it's exactly there where the yellow keys(s) fpr later are hidden !!!
I know it's not the most perfect of styles there, it could be clearer....but I thought it was obvious enough !

Your second thought..... I think you're absolutely right that giving out keys for a door that arrives in a much later section bears certain dangers.
I can't even tell you why I like to do it sometimes, other than:
I don't know why, but I have some reservations about the concept where a key should only be allowed in close vicinity to its resp. door... although I fully admit in this case it's really a very very long distance between key and door.

It's probably due to the different playing styles....  my playing style  is collecting anything (keys, money etc.) as soon as I come across it...and it never dawned on me that anybody might NOT collect a key once he spotted it, but first explores the rest of the area.... and comes back for the key later.  What advantages does that give you (other than in a case where you might be short of space for keys ('cause you have 6 shields or something) ??!

Well, I'm sorry for the inconveniance.
In the update I might put up a BBB saying "Do red section first" in the room mentioned above.

aquaMat wrote on 25.03.2007 at 03:22:43:

the fact -(for everyone obvious to see) that the blue door section is LOWER than the red door section....and there are only falling platforms there.....  (so you can't get UP on a falling platform) was enough indication to the player to DO THE RED SECTION first.  And it's exactly there where the yellow keys(s) fpr later are hidden !!! I know it's not the most perfect of styles there, it could be clearer....but I thought it was obvious enough !

And if this were straightforward, solid-feeling mansion, it might be obvious. But this is a tricky mansion with a lot of paths that are hidden or obscure, with lots of platforms hiding in the walls and invisible ladders. Up until that point, I had always been able to find a way back from any weird corner of the mansion I had found myself in.

My logic at that point was this: the blue key was hidden better than the other key. Therefore, the blue side was a secret path (which it is). So I had better do that part first, and then find the path back to the main section. In fact, I died in that secret section and when I rebooted my save, I went to the blue part first, AGAIN. I still didn't know that there was no way back to the other side. And then when I couldn't find a way up to the other door, it just seemed like, since I could so easily skip that part, it must be optional. I'm not looking forward to going back two whole save points to look for those keys.


Quote:

It's probably due to the different playing styles....  my playing style  is collecting anything (keys, money etc.) as soon as I come across it...and it never dawned on me that anybody might NOT collect a key once he spotted it, but first explores the rest of the area.... and comes back for the key later.  What advantages does that give you (other than in a case where you might be short of space for keys ('cause you have 6 shields or something) ??!

I collect keys whenever I see them. But you hide a lot of the keys in your mansions behind walls or sprites. That method of design encourages players to explore around, find a door, realize Jack must have passed a key for that door, and then go searching for it. Which is fine. But if you expect people to pick up those hidden keys (which includes keys that are in sections you can potentially skip entirely) on the way to a later door, then your design philosophy is clashing with your expectations on the player.

If you want Jack to collect keys as he goes, make them visible. If you want Jack to go hunting for invisible keys, don't hide them very far from the door, because he's likely to find the door first and have no idea where the key is.

OK...I'm still not ready to answer this post in full (and don't think I will be until I finish DoD, and that might take me a few weeks). But I have a moment now to try and explain some things.


aquaMat wrote on 23.03.2007 at 19:54:06:

Ryos, even back when you wrote your arguable "Sins Of The Mansion Builders" I felt you had a special disliking of my mansions...... of course I have no problem of your saying so...as long as it is on reasonable grounds and within certain confines of politeness. To be honest... I really like a good discussion. But I'm not sure if this is one, but it might become one....

If you feel I've been unreasonable or impolite, then I apologize. That was never my intent. The language barrier is difficult (I spent two years speaking a foreign language almost exclusively, so I know how easy it can be to completely miss the spirit of what someone is saying). If you ever find yourself offended by something I've written, just remember these five words: "Ryos never means to offend." Seriously, never.


Quote:

In this case I have the feeling you already disliked the mansion after the first couple of rooms, judged by the speed of your post.... I'm not sure why, though.

Heh, prejudice is an ugly thing, and I completely prejudged DoD based on the negative experience I'd had playing "Mind Mines" and, to a lesser extent, SPoG. Sorry, that wasn't fair of me, and I am giving the mansion a fair chance.

I hope to try and explain why I don't like the style of your mansions, but first I have to figure that out myself. Right now all I can say is that I don't enjoy them, but that's an emotion that I haven't finished analyzing. I may come to appreciate them, like some works of art can only be appreciated and not enjoyed.


Quote:

Why don't you see it  (what you call "devious and unfair traps") as a challenge.... as I do. 'Cause unfair is something that is "not right" or "unjust".... which is definitely neither what I had in mind, not what I have actiually done.

You're right on the definition of unfair, and it's instructive then to consider what "unfair" is in the context of Midnight Mansion. And to try and do that, I'll invoke a concept I read in a book about writing stories by Orson Scott Card (Characters and Viewpoint).

While I don't have my copy at hand (it's 500 miles away), I'll paraphrase as best I can. Authors have an implicit contract with their readers. As part of the contract, readers agree to suspend their disbelief and expect in return that the author will present a story that is believable and consistent. Should the author ever fail to uphold his end of the deal (by, say, having a character do something that he wouldn't do for no reason), the reader will rightly feel cheated and may stop reading altogether.

Let's carry this concept to Midnight Mansion and assume that an implicit contract exists between mansion builder and mansion player. What would be the builder's end of the contract?

...well, of course that's open to interpretation, and mine can be summed up like this: when I die, I want it to be my fault. The mansion builder has the implicit responsibility to make sure that the player can only kill himself, instead of being killed by the mansion. "To act, and not be acted upon."

Another part of the implicit contract is that the mansion should never become unfinishable. That's what we call a Jack-stuck. I suppose it's reasonable to use this as part of the design of a mansion, but you better darn well do it on purpose and make sure the player knows what happened.

If you violate the implicit contract...IMHO...that's unfair!

Now, I'm not prepared to give specific examples of DoD violating the implicit contract. Sorry...please have patience with me.  8-)


Quote:

Just because I have the principle of hiding (some) secrets more than others, doesn't make me u nfair..... there is still almost always a hint somewhere...even if it's not the "usual" hint (of using crooked bricks, for example). We've discussed that one before.

Your hints in DoD are almost uniformly ingenious. What I initially took exception to was the fact that the path forward is quite frequently hidden. This is a major departure from all other mansions out there and it threw me for a loop. But it is used often and well enough that I began to look at it like a puzzle, and I now think it is the mansion's greatest quality (and possibly its saving grace).


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I have tried to avoid really cheap deaths and I think I managed to do so. And just because a mansion is HARD doesn't make it UNFAIR. I can't begin to tell you how many times I had to replay the same sections of ACO time and again, 'cause they were so unbelievingly hard...to a point where I felt it was....well... a bit unfair that it's so hard. Yet I realise it's just very hard...and I never would accuse Psychotronic of unfairness....and haven't heard anybody else do so either.

I never said it was unfair because it was hard. You're putting words in my mouth.


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So tell me..... where do I penalize you for leaving a room....? Why do you feel I "force you to search for hidden cclues in order to continue"...when this is simply part of the game, a challenge..... just a means to make it more interesting (even in repeated plays).

Sorry...examples forthcoming. ;)


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As I said before: DoD is designed in a way so you cannot find all secrets during your first game.....  why don't you see it like I do, as a positive thing, that you can actually play it more than once and still find new things.

I don't believe I ever complained about the way secrets are hidden, just that the path ahead was a secret, which I addressed above.


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If you don't like that style....why don't you play  -say- The Swiss Mansion Easy, where you get a basic, simple, straightforward gameplay that you can finish in 10 minutes.

WEE-OOO-WEE-OOO! Ad hom alert! Help, help, I'm being repressed! ;D

No, seriously, that reads like a personal attack and is quite offensive. One of my favorite mansions, Temple of the Moon, is mind-blowingly difficult.

But hey, I hadn't tried the Swiss Mansion. Maybe I'll have to, as hard mansions, while enjoyable, take considerable time commitment that I don't always have to give them. Sometimes all I need is a simple, straightforward, relaxing 10 minutes. :)


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If you do not consider this fun...well.... then maybe you simply have a different taste...... I can't please everyone...and I never set out to try.

Oh, good heavens, who can please everyone? It's pointless to try. And if it were just that your mansions aren't for me, then I would never say anything (like I've never complained about House of Wonders, which is most definitely just not for me). It goes deeper then that; I have the hubris to think that my opinions will help you design better mansions, ones that I might enjoy playing (and others enjoy more). That's all.

But before I type another word, let me ask: do you want my feedback? I ask because you act like you don't. Don't hesitate to say no, I won't be offended.

According to the character counter, this post is...7348 characters! Yikes! * shuts up now.  :-X

Oh, and on a lighter note...I need a hint! :P

I'm in room 21104 with no keys! The horror! The humanity! I did take your hint and play the red door first (like Psychotronic, I had thought the blue door was a secret area that I'd miss if I hit the red door first), but I only found one yellow key. And I'm also out of blue keys, and can't find anything more in any area that I can reach.

I'm just looking for a hint here. For the sake of my sanity, is there some way out of this mess? Or do I have to go all the way back to save point 2 (from 5), and find more keys?

THANKS!

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Let's carry this concept to Midnight Mansion and assume that an implicit contract exists between mansion builder and mansion player. What would be the builder's end of the contract? ...well, of course that's open to interpretation, and mine can be summed up like this: when I die, I want it to be my fault. The mansion builder has the implicit responsibility to make sure that the player can only kill himself, instead of being killed by the mansion. "To act, and not be acted upon." Another part of the implicit contract is that the mansion should never become unfinishable. That's what we call a Jack-stuck. I suppose it's reasonable to use this as part of the design of a mansion, but you better darn well do it on purpose and make sure the player knows what happened. If you violate the implicit contract...IMHO...that's unfair!

This is how I think of it, too. It feels like there's an implicit trust that exists between me and the level architect when I play a new mansion. I trust that the mansion won't kill me without giving me a reasonable chance to defend myself. I trust that the mansion difficulty won't vary wildly without warning. I trust that walls will act like walls and ladders will act like ladders and backgrounds will be backgrounds, that there will be some consistent rules and physics, so I can relax and work on the challenges that I encounter. There's sort of a trial period at the beginning where the contract gets established. And it's very easy during that trial period for the level design to break that trust, and it can be very hard to get me back in the mood again afterwards.

ryos wrote on 25.03.2007 at 14:42:16:

Oh, and on a lighter note...I need a hint! :P I'm in room 21104 with no keys! The horror! The humanity! I did take your hint and play the red door first (like Psychotronic, I had thought the blue door was a secret area that I'd miss if I hit the red door first), but I only found one yellow key. And I'm also out of blue keys, and can't find anything more in any area that I can reach. I'm just looking for a hint here. For the sake of my sanity, is there some way out of this mess? Or do I have to go all the way back to save point 2 (from 5), and find more keys? THANKS!

Easy things first, ryos...that's why I reply on this one first and only later (hopefully) I'll find the time to address the larger post.

So I reckon you're in front of the blue & yellow doors in 21104 ?! And you have no keys whatsoever ??  But you did take the red door oart at the above mentioed intersection.... there you found 1 yellow key, you said. Well, I don't know (off the top of my head) whether the 2nd yellow key is within the "red door section" as well, or BEFORE that...but I'll check.

If you haven't found a blue key, I recommend: go back a few rooms (from 21104) and look again.... I'm sure you'll find it.

Let me get back to you about the 2nd yellow key.

Psychotronic wrote on 25.03.2007 at 03:45:36:

And if this were straightforward, solid-feeling mansion, it might be obvious. But this is a tricky mansion with a lot of paths that are hidden or obscure, with lots of platforms hiding in the walls and invisible ladders. Up until that point, I had always been able to find a way back from any weird corner of the mansion I had found myself in. My logic at that point was this: the blue key was hidden better than the other key. Therefore, the blue side was a secret path (which it is). So I had better do that part first, and then find the path back to the main section. In fact, I died in that secret section and when I rebooted my save, I went to the blue part first, AGAIN. I still didn't know that there was no way back to the other side. And then when I couldn't find a way up to the other door, it just seemed like, since I could so easily skip that part, it must be optional. I'm not looking forward to going back two whole save points to look for those keys.

There you certainly have a point.... I'll admit that in DoD the player can have the impression that things are a bit differently or pretty much anything is possible....so normal "reasoning" probably can't be counted upon.
However..... I still don't understand the logic of "skipping" the red section, or why you believed it could be less important than the blue side.

To cut a long story short.... I will definitely try to do something about the situation in the next UD.
Maybe I should have sticked to how I had it done in one of the beta versions (albeit only very shortly): where I had simply hidden the blue key inside the red section.... so anybody coming to that "crossing" MUST take the red door, 'cause he simply doesn't have the blue key. (the only reason why I didn't stick to that method was: I liked the initial hiding place of the blue key so much   ;)


Psychotronic wrote on 25.03.2007 at 03:45:36:

If you want Jack to collect keys as he goes, make them visible. If you want Jack to go hunting for invisible keys, don't hide them very far from the door, because he's likely to find the door first and have no idea where the key is.

Again you have a point...  BUT:  I made clear in the introductory text for DoD, that in this mansion players should be alert at all times...and especially go looking for things even where they least expect them. And that OF COURSE includes that it's not very advisable to skip an entire section... although I understand how it happened and why you did it.

Apart from that I don't quite understand why you're "not looking forward to going back to look for those keys"... is it really so terrible, after you realized you missed an entire section in a mansion, to go back and be able to explore a whole series of new rooms you haven't seen before ?

I consider that more fun than - say - searching the same section of House Of Wonders (to just name 1 example) time and again to find out in which succession I have to open the hundreds of multi-colored doors and to find the resp. keys for them !!
(Note: this is iby NO MEANS meant as a negative statement on HOW.... it's just an example of a mansion I had to replay often).

After all that's one of the main joys of MM: visiting rooms for the very first time ! (At least for me...!)

aquaMat wrote on 26.03.2007 at 01:00:03:

There you certainly have a point.... I'll admit that in DoD the player can have the impression that things are a bit differently or pretty much anything is possible....so normal "reasoning" probably can't be counted upon. However..... I still don't understand the logic of "skipping" the red section, or why you believed it could be less important than the blue side.

At that point, I didn't know I was skipping anything. My choice was between going back to an old save point so I could do the red section first, or forging ahead and hoping that the road would eventually lead back to the part I missed. I never load up an old save on my first time through a mansion, unless I lose all my my lives. That first time, I'm just there to play around and explore a new mansion, not to gut the thing looking for every secret. For all I knew, the red section was just as optional as the blue section.


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Again you have a point...  BUT:  I made clear in the introductory text for DoD, that in this mansion players should be alert at all times...and especially go looking for things even where they least expect them. And that OF COURSE includes that it's not very advisable to skip an entire section... although I understand how it happened and why you did it.

Don't misunderstand me. Most of the time in this mansion, things work out pretty well. I'll reach a dead end, realize I need to hunt around for some secret key of lever or passageway, and find it nearby. It's just this one case, really, where the keys were hidden so far from the door that it became a problem.


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Apart from that I don't quite understand why you're "not looking forward to going back to look for those keys"... is it really so terrible, after you realized you missed an entire section in a mansion, to go back and be able to explore a whole series of new rooms you haven't seen before ?

Yes, because I know I'll have to do a bunch of rooms again that I've already done. And that's not a problem in some mansions, but it is in others. The difference is subtle, and I have trouble explaining it, but there's something that kept me coming back over and over to get all the secrets in Nightmare Mansion and Spider Palace, (Although it didn't take many tries to get all the secrets in Spider Palace, I still kept coming back to it to get all the treasure again.) and kept me from ever wanting to explore Cathedral Towers again. Or Knight Mansion, although I liked that one the first time through.

The best mansions, in my opinion, let me get better at them. The massive tower that seemed so daunting at the beginning seems weak and kittenish once I've conquered it. And once I've gotten to that point, I can zip around the mansion fairly easily, ferreting out all its secrets, solving the occasional challenging bit, looking for every last bit of treasure. But if the mansion is asking me to pull a bunch of levers or make precise jumps in pretty much every room, it's not fun any more to look for the secrets, because I'm spending all my time solving puzzles that I've already solved.

If I'm replaying DoD, I'm going to have to go behind a whole bunch of walls to get keys. And I know where they are now, but I have to go get them anyway. I don't need them for a secret. I just need them to continue in the mansion. But despite the fact that I know where they are and I need them to get back to the part where I already was before I restarted my game, those keys are still hidden, and I have to go behind that wall to get them. It feels silly and weird to me, like the mansion is being coy or taunting me or something.

Um...long answer to a short question. But it has to do with the replayability of the mansion, too, so I hope it's helpful.

It's so many things / posts to answer now...I don't know where to begin. Therefore I'll answer the most important, and might be forgetting a few others....but below you'll find out that last night I have made un update that changes some important issues you have reported.

But first I'll answer a few earlier posts:

@Ryos:
Of course I always like to get feedback. And I also like to hear from you.
Only what I don't like (and what I'm sure doesn't help much) is getting such a negative, biased post (like your first one) a mere day after the release of a mansion I spent more than 3 months (!) creating from someone who admitted he hadn't played more than a handful of rooms.
'Cause that only has the effect to influence (or even put off) other people who might otherwise have enjoyed the mansion... it might lead them to believe anything would be terribly wrong with it and maybe they're reluctant to try it out. Esspecially when it's the first post after the release.
(You see I have problems finding the right words..).

But you already apologized for that.

BTW, when I said "why don't you play Swiss Mansion..." it was really not meant as an offensive statement at all (it probably came out sounding sharper than I had attended, I don't know).... no, I really meant it as a suggestion (having had the impression that style probably suited your taste more).... and even if it was a bit polemic (does this word exist in English ?) it certainly wasn't meant as an offense.

And maybe I misunderstood you there..... but I had had the impression you were complaining about the way secrets were hidden and the difficulty of DoD, even if not expressively so.  If that's not the case I apologize for the misunderstanding.

@Psychotronic:
I understand you better now.... your remarks have been helpful.

And to everybody:
I have completed a major update of DoD (called it DoD 2.0, if Freddy goes along with that) which irons out a few of the things you have reported, including:

- the blue key (for the blue section) is now WITHIN the red section, plus
- red and blue sections have been marked with a big 1 and 2, respectively to further indicate the "running order"
- a few other keys have been put into new places, less hidden and / or later in the game, including the yellow key needed in room 21104 (which is now in close proximity to its resp. door)
- backtracking in room 21506 is now possible (although a squirrel jump is needed).
- the other JS (room #21712) is now 'repaired'
- somewhere along the way (after a pole that doesn't allow backtracking) a "reserve yellow key" has been hidden, for those players who might have missed an earlier hidden yellow key. (Unfortunately those who find all keys will have a surplus yellow key in the last room...so another imperfection.

If these issues have troubled you before, I have to apologise...but I have to say that none of the beta-testers (which include 2 of my colleagues here, that I had turned on to MM) had ever reported that yellow key issue.... probably they all managed to find all keys so never arrived in front of those blue/yellow doors without a key.  However brell mentioned the risk of players taking the blue section first, after which I had experimented with moving the blue key to within the red section (but unfortunately didn't stick to it.)

I just sent the updates to the admins....and hopefully it's downloadable later today.  Please wait until then....and I'm sure the whole thing is much clearer and you'll enjoy playing more.  ;)

(Sorry...got rather longwinded...)

Update 2.0 is downloadable now

Thanks, brell !

Well, I finally finished DoD! Phew! What a relief! [smiley=birthdays.gif] [smiley=bath.gif]

And...well, I still didn't play it with my debugging goggles on, so I don't have any notes to offer an intelligent critique. I'll go for high-level then.

I enjoyed many of the puzzles and challenges, and as I said before, though I initially was put off by always having to search for the way forward, after a while it became the most enjoyable part of the mansion.

I still think many of the traps are unfair. Sadly, I don't think you can make them fair and have them retain their trap-ness. Traps are supposed to be unfair, that's part of the definition of a trap! So, I guess I just don't like it when traps are used in MM. I get annoyed when the mansion kills me, especially since lives are often quite dear in this mansion. This is just one of those points where aquaMat and I have agreed to disagree. :)

I didn't have any problems with keys after the update. I don't know what magic you worked, but I most certainly arrived in 21104 with five keys this time around!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I had three spare keys when I finished. One was no doubt the spare yellow key. Another is a green key from a green door that I intentionally ignored because I knew darn well that opening it would do nothing (sometimes extra rewards are given for such frugality). The third--a rainbow key--is the one that has me wondering what I missed (besides, you know, 22% of the secrets :P). Especially since I found it very near to the end.

There was a room with two blue doors and a green door, and you absolutely had to open one of those doors first or the level would become unfinishable. I consider this a serious flaw, as it must be learned by trial and error which door comes first and why.

Visually the mansion is all over the place, wild and unpredictable. There were quite a few rooms where faces or other shapes emerged from the mess, and those were entirely delightful. The look and wacky design combine to give the feeling of a roughly drawn pencil sketch of a Rube Goldberg machine, animated by an evil genius to torment those who seek the Discotheque.

A consequence of the unconventional design is that there were many many places where jumping against a room boundary resulted in a fall to your death. Luckily I never survived one of these incidents, as doing so would set me pretty far back. I know aquaMat warned of this in the description and so I'm betting it's intentional, but it feels like a mistake nonetheless.

The music is really well done. It fits the rest of the mansion in that it's way out there. I was reminded of the goofy off-beat tunes in Gooball, and also in Earthbound, with shades of the Beastie Boys (I bet aquaMat won't appreciate that last comparison. I say: tough. ;D). I find the weirdness sticks in my head, and I find myself drumming the beats for hours after playing.

Nevertheless, the music is extremely repetitive, as is all dance music, so thankfully it is very sparingly used. I think that if I play again, I'll turn it off and leave iTunes running in the background, like I usually do. (I'm not suggesting there's much you can do about this if you want to have dance music; it's just part of the genre and it's a genre I don't much care to listen to. Great for dancing, not for listening.)

The custom graphics are generally well done (except for the odd pixelated cardboard cutouts found later in the mansion--why do those look like something out of a Super Nintendo game?). They really contribute to the unique look.

Oh, and I was a little disappointed by the Discotheque when I finally arrived. Somehow with all the buildup I was expecting something...I don't know...grander? It just felt like the rest of the mansion. Not sure if it's possible to satisfy the hype built up by all those signs, though.

I suppose it is host to the hardest room in the mansion. Evil zapper beam room!  >:(

Ok...that's a lot of words. But is it fun? I answer: sort of. A lot of the puzzles are great fun, the visuals are a continual delight. The atmosphere is unique and enjoyable. But what I felt through most of it was annoyance. I was annoyed at the mansion for killing me so much, which didn't leave any room for my own errors (they're inevitable, and every time I made one my annoyance at myself grew). I was annoyed when the apparent way forward is actually a death trap, but designed in such a way as to make me think I just needed to hit it right, thus wasting three or so lives.

There were moments of joy and triumph that kept me playing, and I think the mansion is worth finishing at least once just for that. But in the general, big-picture sense, the annoyance wins out over the joy.

And so, when I finally finished, I felt a mixture of triumph and relief. Triumph that I had conquered the beast, but relief that I was finally, at long last, through with this mansion.

Here's my stats.  8-) Has anyone else beaten this?

---

Wow this page contains some of the most LONGEST posts in all the history of mansion-kind! :P

ryos wrote on 07.04.2007 at 08:04:42:

Well, I finally finished DoD! Phew! What a relief! [smiley=birthdays.gif] [smiley=bath.gif] And...well, I still didn't play it with my debugging goggles on, so I don't have any notes to offer an intelligent critique. I'll go for high-level then. I enjoyed many of the puzzles and challenges, and as I said before, though I initially was put off by always having to search for the way forward, after a while it became the most enjoyable part of the mansion. I still think many of the traps are unfair. Sadly, I don't think you can make them fair and have them retain their trap-ness. Traps are supposed to be unfair, that's part of the definition of a trap! So, I guess I just don't like it when traps are used in MM. I get annoyed when the mansion kills me, especially since lives are often quite dear in this mansion. This is just one of those points where aquaMat and I have agreed to disagree. :) I didn't have any problems with keys after the update. I don't know what magic you worked, but I most certainly arrived in 21104 with five keys this time around! EDIT: I forgot to mention that I had three spare keys when I finished. One was no doubt the spare yellow key. Another is a green key from a green door that I intentionally ignored because I knew darn well that opening it would do nothing (sometimes extra rewards are given for such frugality). The third--a rainbow key--is the one that has me wondering what I missed (besides, you know, 22% of the secrets :P). Especially since I found it very near to the end.

(I cannot comment on all your remarks... as I'm on a very tight schedule today... but here are the most important ones:)

Congratulations, ryos, for making it 'til the end !! And I'm happy to see you've come to enjoy it a bit more...

And know what.... even though you might be reluctant about it: Go and play it again !!!  I promise you, you'll enjoy it more and more.... besides, there is quite a huge number of things you must have missed !
You gotta keep in mind that DoD contains quite a huge number of secrets.... so when you ended with 78 % secrets this effectively means you missed ca. 11 secrets (!!) as DoD has about 50 secrets !

Also the fact that you ended with several spare keys indicates that you must have missed one or more hidden areas, I guess.
'Cause you should end with only the one yellow reserve key !


ryos wrote on 07.04.2007 at 08:04:42:

There was a room with two blue doors and a green door, and you absolutely had to open one of those doors first or the level would become unfinishable. I consider this a serious flaw, as it must be learned by trial and error which door comes first and why.

Unfortunately I don't know what room you're talking about at the moment.... I'd have to go checking in the editor and try to find it. However, I'm surprised as I can't think of ANY room that would fit this description....   :-/  :o


ryos wrote on 07.04.2007 at 08:04:42:

Oh, and I was a little disappointed by the Discotheque when I finally arrived. Somehow with all the buildup I was expecting something...I don't know...grander? It just felt like the rest of the mansion. Not sure if it's possible to satisfy the hype built up by all those signs, though. I suppose it is host to the hardest room in the mansion. Evil zapper beam room!  >:(

I have the exact SAME feeling about the central dancefloor... and I can tell you how this came about:
When I built the Discotheque I had much grander plans for the central dancefloor...(you should see my folders with custom graphics for that area...it is huge)... unfortunately many of those things I couldn't get finished...for several reasons: some were just too hard or impossible to do, on others I lost patience or wasn't good enough at graphic desgining etc .

I had started so many things.... like e.g. the "rising skeletons" I had started to change into "collapsed ravers" who came to life when you passed them by...  I worked weeks at that one... but in the end it didn't look good enough.. It's much harder than changing them into mummys, for example, as I had to draw pants, t-shirts, faces, hair... you get it....

Other ideas were abandoned too, like the DJ and DJ booth or the sound-triggered events ..... and the lightshow is almost impossible to pull off, beyond thos bits I have done with the candles and neon.

It all went over my head.... it wasn't without reason that the release of DoD got delayed 2 months. In the end, I must confess, I got fed-up a little bit... and finished the central dancefloors "early" in order to finally release the mansion.

So for me it feels exactly the same.... the dancefloor(s) doesn't quite fulfill the expectations....  but maybe in a future major update, DoD will return....  ("God beware" I hear you say)   ;)

But -as you say-  there's still the mean "hardest room" plus... (I hope) the visuals are quite cute to look at...!

And I came to think of it in Buddhist terms: the WAY is more important than the DESTINATION.....

But please - trust me on this - play again and you'll like it more, as you master it more....and there's enough left to explore... just as I had planned it, remember ??