How about adding a female character (Jack's sister Jill maybe?) with an option to choose your character at the beginning of each mansion.

Or having different clothes sets for Jack (or Jill) that you can find within levels in huge secrets. :P

Or actually being able to play with both simultaneously (allowing to switch back from one character to the other, I mean, not for two players).

Jacob and I have started discussing this option for Midnight Mansion 3.

The only thing is, there is a TON of animation work that has to be done by the artist for this:
- Walking animation
- Jumping
- Climbing vines
- Sliding down poles
- Climbing ladders
- Being electrocuted. Falling in lava. Skeleton death. Medusa stone death.

and so on.

The amount of work for all of that would be doubled (for the artist) to provide an alternate character you could play. It's possible though. I'm just curious if it'd be worth it, compared to all the other artwork you could add to the game, with the time required to do this?

Also, if you had a female character, would it be simply for kicks, or would she have special abilities that Jack does not? (And vice-versa. So you could switch between them and use a certain character, depending on the situation, to solve that puzzle.)

I think it would be weird switching between characters to perform different tasks if one disappeared and the other appeared all of a sudden. If they could be in the room at the same time, that would be pretty cool.

If it's too much work for the animation, though, I don't mind just sticking with Jack. It was just a suggestion.

They could even be in different rooms (easily spottable on the Map).

Being able to play as two characters in the same map is a very intriguing idea, like the old video game The Lost Vikings (and there were plenty of others with this idea).

I know I'm not a good enough level designer to fully exploit the concept, that's for sure!  But, it would open up tons of mind-melting puzzles.

It does open up more questions though, like do Jack and Jill share a "backpack" (meaning if Jack picks up a key, then you switch to Jill, will she somehow have that same key?) ... if not, what happens if the designer expected Jill to have a certain key but you picked it up with Jack?

VernJensen wrote on 01.09.2010 at 04:15:08:

Jacob and I have started discussing this option for Midnight Mansion 3. The only thing is, there is a TON of animation work that has to be done by the artist for this: - Walking animation - Jumping - Climbing vines - Sliding down poles - Climbing ladders - Being electrocuted. Falling in lava. Skeleton death. Medusa stone death. and so on. The amount of work for all of that would be doubled (for the artist) to provide an alternate character you could play. It's possible though. I'm just curious if it'd be worth it, compared to all the other artwork you could add to the game, with the time required to do this?

It would be a ton of work but would be worth it for MM3, and even more so since the graphics will be high res. I did re-draw Jack with my own character at one time and it took me about 4 hours of animating. Now I didn't do a good job, but I did do a decent one. :P

I'm not sure how you would incorporate abilities to the game between Jack and the female character. Well, you could do something about how fast they both pull levers, how fast they walk, jump, etc., or climb. Hmm...

And on a side note, perhaps Jack and Jill could be like the lost vikings to a certain effect? Maybe Jill starts on the other side of the mansion, and Jack the other, and you can switch between playing them, maybe for hot-seating players? Or maybe even you could have multiplayer like that? :O It would be difficult to design a level that would involve both players to help each other but possible.

It would be kinda cool to have maybe different character suits or something. :D

(For example, have a Jack with a top hat accessory... Maybe this could be something you could buy in a store with the gold you've earned?)

Jack and Jill shouldn't share the backpack, but they should be able to exchange stuff when they meet.

(I got the idea playing Shift 3 btw).

Vern, Jacob and the rest of you may want to take a look at The Dalton Brothers, which is a MM1 custom mansion with 4 Jacks in one room, and Identical Twins which is also a MM1 custom mansion but never got approved.  In this mansion there are two Jacks exploring more than a one room, which leads to some interesting complications.  I know that the Jill concept is not quite the same but these mansions may give you some ideas.

I think a good idea is being able to switch between characters while playing, but when I mean switch characters, I mean they're both in the same room so you will have to watch out for the other character, it would be good for puzzles where one character has to stand on a switch to open a door but if he/she gets off, the door closes.

I got this idea from the last part of the Anju and Kafei Quest in Majora's Mask

As far as Jill, maybe something like the blue-haired troll. I already checked out the builder to see if I could get the troll to retrieve a key. He can't, but that would be how to do a Jill. She can retrieve keys, money etc.

why cant it be like you can unlock people by doing certain things.
such as:
-completing certain mansions in certain difficulties
-beating the game in a certain difficulty

and you can unlock costumes for them by:
-completing certain mansions in certain difficulties as i said above
-geting a certain total amount of money(based on the amount of money you collect in mansions and only grows if you get a higher amount of money in that mansion)
-finding enough secrets in a mansion
-beating the game in a certain difficulty
etc.

I would suggest for things like that you get rewards such as different hats for the main character or clothing for the main character, but that would require a lot of work from the artist.

true but of course there doesn't have to be a ton of accessories

Maybe you could choose which character you wanted to play with in the menu? I like the idea of accessories, although I really feel it shouldn't impact the gameplay too much. And maybe instead of playing as two characters in the same mansion you could play the mansion each time with a different character to get a different play experience. For example you could have it that Jack can get help from trolls, and Jill could climb a special type of ladder. Or maybe you could have some other characters, such as Jack's children perhaps? Or Gus?

In fact a goblin hero would be an interesting companion in my opinion. And there would be less work for the artist due to a lot of the Goblin's animations being finished.

There are lots of ways this could branch out. Such as multiplayer. I have played with my friends on this game, and every time we die, we switch out. Going by this idea you could have it so that you have a team of characters, that would switch out when you died? Or maybe through an online connection you could play a mansion with another person. There could even be special multiplayer mansions which would have you on one floor and your friend on the other.

Just a few of my ideas