My previous post was ... talking as a designer. Now I am a player.

I don't know if other players recognize themselves in these. Too often I forget to have a look at my map(s). The best example to explain what I mean is probably Semi-Native's . When I played that mansion the first time I didn't like it. Till I was aware that almost all my Jack-deaths only had to do with forgetting to look at my maps. When I played it again I really liked it. Simple conclusion: maps are NO garniture. They are there ... to use. And if you don't, they only one to blame is ...

Darn it, I scared everyone off again.   

ryos wrote on 02.02.2007 at 11:45:38:


EXCELLENT commentary, especially sins #1 and #2. Heh, maybe we can get a whole 10 Commandments of Mansionites.

This is also a GREAT time to start discussing mansion design, because I will be holding a Mansion Design Contest with $50 - $300 prizes this summer for the expansion pack, and I want good mansions!

Similar "sins" were discussed in the old forums, and I think I posted a bunch of my own sins, but those forums got lost, and I don't remember what i posted, so I'll just mention a couple of things off the top of my head:

1) Cheap deaths. All rooms should have a "safety area" where you enter the room that is a size of at LEAST 4 tiles, preferably 6 tiles or more. You should have plenty of time to see danger and react upon entering a new room, before dying.

Similarly, cheap deaths ALSO include traps. Things llike, you pull a lever and, Oops, Wrong Choice, You're Dead!!! Guess you'd better not pull that lever next time you play! I'm not a fan of that kind of stuff.


Well, I don't have any other "major sins" off the top of my head, but let me give a couple of "tips" that aren't sins if you don't do them, but WILL make your mansion more fun if you do:

1) Giving the player keys before they even find the doors they go to. That ruins the whole point! When the player sees a door that he doesn't have the key to yet, it's WAY more fun. You've just given the player a GOAL: find the key for that door! The key should be far enough away that it's a good challenge to get it, but not so far that the player forgets where the dooor is, or it feels like lots of work/backtracking to get back to it?

2) Don't make rooms that impede exploration. I like mansions that make it easy to "explore". It's fun to see what's on the other side of the hill. Cathedral Towers is a good example of what I *don't* ike so much in this regard. Each room is like a separate obstacle course in its own right. Eachh room is a puzzle or challenge. I don't think this should be the case. Let players move quickly/easily through *most* rooms, with occasional puzzle/hard roooms containing keys or other items the player needs. But if most rooms are easy to get through quickly, the player can explore, and that's far more fun, at least to me.

2.5) Speaking of that,, don't require lots of backtracking! LLike, you have to go backwards throuugh 20 rooms to get to a door at the start of the mansion. To do this, I like to have mansions divided into "regions". Each region is self-contained: all the keys in that area open doors in that area, and once you commplete the "goal" in that area (finding a certain key you need for the next section, or opening a certain gray door) you can get to the next section, and you in NO CIRCUMSTANCES shall ever be required to return to the previous section. In fact, you might not even be able to return to it. Great examples of the "region" design are Falcon Manor and Spider Palace.

3) Try to not make your mansions too "boxy"/square/rectangular in design of the bricks. I think the rectangle tool is a bit of a curse in this case, because it's very easy to do mansions that are very rectangular. But I like unique designes. Like Spider Palace when you go through the bottom-right red door at the start. This section also has a great use of keys/doors.

4) Use those invisible gray "moving platform blockers" to make your moving platforms stop where the pllayer expects them to stop. (i.e. one going up and down should stop when it reaches the ledge Jack will get off on, instead of continuing up until it hits the ceiling.)

5) Try to design the timing of many rooms so an experienced pllayer familiar with the room can be daring and "run" through it... the timing of the zapper beams, moving platforms, etc. are such that a fast and daring player can go through it quickly.

6) Give hints about your secrets, so players don't randomly jump against every wall they come to.

Well, there's a ton more I could give, but I've got to go. I could probably dig up some old tips if someone pesters me.

-Vern

OK. From one of the chief sinners in Mansion design:

#1. On the whole I agree with the cheap death sin BUT often times I just run out of room or I need those extra 2 or 3 tiles. In that case I've tried to put a "stopper" in the way. A brick that needs to be jumped over or a door that opens because the first brick into the room is a switch for that door.

#2. Guilty. Matt loves to make rooms chock full of stuff so I often find myself yanking on the reins. Sometimes I just say what the heck. But I am guilty of single room or small group of rooms puzzles. My problem is consistency. I've gotten 2 different comments from MM players;
A. I like to be able to stop and figure a room out rather than just running thru it.
B. Vern's comment, you should be able to run all the way thru without stopping.
I've tried to combine the 2. When you take the time to look at a room or play it a couple of times it may become apparent that if you walk to point A. duck for a count of 2 and run like the dickens to the ladder and up and out you never die. Very tough to design but pretty spiffy when you can get it right.

#3. With the exception of our first mansion or two I think Matt and I have very un-rectangular mansions

#4 Yes. But very cool if you get the timing right so the platforms use each other instead of needing the blocks. Not a master of this yet but we are trying.

#5. See #2

#6. I agree

Other points.

#7. Backtracking is OK to a certain degree. For myself I often find myself when faced with multiple paths out of a room taking the shortest one. I enjoy the feeling of "AHA, I have a green door so there's got to be a green key. Now which path did I need to take to find it" Goes to the exploration point Vern brought up. But don't make me have to go thru 5 other rooms each with 4 different ways out . That sort of design is confusing to me. Which is why I guess most of our M&J mansions are of the straightforward type.

#8. If you do like to have massive backtrack paths at least have a shortcut back to the furthest point where you needed to start backtracking. We had something like that in the Mall where after transversing a "department" you could slide down a pole and start on another department 2 rooms away.

#9. I'll probably get flak on this one but sometimes the unexpected can be fun. Unexpected as in you see no way to continue except to take a path that looks like it's certain death but when you do the floor falls away and you're in a room underneath. I'm trying to implement that in Dominator to see what sort of feedback I get. I like to think of it as "leap of faith".

#10. I KNOW I'll get flak on this one and want to state up front this is a personal preference and residual conditioned response from having a 7 year old. I really don't like big mansions. For me the limit is around 250 rooms. Yes I understand that some folks like the challenge of lots of rooms but I prefer to enjoy 2 hour adventures that don't have me wondering what I should or shouldn't have done. I guess it's the sort of pseudo "instant gratification" thing where I really need to complete the task and get the rush of "YEAH, I beat it". Then I can go back and work on getting a higher score, take less time, etc.


For Vern: Are you planning on a time frame i.e. mansion will be done by ????. no custom graphics, must contain certain elements, etc.

later all

joeb

I agree with most things Vern said, especially his points about backtracking and hidden keys etc. having to be in the vicinity.
I also agree fully with the "rectangular" issue.... that's why my rooms always have that "open look", even though -as Freddy once pointed out to me- that always harbours possible "dangers" !

BUT:  I do NOT think, that ALL moving platforms should be limited by that invisible grey block. I have often used it as an added feature or challenge that some platforms went up to the ceiling and others didn't. You could make it into an interesting challenge, where players needed to get off the platform in time, or don't get on the platform on its way up, only on its way down etc.

Unfortunately, Vern has changed the bit, where players died when they hit the ceiling while on a platform. I understand why he did it...but unfortunately now, all my (and other designer's) challenges that used platforms going to the ceiling are now pointlless !!

Therefore I strongly plead for a re-introduction of that feature. The reason for its removal (the game-bug, where a game crashed when a platform hit the ceiling, but there was no ceiling built into the room) hadn't been solved with its removal anyway.... and once this issue is solved, I would really welcome if players would die again, when a platform reaches a  ceiling .... so our challenges will be working again.  (As far as I remember, even some of the original mansions used this feature as a challenge ?!)