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Actionsoft's latest game, Midnight Mansion 2: The Haunted Hills,  includes 28 mansions. The 8 Built-in mansions have 3 difficulties along with 4 extra custom mansions. We don't have that many other custom MM2 mansions yet. Design your own custom mansion! Info below.  You can find out more about the game here.

The original Midnight Mansion game contains over 150 mansions. The 8 included mansions which have 3 difficulty levels each, and about 115 approved custom mansions which you can download here and also several freely uploaded mansions. To know the difference between these three types of mansions, click here.

Are you a creative person and thinking of designing a mansion yourself? Or want to know about how to upload it? Click here and we'll show you! You'll find guidelines for betatesters here.

News:
Midnight Mansion 2: The Haunted Hills version 1.0.2b has been released. This fixes a bug in Jasperlone Mountains Hard. Simply re-download the game, bring over your custom mansions folder from the old version and play on. All your saves and high scores will not be changed.

Midnight Mansion HD (MM1) is now available at the Mac App Store and at the Actionsoft website. A Windows version is now available.

Here is a list of downloadable MM1 HD ready custom mansions, which also work in the Windows version of the game.

The MM2 custom mansion Hanging Gardens of Babylon by Freddy/SandyBean/Josephine/brell was updated on 19. Nov 2023 to add a fourth section. Available here


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Dominator (Read 8347 times)
joeb
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Dominator
07.02.2007 at 21:58:33
 
aquaMat, Wingy,

I've only been back for a day but here I am learning already....

Didn't know about the multiple music file options. I tried something similar with the background screens and it doesn't seem to take anything over 6.

Glad that others are starting to do serious modifications to MM. When I started on this a long time ago in a galaxy far far away only a couple of people were doing it but now it seems as if a whole new group is taking on the challenge.

I also have had Bias and SoundConverter but they both seem to not like the Intel Macs and I have had issues on the PPC platform similar to what you're seeing. So I guess for the time being I'll keep the SoundApp solution which although a little hokey does do the job. I've also been playing around with another nifty little piece of code called Soundflowerbed which allows me to do virtual patching between music/sound applications using Apple IAC. I'd like to get a midi interface for my old Roland D-10 but since I just dabble in music I don't want to spend a lot on an interface that will spend most of it's time collecting dust.
For Dominator I wanted to create John Williams type music but the first 2 things I've come up with are based strictly on Apple Loops. And it's been Matt doing that. I'm working on a 3rd piece written completely by hand but working with the music typing and miniscule keyboard in Garageband has made me pull out the Roland and an old Yamaha and I think I'll wind up in Finale which is more robust for "real" music but also carries that nasty learning curve thing.

As far as DS goes believe it or not it actually started on the Mac (or so I've been told) but like most software has taken a turn to the Dark Side. Take you time with it and don't make the mistake I did by assuming I could go straight from DS to MM graphics. Then you wind up in that annoying "Oh crap, the edges look terrible" mode. Just make PS posting part of the process and you'll see how much easier it becomes. I'm probably what would be considered a proficient DS user so PLEASE don't hesitate to ask me for help and again, I do have a ton of content so let me know if you can't find something.

In the same vein I'm probably going to ask you guys a lot of sound stuff. Finally what mansions have you guys put together so I can go get inpired to finish the dilithium mines and get Dominator posted.  Matt's also looking to play some new mansions so any suggestions would be welcome.

And now back to that annoying work thing.....

later,

joeb
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aquaMat
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Re: Dominator
Reply #1 - 08.02.2007 at 00:07:03
 
Joe,

my mansion with the custom music is not yet released, it's the forthcoming "Discotheque Of Doom", but in the meantime you could play my Small + big Palace Of Gore. Freddy made a very practical new download list, where the mansions are sorted by designer.

As far as custom graphics are concerned, what I need at the moment are some dancers for the Discotheque (they won't be able to move, of course). I started out by modifying a few 70s-style dancers I found in the web, processed them in Photoshop, but they turned out to have that "edge-problem".  So I might have 2 options:
1. To "reoair" them in PS, as you described ....  or
2. Find some models for DAZStudio which would fit.

Those processed photos turned out to look kinda flat, too, so maybe the 2nd solution might be better. If you happen to have some stuff in that vein?  I also need a couple more props, like turntables (+ DJ), spots, mirror-ball....the typical 70s disco stuff.

I have also modified a lever, using Adobe Illustrator, and it looked really good as a pict ...with absolutely no pixels crossing the outline, but still in the game it looked terrible, as if someone had it torn it out of a white sheet of paper.....

Strangely, as all other sprites I made, like new Jack (only dressed differently), new BBBs, new platforms etc. have turned out beautifully.  I have yet to understand the logic of it....

Don't hesitate to ask me questions about sound & music, I have a complete recording studio with tons of hardware and software, so I guess I might be able to answer them.

I'll try to attach a jpg of one of the dancers, so you know what I'm talking about......

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aquaMat
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Re: Dominator
Reply #2 - 08.02.2007 at 00:10:26
 
And here is a picture of my lever:
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NewLever.jpg (10 KB | )
NewLever.jpg

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Re: Dominator
Reply #3 - 08.02.2007 at 01:02:59
 
Must...restrain....myself...from making a joke about that.

Grin Grin Grin Grin Grin
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joeb
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Re: Dominator
Reply #4 - 08.02.2007 at 02:13:55
 
Joes TIP #1:

White is not always white.

Whenever you have a raggy edge the first thing you should do is go into PS, open the source document and select the magic wand. In the toolbar, in the tolerance box type a 1 (one). Click anywhere in your document and if there's nonwhite pixels you'll see them! To work correctly
WHITE = 255,255,255
AQUA = 0,255,255
BLACK = 0,0,0

Just because you can't see the difference between a white pixel at 255,255,255 and a "white" pixel at 254,255,255 the software will put that white pixel up and you'll scratch your head and go "Wait, that pixel is white". TOTOMB I ran into that issue with the plants where there were pixels at 0, 254,255. See the attached example.

HTH,

Joe B
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Re: Dominator
Reply #5 - 08.02.2007 at 05:02:04
 
Thanks a lot, Joe.

My dancer looked exactly like your JAC in the right picture !!!

I have tried it out, now, and it really works.... but it's pretty hard work, nevertheless.
I assume, by "Magic Wand" you mean that "magic eraser" in Photoshop (I have the german version)?!  I used that now, and it worked good, however -even with the tolerance set to 1- the radius of it was sometimes too big, and it started erasing non-white pixels that were actually part of the picture. The reason for that is that the picts are pretty low res, so the borders are often not "defined enough".  Next time I will do that process while the picture is still at a higher resolution and bigger size, and only downsize it AFTER this process is finished !!

But I managed to include the finished dancer in my mansion and it looked really good for the first time. Thx a lot.   Smiley Cheesy
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Reply #6 - 08.02.2007 at 05:44:19
 
NO. The magic wand is the tool that looks like a wand with a sparkle at the top. On most versions of Photoshop/Elements it's the second tool from the top on the right hand side of the tool palette. For any MM work it is INVALUABLE! Using that same technique of select everything on the white background you can then go to the Select menu and choose Inverse. Now you'll select everything that isn't white which should be you graphic. Using the same Select menu you choose Modify -> Border and in the dialog box select 1 pixel. Now you have an outline around your object. Then you can do a fill with whatever color you want, black in most cases. Then you can touch up the outline by hand. I'll see if I can put together a step by step with graphics explaining what I mean. As I said above this is THE tool you really want to become familiar with.

joeb
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aquaMat
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Re: Dominator
Reply #7 - 08.02.2007 at 18:59:49
 
Oh you mean the "Zauberstab" (that's the german expression for it in Photoshop). I was confused, as "wand" in german means wall, and this thing looks nothing like a wall !!!  Smiley

However I use this thing usually only for selections, to easily select a region.... I never knew it had other uses as well...

But I managed to use the magic eraser for that purpose as well, with the limitations I described above.  So I will now try it with the Zauberstab.

Thx again.
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