Midnight Mansion Forums - Midnight Mansion 3

Catwoman

Explorer
Offline

Posts: 217
New Jersey, USA
Gender: female

Re: Midnight Mansion 3 - your opinion wanted!
Reply #20 - 01.09.2010 at 08:05:07

I like keeping three difficulty settings on a mansion. I still so vividly recall when I first started playing and changing from Easy to Normal and then Normal to Hard being such a jump and taking a lot of time. I never used the easy jumping option but when I first encountered many of those small floaters (in Octopus Mansion) it took me forever to figure out how to do the jump.

I'm not a huge gamer, in fact MM is the only game I really play except for solitaire. Maybe that's why it took me awhile. And to Anthony's comment on his brother, that is one of the nice things about MM is younger players being able to play it.

And as far as a few small mansions to progress, that's fine. But also make sure the new player has enough options and play time to progress. Those of us who are experienced players wouldn't need that but any new players would. So who's the market and do you potentially shut out new players? (Devil's advocate here.)

Back to top

I throw myself against walls.

IP Logged

Semi-Native YaBB Administrator Offline Posts: 1429 Orlando, FL USA Gender:	Re: Midnight Mansion 3 - your opinion wanted! Reply #21 - 01.09.2010 at 08:17:16 I like the 3 difficulty levels, too. But it definitely is more interesting when the mansion takes on more rooms and challenges as you progress. Just adding more creatures to the same mansion isn't nearly as fun.
Back to top	IP Logged

josephine Adventurer Offline Posts: 332 California Gender:	Re: Midnight Mansion 3 - your opinion wanted! Reply #22 - 01.09.2010 at 08:38:06 Pretty much agreewith everyone else, it takes several rooms to really get the feel of a mansion. Small mansions seem to make more sense for iPhone play.
Back to top	IP Logged

jacobvann

Wanderer
Offline

Posts: 34
Champaign, IL
Gender: male

Re: Midnight Mansion 3 - your opinion wanted!
Reply #23 - 01.09.2010 at 12:58:41

Rob Seegel wrote on 01.09.2010 at 07:07:16:

Jacob, you think that half the players don't see anything beyond Easy?

Well, my point is, the Normal/Hard mansions in MM *now* are based on existing mansions, so the players have "seen" them in some form or another if they play through easy, unlike designing an 80-room mansion specifically for "hard" mode only.

Something I suggested to Vern was the following. The game map is made up of 4 or 5 "regions" (think islands or something), each one with about 8 mansions (maybe 2 large and 3 medium and 3 small). They start out as "normal" mansions, and when you beat the "boss mansion" for each region, Jack finds some artifact or trinket that, when disturbed, causes on earthquake on that island that changes all of the mansions. New passages are opened up, new monsters appear, etc. That way, they become "hard" mansions in an organic way, and you can go back and play them (and they're completely optional) for more treasure and more paths to hidden mansions, etc.

It lets the player progress from Normal to Hard in an organic way, and makes all the hard mansions hard in a very consistent way, and something related to the story of the game. And, you're essentially doubling the gameplay for one playthrough of the game.

"Easy mode", in this suggestion, is still infinite lives, but still the "normal" and "broken" versions of each mansion during a playthrough. Either easy players' high scores aren't saved, or they are saved in a separate table as it is handled now.

Back to top

IP Logged

Leon

Adventurer

Offline

Posts: 353
Chichester, UK
Gender: male

Re: Midnight Mansion 3 - your opinion wanted!
Reply #24 - 01.09.2010 at 20:04:29

I was thinking, maybe for easy mode, there could be some sort of hint system rather than just changing the mansions, and maybe there could be some completely different mansions between the two. And hard mode could be unlocked until a certain point and in hard mode there would be much harder mansion to challenge the most experienced players.

BTW - I like Vern's idea of having a sorta map system, kinda reminds me of Super Mario games a bit where you have a choice of which level to go to next

Back to top

IP Logged

negative zero Wanderer Offline building since 2004 Posts: 28 Melbourne,FL Gender:	Re: Midnight Mansion 3 - your opinion wanted! Reply #25 - 02.09.2010 at 05:36:22 maybe you should try making the easier mansions shorter and possibly make them longer based on the difficulty selected?
Back to top	why do we drive on the parkway and park on the driveway? IP Logged

Anthony

YaBB Administrator

Offline

Nova Scotia, Canada

Posts: 1367
Canada
Gender: male

Re: Midnight Mansion 3 - your opinion wanted!
Reply #26 - 02.09.2010 at 05:57:51

That's an idea we used towards to the end of designing the levels in MM2. Two of my mansions are like that -- Mt. Peril Easy is quite short, while the other two get longer and longer. Also Jasperlone Mountains is quite short on easy mode, moderately long in normal and very very long on hard mode. Castle Basano, however, only had a longer version in the hard version.

I'm not sure what the other designers did. Tongue

Back to top

Anthony Duchesne ~ Original designer of Castle Basano, Leofani Manor and Jasperlone Mountains

IP Logged

brell YaBB Administrator Offline Posts: 1792 Moita, Portugal Gender:	Re: Midnight Mansion 3 - your opinion wanted! Reply #27 - 02.09.2010 at 06:42:36 TC&TC easy, normal and hard are 80, 90 and 100 rooms respectively. I like the idea of a mansion that is divided into smaller sections, which get harder as Jack moves on, wiht a saving point and an escape between each section. Reminds me of the Catacombs concept and Freddy's Midnight Mazes and Monsters.
Back to top	A stuck Jack is better than no jack IP Logged

Alan Falcon

Wanderer
Offline

Posts: 85
Vegas, baby
Gender: male

Re: Midnight Mansion 3 - your opinion wanted!
Reply #28 - 04.09.2010 at 15:27:35

Quote:

Something I suggested to Vern was the following. The game map is made up of 4 or 5 "regions" (think islands or something), each one with about 8 mansions (maybe 2 large and 3 medium and 3 small). They start out as "normal" mansions, and when you beat the "boss mansion" for each region, Jack finds some artifact or trinket that, when disturbed, causes on earthquake on that island that changes all of the mansions. New passages are opened up, new monsters appear, etc. That way, they become "hard" mansions in an organic way, and you can go back and play them (and they're completely optional) for more treasure and more paths to hidden mansions, etc.

It lets the player progress from Normal to Hard in an organic way, and makes all the hard mansions hard in a very consistent way, and something related to the story of the game. And, you're essentially doubling the gameplay for one playthrough of the game.

The problem I foresee with this is that some players just want to jump into "hard" mode straight away, without having to play through normal mansions. Personally I like to play Normal and Hard modes (and occasionally Easy, just to see what is new and different) but it doesn't seem nice to force all players to play through Normal before they can access Hard. In fact, I think that may even be a "Twinkie Denial Condition" in the Game Designer's Notebook (Bad Designer! No Twinkie for you!)

Back to top

-------> Original Designer of 'Falcon Manor', 'Chateau de Medusa'
-------> Now making iPhone games at FalconEmpire.com

IP Logged

brell YaBB Administrator Offline Posts: 1792 Moita, Portugal Gender:	Re: Midnight Mansion 3 - your opinion wanted! Reply #29 - 04.09.2010 at 19:03:11 Alan has got a point here!
Back to top	A stuck Jack is better than no jack IP Logged

	Welcome, Guest. Please Login or Register
	Welcome to the Actionsoft Forums! New to the forums? Go ahead and register! Why register? Click here to find out the difference of being a guest and a member. After you're done, go here to learn how to start posting. Make sure you've read and agree with the rules of posting here! The forums is run by three administrators. Read here who they are and what you may (and may not) expect from them. 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