Midnight Mansion Forums

Semi-Native YaBB Administrator Offline Posts: 1432 Orlando, FL USA Gender:	Jill Malone? 31.08.2010 at 23:54:17 How about adding a female character (Jack's sister Jill maybe?) with an option to choose your character at the beginning of each mansion.
Back to top	IP Logged

Anthony YaBB Administrator Offline Nova Scotia, Canada Posts: 1367 Canada Gender:	Re: Jill Malone? Reply #1 - 01.09.2010 at 00:08:29 Or having different clothes sets for Jack (or Jill) that you can find within levels in huge secrets.
Back to top	Anthony Duchesne ~ Original designer of Castle Basano, Leofani Manor and Jasperlone Mountains IP Logged

Toybox Treasure Hunter Offline Posts: 561 Kiel, Germany	Re: Jill Malone? Reply #2 - 01.09.2010 at 00:41:46 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).
Back to top	profile picture 'The Book of Secrets' (c) Marta Bevacqua http://m0thyyku.deviantart.com/ IP Logged

VernJensen

YaBB Administrator

Offline

Posts: 1064
Los Angeles, CA
Gender: male

Re: Jill Malone?
Reply #3 - 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?

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.)

Back to top

IP Logged

Semi-Native YaBB Administrator Offline Posts: 1432 Orlando, FL USA Gender:	Re: Jill Malone? Reply #4 - 01.09.2010 at 05:11:32 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.
Back to top	IP Logged

Toybox Treasure Hunter Offline Posts: 561 Kiel, Germany	Re: Jill Malone? Reply #5 - 01.09.2010 at 05:19:35 They could even be in different rooms (easily spottable on the Map).
Back to top	profile picture 'The Book of Secrets' (c) Marta Bevacqua http://m0thyyku.deviantart.com/ IP Logged

jacobvann

Wanderer
Offline

Posts: 34
Champaign, IL
Gender: male

Re: Jill Malone?
Reply #6 - 01.09.2010 at 05:36:19

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?

Back to top

IP Logged

Anthony

YaBB Administrator

Offline

Nova Scotia, Canada

Posts: 1367
Canada
Gender: male

Re: Jill Malone?
Reply #7 - 01.09.2010 at 05:40:37

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. Tongue

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? Shocked

It would be difficult to design a level that would involve both players to help each other but possible.

Back to top

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

IP Logged

Amplifyed Adventurer Offline Formally known as "Sam S." Posts: 300 Down the hall on the 3rd right Gender:	Re: Jill Malone? Reply #8 - 01.09.2010 at 07:53:48 It would be kinda cool to have maybe different character suits or something. (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?)
Back to top	-Vintage Octopus- IP Logged

Toybox Treasure Hunter Offline Posts: 561 Kiel, Germany	Re: Jill Malone? Reply #9 - 01.09.2010 at 16:42:55 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).
Back to top	profile picture 'The Book of Secrets' (c) Marta Bevacqua http://m0thyyku.deviantart.com/ IP Logged

	Welcome, Guest. Please Login or Register
	Midnight Mansion Forums from ActionSoft Latest news! January 2025's updates of custom mansions are: - for MM1 The Bat House (version 1.1) by Chippy - for MM2 Brave New World (version 1.1) by Freddy - for MM1 Art minds mansion (version 1.1) by Veronika December 2024's updates of custom mansions are: - for MM2 Hanging Gardens of Babylon (version 4.1) by Freddy, SandyBean, Josephine and brell - for MM1 Cheetah Castle Easy (version 1.2) and Cheetah Castle Normal (version 1.2) both by Catwoman. 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 are run by three administrators. Read here who they are and what you may (and may not) expect from them. A brief history of the game At first there was Midnight Mansion, now often called MM1. This game package was for Mac only and contained 8 mansions, each on easy, normal and hard level. Above that there was a builder included, so that customers could design mansions themselves. Then there was Midnight Mansion HD, now abbreviated as MM1 HD for both Mac and Windows. It contained the 3x8 mansions from MM1 plus 3x a bonus mansion: Tomb of Princes. All in high definition! Actionsoft's latest game, Midnight Mansion 2: The Haunted Hills, includes 28 mansions with a lot of new features. The 8 built-in mansions have 3 difficulties along with 4 extra custom mansions. Yes indeed, the MM2 package also has an included builder to create mansions! Custom mansions In the past decades several customers started experimenting with the builders. Creating rooms. Talking about it on the Midnight Mansion Forums. Sending their own designed mansions to other board members to test them. And finally sending them to the administrators of MMF. Result? Nearly 200 extra mansions are downloadable from these boards and some of them have over 100 rooms. If you like to download custom mansions, go to the General Custom Mansions Area (Mac and Windows) where you find the lists with all the download spots.