Rob Seegel wrote on 30.04.2012 at 10:21:50:(...)
(removed my old quote from your quote)
I'm not sure it's as bad as you think. I could have sworn that there were some that didn't need as much work as others in terms of graphics conversion. I think it's also worth seeing if we can do something about those levers with graphics. Between new graphics and a script to do most of the lever moving, that wouldn't be too big a deal.
That sounds good. It'll be great if it turned out to be less work than I fear at the moment. And it'd be fantastic if we could somehow 'save' my 'buried levers'.... !!
Rob Seegel wrote on 30.04.2012 at 10:21:50: Quote:Rob, one more question: what did you and the other designers use when preparing the all-new designs for the HD version ?? I certainly can't imagine you went thru all that trouble of designing in the old editor and than replacing all parts using your described Rezycle method ?!
So I reckon you must have built some sort of tool for yourselves to help you make those new designs?
No. We used the old editor, which was actually a pretty big hassle. All the mansions in the HD game get stored in the old way. That is the only way they can be edited - aside from some really experimental stuff I've been doing. Prior to shipping, the original formats have to be converted using rezycle. Generally, this is pretty easy. Occasionally, one or two custom graphics may have to be added after Rezycle has unpacked everything. Fortunately, there are not many custom graphics in the new game. Jacob redid *all* the graphics though.
What this meant is that if you worked on the mansion, you had to work on it as though you building a mansion for MM1, then to see what your changes looked like, you would then have to convert it, and open it as a mansion (or custom mansion) in the new game. As you can imagine, this was a little tedious. Because the mansion and the builder were working off of different files, I could bring up the game and the old builder at the same time and flip back and forth between the two windows.
Ohmygawd...... that sounds really tedious indeed. I would have thought you'd have had a 'not-meant-for-release-version' of a HD-editor at least..... but like this it sure sounds like hard work.
Rob Seegel wrote on 30.04.2012 at 10:21:50:I did end building out some tools, but they were command line based. I wrote a few Perl scripts to help me quickly identify potential or known issues. I didn't actually build any new mansions for the game. That was done by Toybox, Jacob, and Vern. I ended up scrubbing all the existing "included" mansions. Scrubbing included:
- Finding and correcting any odd Layer 6 issues
These fixes were areas were for areas where the illusion was spoiled. For example, a short pillar in layer that "supported" the ceiling above it. There were many, many areas where Jack would be "behind" the pillar, jump, and then appear in front of the tiles the pillar was supporting. This sort of thing spoils the illusion and tends to look "weird" to the eye. There were lots of different cases here, that were dealt with in various ways. Some of this was easy, some was a bit more work.
I can't stand these kind of things, either.... but to be very precise in those areas is something I had to learn over time.... so while probably all of my mansions from the last 4 years or so should be very exact + correct in this respect, it might be possible to detect some of those layer-mistakes (or rather: design flaws) in some of my very early mansions like PoG, SPoG or DoD.
In fact - while checking DoD in the old editor 2 days ago (to see what amount of custom graphics it features) I in fact came across at least 2 situations where a roof should have been painted into layer-6 (but was in layer-4)
Rob Seegel wrote on 30.04.2012 at 10:21:50:- Removing *most* designer-painted shadows
I was sure that this would be the most controversial of the changes, yet I don't recall anything getting upset. Vern added game-generated shadows to MM HD. These shadows generally look better than the painted in shadows because they more closely resemble the item that casts the shadow, and there is a bit more consistency. I believe that tiles in layers 4 and 6 will cast shadows, initially only in rooms with a black background. Otherwise, Birds and other creatures could cast "shadows" on the sky background image, which looked strange. Game generated shadows can also be disabled in newer versions of the old Builder.
This probably should be disabled by default for all custom mansions, because I can tell you first-hand that removing most of the designer-added shadows was tedious in the extreme. If you don't remove them, then the game will add shadows on top of areas where the developer already painted them in. These areas will be darker than what the designer intended, slight ruining the effect. Areas that were shaded may become black outright.
Luckily I only rarely painted / designed in shadows myself.....
Rob Seegel wrote on 30.04.2012 at 10:21:50:- Correcting some block inconsistencies
There are basically two kinds of Bricks most often used in Layer 4. You have the bricks that are smart enough to "assemble" themselves when you are painting them in. There are others for each color that have to be manually and painstakingly assembled. In the past, these two types were mixed together in some places. The problem with this is that Vern applies some sort of logic to the "smart" bricks while slightly and somewhat randomly alters their appearance to add some variety and keep things from looking too uniform. It's a very nice effect that I was skeptical about at first.
The problem is that if you mix and match the "smart" bricks with the others, then it noticeably throws off the effect. This was among my least favorite things to fix, because it was tough to detect i the MM1 Builder..
Here I am afraid I'd be guilty - simply BECAUSE I am so keen on graphic details I used to plant each individual brick by hand most of the time - and I am sure there might be enough situations where I used both types next to each other.... but when I did, I did that exactly FOR the "irregularity effect" - and I always double checked how it looked. It always looked great in the original game..... but I have no idea how it will "translate" into the HD-version...!?!
Rob Seegel wrote on 30.04.2012 at 10:21:50: - Taking a first cut to see how the mansions appeared with the new graphics.
kind of self-explanatory. By the end, I was getting pretty sick of looking at all the mansions. For some reason, it was a *lot* more work that I thought it was going to be. I hope some of this make sense. Feel free to ask if it's not clear.
(...)
Yes, I can very well imagine how that added up to a pretty frustrating bunch of work.... and that you eventually ran out of time and nerves to continue....
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