Welcome, Guest. Please Login or Register
YaBB - Yet another Bulletin Board
 
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


  HomeHelpSearchLoginRegister  
 
Pages: 1 2 3 ... 6
Send Topic Print
A nostalgic blog concerning designing mansions (Read 7079 times)
Freddy
YaBB Administrator
*****
Offline



Posts: 1734
Brugge, Belgium
Gender: male
A nostalgic blog concerning designing mansions
10.05.2022 at 22:27:29
 
BLOG (part 1)


2022 may 11th

Many many years ago I started playing Midnight Mansion. The pre-Intel period. In those days I was already active on the first boards and around that time I made my first steps with the mansion builder, which resulted in a project that I called Works in Progress. Several parts of it were used in my
House of Wonders
. A mansion that absolutely needs a serious renovation. What brings me to my first issue: I do not have access anymore to any of the MM-programs.
Cry

Together with
brell
I became administrator of the current boards (version YaBB 2.2) at the time of the release around Christmas 2006. I am not sure, but I think that it was earlier that year that I released my
Midnight Mazes and Monsters
. This custom mansion was a huge monster and because it was so big, no wonder that it also contained some good parts.
Wink

In January 2010 I created my last mansion:
The 7th Key
. It was a small, quizzical mansion where Jack struggled with a backpack that wasn't large enough. It was also the period that my MM-life slowly faded away. I remember the start of HD and MM2 with its contest. But finally I did stop completely.

So what is going on right now, more than ten years after? Even without the possibility to play, fix or build mansions! That is the ...

Back to top
« Last Edit: 21.05.2022 at 19:19:16 by Freddy »  

MM1_HD_-_MM_M_001.png (112 KB | 77 )
MM1_HD_-_MM_M_001.png
 
IP Logged
 
Freddy
YaBB Administrator
*****
Offline



Posts: 1734
Brugge, Belgium
Gender: male
Re: A nostalgic blog concerning designing mansions
Reply #1 - 12.05.2022 at 20:05:46
 
BLOG (part 2)


2022 May the 12th

Recently I was able to (re)watch a lot of MM-videos that I found on internet. Besides it gave me pleasant memories, it also made me think again about the ways of designing mansions.

To hear and see what a player is experiencing and thinking during play was extremely interesting. It made me wonder how the setup of a new mansion of mine should be. This issue is only theoretical, because I don’t have a working builder. The mansion is a virtual desire, but that doesn't need to stop me from giving it a name:
Brave New World
.

In this blog I like to share my thoughts about designing mansions and will add images to illustrate what I mean. Or just for fun like in my previous post.

Before even thinking of a single brick, door or ladder, I did something I never did before: dive into the roots of the game. And I found inspiration in three sources.

On the ActionSoft downloadpage I got this: Jack Malone explores mansions while avoiding traps, solving puzzles and discover secrets. The lists with the high scores taught me that there is a rang order for 1° the amount of money, 2° the used time and 3° the found secrets, but also that, first of all, Jack has to leave the mansion through the/an exit door! Last of all,
Alex Diener
(betatester for some of the original MM1’s), did put my attention on the importance of the thrill from playing on the edge of game over. His playing-behaviour increased once his Jack had two lives or less. And Alex also often saved saving points for later/never …
Cool

I must confess that I barely took care of that game-over-thrill. E.g.
Midnight Mazes and Monsters
started with a pretty large grey area where it was completely impossible to lose lives. In contrary, before Jack encountered the very first challenge he collected over $ 3.000 an could ‘start’ with 9 lives!

So here is my first conclusion for my hypothetical mansion. It must contain:
- an exit door;
- money;
- secrets;
- traps;
- puzzles;
- the thrill of game over.

If I should start building a first section right now, it would be a not complicated area on a normal level, only to documentate how the loss of Jack-lives is when betatesters are exploring it the very first time.
Back to top
« Last Edit: 29.09.2022 at 20:15:51 by Freddy »  
 
IP Logged
 
Freddy
YaBB Administrator
*****
Offline



Posts: 1734
Brugge, Belgium
Gender: male
Re: A nostalgic blog concerning designing mansions
Reply #2 - 21.05.2022 at 17:54:32
 
BLOG (part 3)


2022 May the 21st

On our boards, and especially under General Custom Mansions Area, there is a lot of information about:
- the major importance of overall playability;
- avoiding Jack-stucks, half Jack-stucks and cheap deaths;
- taking care with the use of layer 6 etc.

Thanks,
brell
. I don't think I need to add something to that.
Smiley

But there is more, so much more!

A good way of spreading rewards, especially the dollars since they generate Jack-lives. (To) empty rooms. The sometimes unpleasant speed of critters and platforms. Treasure areas. Map and sound hints!
Cool

With showing several examples I like to tell you about the different ways of designing starting rooms of mansions.

The image in part 1 of this blog is the starting room from my
Midnight Mazes and Monsters
. The idea was to raise doubt about first going left or right. That was wrong since the explication about the 'crumbs' only came several rooms later in one of the two directions. Besides that, if you choose the way to the crumbs first, then there is far to much backtracking to do.

It seems that in the HD-version coins give a glow, so I assume that the single hidden coin is hinted. Then that's okay. But in the not-HD-version the coin was completely invisible. Therefor I shouldn't do that anymore. The setup of this mansion is starting with a very easy area (where Jack can't lose any life). So now I have the feeling that the hidden coin (not-HD-version) isn't appropriate for that anymore.

Conclusion: without making any building mistake, the design of the first room was influenced by bad ideas.
Sad

Next time I show examples coming from the original mansions.
Back to top
« Last Edit: 03.11.2022 at 16:34:15 by Freddy »  
 
IP Logged
 
Freddy
YaBB Administrator
*****
Offline



Posts: 1734
Brugge, Belgium
Gender: male
Re: A nostalgic blog concerning designing mansions
Reply #3 - 23.05.2022 at 02:45:31
 
BLOG (part 4)


2022 May the 22nd

The added images are from the first 3 rooms and one of the possible 4th-rooms from
MM1 HD Knight Mansion hard
.

Picture 1 shows the starting room which gives smooth play. The minor change that I should do is moving Jack’s start position to the right of the column, since the scorpion above his head is going left and very soon coming down. I prefer a start where I don’t need to bother about Jack’s life. For me it is a matter of acclimatization and ‘feeling’ the mansion.

In room 2 Jack encounters his first challenges. The easiest way is waiting till the scorpion disappears in the deep, leaving the blue bird as the only enemy to avoid.

On image 3 you see that it is forced to continue forward on the upper floor. There he had choice and climbed the vine to arrive in the room shown on picture 4.

This room exposes perfectly that Jack is really in a hard mansion! He has to think about getting the moneybag at the left and leaving in the upper right corner, while avoiding both birds.
Back to top
« Last Edit: 27.05.2022 at 15:11:25 by Freddy »  

MM1_-_HD_-_KMh_01.png (691 KB | 72 )
MM1_-_HD_-_KMh_01.png
 
IP Logged
 
Freddy
YaBB Administrator
*****
Offline



Posts: 1734
Brugge, Belgium
Gender: male
Re: A nostalgic blog concerning designing mansions
Reply #4 - 26.05.2022 at 17:57:23
 
BLOG (part 5)


2022 May the 26th

Freddy wrote on 21.05.2022 at 17:54:32:
But there is more, so much more!

A good way of spreading rewards, especially the dollars since they generate Jack-lives. (To) empty rooms. The sometimes unpleasant speed of critters and platforms. Treasure areas. Map and sound hints!

I absolutely need to add dark rooms and the number/spread of saving points to this list.

Now back to business: set-up of the starting room(s).

The most controversial start in the original mansions is, in my opinion, the one in Chateau de Medusa hard. I try to explain this with the included images that are stills from the video where
Alex Diener
’s Jack struggles through the first rooms of
MM1 HD Chateau de Medusa hard
.

Jack has to start in a flat room with only one moving skull spider at the right and the task to do a precise jump to the left (pic 1).

The video starts with Jack’s first attempt by walking to the left where he got stuck in a row of dark rooms. After a voluntary game over he started to the right where he soon found out that this way is a dead end street. With his nose against a grey door he had no other choice than turn around (pic 2).

Like in his first attempt he continued to the room at the left where is no other possibility than climbing the ladder down (pic3). Since he was there before, he now wasn’t taken by surprise and hesitated while hanging at the bottom of the ladder (pic 4). But like in all previous rooms, there was only one way to continue: falling into the deep (pic 5, 6 & 7).

Jack had a safe landing on the invisible vines; invisible because it’s a dark room. The silver coins show an odd arrow to the right, but he decided to turn to the left first. There he kicked without succes against a wall (pic 8).

The only way forward is to the right, while being careful and picking up the coins (pic 9 & 10). As soon as he entered the next room two things happened nearly together: he walked into a mess of coins and bumped against an invisible wall (pic 11 & 12). Just like with his previous attempt he couldn’t start jumping over the lava pits or doing anything else that was useful.

It is interesting to see the images from his way back to the left because all the silver coins are gone now (pic 13, 14 & 15). Especially the last image is weird because the room is completely black.

Because there is no way up in any of the dark rooms, the area to find the solution is somehow limited in size: the bottom row in four rooms. So, no panic!

At last Jack found a hidden sign with a clue to help him (pic 16).

Conclusions

The small area to the right of the starting room is a way back. Right of the closed grey door is a pressure button that should open that door (pic 2). Maybe it is only because it is a way back that these rooms are pretty easy for a hard mansion. But why a way back to the starting room? To do efforts to catch a few more coins or a shield during the fall (pic 4 & 5)? And then again the whole way back to the place where you want to continue with exploring the mansion? Maybe even more than once? Really?

There is nothing wrong with a 4-room-fall, but in a first attempt the odds are big that you get taken by suprise, fall down from the ladder and will miss some rewards. Besides that, the two money bags (pic 4 & 5) are out of reach due to gravity. That is distracting and therefore feels unfair.

The dark rooms! To avoid spoilers I will not give details, but I like to put your attention to the fact that Jack-from-the-video at first missed the sign and the second time only found it after a lot of kicking/jumping/climbing everywhere in the dark rooms. More important is that before he found the sign he hadn’t the slighest idea that there was a hint. In my opinion I think that the hint was okay because it is a hard mansion and the hint did not disappear.

However this was a wake-up call for me to be very careful with designing dark rooms and especially not to forget that coins ‘to show the way’ disappear when Jack picks them up. E.g. there are coins suggesting the presence of a ladder (pic 11 & 12). If Jack climbs that ladder, dies in the zapper beam and leaves the room to search for an other way forward, the player may forget that there was a ladder or where exactly that it was.
Back to top
« Last Edit: 03.11.2022 at 16:58:02 by Freddy »  

MM1_HD_-_CdM.png (783 KB | 69 )
MM1_HD_-_CdM.png
 
IP Logged
 
Freddy
YaBB Administrator
*****
Offline



Posts: 1734
Brugge, Belgium
Gender: male
Re: A nostalgic blog concerning designing mansions
Reply #5 - 05.06.2022 at 19:09:25
 
BLOG (part 6)


2022 June the 5th

Jack-from-the-videos also visited
MM1 HD Spider Palace hard
. In the starting room (pic 1) he saw that his only way out is the pole to the room below. But he also noticed that soon there will be a path to the left and one to the right.

Correction (pic 2)!
3 paths to the left and 3 to the right.
Smiley

I took note from the fact that this Jack chose for the most natural way of exploring: wait with using keys and first have a (brief) look in other rooms.
Smiley

In the next room (pic 3) he did find 2 saving points. Here
Alex Diener
said: “Oh, it’s a hub. Probably I use one save pedestal after the left red-door-sections and the other one after the right wing."

Further down Jack arrived in a room with 6 yellow doors and 2 levers to open the 2 closed grey doors. There Alex predicted the future. "Each red door will finally lead to 1 yellow and 1 red key. So Jack will be able to open all yellow and grey doors and will climb down the vine with a red key where he will find a new hub."

Conclusions

The set-up of
MM1 HD Spider Palace hard
is very very clean, in an almost clinical way. The design of these first 4 rooms is without any risk. And that is also the case for Jack, because there are no enemies, no puzzles and no traps. Easy (pic 2 & 3) and very easy (pic 1 & 4) stuff in a hard mansion.

Things to keep in mind are the moneybags and shields (pic 1 & 4) and the possibility of a secret (pic 4).

Next time I like to share my first ideas for the set-up of
Brave New World
.
Back to top
« Last Edit: 08.07.2022 at 15:21:54 by Freddy »  

MM1_HD_-_SP_h_A.png (553 KB | 69 )
MM1_HD_-_SP_h_A.png
 
IP Logged
 
brell
YaBB Administrator
*****
Offline



Posts: 1778
Moita, Portugal
Gender: male
Re: A nostalgic blog concerning designing mansions
Reply #6 - 16.06.2022 at 22:35:30
 
Dear Freddy,
nice to "see" you again.  Your blog is good and I think in the right category.
What type of Mac and system are you using to play/build?  I am using a VirtualBox machine where, unfortunately, MM lags a little which makes it harder to play.
Back to top
 

A stuck Jack is better than no jack
 
IP Logged
 
Freddy
YaBB Administrator
*****
Offline



Posts: 1734
Brugge, Belgium
Gender: male
Re: A nostalgic blog concerning designing mansions
Reply #7 - 17.06.2022 at 03:39:18
 
Hi Brell
Smiley

Everything is very well, besides the fact that I don't have machinery to play and build. I would like to buy an older Mac with macosx 10.3, 10.4 or 10.5. If anyone should know from an online site please let me know.

After struggling through the original mansions again, the first thing I like to do is renovation works in my own mansions, based on my new ideas but with respect to the existing saving points, amount of secrets and money etc. And fixing mistakes, like a really horrible serial-half-Jack-stuck in Midnight Mazes and Monsters.
Shocked Embarrassed

In part 7 of the blog I will give info about these ideas.
Back to top
 
 
IP Logged
 
Freddy
YaBB Administrator
*****
Offline



Posts: 1734
Brugge, Belgium
Gender: male
Re: A nostalgic blog concerning designing mansions
Reply #8 - 04.07.2022 at 20:36:36
 
BLOG (part 7)


2022 July the 5th

First of all I have to remind the readers of my blog that
Brave New World
is not an existing or forthcoming mansion. It is just a collection of ideas about how a new mansion could be.

Refering to the original mansions the standard difficulties are easy, normal and hard. Because of the size of
Midnight Mazes and Mansion
I added very easy and very hard to them. And to be honest, I have the feeling that there also should be a difficulty degree like ‘quizzical’, probably best used in miniatures only.

But let's assume that there are only The Three Degrees.
Wink

You may absolutely disagree with me, but for me, as a player, the most important element to decide if a room or a complete mansion is easy, hard or normal is the risk of losing Jack-lives. But as a designer I believe that I have to take care that (all) other elements are in balance with the previously chosen difficulty: the amount of money, the number of shields and safe pedestals, the puzzles (!!), the place of the lantern or the first backpack.

One single example of a mistake out of my own lab. In the very easy area of MM&M there was a rugsack-maze (see added pic): the maze where Jack could find his first backpack. While it was really impossible for Jack to die, the 3-room-puzzle wasn't easy at all. Room 1 had real and fake ladders, room 2 also ànd magic doors.
Huh

More complicated is the handling of secrets. It starts with the fact that, what's in a name, secrets should be secret. So a designer can't just use bricks with cracks for all secrets. On the other hand both
Psychonitric
and
Alex
mentioned me that at a certain point the fun is over when you don't have any clue, therefor get the feeling that you're playing blind and Jack has to kick, jump and duck everywhere.

I prefer not to get into details, because sooner or later I like to restore my own mansions. But saying some things more in general is of course possible.

The hint(s) for a secret may be:
- in an adjoining room;
- on the map;
- a sound (of a hidden falling moneybag, an eye ball, ...);
- the abrupt absence of music;
- in the name of the mansion.
Cool

And also: the lack of a 'normal' way out of an enclosed area.

Conclusions

Hints for secrets must be subtile. (Bricks-with-cracks feel only good in easy mansions.)
Take care that the hints are not too subtile.
Tongue
Back to top
« Last Edit: 10.07.2022 at 18:32:00 by Freddy »  

MM1_HD_-_MM_M_B.png (523 KB | 58 )
MM1_HD_-_MM_M_B.png
 
IP Logged
 
Freddy
YaBB Administrator
*****
Offline



Posts: 1734
Brugge, Belgium
Gender: male
Re: A nostalgic blog concerning designing mansions
Reply #9 - 10.09.2022 at 22:15:28
 
BLOG (part 8)



2022 September the 10th

Bit by bit having the game again felt more and more important to be able to continue giving you interesting information and relevant images.

I will keep it short, because this post is not directly about designing. Previous weeks I was struggling with executing a plan to play the Midnight Mansion game on a virtual machine. Although I had a lot of help from my friend
brell
, without any success.

So finally I returned to my plan A: getting myself an older Mac with e.g. 'leopard' to run our game. This morning I had a promissing contact!
Smiley

I'll keep you informed.
Back to top
« Last Edit: 02.10.2022 at 22:56:03 by Freddy »  
 
IP Logged
 
Pages: 1 2 3 ... 6
Send Topic Print