Beta 2: General Discussion

[joeb]

Vern,

WELL understood! This is a most impressive game as is. But here are one or 2 more for MM3.
1. Maybe it's just because I'm an old fart but I often place stuff on the wrong levels because I've been concentrating on editing and forget what level I'm on. A display on the editor window of the current working layer, just like a text number would be really helpful.
2. Along with #1, maybe worked in with it a way to change layers without having to go to the menu. If you incorporated this as radio buttons you could have #1 as well.

Again, just things I've thought about while working with the beta and thought would be a great help to mansion designers. Did get a chance to play Leofani Manor and some of Trigger Island and noticed my rope or something that looks a lot like it. YES, I did agree to it (and other stuff)  being freely available but I didn't see the rope anywhere in the editor. I guess that means that it's OK to do little tweaks with the graphics? I won't be doing any initially but wanted to know if the same type of editing of graphics would be possible as with MM1.

Thanks and keep up the great work,

joeb

[joeb]

Just for yuks I found Ghosthunter and as long as it's in a separate folder with it's own graphics (sprites) it seems to work just fine although I haven't been all the way through it because it is the hardest mansion I've ever done. I've changed all the screens to not conflict with the standard screens (backgrounds). But it does work. All 80 rooms. Oh and if psychotronic is still around there are a whole net set of tiles at least as many as Dominator. So when Vern releases MM2 I'll put this mansion out on the board.

joeb

[Wingy]

0B0E0403610 wrote:
2. Along with #1, maybe worked in with it a way to change layers without having to go to the menu. If you incorporated this as radio buttons you could have #1 as well.

There are hotkeys:

Command + 1 = Layer 1
Command + 2 = Layer 2
Command + 3 = Layer 3
Command + 4 = Layer 4
Command + 5 = Layer 5
Command + 6 = Layer 6

Only thing is it doesn't say these hotkeys to the right of the buttons on the menu. But still, they are there.

[joeb]

Thanks Anthony. I had a DUH moment. Still would like to see some kind of on screen level indicator though.

joeb

[Semi-Native]

I would, too. Whenever I use the hotkeys, I end up checking the Current Level menu anyway just to make sure it switched.
:

[Toybox]

I concur. And if there could be an option to show only a single layer, or to hide sprites, that would be pretty nifty as well.

[VernJensen]

Yep, agreed -- these would all be great additions.

ToyBox, showing ONLY the current layer was actually something I wanted to put in, prior to even releasing the game in 2005. But features got cut in order to ship the game. Maybe sometime I can put it in. But I totally agree -- displaying the current layer's number somewhere would help!

[Toybox]

Oh, and a very, very minor thing: maybe an option to disable all dark rooms in the menu for testing purposes? 'Cos sometimes you need to run through dark rooms when testing something else, and you might not have a lantern. Then it can be cumbersome to uncheck all dark rooms, or you may forget to darken them again.

[VernJensen]

Yeah, I've been there Toybox... Unfortunately, it's not an easy thing to do programming-wise. The editor, despite how it appears, is actually quite separate from the game.

[Toybox]

Ah ok, it doesn't matter really.

It's very hard for the the clueless (that is, me) to guess what is easy to do and what is not easy to do. It always makes me marvel