Beta 2: Leofani Manor

[VernJensen]

Rob wrote:
>>16904 OK - I'm officially not a fan of hidden keys that pop out of thin air This is a dynamic that I'm still not used to in the new MM game.<<

I'm going to agree with Rob on this one. Having a key appear in a room with the gold sparkles is fine, but using hidden triggers for them... can lead to confusion. That's definitely one of the dangers of the T triggers.

Sorry to ruin this room for you Anthony, but I'd say keys should always be visible right away, OR gold sparkles (H triggers) should be in the room to make it obvious the player needs to do something to get them to appear.

[VernJensen]

Rob -- I kinda like your idea to have fewer sections in Easy versions. I've not played Leofani Manor recently enough to comment on your specific suggestions, but since most MM players seem to start with Easy, then graduate to Normal and then Hard, it seems appropriate that the mansion would give players new sections to explore as they move up.

Some mansions, such as Blackheart Keep and Dr. Demented's Den, are short enough that they probably shouldn't be shortened for easy, but some of Anthony's are long enough they could probably afford this shortening.

Not saying you should necessarily do this Anthony -- I've not reviewed the specific sections Rob suggested taking away from Easy. I'm just saying I do like the concept in general.

[Wingy]

Thanks Rob for all your suggestions. I went through them and mades changes to my mansions where I thought they were good ideas (most of them, actually).

About that hidden key thing- they aren't actually hidden in hard mode, and I don't think I even intended them to be hidden at all in normal, so no harm done. They shall be visible.

As for the date screw ups, on my part, I was laughing so hard when I realized. Yes, sorry that I forgot to mention, but Leofani was actually the inventor of Dr. Who's Tardis and did a little time traveling. ;D

Anyway,
I'm not really a fan of cutting the mansion short. It seemed to me in the original game all the mansions were 100ish+ rooms. I've stuck with 120-160. (180 for Basano Hard, but I went over the top)

For mansions that haven't had their Easy/Normal modes constructed yet, I may consider shortening the mansion. Especially Jasperlone. After the 2nd section, I may do a short one, then that's it. And I'll probably cut that island resort house thing in the mountain section, and maybe make it bigger in hard.

[RobSeegel]

536D6A637D040 wrote:
I'm not really a fan of cutting the mansion short. It seemed to me in the original game all the mansions were 100ish+ rooms. I've stuck with 120-160. (180 for Basano Hard, but I went over the top)

That's fine - I only suggested it because my favorite mansions from the first MM seemed to use this approach. When i read your comments I thought maybe I wasn't remembering clearly, So I went back and checked. Here's what I discovered:

Castle Doom:
- Easy: 77 Rooms, 16 Secrets
- Normal: 78 Rooms, 16 Secrets
- Hard: 81 Rooms, 18 Secrets

Cathedral Towers:
- Easy: 71 Rooms, 8 Secrets
- Normal: 90 Rooms, 10 Secrets
- Hard: 108 Rooms, 16 Secrets

Chateau Medusa:
- Easy: 99 Rooms, 14 Secrets
- Normal: 100 Rooms, 9 Secrets
- Hard: 112 Rooms, 12 Secrets

Falcon Manor:
- Easy: 97 Rooms, 13 Secrets
- Normal: 102 Rooms, 13 Secrets
- Hard: 102 Rooms, 13 Secrets

House of Baron Garneau:
- Easy: 86 Rooms, 14 Secrets
- Normal: 85 Rooms, 12 Secrets
- Hard: 97 Rooms, 15

Knight Mansion:
- Easy: 89 Rooms, 10 Secrets
- Normal: 104 Rooms, 10 Secrets
- Hard: 120 Rooms, 13 Secrets

Nightmare Mansion:
- Easy: 117 Rooms, 10 Secrets
- Normal: 118 Rooms, 10 Secrets
- Hard: 120 Rooms, 11 Secrets

Spider Palace:
- Easy: 110 Rooms, 15 Secrets
- Normal: 111 Rooms, 15 Secrets
- Hard: 122 Rooms, 20 Secrets

So... it did happen, but was it consistent? No.  I mentioned it for a few reasons:

- I really liked the approach in the first version of MM.
- I thought it was also great in differentiating Castle Basano Normal and Hard.

Finally,  I thought your Easy version of Leofani was largely excellent, though slightly harder than I expected. It seemed to me that the area I had the most issues with was fairly self contained, and by finding a way to chop it out, that might be an easier way of making the overall mansion easier without having to examine and possibly modify several rooms in that section.

The fact is, I was a bit lazy in my recommendation. What I'll do instead is take a second look at the section I took issue with, and give you more specifics. This should be more helpful than,

Hey, why don't you chop out this section?

[RobSeegel]

Leofani Manor - Hard

I did take a look at this mansion, but I didn't finish it at this time. I ran into a few problems that have already been heavily reported, and ended up getting frustrated and stopped around room 15503.

Here were some comments:

16698 - Something weird with the layers in the track the platform moves on especially in the water. Unsure whether that was done to make it easier to track the platform's location. I think it should be completely visible at all times - mostly for aesthetic reasons.

Came back later and saw some weird behavior. The platform went along its track on the bottom - didn't see the layer issue I saw the first time, but then it started following a track, vertically on the far right side of the screen. Not sure what this was all about!

I flipped the lever back to the position, and left the room, then came back and everything appeared to back to normal.

16696 - I really like rooms like this where you have to take your time, look around and think a little bit. Good one!

16697 - Getting those last two money bags was a real challenge .

16700 - This room is CRAZY. I like it. Absolutely appropriate for HARD. I was shocked that a got the key my first attempt. I can't say the same for all coins - greed kills!

16301 - I've looked at the forum for this screen. Not much else to say here, really. I went ahead and used MBB to get around it for now.

16906 - Happy to get out of this room! What a pain, but I didn't have to cheat to get past it. If I had to make it a little easier without ruining it, I'd just a little more ground between the water and pressure-sensitive plate in the lower left. Even a little bit would make a big difference. Once I knew the trick moving left to right across the double plate, it wasn't bad. It was coming back across without going in the water that was ugly for me.

16706 - Ugh... This room probably crosses the line into ridiculously difficult - at least for me. One small thing to make it a little easier would be a pad on the upper left exit that would shut off the zappers once you got through it once. Even with that it will be very easy to burn through 6 Jacks given that you still have to go through the zappers once, plus contend with creatures.

16904 - That additional skull under the bat platform is cheap shot (as opposed to a cheap death) IMO. It's a little tricky to get that point as it is, and then to have something unseen interfere like that seems unnecessary to me.

15905 Stuck Jack, sitting on the bottom bat platform on the right side, with the upper platform is on the left side. Unfortunately, couldn't suspend in this position either so I couldn't rescue Jack in MMB.

Jack Stuck again at top of elevator.

15506 - Tried many, many times. Had to slow squares down.

15503 - Unable to get by Giant Spider without sacrificing Jack, and I couldn't see any way to get from this screen to the next one on the left.

It was roughly around this area where I realized that it had stopped being fun -- for me, anyway. This mansion is brutal - harder that most of the non-included mansions on the Forum boards. While hard mansions are supposed to be very difficult, they should be playable.

There were parts of it that I really enjoyed despite (or perhaps because of the difficulty), but I'll hold off looking at the rest of this, until there's an update available that fixes some of the issues already mentioned by others.

I'm going to move on to a different mansion for now.

[RobSeegel]

I went back and replayed Leofani Easy - and looking back at my comments I'm not sure what I was reacting to. It was fine. The sky platforms weren't as unusually difficult (for Easy) as I remembered. Maybe I was initially reacting to the silver/gold areas, but when I looked at them again with a critical eye, I noticed that there was always a platform directly underneath when a lever was pulled.

It seemed fine to me the second time through. I'll have to remember if I have a strong reaction to a mansion in the future to record my initial thoughts, and replay it later to see if I feel the same way.