Jill Malone?

[Semi-Native]

How about adding a female character (Jack's sister Jill maybe?) with an option to choose your character at the beginning of each mansion.

[Wingy]

Or having different clothes sets for Jack (or Jill) that you can find within levels in huge secrets.

[Toybox]

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).

[VernJensen]

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.)

[Semi-Native]

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.

[Toybox]

They could even be in different rooms (easily spottable on the Map).

[jacobvann]

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?

[Wingy]

417265795D7279647279170 wrote: 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.

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

[samskelton]

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?)

[Toybox]

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).