Midnight Mansion 1.0.8 Released

[imported_admin]

...and it has lots of great features to make your life as a mansion designer much easier! Check out the complete list of things below:

- Changed respawn after death so that if Jack climbs down into a room below that has very little space at the top, Jack still respawns after dying in that room, not the room above, if he died after walking on solid ground.
- Hopefully fixed a problem where Jack could climb onto a ladder with no floor below it, if he was standing on bricks directly to the ladder's left side.
- Fixed a game crashing bug that would occur if Jack rode a moving platform all the way up to the very top of the screen, and a room was above that.
- Fixed a problem in Knight Mansion Hard where you could get stuck if you used the keys in the wrong order.
- Fixed a problem in Nightmare Mansion Easy/Normal/Hard, Room 17502, where Jack could get stuck by pulling the wrong levers.
- Changed number of secrets in Knight Mansion Hard from 12 to 13.
- Changed number of secrets in Nightmare Mansion Hard from 10 to 11.
- Improved size of tile and sprite areas in the Mansion Builder, so it's easier to see what's in them.
- Made Command-0 through Command-6 set the current layer in the Mansion Builder.
- Fixed dialog box for lantern in Mansion Builder, so it doesn't have an

Is Falling

checkbox anymore.
- Added a great new feature to the editor:

Copy border from adjacent rooms.

Use this feature when designing a new room to copy tiles from the borders of nearby rooms, so you know where to put your bricks and ladders so they connect to the rooms nearby properly.
- Added

Mansion Info

option to editor's Special menu, to tell you teh total number of rooms, secrets, and money in your mansion.
- Removed

New Room

menu item. Now

Open Room...

can also create new rooms. Click on an empty location to create a room, or an existing location to open a room.
- Added support for custom sprite replacement. Now you can replace sprite graphics on a per-mansion basis, just as you can do for tiles.
- Signs can now be edited directly from within the level builder! Mansion builders rejoice!
- New editor design that makes it easier to find tiles and sprites on large monitors.
- Beat-the-Mansion screen now shows the mansion's name as set in Mansion Options...
- Added screen to promote the Midnight Mansion Level Design Contest when you quit.
- Added support for custom mansions to come with custom music and background screens. Just put these files in a folder named

MANSION NAME Data

where MANSION NAME is the name of your mansion. Put the folder in the Custom Mansions folder next to your mansion.

-Vern

[Toybox]

Champagne! Celebration!

[smiley=2vrolijk_08.gif] [smiley=bath.gif]

[aquaMat]

What a nice surprise this morning !!

Thanks, Vern !! ;D

[aquaMat]

Vern,
I have an important question:

Now that you made it possible that custom sprites too can be placed within the mansion's res. file, should we

redesign

the existing mansions (that use custom graphics) to have their custom graphics resources contained within.... thus erasing the need to switch additional

Midnight Mansion Sprites

files ???

Are the old ones working at all in 1.0.8., when the old method is used ?

On the other hand... when we change them, what about those people who have not yet upgraded to 1.0.8. ?! They will not be able to use them. So we should either encourage EVERY user to upgrade, or leave the old custom graphics where / as they are.... or: put 2 versions of each mansion up (1 for 1.0.8 and the existing ones for lower versions).

What do you think ??

[Semi-Native]

Vern, a HUGE thank you for the new release. I'm hoping this will inspire me to get back to work on building a mansion.
I can't wait to try it out.

;D 8-) :-* [smiley=vrolijk_26.gif] [smiley=thumbsup.gif] [smiley=dankk2.gif] [smiley=beer.gif] [smiley=2vrolijk_08.gif]

[Wingy]

Teds looking brighter already! 8-)

Thanks Vern!

[joeb]

Vern,

This is BEAUTIFUL!!!! I've moved ALL Ghosthunter sprites including a couple of critters into the mansion file and it works, no problems. Nice job!

Joe B

[brell]

The handling of signs is a great relief!  Now I can resume work on The Pirate Invasion, which I postponed because of the storyline, which is mainly told by signs.

And I can see that all bugs I've reported have been fixed

[Mikee]

VERY VERY NICE WORK VERN!!!!

;D 8-) [smiley=beer.gif] [smiley=thumbup.gif]

[VernJensen]

aquaMat wrote: Vern,
I have an important question:

Now that you made it possible that custom sprites too can be placed within the mansion's res. file, should we

redesign

the existing mansions (that use custom graphics) to have their custom graphics resources contained within.... thus erasing the need to switch additional

Midnight Mansion Sprites

files ???

Are the old ones working at all in 1.0.8., when the old method is used ?

On the other hand... when we change them, what about those people who have not yet upgraded to 1.0.8. ?! They will not be able to use them. So we should either encourage EVERY user to upgrade, or leave the old custom graphics where / as they are.... or:  put 2 versions of each mansion up (1 for 1.0.8 and the existing ones for lower versions).

What do you think ??

Yes, I think it would be wise to convert your mansions to the self-contained format if that's possible. On the other hand, if you changed MORE than just the Sprites file (for instance, sounds too), then I

d say leave it alone, since users have to move files anyway. But if you can make your mansion self-contained, so no file-swapping is needed, then I say that's definitely worth doing.

Note that you can also have custom music and background screens come with your mansion in 1.0.8 by putting them in a folder named the same as your mansion, plus

Data

, such as

Foggy Forest Mansion Data

and putting this folder in your Custom Mansions folder, next to your mansion. Just continue the music and background screen indexes where they left off in Game Data, so you'd do

Background Music 5.mp3" etc.

The old method will still work in 1.0.8 though.

You're right, that those who haven't upgraded to 1.0.8 wont' be able to play the revised mansions correctly. But, there is NO reason to not upgrade! I mean, it's free, after all. And it fixes bugs, and adds new features. Unless you're on a very slow modem line, and have to call long distance to get on the 'net, I don't see why anyone wouldn't want to upgrade.

I don't think you should do 2 versions of each mansion. Just delete the old version when you do the new one. You might make a note to Freddy, however, that this mansion requires 1.0.8.