Midnight Mansion Forums - Custom Mansions / Designing

A nostalgic blog concerning designing mansions

Tue, 10 May 2022 10:18:29 -0400

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.
:'(

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.

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 ...

MM1_HD_-_MM_M_001.png (Size: 19.53 KB / Downloads: 2)

Converting Water to Acid?

Thu, 24 Apr 2014 09:12:07 -0400

Hey,

Does anyone know if it is possible to convert a Water mansion to an Acid Mansion, I'm thinking acid would probably suit my mansion more but do not want to remake what I have done haha

Cheers
Leon

Saving Mansions in Level Builder

Sun, 03 Nov 2013 17:41:11 -0500

Where is the Mansion I build saved? How do I name it? How do I open it again?

Warning! Room limit or Level Builder will crash!

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:20:39 -0400

I just had a guy send me a mansion he had done where the Level Builder was crashing whenever he tried to make changes to a room and save it.

After digging around, I discovered that he was running up against a

resource file size limit

that I had forgotten about and never documented. The problem is, I now can't find the documentation. So I don't know what the actual number is. It is either 2727, or double that -- 5454.

Anyway, this guy's mansion has 5447 resources in it. Each room requires a minimum of 12 resources (and each sign adds an additional resource to that total). Plus a handful of other resources needed for the mansion in general. So if you have 100 rooms in your mansion, you can assume it has somewhat over 1100 resources.

This guys' mansion happens to have 452 rooms. That times 12 is 5424, plus the other resources for the signs and the mansion data totals around 5454, where the builder started crashing for him.

This issue will NOT be an issue once I port the Mansion Builder to be HD, because it no longer uses resources to store the mansion data. (This is what happens when you

convert

a mansion to the HD format using Rezycle.)

However, since you are all designing mansions using the old level builder in the meantime, I wanted to let you know about this issue, so you don't add too many rooms to your mansion!

Need some advice for beginner designer

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 06:42:02 -0400

Hi,

I just got into playing Midnight Mansion (HD– I'm in the beta), and I've started dreaming about making a mansion of my own. I was wondering if anyone had any advice about mansion design for someone who is completely new at it.

Thanks~

Torch Flames

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:49:06 -0400

Hey,

I was just wondering if anyone knew what the option on a fake brick-switch Move Torch Flame Forwards/Backwards does. I tried it out as my next mansion uses torches so I was just seeing what I could do with them, but when I step on the switch, the torch does nothing.

Cheers
Leon

Special Abilites of Trolls

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:35:10 -0400

When I testing my mansion earlier, I made a trap in which you had to walk a troll over many moving platforms, which would descend down into water. However my puzzle did not work correctly, as he did not die when sunk into the water. After conducting a few tests I discovered that he did not die when on a moving platform that descended into the water as long as he DID NOT MOVE. Has anyone else discovered this? Or is it just a glitch?

P.S. Heres a video of the situation

The_Fission_Fusion_Hard_9.zip (Size: 19.53 KB / Downloads: 2)

Adding custom graphics to a mansion without editing a copy of Game Data?

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 14:50:29 -0400

I noticed that some of the included mansions in MM2 as well as ghosthunter use custom graphics without an extra copy of Game Data. How is it possible to do this?

Music in MM2

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 12:32:02 -0500

I'm fiddling with making a few rooms in MM2, but having a real hard time getting music to play !

I have entered my starting room #, and plugged in #'s from 1 - 4, but still no music?

Any suggestions?

OH, one more question while I am here .... is there any way to have water And lava in the same mansion?

thanks in advance,

SandyBean [smiley=2vrolijk_08.gif]

just a little question

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:15:17 -0400

i have a question a really simple question.
how many total music tracks are there to choose from in the second game?

Reset your ObjectIDs!

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:58:15 -0500

Apparently there is a bug in Midnight Mansion where, if the currently in-use ObjectID is higher than 32,767, problems start to happen when levers attempt to control an object with an ID higher than this number.

But it's very rare to have this many objects in a mansion. So I recommend, while designing, resetting your ObjectIDs whenever the number seems to be getting higher. (You can reset them as often as you'd like.)

I'd double-check to make sure your levers still affect the same sprite, after you do the

Reset

, but I believe the editor handles this properly.

A little background on what this is:

Every time you add a sprite to the game, the editor assigns it an objectID, starting with 1, and increasing with each object you add. If you get up to 100 objects, and then delete some old objects or entire rooms, the next ID used will still be 101, even though there are

available

objectIDs that can be reused, due to deleting other sprites.

Reset Object IDs

re-numbers all objects in the entire mansion, starting from 1, so there are no unused IDs. This helps avoid problems where, if you exceed 32,767, apparently problems can happen. It's not supposed to happen, and I'll be looking into this to see if I can get this fixed, but in general, the

solution

is simple and easy.

If you let your objectIDs exceed 32,767, and *then* use Reset ObjectIDs, you may have problems with levers no longer controlling their target object properly, for any target objects that had a value higher than 32,767. So you may have to go back and re-enter the correct objectID into the lever for these objects. But the easy way to avoid this is to reset your object IDs before the number gets higher than 32,767.

I'm not sure if this is confusing, but if you have any questions, please ask.

ladder and sercret room

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:28:10 -0500

Hi, I need help for 2 things in level builder. A ladder and the wall that Jack can go through. When I make a ladder, Jack can't climb it. How do I make a ladder that Jack can climb it? How do I make a wall that looks solid that Jack can go through to the secret room?

dark rooms and coloured doors

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:45:11 -0500

I always thought it was an issue with the level builder, that one cannot open a coloured door with a key if the room is dark.
I always thought that one could do that when playing the actual game, since I could think of several places this has happened...

But today I tried to play our latest creation and got... stuck? Couldn't open a red door with a red key, simply because the room was dark.

Or is it just me?

Question on steps

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:24:02 -0400

I have a question on designing a Mansion. Is it possible to have steps that go down from one room to another? And for you to go back up same steps. I've started my second mansion (first is finishing up beta testing right now). And I wanted to do this. But testing it in the Builder, I can go down but not back up. :'(

Any and all help/input appreciated.

Layers of sprites

Wed, 21 May 2008 04:43:33 -0400

I've been trying to place coins/money bags behind for instance a chest, but the chest always appear behind the bags, no matter how I do it

I've seen it in lots of other mansions, treasures covered by stuff... how do I do it? Sprites seem to appear in all layers at the same time so it doesn't seem to help to put them in different layers...

anyone?