Midnight Mansion Documentation

Many a brave adventurer has perished while seeking the treasure rumored to be hidden in eight haunted mansions. Will you be more successful?


Startup

A Monitor Settings dialog at start-up allows you to select your preferred screen resolution. We highly recommend allowing Midnight Mansion to choose the preferred resolution (640x480), as this fills the entire screen, providing a much more engrossing gaming experience. However, you can also choose to leave the current resolution unchanged, or play in a window.

If you have selected the "Don't ask again" checkbox, the Monitor Settings dialog will not appear on startup, unless you hold down the Option key. Make sure to hold the Option key right away when starting Midnight Mansion, or the dialog may not appear.


Controls

Default controls (can be changed within game):
- Arrow keys or keypad to move
- Space bar to jump
- Return key to pull a lever or read a sign
- M key brings up in-game map (press M again to exit map)

Menu shortcuts:
Command-P - Pause (can also use Esc)
Command-E - End Game
Command-M - Turn music on/off
Command-R - start/stop movie recording (see Movies section for more info)
Command-D - Display stats (see below)
Command-Q - Quit
Command-Space - shows menu bar / dock 
   (during the game, you must pause before doing Command-space)

When you press Command-D, you will see the current room number in the upper-left, the current fps (frames-per-second) value in the upper-right, and the number of secrets found so far in the lower-right.


How To Play

Play the Tutorial Mansion and look at the Help screen to learn how to play. However, some important points are mentioned below. Since Midnight Mansion is intentionally a "retro" game, it behaves differently than modern games in some important ways, namely:

- You can't kill the monsters, unless you have a shield, which protects you from a collision with one monster. (Although shields won't protect you from the large spider.) In general, though, the game is about avoiding the bad guys, not killing them.

- Jack dies easily when falling rather short distances. As a rule of thumb, don't fall more than your own height. When you fall a distance that was close to making Jack die, he will grunt, letting you know you'd better be more careful next time! You won't die, however, if you land on a vine or pole.

- After you die, Jack will re-appear, blinking on/off. He can't be killed again until you push a key, so wait to move him until it's safe to do so!


Difficulty Setting

When you start a new game, you'll be prompted to choose your difficulty. Not only does this option make it so both beginners and advanced players can enjoy the game, but it also adds replay value to the game. Many mansions have been significantly redesigned for each difficulty setting, making them fun to play all over again.

If you are playing the Easy setting and still find the game hard, due to not being able to jump over the monsters without dying, consider turning on the "Easy Jumping" option in the Options dialog. This makes it easier to jump over the bad guys, but this setting only affects the Easy setting. So be warned: if you get used to easy jumping being turned on, but later want to play Normal or Hard, you may find it hard to get used to normal jumping.

If you've already played the Tutorial Mansion, and don't want to play it again, be sure to uncheck the "Play Tutorial Mansion" checkbox on the Difficulty screen before choosing Easy/Normal/Hard.


Selecting A Mansion

After finishing the tutorial mansion, you will be presented with a map of mansions to choose from. In the unregistered version of the game, you may only play portions two mansions: Falcon Manor and Nightmare Mansion. A picture of a lock is shown next to the mansions you can't play yet. In the registered version, you may play all mansions except for Spider Palace, which you may play only after you have beaten all of the other mansions. 

When you have completed a mansion, a red circle appears around it on the map. (Note: you won't get a red circle if you cheated at any point while playing that mansion. Usage of cheating is recorded in your saved game files!) You must complete all mansions except Spider Palace before you will be able to play Spider Palace itself. This final mansion is rumored to contain far more treasure than all of the other mansions combined. Jack can hardly wait!


Map

During the game, you can push the map key to see a map of where you've been. Scroll around the map using the arrow keys, and push - and + to zoom in and out. Push the map key again to return to the game.

You can find map items in the mansion that will reveal new, unexplored areas in your map. These areas will be a darker color.


Scoring

You earn points by collecting coins and money bags. Points are important, because you get an extra life every 1000 points!

Silver coin - 25 points
Gold coin - 50 points
White money bag - 100 points
Gold money bag - 200 points


Saving the Game

When you reach a save pedestal, you may save your game. Choose wisely when you wish to save, since each pedestal may be used only once. When you use a pedstal, your lives are restored to 6 lives if you had fewer than 6 when you saved. If you don't want to save when you jump on a pedestal, just push cancel when the dialog comes up.

Saved games are stored in the current user's Application Support directory, in the Midnight Mansion folder.


Suspending the Game

At any time while playing, you may suspend your game. This works a lot like pause, except you can quit Midnight Mansion and resume your game later. Suspend Game differs from Save in that you don't get any extra lives when you suspend, and you may resume a suspended game only once. (Unlike saved games, which create files you can resume from as many times as you wish.)

To suspend a game, press Esc or Command-P, then click the Suspend button. You can then quit if you wish.

When you resume a suspended game, sprites may be in different positions in the room. Just remember that Jack is invincible until he stops blinking, so don't move him until it is safe to do so.

Also, be warned that Jack might find himself in a "stuck" position upon resuming a suspended game! See the Tutorial Mansion for some examples of this, so you can avoid it.


Options

In addition to setting options before starting a game, you can also change them during the game by pausing, and choosing "Preferences" from the menu. You can change controls, music/sound volume, and more.


Tips

The following tips will be the most useful if you read them over after having played the game a bit...

- When you kill a monster, it disappears permanently. This is true both of when you use a shield on a monster, and when you die due to running into it.

- There is no key that will open a gray door. Instead, you must find a lever or raised brick switch in the same room that opens it.

- Many things "reset" themselves when you leave a room and come back. If you mess up a puzzle in a room, try leaving the room and coming back. This includes items that fall into lava. For instance, if a key falls in lava, leave the room and come back, and get it before it falls in again.

- If a lever doesn't seem to do anything, it could be that it changed the direction of conveyor belts while the belts were turned off.

- Most lever actions only affect things in the same room as the lever. The only exception is gold/silver blocks. When you make these appear/disappear, it affects all rooms in the entire mansion.

- When you get to the end of a mansion (you'll see piles of gold) walk up to the doorway and push up to exit the mansion.

- Even though you can't kill a large spider, there are ways of dealing with them. These spiders are hungry, and will eat just about anything. Once they have caught something, they won't attack for the rest of the game. In fact, Jack can touch them and not be harmed once they have caught some prey. You can use this to your advantage.

- Each type of medusa head can be killed using a method other than the shield. See the Help screen for hints about what this method might be. When killed using this method, the lighter-colored head ("Arthur") will be gone permanently when he dies. However, the other head ("Elizabeth") will re-appear when you re-enter a room.


Custom Mansions

To play a custom mansion, choose New Game, then "Open Mansion..." on the Difficulty Settings screen.

Custom mansions should be placed in the "Custom Mansions" folder. If they aren't, Midnight Mansion won't be able to open any saved games that were saved from within a custom mansion.

You won't get a high score for beating a custom mansion. Only mansions that ship with the game have entries on the High Score list.


Movies

If you turn on movie recording in the Options dialog, movies of each game you play will be recorded on your hard drive. They are stored in Application Support, in the Midnight Mansion folder. The movies are extremely small, making it possible for you to easily send movies to your friends or post them online.

To play a movie, choose the "Play Movie..." command from the File menu. (Press Command-Space on the title screen to show the menu bar if it's not visible.) Only Midnight Mansion can play the movie files it creates. The "Play Movie..." option will be dimmed out if you are not on the game's title screen. (The screen that has buttons for New Game, Open Game, etc.)

When playing a movie, you can "fast-forward" by holding the right arrow key, making the movie play double-speed. You may also do an "extreme fast-forward" by holding the up arrow, which makes the movie play as quickly as your computer is able to go. It is not possible to "rewind" a movie, however. You can stop a movie by pressing Command-A, and you may also pause movies by pressing Command-P or Esc. Additionally, you can look at the map while a movie is playing by pushing the map key.

In addition to recording movies of an entire game, you can also record short movies by turning off automatic recording of movies in Options, playing a game, then pushing Command-R just *before* you enter a new room. Recording will start as soon as you enter the new room. Push Command-R again (or Command-A to end the game) when you want the movie to end. If you didn't end the game, you may push Command-R again to record another movie if you wish, but just remember that recording won't start until you enter a new room. 

Instead of pushing Command-R, you can also pause and use the File menu command to start/stop movie recording, but Command-R is faster, resulting in more control over exactly when your movie ends. NOTE: After pushing Command-R, do not jump into the new room where movie recording will begin. Walk into it, or climb/slide into it, but don't jump into it. Otherwise, the movie will most likely not play back correctly.

IMPORTANT: If a mansion is changed after a movie is made, the movie will most likely not play back correctly. Once the movie reaches the portion that was changed, Jack might start moving around erratically. This means the movie has gotten off-track. This happens because movies only record the keys a player presses when playing, and almost nothing else, so a mansion must be *exactly* the same as it was when the movie was first made in order for it to play back correctly.


Cheat Codes

You can type in cheat codes when the game is paused. But be warned: if you cheat at any point when playing a game, you will NOT be able to enter your name for a high score when you beat a mansion! Additionally, the mansion will not be checked off as being completed on the map screen if you beat it using cheats.

I don't recommend using cheat codes, because even if you do play the mansion without cheats later, you won't have the fun of discovering things for yourself. But if you really must cheat...

I'm not going to tell you the cheat codes outright. But, I will give you some of the words in scrambled form. After unscrambling them, you must enter combinations of two words (you must decide which two you think goes together) to form a code. Type a space between the words.

rupelp
wosh
setesrc
ratex
lerave
ubel
fiel
nereg
migmie  (note: not a real word. Something a kid might say.)
pam
der
noyem
loyewl


If you successfully enter a cheat code, you'll hear a sound. Unpause, and you'll see the effects of the cheat you entered.



Credits

Programming and Game Design
Vern Jensen

Artwork and Game Ideas
Jacob Vann  (http://www.jacobvann.com)

Level Designers
Jacob Vann  (Spider Palace, Nightmare Mansion, Castle Doom)
Alan Carr  (Falcon Manor, Chateau de Medusa)
Peter Robinson (Knight Mansion)
Chris Doucette (Cathedral Towers)
John Komick (House of Baron Garneau)

Sound Effects
Vern Jensen (the majority of the sound effects)
Mike Damon (lava bubbling, door opening, got shield, death screams, and several others)
Jens Nilsson (torch burning, got map, pull lever)
Hans Jensen (lightning, save game, plus help with other sounds)

Mike Damon's website:   http://www.virtualproductions.net/
Jens Nilsson's website:  http://www.fadeoutstudio.com/

Music
Gianluca Verrengia (Opening Music, Background Music #2)
Mike Damon (Map Screen, Game Over, Beat Mansion, Beat Game, Background Music 1 & 4)

Gianluca Verrengia's website:  http://www.gianlucaverrengia.com
Mike Damon's website:  http://www.virtualproductions.net/

ActionSoft logo and webpage design
Jeffrey Seibert  (www.ariossoftware.com)

Beta Testers
Alex Diener
Alan / Falcon
Brecon J
Bruno Lochet
Charles Wardlaw
Chris Doucette
Hans Jensen
Jeffrey Seibert
Jacob Vann
Justin Busch
Keith Bauer
Kjurtyl Lacasse
Larry Elseman
Mark Johns
Matthew Benfall
Max "Entarus" Van Sande
Olivier Scherler
Rose Cooper
Robert Rhode
Robert Kingswell 
Shalev NessAiver
Vince Tagle
William Griffin


Special Thanks to....
Jacob Vann - for his excitement and enthusiasm about Midnight Mansion, and for being willing to commit to providing artwork to an unknown developer. I feel like I've gotten to know Jacob over the several years we've worked together, and consider him as much a friend as he is a co-worker.

Alan Carr - Alan went above and beyond most level designers, in not only creating great mansions and testing them thoroughly, but also in finding many bugs in the game and suggesting ideas. It was great having Alan on the team.

Jeffrey Seibert - for his help with the web site and various related programming issues.

Karl Bunker - for helping me learn Mac programming many years ago, and for putting up with my many questions and silly ideas.

Anders Bjrklund - for his contributions to SpriteWorld, plus help making the animation run faster on MacOS X.

Ken Pajala - for his resolution dialog code.

Ben Haller - for providing valuable feedback.

Ricky Sharp and the other helpful folks on the carbon-dev mailing list - for helping me with the parts of Carbon development that aren't documented so well.