Murder Mansion

by SuperSaiyanGokuX
Murder Mansion
Not for the faint of heart...
ID:1315303
 
I figured I would make a few posts discussing the changes and improvements I've made to the game (at least to the best of my ability to recall everything that I've done so far)

The truth is, I've touched on virtually every aspect of the game. Art, programming, gameplay, sound (to a small extent), interface, and everything in between.

First up for discussion/preview, is the least important of the above; the art.

I've always been proud of the art in Murder Mansion (especially after I finally replaced the original black-and-gray placeholder player icons), but there's always room for improvement, so a portion of my update work has been spent giving it a little facelift. I noticed a couple of glaring problems that I (hopefully) have corrected. One is that many of the icons in the game looked very much like plastic. Second of which is that some colors were way off (I don't know if I had a bad monitor when I originally drew the icons but, for instance, the wood all had a sort of purple tone to it...)

So I've gone through the art, almost icon-by-icon, and tweaked everything.

Much of this was accomplished through the application of some quick-n-dirty texturing by overlaying a semi-transparent pattern over the existing icon (for instance, I made a woodgrain transparency, then plastered it over almost every wood surface in the game)

Of course, I did a lot of other, more hands-on, pixel-by-pixel graphical editing while I was at it.

But anyway, I'll pepper in some screenshots now...


A shot of the new title screen. Nothing fancy here. Just some added "stone" texture to the background, some of the flickering "attic" lights around the edge to give it that little extra something, improvements to some HUD buttons (I'm not sure how I ended up with a brownish color instead of dark red, but that's fixed!)

Also note that I've even made some improvements to the text output. I'll probably discuss those later, but it mostly involves changing some font sizes to make certain output stand out, adding better colors, etc.


And here we are in the front room of the Mansion. Here you can see what I mentioned above. The wood is no longer purple-ish, and it has a woodgrain texture. I believe I had already added the carpeting texture in the currently released version, so that might not be new. But I've also added a very faint texturing to the walls, corrected the bearskin rug colors, and given doors and windows the same lighting gradiant that the walls have always had.


Regular players will recall the screenshot that has been on the MM main page for years, of a murder scene in the kitchen. Well, the above screenshot shows a before and after of that area. I *just* took the before shot in the image above from the currently released version (I just ran the game briefly from the hub page to get that shot)

To the right, we have the After shot. Immediately noticeable, of course, is that I've increased the view by 4 tiles. But this comparison also shows off the improvements to surface textures and colors (especially the horrid furniture...)

Also note the liquids on the floor. The blood has been tweaked a little, but the water has been tweaked a lot. There's something else special about these two substances, but it falls under another topic for another day... :)

Last thing about this image is that the players now have a shadow! I added a 32-pixel-diameter circular shadow under the players, to make them stand out, and to offer a larger target to click on.


And a few more for the road. You may recognize the first one as the one I posted a few days ago. The second is just a shot of a casual stroll across the balcony that now lines the front of the Mansion (from the gold bedroom's second floor, over to the old balcony off of the game room). Hey look! Footprints are now directional, instead of generic dots! And the third, I'm currently getting beaten with a fire poker (hence the read "pain" screen fade; but that's been in the game for years now), but wait... That place sure doesn't look familiar...
The game looks nice and interesting.
Oh, I can't wait to play this with people again. And the art overall is much improved. Good job.
Will the Gramophone in the Clue map do something now? >:
In response to CodeWeasel22
No, not this time around. Well...maybe. :)

There's a spot in my To-Do list with stuff like that (I had planned on eventually making a lot of things interactive in at least a small way; the board and table games in the Mansion game room, the stereo in the Mansion, bookshelves with readable books, etc.), but it's a section I've labeled as "possible additions", because they're things that I keep pushing down to add in other things that seem to be more important.

So it's definitely something that I want to do (even if each of these items ends up just getting an animation and random sound effect when you click on them; like the arcade machines in the game room), but I'm currently at a point in this update where "feature creep" will kill me...lol (I know that if I start doing this, I'll wind up doing more and more and getting buried)

If I manage to wrap up everything else that I want to do, and can afford to put off the release for a little longer by that point, then I might just get this done. But, I don't currently plan on it being a part of this update.
Hey, I can get you a link to some well transferred music that fits well with MM; http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/2000/2145/ cusb-cyl2145d.mp3 It's in MP3 format, but it's excellent music; Gounod's Funeral March for a Marionette. You already included Danse Macabre, which is awesome.
Yut Put wrote:
The main issue I've always had with this game is that it lacks accessibility. It's understandable, but someone entering the game who has never played before will likely be turned off by awkward controls and the -extremely- annoying camera.

Drove off a few people I tried to talk into playing it.


durrrr
Thanks for the suggestion, CodeWeasel22! I don't really want to add BGM in .mp3 format (mostly because my inner OCD hates the idea of having the music in mixed formats, so I'd then have to upgrade the rest of the songs to .mp3 versions (if available).

However, I did find some midi versions, so I'll pick the one I like the best and stick that one in there; the song most commonly known as Alfred Hitchcock's theme definitely deserves a place in MM!

Now, speaking of the annoying camera:

No, it is not going away. I've always felt that the game all but *requires* a limited view behind your character's back, to allow for sneak attacks and such.

There are other ways to accomplish this (most notably would be to keep the player centered, but obscure the tiles behind him with screen objects), but I'm not a fan of anything else I could think up. (for instance, the before-mentioned use of screen object view blocking ends up wasting a lot of screen "real estate". I also want a large view in front of the player; so to use this method, but still have the same view in front of the player, I would have to increase the total view by too large of a number of tiles)

However!

Even the "annoying" camera has been made a little less annoying.

My intention with it has always been that it would stop moving as you approached an opaque object (generally, the walls). It will try to always move ahead of your player, but it will stop its movement once you close in on something that you can't see past.

In the previous version of the game, this system didn't work quite the way I intended, and it wound up jumping the camera back and forth as you approached a wall.

Well, in the update, that jerkiness has been fixed. The camera now stops dead at the wall as you near it. No more jumping.

However, there is still the potential disorienting movement of the camera when you change directions (and likely always will be, as this is basically unavoidable). The camera must move from X number of tiles ahead of you in your current direction, to X number of tiles ahead of you along your next direction. I made a few attempts to alleviate that (for example, I tried it out having the camera move first to your location, and then move on to the next place after a few ticks, and I also tried having it only move once you've made two consecutive steps in any direction, so that someone "zig-zagging" doesn't have their camera bouncing around with every step; but those didn't work out quite right)

I realize that the camera in MM does turn off a lot of players (it's been one of the biggest complaints since day one), but I am very strongly opposed to removing or replacing the system. I'll do everything I can to make it smoother and less disorienting, but the camera moving ahead of you will always remain.
In response to Rushnut
HA! Excellent catch!

The perils of making HUD layout changes, but neglecting to update instruction text.
In response to SuperSaiyanGokuX
Oh man Alfred Hitchcock. Can I please add you to friends?
The way the camera works is necessary for the game's atmosphere. Besides, nobody has eyes on the back of their head. Sorry it's just a fact.
In response to CodeWeasel22
CodeWeasel22 wrote:
The way the camera works is necessary for the game's atmosphere. Besides, nobody has eyes on the back of their head. Sorry it's just a fact.

(Yes they don't know about me heheheh) Yeah of course nobody has eyes behind their head.
I'd host but no one is ever able to connect to my games...
In response to CodeWeasel22
Well, technically, the only aspect that is necessary for the atmosphere is somehow preventing/blocking/obscuring the view behind you. I chose the camera movement to do this, but there are other methods (some I mentioned above, another that Yut Put suggests, and probably several other alternatives)

So the camera movement isn't technically necessary (if I were to replace it with something else that performed the same function of preventing you from seeing behind your back)

Personally, I've never had a problem with it. This might be partially due to my style of movement (I don't zig-zag; I walk in as straight of a line as possible until I need to turn, so my camera doesn't jump back and forth a whole lot), or maybe I've just grown used to it, or whatever else. And I know that I shouldn't be like "it doesn't bother me, so it shouldn't bother anyone else!", but to be honest, that's partly how I feel...lol

However, I know that it does bother some people, and even drives off potential players, so I'm not completely against changing it, if I ever settle on a suitable alternative, and have the motivation/time to replace the current system (it's tied into a few other aspects of the game, so swapping it out is more of an undertaking than it would seem)

But like I said before, I've made some tweaks to it that will make it steadier, and perhaps make it at least bearable to those that are so put off by it...lol
I was working on generating/uploading some current screenshots to the MM hub page, so I was going through my files in various locations, and taking some new shots, etc. And I looked at the old MM website which hasn't been updated with new shots since the first version of the game was released. And with every major version since then, I've had a habit of taking a particular screenshot in roughly the same location. Well, here I have 4 of them gathered together in order of appearance. Wow.