I finally finished my special edition of “Mansion of Insmouse”, which I created using InsmEdit, an Insmouse No Yakata editor, the download and discussion for which can be found here:

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=18450#forumpost18450

The name of my special version of the game is “Mansion of Insmouse: Mario Madness Edition”, and the reason for the name is that each of the level layouts looks like a character from Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, or 3, or Super Mario World.

The download for this game, which is attached to this post, is already ready for play on a Virtual Boy using a FlashBoy or FlashBoy Plus, or you can also play it on your Virtual Boy emulator of choice.

I’ve also included a full level map guide attached to this post, which gives the password for each and every level of this special version of the game and which will also help you get those target times for each level of the game.

Special thanks to Matej Horvat for making the user friendly level editor (such things have to be user friendly in order for me to be able to use them ;-), and also special thanks to my brother Greg, who made a patch to create a simple title screen for this special edition of the game, which you will see on the first screen, in place of that much disregarded “Read Instruction and Precaution Booklets Before Operating” screen.

Attachments:

1. mansion-of-insmouse-mario-madness-edition.zip
2. mansion-of-insmouse-mario-madness-edition.pdf

Just ran through a few levels on my FB+; it feels like a whole new experience having mario themed mazes.
Most importantly, it is rather enjoyable! Commendable work! 🙂

Great work, Ben! Due to the large levels, this game plays a bit different than the original. Your first premise is to find the goal as fast as possible while you’re rushing through the large levels. I always tried to avoid fights with monsters because it would’ve cost too much time. Feels a bit like madness indeed. 😉

One request: could you please post the patch file itself, so I can add that to the site?

Yeah… I like how it all worked out in the end. The levels have less monsters than the original levels, but they are larger in size as you mentioned, plus there are less ways to go around the monsters than in the original, so you are forced to confront them more often than in the original. Thus, I think the larger sizes of levels and the less alternate routes help balance out the fact that there are less monsters in total, but I’d actually have to try to get Ending A to know for sure, which I haven’t tried to do yet. I think getting Ending A in this version should be easier than getting it in the original, but I won’t know until I actually try. 😉

Okay, there are two different patches that must be applied, in order to get the full game. The one is the title patch for the initial title screen, and the other is the patch for the new levels. I’ll include both of them here.

Attachments:

1. mario-madness-title-patch.ips

I’ve played a few levels only to find that ASUN (layout 13) has no exit! But other than that, it’s pretty good. My only complaint is that because of the nature of the layouts, you have to turn very often and that causes you to lose time – this is why the Insmouse layouts mostly have straight corridors, even in levels such as JAZZ. I’ll include a level time editing feature in InsmEdit 1.1 to reduce this problem a little.

Do you think it would be useful to be able to put IPS patches into IMP patches?

HorvatM wrote:
I’ve played a few levels only to find that ASUN (layout 13) has no exit!…

Doh!… Attached are the new files, which now allow for all levels to have exits (I double-checked to make sure all the other levels have exits)

Do you think it would be useful to be able to put IPS patches into IMP patches?

Oh yes… I think that would be very useful. If you like the idea of the first screen being able to be used for a simple title screen for any person’s new edition of the game, perhaps the next version of InsmEdit could allow a person to input their own title and name into the first screen of the game.

Attachments:

1. mario-madness-title-patch-1.ips
2. mansion-of-insmouse-mario-madness-edition-1.zip

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
If you like the idea of the first screen being able to be used for a simple title screen for any person’s new edition of the game, perhaps the next version of InsmEdit could allow a person to input their own title and name into the first screen of the game.

Maybe. But I know where many of the charsets and charmaps are, so it shouldn’t be any more difficult to edit the actual title screen. I think it would be very cool to have a full graphics editor in InsmEdit, but version 1.1 will only add IPS support, player direction editing, and level time editing, because it will take too long to release otherwise and I think your patch would benefit from those features.

I also made a level scheme for the new edition of the game, which lets one easily see which routes must be taken to get to certain levels from the start of the game.

Attachments:

1. mansion-of-insmouse-mario-madness-edition-level-scheme.pdf

Just been giving this a go and what can i say, Great stuff Ben. Job well done!

HorvatM wrote:
My only complaint is that because of the nature of the layouts, you have to turn very often and that causes you to lose time – this is why the Insmouse layouts mostly have straight corridors, even in levels such as JAZZ. I’ll include a level time editing feature in InsmEdit 1.1 to reduce this problem a little.

I don’t know about anybody else, but I have been having an easy time beating all of the current target times in this version, and I’ve been playing it on an emulator with controls that are far worse than the Virtual Boy’s controls. Granted, I know all of the level layouts, so it makes it easier for me to run through the game quickly, but once a person is familiar with the layouts and/or uses the level map guide to help go through the levels quickly, the current target times should be easy to get. Obviously, the shape of each character is what dictated all of the many turns that must be made within each level, but I think the fact that it is harder to go through the corridors because of the many turns balances out the fact that there are less monsters in the levels to try to stop you. So the game challenges you in a different way than the original game challenged you, which makes for a very different gaming experience, and I like that. Since I’ve been having an easy time beating all of the original target times, I don’t plan to change them, but if you do make a new version of InsmEdit, especially if you can find out a way to edit the monster positions, I will very likely make an entirely new version of the game again.

Thanks VBmills for the compliments. 🙂

I like how this project developed. Did you ever consider changing sprites and music to make it a even more unique experience? It sounds like Greg has the skills to pull something like that of.

It would be really cool if it had eerie Mario-type music. That would really help complete what I was going for.

As for my brother, he is currently working on his own homebrew title for the Virtual Boy, and since I’ve already asked him to do so much for me, I was going to give him a request break so that he can do what he has wanted to do for a long time. He has wanted to make his own video game for a while, but he always figured that his first one would be for the PC, but now thanks to my requests, it looks like his first one is going to be for the Virtual Boy! 🙂

But yeah… I’ll keep your idea in the back of my mind for a possible future request once he’s made and released his first game, which might not be for who knows how long, though, so don’t expect anything too soon.

I’d like to see it sprite hacked to feel like a “Luigi’s Mansion” for VB.

http://www.gamehiker.com/wiki/index.php?title=Enemies_in_Luigi’s_Mansion
All the villians for inspiration.

It would be amazing!

Obvious gratitude for this project. Exceptional stuff.

Naturally I am stoked to be playing more of this classic game.

Can we use this as a springboard for something with Wolf3D skins/pics? Or what not?

I love the Inns game engine, its works so well on VB. So more of the same wouldn’t be a bad thing for me. My ‘thing’ is stuff like Wolf3D or something atmospheric.

Can something be done with the map screen/shooting element or am I getting too far ahead of myself? lol…

Seriously this is awesome stuff and of course I can only say thanks as everyone else has done.

Appreciate the effort and love that has gone into this!

Nice one!

I was wondering what characters from the Mario universe would be perfect as replacement sprites for the actual monsters in the game. The characters from Luigi’s Mansion would, indeed, be perfect for that. Unfortunately, I myself don’t have the artistic capabilities to make complex sprites like that, but I’m sure others on here like Virtual_Ben would. Of course, if a programmer can find the sprites of the monsters in the game and design a patch to replace them with sprites of choice, there would be any number of possibilities for different enemy types. I’m not a programmer, so I can’t say for sure, but I think changing the sprites isn’t too difficult, while changing how the enemies behave would be much more difficult. Can a programmer on here verify that to be correct?

It could also be House of the Dead or Resident Evil… the ideas are endless.

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
Of course, if a programmer can find the sprites of the monsters in the game and design a patch to replace them with sprites of choice, there would be any number of possibilities for different enemy types. I’m not a programmer, so I can’t say for sure, but I think changing the sprites isn’t too difficult, while changing how the enemies behave would be much more difficult. Can a programmer on here verify that to be correct?

The monster charset begins at 663801 (decimal, starting with 1). I don’t know where the appropriate BGMaps are, but there are eight contiguous BGMaps beginning at 758009, which are loaded near the start of the game, so maybe one of them affects the monsters. However, remember that the monsters are made of parts – they can move their claws and they explode to bits when they die – so replacing their graphics will be harder than replacing normal sprites.

In my opinion, a more interesting hack would be to give each level or group of levels its own texture set (there is a lot of unused space in the ROM). The charset for the standard texture set begins at 696569, so we can use it as a template, and I already know where the level loading routine is, so it could be hacked to load a new texture set for each level.

I see, we’ll that’s saddening. I was hoping to see the games with changed sprites. :/

HorvatM wrote:
In my opinion, a more interesting hack would be to give each level or group of levels its own texture set

How complex could the textures be? Or what all textures would be able to be implemented?

You could replace how the walls, floor, and ceiling look, but since they are mostly solid colors, there’s not much you could do.

I wonder how good it would look if something like the brick texture from the Bowser levels of Super Mario Bros. would replace the current plain walls.

Attachments:

1. 

   brick-texture.bmp