Maniac Mansion Mouse Hack

[HonkeyKong]

I got bored a couple of days ago, and decided to hack Maniac Mansion for NES to work with a SNES mouse plugged into the second controller port. I've done some initial testing with Nestopia (which didn't seem to work correctly) and Mesen (which worked fine), as well as my MiSTer and NES, but only with a Hyperkin Hyper Click mouse.

As I'm too lazy to dig around in my closet for my original SNES mouse, I thought I'd share my hack here and see if anyone would be able to test the hack with their mouse. Even if you don't have a mouse, just testing in an emulator and seeing if the game is beatable would help, as it's probably been 30 years since I've played through this game. 😂

I've tested this one mostly on the uncensored patch, though it should work fine on the original ROM as well.

Maniac Mansion Mouse Hack V1

[HonkeyKong]

And I've already found a bug in it that causes the cursor to constantly move down and to the right when a controller is plugged into port 2. Here's a fix for that.

Maniac Mansion Mouse Hack v2

[AxlRocks]

Hey, very cool hack! I'll try to do a full run soon in Mesen and let you know if it works out, though I've never played Maniac Mansion before so may take a bit haha Any plans to do other NES point and clicks, like Shadowgate, Deja Vu? Just curious, I did a run of Shadowgate for the first time somewhat recently, definitely feel like it'd be a lot less of a chore to play if it had mouse support. Honestly surprised after all these years you're the first to add mouse support to an existing NES title, I think? Congrats! 

[Jorpho]

Honestly surprised after all these years you're the first to add mouse support to an existing NES title, I think?

I for one never even considered the possibility of plugging a SNES mouse into an NES.

[HonkeyKong]

Any plans to do other NES point and clicks, like Shadowgate, Deja Vu?

Funny you should mention that. Shadowgate is one of my favorite NES games, and I originally set out to hack that one, but it was a bit too difficult at first, so I moved over to Maniac Mansion. Now that I've got that going, I've gone back to Shadowgate, and have the point-and-click engine about halfway working with the mouse.

Clicking on actions and items works, as does saving with the mouse, but clicking on the map or inventory cards to change them doesn't work, so I still have to figure that part out.

[SegaMan89]

I love this.
EDIT: Is there an uncensored hack for Maniac Mansion on NES? 

[HonkeyKong]

Yep, right here.

[SegaMan89]

Yep, right here.

Thank you! 

[Asaki]

Now that I've got that going, I've gone back to Shadowgate, and have the point-and-click engine about halfway working with the mouse.

Niiice.
I posted this in the Beyond Shadowgate Discord, and the devs are a little bit geeked.

[HonkeyKong]

Awesome, I love hearing stuff like that. I got the Shadowgate hack into a playable state this morning, and decided to post a preview version here if you're interested in playing around with it.

[Alexb54]

This is so cool! Would a basic adapter work such as the ones sold by Misteraddons or Raphnet? I can't wait to try these with my SNES mouse after getting an adapter! Wonderful work, HonkeyKong.

[HonkeyKong]

I just looked at those adapters, and they seem like they're the same as a homemade adapter, so they should work fine.

[Imperator]

Is it possible to do on Deja Vu and Uninvited too?

[HonkeyKong]

I'm currently halfway through Deja Vu, and plan on tackling Uninvited next. 😁

[gzip]

This is a welcome hack. One request and one issue:

• Can you modify it so that right-click has the same action as select, which is to scroll through the common actions?
• The start and select buttons are now sluggish, requiring several presses before responding.

Fwiw, I'm testing on Mesen 2 and have the SNES mouse configured as port 2 and a normal controller in port 1.

[HonkeyKong]

I decided to hack together a new mouse driver while I was at it, since I've learned a bit more about working with the mouse since the first version of this hack. Hopefully this one works better.

Maniac Mansion Mouse Hack v3

This one has the right mouse button mapped to Select, so you can cycle through commands as requested. My only issue with this is that it means you can't fast-forward with the mouse like you could before, though I suppose if someone really wanted to skip the dialogue, they could just press B on the controller.

I haven't tested the controller issue yet, but the new driver should hopefully clear that up, since it injects the buttons into the input buffer, rather than just smacking the button value onto it.

[gzip]

This one has the right mouse button mapped to Select, so you can cycle through commands as requested. My only issue with this is that it means you can't fast-forward with the mouse like you could before, though I suppose if someone really wanted to skip the dialogue, they could just press B on the controller.

I haven't tested the controller issue yet, but the new driver should hopefully clear that up, since it injects the buttons into the input buffer, rather than just smacking the button value onto it.

I agree that losing mouse functionality for skip cutscene isn't ideal, but it is worth the tradeoff. Could always change the skip cutscene button to A or Select to get mouse control back. Maybe an optional patch.

The start and select sluggishness is now resolved with your latest patch.

Do you have source code available or are you editing hex directly? I'll probably put together a snarfblasm compatible version if there's no source available since I need to resolve a conflict with a hack I'm working on (I resolved it once in hex with your previous version but don't really want to do that again).

[HonkeyKong]

The start and select sluggishness is now resolved with your latest patch.

Do you have source code available or are you editing hex directly?

Glad to hear the sluggishness is gone. 😁
Not sure if you're asking whether I have the source code to the game, or for the mouse hack. I don't have game source code, I'm just hex editing the ROM. However, if the source code for the mouse hack itself would be useful, I can share that.

EDIT: I decided to go ahead and upload the source code. Who knows? Maybe someone else will find it useful for creating mouse hacks.
Maniac Mansion Mouse Hack Source

[gzip]

EDIT: I decided to go ahead and upload the source code. Who knows? Maybe someone else will find it useful for creating mouse hacks.
Maniac Mansion Mouse Hack Source

Yep, that's what I was asking for. Thanks! I guess ophis can't output a patch? You might want to try out snarfblasm.

[HonkeyKong]

Yeah, I definitely need to check that one out. I still patch my ROMs the old-fashioned way, with an assembler and a hex editor. It looks like it supports Ophis syntax, so maybe it won't take much modification to assemble with snarfblASM? Also, is there a Linux version of this, or do I need to use mono?