Waterfall Ambiguity

[Vhati]

Prime Bbcode Spoiler Show Prime Bbcode Spoiler: There's no indication that a timer puzzle begins when...

you deploy the Penguin, which will soon get you killed. This looks similar to the walking death animation. Without a narrator cue or something, players who see the ladder won't recognize they still have a functioning HAND to grab it.

And in the message after climbing up:
"You climb up the manhole cover and close it behind you, as to not draw any attention to your do-abouts."
Since 'do-abouts' isn't a word, 'infiltration', 'tresspass' or 'antics' might work better.

[olzen]

Yes, there are a couple of deaths in the game that come from nowhere, and will leave you wondering what you did wrong. But this no bug - it just wouldn't be Space Quest without such deaths.

At least we got rid of some of the more frustrating ones, and you've got a "Try again"-button if you didn't save

EDIT: Oh, I forgot your mention of the word "do-about." While it is definitely more of an idiom than a real word, I wouldn't count that as a bug either, I'm afraid.

[mjomble]

Technically not bugs, yes, but still valid concerns
And we don't really have a better place on the forum for these. "Bugs" was just a more convenient title than "Bugs and typos and other things like that which may not technically be bugs"

I think the waterfall issue is less about dying and more about frustration, confusion and a lack of response for having solved half the puzzle (by using the penguin). I brought the same issue up during development, but ultimately we decided to not mess further with it. Because I brought up a lot of these and it would've taken us another year to tweak everything

[olzen]

I find this is a bit like Kerona in Space Quest I or Phleebhut in Space Quest III. Any dangerous location in the original games, basically. The first time you're playing these games, there's no way of knowing where you can walk and where you can't. Suddenly, you'll find yourself being eaten by some monster that came out of nowhere. If you didn't save, tough luck.

That's basically what you get when you go for Space Quest, but again, the "Try again"-feature and the elimination of dead-ends will hopefully take some of the sting out of the issue for most players.

[Vhati]

Er, no. Not what I meant. The death is totally expected and enjoyable.

The confusing thing is that this animation is very much like the non-interactive death from walking down the slope.
And there's no narrator saying "This maneuver's gonna be tricky. Better grab hold of something," or some such to coyly let players know the HAND works during this sequence. Being similar, it looks as if using the penguin will definitely get you killed, period.

Edit:
On Klorox II in SQ5, the villain said "Now try and dodge my death loogies, monkey boy!" on top of the death message: "Nice reflexes. Try ducking next time."

SQ3's conveyor into the shredder and SQ4's Sea Slug didn't say anything, but they offered a significant delay to notice actions could still be taken (4.5s and 12s).

In SQ4(SQ1) there was a noise and Roger changed posture before angry bikers tried to run him over. Failure to jump out of the way got a "Nice reflexes!" remark.

Most other act-now-or-die events involved a thing leisurely approaching Roger.

[pcj]

I'm changing the death message when you die when using the penguin. Hopefully that should help a bit.