QFG4 floppy: Great hall eavesdropping door actions are all lies

[Vhati]

ScummVM 2.1.0git3871-ga37e388304 (Nov 8 2018 04:22:23)
Windows 7 64bit
QFG4 Floppy 1.1a + note patch (English)

In a castle stairway (room 627) that leads to the great hall's right entrance (where hero is expected to eavesdrop from, one screen north of the crypt passage bookshelf)...

Clicking HAND on the door brings up a menu that gets everything wrong.

• An initial message as the door is approached.
  • "You hear voices beyond the upper door. Two people seem to be having an argument in the next room."
    • (This message persists after eavesdropping is over, when nobody's in there.)
• Listen at door
  • "You carefully open the door just a little so you can hear better and look through the crack."
    • (No oil): "The rusty hinges give out a SQUEAK as you open it."
      • (Hero fully walks into great hall and is killed by Ad Avis.)
        • "You've been tried and fried on charges of failing to have looked before you leapt."
        • (The death message complains about recklessness, when clearly the hero was trying to peek. Clicking EYE doesn't justify the message either, "There is a door at the top of the stairs.")
    • (Oiled, haven't eavesdropped):
      • Cutscene.
    • (Oiled, have eavesdropped):
      • (Hero FULLY walks into an empty room. The above messages are wrong about the voices AND merely peeking.)
• Open door
  • "Ignoring the voices, you fling the door open and stride through into the castle's great hall."
    • (Hero does not walk through.)
    • (This message persists after eavesdropping is over, when nobody's in there.)
    • (This would have fit with the death message, had this action been fatal.)
• Knock on door
  • "Very polite of you. The door opens to your knock and you step on through."
    • (Hero does not walk through.)
    • (This would have fit with the death message, had this action been fatal.)

I thought I intermittently got a "Pick lock" option. Nevertheless, clicking the thief's toolkit on the door has the effect I remember. It acts like "Listen at door", except always with the SQUEAK (even if you did oil it), followed by - depending on oil - the cutscene or death... or an empty room if eavesdropping already happened.


Compare to the menu from the haunted stairway leading to the great hall's upper entrance. That one demonstrates empty room responses because it never allows eavesdropping. I walked all the way around to the haunted door when I knew I *could* have eavesdropped at the first one.

• Open door
  • (Hero walks in.)
• Knock on door
  • You politely knock on the door. Fortunately, there is no response.
• Listen at door
  • You put your ear up against the door and listen. You don't hear anything.
• Pick lock
  • (Hero walks in.)
• Peer through keyhole
  • Peering through the keyhole, you see no threatening activity on the other side of the door.

I'm not familiar with the cutscene prereqs to reproduce this.

With the original intrepreter and CD edition under ScummVM, I did some spot checks that showed the problem door is indeed /sometimes/ capable of empty room responses, similar to the haunted stairway. The cutscene wasn't available, and I don't remember if I'd seen it already in those runs. They weren't rigorous enough to be diagnostic.

File - 5kb MD5 - Full MD5

RESOURCE.000 - f64fd6aa3977939a86ff30783dd677e1 - ff42260a665995a85aeb277ad80aac8a
RESOURCE.MAP - d10a4cc177d2091d744e2ad8c049b0ae - 3695b1b0a1d15f3d324ea9f0cc325245
RESOURCE.SFX - 3cf95e09dab8b11d675e0537e18b499a - 7c858d7253f86dab4cc6066013c5ecec

[Vhati]

SavedGame (Floppy) - Eavesdropping door

[Vhati]

SavedGame (Floppy) - Haunted door

[sluicebox <22204938+sluicebox@…>]

In aab22041:

SCI32: Fix QFG4 Great Hall argument door

Fixes a large number of script bugs surrounding the door to
the argument between Katrina and Ad Avis in the great hall.
This fixes floppy-only bugs, CD regressions, and message
responses which were broken in all versions.

As part of this, the audio for two messages is now available
in the CD version for the first time.

Bug #10799

[sluicebox]

What is it with these Katrina / Ad Avis scenes?

I've fixed all the messages and the floppy options which didn't open the door.

The puzzle rules are unchanged, even though I don't think it works the way it's supposed to. From the death messages, it appears that the original intent was to require oiling the hinges and selecting "Listen at Door". If you don't oil, then they hear the hinges and kill you. If you oil and barge in or knock, it doesn't matter that you oiled, they see you and kill you. That makes sense and sounds like typical Sierra rules, but that's not what they programmed, instead it only matters if you oiled the hinges. The only difference between how you enter the room is which death message you get if you didn't oil.

That seems wrong to me, but that's the way it is, and it would be editorializing to change that. It could be deliberate and I don't think it could even be safely changed without creating edge cases.