Odd Question

If you add a fail-able condition to a pre-mission (say, a time limit), and fail it, what happens?

You got me curious. Here's what happens: the stage will fail much like within an actual mission, what's interesting is when you decide whether or not you want to retry. If you say yes: the game will enter an endless loading screen while playing the level's ambience in the background. What's odder is it's a loading screen I'm not familiar with:


But here's where it gets really interesting, if you say you don't want to retry: the mission automatically starts like normal. Not the pre-mission, the mission itself. The more you know!

Thanks for testing. Those are rather strange effects. Regarding the loading screen, I once got stick on a screen exactly like that when the game crashed on me; I also see it after selecting a memory card in the prototype.

Very interesting. I've actually got this LOADING screen before stuck like that, it happened to me when there was a vehicle parked close to a "death trigger" and pressed the button to get in the vehicle but instead the player character fell in water before he/she entered in the car.

This bug actually happened to me first time as a kid, when I was messing around in level 3. I was at Camp Krusty and parked my vehicle close to the water, then when I tried to get in vehicle, Lisa fell in water before she got in vehicle and game got stuck in the loading screen like that.

Possibly a loading screen used when the game has no idea what to do?

Yes, that's what I'm thinking. The idea is the character is supposed to teleport inside car (this behavior can also be seen when trying to get the bonus vehicle in Level 6, Bart can fall down while trying to enter the vehicle and a second later he will be teleported inside car) but since the character will fall down in water, he is already supposed to appear on land. But the game gets confused when doing both things (trying to enter in a car and or trying to respawn from the dangerous place). I know sounds quite confusing as I can tell what happens exactly but I just have a hard time explaining.

Actually for the teleporting inside car feature, this can also happen if something blocks the character while trying to enter in the car, the iris transition will happen and character will appear in the vehicle. This feature is very useful as it can save time if done right (which is why most people, myself included, will just hop on top of the car and enter, to skip entering animation) but it was also done to prevent the player getting stuck. Just think at the example I gave above with the secret car in Level 6, if Bart fell down before he got in the vehicle, he would get stuck down there if it weren't for that teleporting feature.