[Puzzle/Challenge] [KS+] Deep Freeze

The main mechanic of Deep Freeze is the "moving shift."  Essentially, you use a shift point, and you have a limited amount of time to carry that shift somewhere else before it actually teleports you.  This is done with a mix of a delayed, un-quantized shift and a trigger.  This does have its limits due to the way KS works, of course - while you can shift off-screen, you can't carry a shift off-screen.

Putting the player in a room akin to Do Not Pick Up The Key's Room of Doom, with no escape and constant danger, in which they have to stay alive until the shift whips them away.
Out of interest, is it possible to override a timed shift with another shift? In other words, if you're waiting for a shift to count down, can you cancel it by using a different shift? I really ought to be less lazy and try these things out for myself.

Yeah, you can override one timed shift with another, or even one timed shift with itself.  I'm hoping people won't accidentally "double-tap" the shifts too often, since it makes the timer sound effect play twice, and, well... it doesn't sound very good at all.  There are a few other issues with the timer sound, as well - it continues to play even after the player dies, and if the timer is of the longest length, there's a good chance that it could interfere with them hearing another timer, so they're forced to either wait or deal with two simultaneous timer sounds.  Similarly, even though the player can't actually carry shifts offscreen, the timer will still keep going even after the player leaves a given screen.  Another issue I've noticed seems like it has to do with how many sound effects KS can handle at a time - with the longer timers, they'll occasionally get cut off either on the last "tick" (which is when the player teleports, so it's inconsequential) or two ticks beforehand (so I can't have situations where the player uses this long timer and then has to be in an extremely specific vertical spot, because that requires precise timing).  There are a number of limitations and quirks, but the idea's so fun to work with and changes the pace of a KS level so uniquely that it's worth it, I feel.  It's got a lot of the feeling of Monocromatica Grotta, but the player has more control of when to initiate that "rush" rather than being under constant pressure, so it's more suited for extended levels and thoughtful puzzles.

My application of the shift carry, at its core, is more focused on finding somewhere to use the shift, activating it, and then moving to that point.  Observe, plan, execute is the rhythm that drives most of this level.  Your idea - surviving a dangerous room - was something that I considered, but ultimately decided wasn't really something that would "gel" with the rest of the level design (and I doubted I could do very well, anyway).  That said, your idea is likely a better fit for Knytt Stories' enemy design philosophy than what I'm doing.  Since almost all enemies have randomized movement, attack patterns, attack spreads, or some mix of the three, I have to be very picky about which enemies I place into the level.  An inconsistent challenge with the shift carry could be extremely frustrating, since the player doesn't have time to wait and adjust their plan.  However, when the enemies are treated less as complex obstacles, and more as active threats that the player has to be constantly avoiding, this can work - randomized enemy design keeps the player on their toes, instead of memorizing a specific strategy which can get boring when you're waiting for something to go off.

Okay, so it turns out you can't override one timed shift with another.  I'm not sure why I thought you could.  I ended up testing it out recently, and the first shift was the only one to activate.  I still wish you could "stack" shifts, but I guess I'll just have to make my own game for that.  

I'm not sure if any of the sound issues you were having were actual bugs. On re-reading about them, I think you're just overtaxing the engine. There are about 20 sound channels for general sounds. Some things like character movement and music have reserved channels. Shift sounds have to share the general channels. Each time a sound is started it plays on the next channel after the one used by the last sound that started. After all 20 channels have been used it loops back to the beginning. This means that if 19 other sounds play before your shift sound finishes, then the next sound will cut it off.

I could program KS+ to check if a channel has finished playing before allowing another sound to play on it, but I'm afraid this would make all sounds hesitate. That would be very bad.

As for double taps making double sounds, try using a Sign to activate a Trigger and a Shift. Leave the first message blank. Put in a second message, it doesn't matter what is says, it wont be seen. Use the Trigger to make the the sound and delete the Sign. Use the Shift to do whatever you want the Shifts do in this level. You will be limited to a single activation.

Throughout that particular section (and probably future sections as well, since I haven't designed quite so far ahead), there are gates which automatically take away the hologram upon Juni running through them, then place the hologram somewhere else (generally on the same screen).  I really like how this pans out in terms of level design, because it means I can take the same screen and approach it multiple ways - before Juni loses the hologram, after Juni loses the hologram, and after Juni regains the hologram.  It also generally means that I have to bottleneck the player; because of the fact that the hologram is spawned by a trigger, I need to ensure that the player picks it up before they continue to the next screen, or else it'll disappear when the player returns.  There are a lot of locations in this level that cannot be traversed backwards, and if the player somehow managed to miss the hologram and pass into the next screen, they could possibly lock themselves into an unwinnable condition.  Though, now that I think of it, I could probably just place a hologram object wherever the trigger spawns it, and if the player manages to get past the hologram, it should be there when they return to the previous screen....