Teleporting multiple people at once Created 18 years ago2005-11-07 01:58:36 UTC by Ichthyosaur

Greetings, at last my long silence has been broken!
I?ve have been very bogged down with, well life, and have just had some time recently to sit down and continue some work on a map I thought I?d never have the chance to work on again. It is great to see that the level of discussion hasn?t been reduced in the months of late.

Anyhow, I do have a question for the knowledgeable bunch here, regarding the teleport entity. As I experimented with the transported it became clear almost immediately that it was designed with the idea that it would only transport one person at a time. Now this is all well and good most of the time, however my level has a Stargate stile ring system that transports a person form one set of rings to a corresponding set in another part of the level. The problem is that if more than one person get in the rings, well, lets just say Scotty would have a field day trying to clean up the mess.

I would really like to be able to transport more than one person at a time because the rings are the only way form one location to another. If there is a team trying to get through, well, one at a time isn?t fun.

Is there a way to transport 2-4 people in a given area to another given area while keeping their original positions in the rings? Or perhaps would it be possible to key a transport node to 2 or more destinations, (inside the rings), so people don?t end up inside each other?

As always any help is appreciated. My thanks to you guys and keep up the good work.

Surely you could just have several teleports? If not, you can certainly disable teleporters, so you could have several in the same place, decide which to disable and enable with some complicated entity work, and teleport a bunch of people. I doubt you'll be able to get them coming out in the same positions, though.

You could also separate serveral teleports into pie slices. Like so..Each pie slice would be a seperate trigger_teleport. Give each of them a different target and it should work.

I've got several possible solutions running through my mind.

One would be to temporarily disable the teleporter once someone has entered it to prevent the Scotty problem.

However, since you want teams to quickly go through the teleporters, I think my second idea is better: changing the destination of the teleporter once somebody has run through it using the trigger_changetarget entity. Using this method you can place players next to each other without need for nasty surgeons.

Probably not in the same order, though.

If you used Spirit, you could move the trigger_teleport across the line of players and change the target as you went. That could keep the right order.

Order isn't that important as long as it works, don't you think? At least it's better than getting stuck inside each other and it allows fast team movement.

But wait a second... this is the Source section... in that case, look for the Local Destination Landmark propertie of the trigger_teleport. This allows you to pick an entity as a reference, and teleport players to the info_teleport_desination with the same offset as they hasd to that reference entity when they teleported. That should prevent getting stuck in each other and keeping the same order for the players as well.

hmm yeah, it might work, i have been trying to make a teleport for multiple ppl too for a long time. this should be made a tuturial tbh

Thanks for your input guys, I have experimented with the pie system in the past and it sortof worked. The displacemnt landmark is an interesting idea and I will have to play with it some time. Unfortunaly right now everytime I compile a map, hl2 crashes. I think it has to do with the vis, I'm to sure anyhow untill i get that sorted out I'll just have to wait on the teleporter.

Have you tried the displacemnt system captain_p? I would really like to hear back from someone who has tried it.

Thanks for your time.

This is just a follow-up on my question earlier. I did try the displacement landmark and it worked like a charm. I used info_target entities at the base of the transporter pads and used them to displace the objects being transported from the center. This is one of the rare moments where a mapper doesn?t have to settle for less because Hammer doesn?t like what they are trying to do.

This is definitely tutorial worthy. It wouldn?t be too hard to write one up or draw some diagrams in paint or something. If you want to know more about it I could post a more detailed account of what I did to make it work and the ?test level? that I used.

Thanks a lot guys, especially the good captain, all it takes sometimes is a new way of looking at an old problem.

I think an Example Map would be good... not really long enough to be a tutorial.

Too simple for a tutorial, though a tutorial or article on the concept of landmark entities (since the idea is used for level changes as well as teleporting now) might be appropriate.

An example map is probably a good idea, but about example maps, they're organized quite lousy right now. Were you planning a better system for them specifically for TWHL3, Seventh? Sorting on subject or a sort of category system for them like the tutorials section?

Yeah, categories, and a proper listing page, with them only listed vertically, with screenshots and descriptions. Like the Awards page, but smaller pictures and less text. Categorised. Oh, and pre-moderated, I imagine.