Portal Tutorial

Austin Whitlatch — 2008-04-18T04:29:22+00:00

Earlier this week I was having issues with getting a portal system to work (player standing at X,Y and being transferred to X1,Y1). The idea and concept were simple enough, but a little daunting. This code will show you how I was able to implement and I hope it helps you guys out in your games as well.
NOTE: this implementation is only good for single player games.
Create a new file in the server folder called portalTrigger.cs.

$canTeleport = true;

This is a global variable that is used to denote when a player can travel through a portal. The reason for this is when traveling through a two way portal, the player needs a small amount of time (close to 1 second) to get out of the telepad so he his not teleported back and forth either infinitely or until the character ends up out of the portal range.

function resetTeleport()
{
   $canTeleport = true;
}

This function resets the global variable back to true. Used later in the code.

[code]
datablock TriggerData(PortalTrigger)
{
   tickPeriodMS = 100; //how many ms it ticks between checking when in trigger.
};

This code is taken directly from the default triggers.cs file. Just controls how often it will check. Here it is 1/10 of a second.

function PortalTrigger::onEnterTrigger(%this,%trigger,%obj)
{
   Parent::onEnterTrigger(%this,%trigger,%obj); //on enter trigger code
   if(%trigger.placement==1 && $canTeleport)
   {
      $canTeleport = false;
      schedule(1000, %obj, resetTeleport);
      echo(trigger2.getTransform());
      %obj.setTransform(trigger2.getTransform());
   }
   if(%trigger.placement==2 && $canTeleport)
   {
      $canTeleport = false;
      schedule(1000, %obj, resetTeleport);
      echo(trigger1.getTransform());
      %obj.setTransform(trigger1.getTransform());
   }
}

When the player enters the trigger, it finds out exactly which trigger it is on the map. I created a dynamic data field in the map called placement. Each portal has the naming standard of 'trigger' + number. The placement is the number, so trigger1 has placement = 1. Remember, for this code to work, you must put in these dynamic fields within The Torque World creator and saved in the specific *.mis file that you are working with. The schedule that is in the code is there to ensure that a player does not get teleported immediately upon entering the other portal that he was teleported to. It gives the player 1 second (which is plenty of time) to remove themselves from the portal.
%obj is in most cases your player (I haven't checked if throwing items through this portal will work, projectiles do not, but items may). %obj.setTransform is setting the players new position, in this case the position of the other portal.

I hope this helps some of you in your future games. I'd like to give special thanks to Lee and Aun for helping me out in a forum post I had a while ago. Thanks guys, its people like you that make the TGE community so great.

Please feel free to use this code as your own, I just hope someone finds it useful ;)

Blog for Austin Whitlatch at GarageGames.com

Portal Tutorial