The Instant Teleport

[Kid Airbag]

Okay, several wads that I know of have the effect of the "instant teleport," where the player crosses a line and teleports without sound or sprites. This is most often used to convey the feeling of going up a flight of stairs to a higher floor without actually using 3d floors or room-over-room capabilities.

Now, my question is, is this possible to do in Vanilla Doom, and if so, what's the quickest/best way to go about doing it in WadAuthor?

[Biffy]

I'm pretty sure, but can only test it with zdoom. Below is from the boomref.txt. I opened a vanilla doom wad with WadAuthor, put in two lines, one near the player start, the other in an outside area. Then, one at a time, right click on those lines and "edit raw data". I set the type as 244 with an available tag number, same tag number for both lines. When you walk over the line, you are instantly and silently teleported to the other line.
My slight doubt is that doom2.exe may not recognize this extended teleport type, sorry I cannot test it.

Regular and Extended Teleport types
-------------------------------------------------------------------
# Class Trig Silent Mon Plyr Orient Dest

195 Ext SR No Yes Yes Set TP thing in tagged sector
174 Ext S1 No Yes Yes Set TP thing in tagged sector
97 Reg WR No Yes Yes Set TP thing in tagged sector
39 Reg W1 No Yes Yes Set TP thing in tagged sector

126 Reg WR No Yes No Set TP thing in tagged sector
125 Reg W1 No Yes No Set TP thing in tagged sector
269 Ext WR Yes Yes No Set TP thing in tagged sector
268 Ext W1 Yes Yes No Set TP thing in tagged sector

210 Ext SR Yes Yes Yes Preserve TP thing in tagged sector
209 Ext S1 Yes Yes Yes Preserve TP thing in tagged sector
208 Ext WR Yes Yes Yes Preserve TP thing in tagged sector
207 Ext W1 Yes Yes Yes Preserve TP thing in tagged sector

244 Ext WR Yes Yes Yes Preserve Line with same tag
243 Ext W1 Yes Yes Yes Preserve Line with same tag
263 Ext WR Yes Yes Yes Preserve Line with same tag (reversed)
262 Ext W1 Yes Yes Yes Preserve Line with same tag (reversed)

267 Ext WR Yes Yes No Preserve Line with same tag
266 Ext W1 Yes Yes No Preserve Line with same tag
265 Ext WR Yes Yes No Preserve Line with same tag (reversed)
264 Ext W1 Yes Yes No Preserve Line with same tag (reversed)

[Kid Airbag]

Thanks a bunch, Biffy. Doom2.exe doesn't seem to recognize it, but that's okay since the project I'm working on is running on ZDoom and other ports. I just don't know scripting, so I'm glad there's an easy way to go it. Thanks =)

[Erik]

it's kind of possible in vanilla doom, but it makes all the teleports like that...

just make the teleport sprite transparent and the sound completely silent.

[Mordeth]

It's not called 'instant' teleports, but 'silent' teleports. Meaning, they are teleports without sound or the flashy sprite. It's a Boom feature, and should be available to every other source port with Boom support.

See the editing tutorials here at Doomworld or the Boom documentation for more info.

You can do the same for vanilla Doom by eliminating the graphics and sound of the normal teleporters (by inserting dummy cyan graphics and an, er, soundless sound). The effect isn't as good as Boom's though, because Boom has line-to-line teleports, whereas vanilla Doom only has line-to-thing teleports. With line-to-line teleports you can preserve angle and speed of the incoming player, which makes it so much better suited for creating eg. 3D illusions.

Tip of the day: when creating a 3D illusion (eg. walking up curving stairs, teleporting player silently to the 'next floor') make sure the home and target sector are aligned to the grid in the same way. This way you avoid 'jumping' of the floor/ceiling textures when teleporting.

[Biffy]

One more thing, I recently noticed that zdoom has added power to the Boom line-line teleport. Now, the lines don't have to share a tag number, an identification number for the line is included as an argument as well as the destination line's ident. number. This way you can further control which line teleports where.

[Kid Airbag]

That line 244 thing seems to be working quite well, thanks guys!