Scripting a Teleporter


	Take the default room and stretch it out to about 100 units wide. Place a powerup (any powerup will do) at the right side of the room (from any angle, just make sure you remember where you put "right"). Name the powerup "to here." Place a clutter object (any one of reasonable size) to the left of the room. Name it "teleporter" and make sure there is about 50 units of space between the clutter and the powerup.

Now We Script

Open up DALLAS and place a blank script. This will be the level start script. Have it so when the level starts it ghosts the "to here" object. That way you don't pick up the powerup when you teleport to it (you may want to change that in certain levels).

Make a new script, this one will do that actual teleporting. Name it "teleporter." Set the owner to the clutter object teleporter. The event should be collided with [it]. Have the condition define [IT] so that [IT] is a player. Now the trickier part.

The actions must be in order, or the script might not work correctly. First, go under the objects area of the scripting actions and select "store [object] position in position clipboard." Set the object to "to here."

This means that Descent 3 has memorized the location of "to here" and can then do some things with that position.

Next we need a filler action. This isn't 100% needed, but I will always put one in, to increase the reliability of the scripts actions working (it seems that D3 sometimes forgets to execute some script actions at times, but I haven't pin pointed the problem). For this tut we'll do a spark effect. Under the objects menu again, add a "make [object] spark at a rate of [sparkrate] for [time] seconds" action. Set the object to [IT] and the time for around 5 seconds.

Now for the final action, again under the objects menu, select "move [object] to position in position clipboard." Can you guess what that [object] is? If you guessed IT you're right. Set the object to IT. Sounds like more is needed, but you're done with the teleporter.