Guide Complete Animated Guide to Teleporters!

ZeroGravitas

The Destroyer
Hey group! :happy:The following is a first draft exclusive for T-MEC ;), collecting all my teleporter micro-tutorials together in one place. The culmination of 6 months of aspiration!:eek: Crossing my fingers this many embeds will work, in a single post (It did not, I had more than 10, so had to split it! :confused:).

Anyway, I'm posting up here first so that you lot can point out any gaping holes in the details I've covered so far, or mistakes, etc. I'd really like to avoid re-recording any of these (as there was a lot of effort and luck involved), but I might try to add broken down sub-sections of some, or additional very short mini-Gifs, or diagrams.

Tell me what you each think could most do with highlighting or clarifying. :) Also, if you think it's interesting, but can't reply right now, please click top right to "watch" the thread and get alert notification of update posts.

1.3.1.1 Update Changes: Teleporters have been relatively untouched, with most of their tricks and idiosyncrasies remaining intact (e.g. floating trick, half block auto-porters, etc). Corrections/notes for below guides:
  • Can no longer place teleporters behind the player, so can not use them as a 'novelty ladder'.
  • Yellow wire added - executes after green wire, extends several example Gifs:
    • Can teleport instantaneously 4 times off 1 switch click (one pair of pads activated by each wire colour, in order).
    • Basic 6 destination example raised to 8.
    • 12 destination wire length trick up to 16.
    • 18 destination demonstration probably up to ~24.
  • Logic gates - outputs execute in layers of new wire activations, after the previous layer (or original source activation) has completed search along each of it's connected red, blue, green, yellow wires.
  • Weighted pressure plates and player above sensors (both new) can not directly trigger player teleportation. Nor can they do so via logic gates.
    • Weighted plates also currently interrupt multiple step teleportation in unusual ways.
  • Teal (projectile) plates activate teleporters just like regular plates. A relay using a teal plate and spear trap (for example) can foward a signal from a weighted plate or player sensor.
  • Day and night logic sensors and liquid sensors all work as activation sources.
Please reply with comments on any additional (overlooked) changes.
vSbXe2R.png
See also:
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Teleporter pads
Teleporter.png
must be purchased from the Steampunker
Steampunker.png
, who will move in to suitable housing only in hard mode, after someone has slain one of the mechanical bosses (destroyer
Mechanical_Worm.png
, twins
Mechanical_Eye.png
, skeletron prime
Mechanical_Skull.png
).

For teleporter operation, two pads must be connected to each other and a 'trigger' device (i.e. a switch
Switch.png
, lever
Lever.png
, pressure pate
Red_Pressure_Plate.png
, detonator
Detonator.png
, timer
1_Second_Timer.png
). An unbroken length of wire
Wire.png
must overlap at least 1 tile of a device's footprint to be connected to it.

There are 6 different colored pressure plates on sale from the mechanic, but only 3 distinct types: those activated only by players (grey, brown, blue), only by NPCs (yellow) and by both (red, green). The rare Lihzahrd temple plates are also player only.

So, while you can select your plates to make traps player safe, unfortunately there is no easy way to distinguish between monsters and friendly NPCs (townsfolk). However, unlike most NPCs, critters do no teleport, so can be saved from your traps by teleporting monsters into pits of death. Pretty much all mobs that collide with blocks activate plates (unlike bosses, and other floaty background creatures). Those that hit plates also teleport, except critters and also sharks, who just don't get on with new fanged technologies...

Liquids, furniture, loose items (including health hearts, mana stars, etc), projectiles, etc, do not teleport either.

More straight forward this one. I really like the intuitive feel of using this kind of mouse-free setup. But another main point is that laying wire routes is easier than ever in 1.3. Wrenches (and cutters) received massive buffs to range and speed, synergising with smart cursor really well for making big networks fast.

More subtly, you only really need to lay one (single colour) surface wire to have many destinations if you simply use this kind of stepping stones approach. Adding in new stops is trivial and a second wire colour can be reserved for vertical routes crossing over, or other things.

Rationale: those little aesthetic touches can make a big difference to your daily game experience. Also, those constantly blinking pad lights drive me bananas! Shadow paint is a godsend and there are lots of clever little wall/block combos that make for compelling door-frames. (You can even make the verticals using actuated blocks.)

I think I must of first seen this idea here on Reddit, last year, but Baih's "Simple Building Tips and Tricks" guide reminded me of the idea. I hope I added a little extra too.

You can make an 'unskippable' doorway (or trap) by sticking a plate on a single platform (both painted), directly above the pad. (Note: to be truly unskippable, there'd have to be no other way around the doorway and the top lintel would have to be 1 tile lower down that pictured here.
0qdKKvh.jpg

At 5 silver per tile, laying a wire the width of a small map costs about 2 platinum (and a fair few minutes). Double that on a large world. So why lay another dedicated length for each destination, when you can just break that one stretch with rapid station stops?

The trick here is carefully connecting the pads (as shown) to keep the lengths either side from linking up. Then positioning the levers or switches in exactly the same mouse position at each stop along a line. This lets you click down the whole length very fast indeed, negating the benefit of taking ages setting up a central hub with separate lines for each destination.

Showing this concept was the idea of @Sulejman in this post on the T-MEC forums. He uses a different switch layout there, which is equally as valid.
NmByXvg.png

Pad offset is arbitrary too. I've recessed my teleporter pads one block down, in the demo, so I can have a switch directly below the player's feet. There's no reason you can't have that downward jump switch entirely below the pad (or above player's head, whatever). No real reason not to use entirely levers either (for their bigger click area), my only reason for switches in the middle is that (due to pads being 3 tiles wide, the 2 tile wide) levers would make the layout asymmetric and ugly. :)

Having a 3x1 'footprint', teleporter pads have a spot either end where you can connect each wire colour without the wires touching and potentially interfering. So, 2 (spots) x 3 (wire colours) equates to 6 robust, two-way destination pairings from a single 'hub' pad.

Clicking a switch/lever or hitting a pressure plate sends an activation pulse along any wire it overlaps. But each impulse will activate only 2 teleporter pads (per wire colour): the first and the last pad the impulse reaches, while exploring the network of connected wire. It spreads out 1 tile a time in each available wire direction.

So (for various applications) you can connect many pads together with a single wire colour, as long as you position the activating switch/plate close to your origin pad. You can make sure the one same pad is a common destination for many origin pads by making it's wire connect loop around, for a long path length.

Note:
major wiring algorithm changes in V1.2.3 mean that non-Desktop users might sometimes experience different results than shown in the second part.

I think I went a step (or two) too far with this Gif, so here is the tutorial (re-recorded) in 3 separate parts (Links to Imgur Gifs):

#6 - Using actuators - and then removing them, teleporter pads can be set permanently to the background. Characters overlapping the pad teleport fine.

#7 - The active catchment area of teleporter pads - Any part of a character's hit box overlapping the area 3 tiles above the pad's top surface will catch them. Hammering down the pad's blocks to half height will lower this area half a tile too. In fact the height is determined by the majority of the 3 blocks of the pad, so only 2 out of 3 need be hammered down.
N2KiTSp.png

#8 - An 18 destination hub.
Together in one album.

Second half of guide in next post due to exceeding media embedding limit... :confused:
[Edit
2017-08-19: trying to fix the embeded Gifs failing to play.]
 
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(1) Teleporter pads are unusual, they can be placed behind the player, like furniture, but also 'step up' the player, like blocks. You can use them to ascend about as fast as laying rope, or descend at single block mining speed (faster than falling with end game picks, etc). But 2.5 gold per tile, lol...

(2) Teleporter float trick - take out the penultimate pad, and whatever is on top magically fails to notice the disappearing support! Anything floated exists in a delicate state, so you can not place any new objects in the adjacent squares without breaking the suspension. Useful for some fun experimental setups, but no particular money cheating potential.

(3) This teleporter engine runs at about 22 activations per second, double the speed of the old style TP engines, but it still makes a right racket! It will currently only function when the wire from the pressure plate connects to the bottom pad first, before the top pad. It's pretty much just a fun novelty design, since perfect hoik engines now exist without even the need for any statues.

(4) If you want to shuffle your NPCs around, or reclaim a stranded one, wait until night-time (7:30pm to 4:30am), set the occupation flags and then quickly TP out and back. The NPCs will sneakily jump instantly into place! Both the NPC and all of their new house must be further away than full HD resolution. Teleporting is not all that much quicker than just walking out and back, and you can even watch the mini-map, to see exactly when their little icons move in.

(5) Target dummies are a magical addition to 1.3 with many unlikely uses. Their 'ghosts' usually just sit immobile where they look like they should be, but remove the ground from under them and that ghost drops away! You can teleport them too. Both methods require teleporters, so hard mode only. Ghosts are invisible, except for their damage indicator numbers. Their surprising duality was uncovered in this forum thread by Thiner.

Mobs captured from multiple teleporter pads, laid all around, can easily be routed to the same destination pad (shown previously). You can drop the mobs into a lava trap of death, for AFK farming, or simply collect and store them indefinitely. There's multiple ways to have mobs drop out underneath a teleporter pad, but a simple way is to use the float trick to suspend a pad, and also have it actuated to background, of course, so it's not solid. Having a platform underneath will stop many mobs (like slimes) dropping through (which might be useful sometimes, I don't know :).

Hitting the monster spawn cap will stop any more new mobs spawning (until you look away and they mysteriously escape). This is potentially useful to block wraiths during hard mode Blood Moons (as shown, which would otherwise float through the walls and harass you and your towns folk, within your base). One could also collect harpies at a cloud base, to block Wyverns (I think). Note the indented overhang either side of the capture chamber, to stop walkers jumping back up to the teleporter pad and being back-teleported out. (This may need to be 4 tiles high, or taller, to stop certain mobs dropping through the floor.) This design doesn't deal well with flying mobs (superior design to come).

Also, be warned that friendly NPCs will necessarily trip the same capture traps, since only yellow plates are available as a non-player trigger. So maybe be careful where your guide can wonder.

Credits:

Because teleporters will happily place players and NPCs atop of solid blocks, they are a great way to start along a hoik track, enabling amazing contraptions. Conversely, hoiks are a great way to clear mobs, etc, from the destination plate, to avoid back-teleportation.

This gif opens up a huge design domain of builds with various complex (and fast) functionalities. Further guide information on: Hoiks, Hoiktronics, fastest 'engines' measured (including the NPC hoik engines show above).

E.g.1: Wiring a skeleton statue to a pair of teleporters is a simple clean way to send these mobs immediately down a hoik line (with pressure plate tracks). Note that the wire must connect to the statue after the teleporter pad it is on, in order for the skeleton to be spawned before the teleporters activate (other wise it'll just run off!). Similar hoik line demonstrated here in this hoiktronics lab video.

E.g.2: Simple NPC hoik engine start/stop. With a 3-wide house, it doesn't matter where the NPC stands, the engine will still work reliably ever activation, by using teleporters. 60 activations per second (every game tick!), between two plates, with up to 6 isolated outputs when plates are kept separate. See fastest 'engines' measured guide for more details.

E.g.3: Dummy engines, are just like NPC or the older, inferior skeleton hoik engines, but need to be started using teleporters to separate the 'ghost' from the dummy stand. Dummy ghosts are perfectly behaved, staying totally still, in place, in hoiktronics builds. I've made the ghosts visible here for demonstration purposes, using Mechmod but usually they are invisible, of course.

E.g.4: Moving towards some proper 'hoiktronics'. Once started off along the hoik track, the dummy ghost gets automatically recycled, looped back to the start of the track by a teleporter at the end that it activates itself. Each pressure plate along it's track activate a pair of teleporter pads above. These shuffle the player 1 pad at a time to the right, as the dummy goes in the opposite direction, but once the player reaches the last pad they then get rapidly swept back along with the dummy, the opposite way.

This setup could be used in-place of a minecart track, for a fancy way to collect drops from under a wide farm, AFK. Extending the length of the run is easy, but will scale back the rate of teleportation (as the dummy ghost has a long hoik length to travel each loop). You could also distribute the pads around an (AFK) arena/farm, to automate dodging attacks. However, this is example was mostly just to demonstration the basics of hoiktronics. :)

E.g.5: See @DicemanX's heart statue hoik line based health replenishment build guide thread here. Note that this, and my sawn-off version, only collect all hearts reliably when the head-height hoik runs to the left. So just add enough lava, below, around the statues, to burn up the occasional dropped heart if using a rightwards setup.

E.g.6: Note that I have used downward sloping (against floor) hoik teeth for my universal hoik, teleporter ejector mechanism, in this grinder. This has the advantage of being able to sit the teleporter pad direction upon sloped block 'teeth' (instead of an unhelpful platform). However, they might be greater risk of certain mobs dropping out through the floor of this design, since the 'fighter' AI (e.g. zombies, and many other walkers) will drop down a block when their head is trapped below a low ceiling, and there are no up-hoik teeth here to force them back up. Generally mobs are ejected too quickly for this to happen, though, and I didn't see any problems with this setup during filming. Only coins getting stuck on the sides of the exit teeth.

ZwntCTK.png

@DicemanX's upward sloping universal hoik ejector, from his recent comprehensive Dungeon Autofarm tutorial. Image (for-shortened by me) also shows, on the right, a ghost dummy mechanism to continuously teleport out mobs from the spawn chamber, without the complication of them needing to trigger plates themselves.

The slime staff I pick up in the Gif (from the item frame at the side) was aimed at demonstrating where to stick one's minion(s). Also, the slime staff is the go-to summon for lucky coin based gold farming, since it does the least damage to mobs (keeping more alive in the shake-down chamber) and does penetrating damage to all of them at once. You would just remove the lava for this function.
yc22R2o.png

Wiring diagram of my demo setup. Spawn surface must be 62 to 84 tiles from where the player stands (so really the right edge wall pads should be a couple tiles closer to me, there). This setup only spawns neutral cavern mobs; you would need to create an (artificial) biome and then also have biome block spawn surface on top of the teleporter pads (as in diceman's setup), to get other specific mobs.

If you want to farm taller mob types, you will need a taller hoik ejection area (and kill chamber), to stop mobs escaping out of the top.

I added a single dart trap on the collection wire that will clear out any critters in the chamber (every 3 seconds), and also poke mimics and lost girls to get them moving and teleport themselves.

Each time a trigger device (switch, plate, etc) triggers the wire under it, the impulse searches out through all the wire networks connected to it's tile(s). The search algorithm appears to be an implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm. Specifically, from each connected tile found, it then checks down, up, right, left, for adjacent tiles containing (connected) wire to spread to, then repeats the process from each new wire tile found, radiating out in all directions at once.
Dijkstras_progress_animation.gif
For teleporters, the first pad found is remembered for activation, then the last one found is activated too, after all the wire routes have finished being explored and any intermediate pads have been ignored.

For the 12 destinations from a single pad example, the tile-by-tile network exploring mechanic is exploited by having each wire colour, from each side of the hub pad, split in two. This doubles the normal 6 destination limit. Then pairs of switches are added in very specific positions such that the hub pad is always closer, but a different destination pad is further from each. Note that the pad that is activated (and that one gets teleported to) is down the branch opposite to the branch the switch is on (confusingly). Note also that if the pads are a useful distance appart, or basically any bigger than reaching distance, there is no way to teleport back to the hub, on demand. (A timer or other independent trigger source, in place of the hub switches, would work both ways, however.)

Of course, turning things inside out, one can have an unlimited number of pads all sending their travelers off to a single destination that is at the end of a long length of wire. The route to the ultimate destination must always be longer than the wire length between any two of the origin/collector pads. This example is the topology of the setup used for rapidly harvesting mobs spawning 'naturally' in a farm, sending them all to a death (or collection) chamber. In the last example shown in the Gif, I just kept all the origin pad trigger switches in reach from the destination pad, so it looks similar to the initial hub configuration.

Side note on directional preference: when a character overlaps the catchment areas of both activated pads simultaneously, they are set from the first pad found during the wire search, to the last one found. So it can matter from witch direction an impulse comes in from, even when triggering the same pads using the same wire.

It's a demonstration of how Terraria handles wiring activations, in turn, by colour. Execution order = red, then blue, then green. Also teleporter function is instantaneous, so it transports the player (or NPCs, etc) before moving on to implement the activations on the next wire colour.

Any other pad pair wiring order would have prevented reaching the end pad. This sort of thing starts rearing it's head when you want to set up a 3 or 4 way teleporter system to AFK bosses, or whatever. We were discussing it in the T-MEC forum group at end of last year. The wiring mechanics seem the same still.
Wire colour rearranged example. Red activates C and D (achieving nothing), blue activates B and C (again, nothing to teleport), green activates A and B (teleporting player once).

The game runs at 60 'ticks' per second, to match it's native frame rate of 60Hz. Each tick is a loop right through it's list of all characters (player, mobs, NPCs, dummy ghosts, etc).

Player is always first in line to get checked for physics, block collisions, which includes being hoiked by a sloped block. So, when the lever is pulled, a wire impulse instantaneously actuates all 3 starter hoik teeth (including the ones for the 2 dummy ghosts), but it is the player who gets moved first...

This means my position is overlapping the first lava pool! But I never catch fire?! This is because all the (block) physics collision for all the characters is done first, in order, before any of them are checked for damage (from lava, or other sources). The game logic hoiks the first dummy over a step, overlapping and hitting it's pressure plate. This instantaneously teleports me 3 times (once for each wire colour, in sequence). Then the next dummy ghost gets checked, and teleports me a further 3 steps out to the end.

Note that I instantaneously overlap a series of up-hoik teeth (evidenced by the trail of teleporter activation particles), but don't get hoiked up because all the teleportation happens immediately, within the same game tick, before the next round of block physics checks.

Fun (brain melting) semi-invisible stuff! :confused:

When on pad is inside the active area of another pad (they are stacked), the order in which the wire impulses reach the pads is important: the lower pad must be connected to the activation source more closely (distance along the wires path), and then the player is teleporter upwards. If the wire impulse reaches these pads in the opposite order, no teleportation is observed.

Exploiting this, one can make a very simple gravity powered teleporter 'engine' simply by curling the wire path around from a pressure plate atop a couple of stacked pads:

(A better Gif needs making for this/these, possibly combined with the previous one or 2...?)


End of guide. Thank you for watching and reading! :happy: Now, what have I missed?! (Minecart teleporting, a ton of hoiktronics...)
 
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I'm glad you took the time to compile all this info into one spot. We can all benefit from having it collected.

Well done!
 
Would like to see more :p
Absolutely. Care to be a little more specific? :p:)

Meant to say up there ^ that if there's something anyone doesn't get, in an example, to please mention it, because it's probably not just them, and might do with at least a note adding. And does the order of the videos makes sense? (I made them higgledy-piggledy, and just tried to thrown them in as best I could figure out...)

Also, please, absolutely, post links to your own related builds, guides, demos thread informative thread replies. Bring in all the teleporter informations!:cool:
 
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There seems to be a problem with the "Infinite Teleportations per tick" GIF. As soon as I hit play, it becomes a black screen. I know this is due to the refresh rate, so I guess the only way to display it would be with a 60fps youtube video. Other than that, great guide! I'll need to remember all these things next time I bother using teleporters in a playthrough. :)
 
There seems to be a problem with the "Infinite Teleportations per tick" GIF. As soon as I hit play, it becomes a black screen.
Looks fine to me, and there's no reason it shouldn't play here, the gif recorder I used only goes up to a maximum of 40fps and I had it set lower for this little 'video'. Anyone else having and technical issues with the animations or the stills? (Imgur images have been a particular pain for me here).
 
Nice compilation as always! This is a great reason to be part of the T-MEC group because it really is a one-stop/shop for information regarding not only building but unique ideas to expand the "Terrariaverse". Excellent resources.
 
Made a subtle little discovery last night (while trying, yet again, to make an automatic, upwards teleporter staircase using upwards displacement via origin pad offset). This looks like it could have a fair few implications for various applications (not figured them all out yet of course)!
'Half-block-outbound full-block-inbound rapid auto-teleportation chains' (HaBlO-FuBlI-RATCh?!) This definitely needs better name! (Edit: how about 'drop-step auto-porters'?)

The trick (and new discovery, for me anyway) is that the height of a teleporter's catchment area is related to the surface height of the one block of the pad which gets activated by the wiring impulse. Not the average level of the entire pad, as I previously assumed, wrongly. (See "Actuated Zoned and Offset." sub-section, above.)

So each pad can have a different height off-set for outbound teleportation activation than it has for inbound activations (or vice-versa) when only one or two of it's blocks are hammered flat. So, connected just right, a player (or mob, NPC or dummy ghost) can be dropped a half tile up above the surface of the next pad in a chain. Pressure plates directly behind teleported individuals are ignored when they arrive. But this drop is *just* high enough to clear a pressure plate and let them fall onto it, activating the next teleportation jump, etc, etc. Fall time to plate is only 1 or 2 game ticks, depending on initial drop speed and can be staggered in between speeds: 1, 1, 2, 2, repeat, and other patterns.

Uses:
  • Obviously this trick will let you make a boss dodging setup very simply, without timers or other mechanisms.
  • It seems very stable and predictable with dummy ghosts, so could be a (partial) replacement for hoik tracks in hoiktronic builds!
  • You could probably do the reverse and drop down through the destination pad, instead.
  • Use it for auto-return-and-shut-off (if a timer triggers the teleportation, etc).
  • Must be a few more goodies out there...?
 
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This is an interesting discovery since it offers an alternative to hoiks. It's in some sense very similar to inomanom's single teleporter units, although those units allow for logic since you can control what destination teleporters you send the signaling agent to. I wonder if there's currently any way to do logic without hoiks based on what you discovered about the catchment area and how only single teleporter tiles control it? It would be an interesting question to answer at least until 1.3.1 is released, since 1.3.1 will allow us to do logic with wires only and forego NPC/ghost signaling agents in most cases.
 
Linky-linky please...?

I'm not sure where to find inomanoms's original post, but I've used his modules in all of my giant logic gate builds. Here's an example of a thread detailing giant gates:

http://forums.terraria.org/index.ph...ic-gates-example-applications-included.29987/

The ino-units look like this:

LbOM6Cj.jpg
J7g8o7n.jpg


Here's how they look when linked together in giant logic gates:

N2zyBGZ.jpg


Inputs A, B, and C control which of the eight destinations the signaling agent will reach. Each path to an output is 3 units long, and each ino-unit consists of a single teleporter.

The above link showcases many different types of giant logic gates using the ino-units.

Here are some more examples:

2GtTgSx.png
 
I can't currently envision how to use this new trick to output switch/toggle...

Well, we can do it with one hoik tooth:

GJWvzPh.png
dNdre9j.png


The top lever controls the destination teleporter - when the tooth is actuated the ghost falls onto the middle pressure plate, and if the tooth is deactuated the ghost is hoiked over the left pressure plate instead. There are in fact several ways of splitting the paths with a single tooth. However, having the ghost fall onto the pressure plate visually looks slower than getting hoiked into the other pressure plate - are you sure the activation of the pressure plate takes 1 tick when falling on it?
 
we can do it with one hoik tooth:
Nice. Although, does it take 2 ticks to drop onto the right-hand plate there? Also, I meant I can't figure a way, without adding hoiks (for purity). Although, a hybrid application might well have new uses. The tick or 2 fall delay might well be useful, even...
[doublepost=1458081901,1458069788][/doublepost]Lololol!... If you thought those 'drop-step auto-porter' chains were funny, you'll wet your pants when you see this...
'The True Teleporter Engine'? - a 1 pad drop-step auto-porter! :D
[doublepost=1458347061][/doublepost]Ok, so not quite finished covering teleporter function theory. I was working on this before the above discoveries. In a way it is as much about wire function in general, but teleporters make for good demonstrative examples.
Each time a trigger device (switch, plate, etc) triggers the wire under it, the impulse searches out through all the wire networks connected to it's tile(s). The search algorithm appears to be an implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm. Specifically, from each connected tile found, it then checks down, up, right, left, repeat, etc, for adjacent tiles containing (connected) wire to spread to, radiating out in all directions at once.
Dijkstras_progress_animation.gif
For teleporters, the first pad found is remembered for activation, then the last one found is activated too, after all the wire routes have finished being explored and any intermediate pads have been ignored.

For the 12 destinations from a single pad example, the tile-by-tile network exploring mechanic is exploited by having each wire colour, from each side of the hub pad, split in two. This doubles the normal 6 destination limit. Then pairs of switches are added in very specific positions such that the hub pad is always closer, but a different destination pad is further from each. Note that the pad that is activated (and that one gets teleported to) is down the branch opposite to the branch the switch is on (confusingly). Note also that if the pads are a useful distance appart, or basically any bigger than reaching distance, there is no way to teleport back to the hub, on demand. (A timer or other independent trigger source, in place of the hub switches, would work both ways, however.)

Of course, turning things inside out, one can have an unlimited number of pads all sending their travelers off to a single destination that is at the end of a long length of wire. The route to the ultimate destination must always be longer than the wire length between any two of the origin/collector pads. This example is the topology of the setup used for rapidly harvesting mobs spawning 'naturally' in a farm, sending them all to a death (or collection) chamber. In the last example shown in the Gif, I just kept all the origin pad trigger switches in reach from the destination pad, so it looks similar to the initial hub configuration.

Side note on directional preference: when a character overlaps the catchment areas of both activated pads simultaneously, they are set from the first pad found during the wire search, to the last one found. So it can matter from witch direction an impulse comes in from, even when triggering the same pads using the same wire.
 
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How about not-so-rapid-drop-step-auto-porters? :merchantsmile:

I wondered if there was a way to slow down the 1 to 2 tick per speed of @ZeroGravitas's drop-step-auto-porter and there is, honey!

The drop velocity does affect the speed so I did tests with a slow fall (defined later), a drop of 2 tiles and a drop of 7 tiles with the teleporters covered with various levels of honey and water. Here are the approximate times per teleport:

honey, 1-tile deep
o slow fall: 3.8 ticks
o 2-tile fall: 3 ticks
o 7-tile fall: 1 tick

honey, 2-tiles deep
o slow fall: 10.5 ticks
o 2-tile fall: 10.5 ticks
o 7-tile fall: 10.5 ticks

3-tiles deep of honey yielded the same times as 2 deep.

water, 1-tile deep
o slow fall: 1.5 ticks
o 2-tile fall: 1.5 ticks
o 7-tile fall: 1 tick

water, 2-tiles deep
o slow fall: 1.5 ticks
o 2-tile fall: 1.5 ticks
o 7-tile fall: 1.5 ticks

Here is a partial view of the test bed and the hoik timer I used...

ZaIuAz9.png


4REeged.png


Each of the test beds has a different layer of liquid (there were 5 of these), all stacked vertically in my build, and connects up to a couple of hoik timer tracks that extend out to 205 tiles. Each test bed also has 6 different ways of starting a test run, going from left to right...

1) Use a switch to activate a drop-step teleporter
2A) Walk onto a drop-step teleporter from the same level
2B) Drop from 2 tiles up onto a drop-step teleporter
3) Use a switch to teleport from a position 1 1/2 tiles above the teleporter
4) Teleport into a small, liquid-covered drop-step teleporter chamber and then start the run by doing a quick "jump"
5) Drop from 7 tiles up onto a drop-step teleporter

Importantly, Terraria has to be run with the very useful Mechmod so that dummy ghosts are visible on the timer tracks. Mechmod is found here: http://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/mechmod-a-t-mec-community-mod.38088/

After starting a run the upper hoik track will record the ticks from when the test starts until coming to the beginning of the 10-teleport test. The lower hoik track will record the ticks it takes to go through 10 drop-step teleport chain. The time it takes to do a single drop-step teleport with some initial drop velocity plus liquid depth is simply the ticks from the lower track divided by 10. Not sure, but I think the timings per auto-port is +/- 0.1 ticks. After reading the results from the hoik tracks, throw the lever to reset everything.

In the times above, #2A, #3 and #4 are considered "slow fall". Each of these ways to start consistently returns the same times for the 10 drop-step teleport chain in all the test beds. Method #2A, walking forward, is not particularly safe, though, since it's easy to continue moving just a little too far and mess up the auto-porting.

#1 is a bit odd in my opinion since does not actually automatically run you through the test but just teleports you onto the first of a series of teleporters and you will just stand there until doing a jump or moving further right. To me, this means that the "auto-porting" is a glitch that might someday be patched (hopefully not in 1.3.1).

A final note: the depth of the liquid has to be exactly 1 tile high and not a little less. In one run, I found that having just 14 buckets of honey in a 15-tile wide area acted as if there was no honey at all.

As a practical example of how this can be really used, I made a variant of @DicemanX's Moon Lord arena that substitutes 1-tile honey drop-step-auto-porters for Joe's hoik tracks. His arena can be found here: Expert Mode Recursive Fully-Automated Lunar Event Autofarm (see Schematics for the Moon Lord Autofarm).

This uses the same pattern at roughly the same timings to avoid most (but not all) Lunar Lord attacks. (After working with this for a while, going too fast or too slow and not taking the right ratio of time on the upper track as the lower one can be fatal. My hat is off to @DicemanX for taking the time to work this through.)

Here is the revised Drop-step-auto-porting Moon Lord Arena

0oUDGVX.png


3p5qENt.png


More notes, as usual, for this:

o It is best to don some kind of knockback protection or the invariable hits from the Moon Lord can stop you in your tracks, usually fatally unless you can start moving again

o The green wire has a #3 start (a teleporter with 1 1/2 blocks above it) at the other end to get you going on the track

o The way out of this arena is to use the Rod Of Discord to collect the drops after defeating the Moon Lord

:merchantsmile:

EDIT: I should point out that this Moon Lord arena isn't significantly better than @DicemanX's and does have the disadvantage of needing some knockback protection.

I originally wanted to use the slow auto-porters with his "Mission Impossible" Moon Lord arena (here: http://forums.terraria.org/index.ph...ugh-afk-from-pre-hardmode-to-moon-lord.38547/) with the 10.5 tick delay and that would have significantly cut down on its complexity. Unfortunately I ran into the problem that the Stardust Dragon got confused and didn't do anything in that large of an arena. When I tried shrinking down its size so the dragon did work, the player got too close to the hands on the right/left sides so that didn't work either. After all this I switched to the simpler arena.

Oh, and another drawback of this auto-porter approach is that leaving autofarms requires some conventional hoik-based teleporter node in the chain to gracefully exit. :merchantsad:

EDIT 8/24/2019 - Changed so images are hosted by Imgur rather than TinyPic as TinyPic is shutting down.
 
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Oooh, interesting original research, thank you for taking the time and posting.:)
Here are the approximate times per teleport:
honey, 1-tile deep
o slow fall: 3.8 ticks [...]
So for the fractional numbers, e.g. 1.5 it's alternating 1 tick then 2 tick each teleport-drop, right. Would it be a lot pf trouble to add a Gif or 2 to your post? (Using Mechmod's slow motion feature.) ;):)

To be clear, all these experimental timings are with player, yes? And perhaps you should have labeled up the the different starting (height) teleporters, A, B, C, etc (took me a little while to figure them).
the depth of the liquid has to be exactly 1 tile high and not a little less
How about using bubble blocks either side of the pressure plate, so you only need exactly 1 bucket of honey on each (simplifying measurement and removal, avoiding duping).
hoik-based teleporter node in the chain to gracefully exit.
Can you not just have an actuated (half) block atop one of the auto-porters to stop you triggering it? (After a prescribed amount of time, or whatever.)
 
Oooh, interesting original research, thank you for taking the time and posting.:)

So for the fractional numbers, e.g. 1.5 it's alternating 1 tick then 2 tick each teleport-drop, right. Would it be a lot pf trouble to add a Gif or 2 to your post? (Using Mechmod's slow motion feature.) ;):)

The numbers like 1.5 come from counting the ticks for 10 teleports and then dividing the count by 10 so I am not sure how it works out but I assume 1 tick and then 2 for each teleport drop.

In the few minutes I looked I didn't find a cheap (heh!) way to capture a video that Photoshop takes so, I'm curious, what software is good for that? In the absence of a GIF, how about a tiny little world with the test beds and the Moon Lord arena? I've attached that. Unfortunately, the world is expert but still pre-hardmode so it's not possible to summon the Moon Lord.

To be clear, all these experimental timings are with player, yes? And perhaps you should have labeled up the the different starting (height) teleporters, A, B, C, etc (took me a little while to figure them).

How about using bubble blocks either side of the pressure plate, so you only need exactly 1 bucket of honey on each (simplifying measurement and removal, avoiding duping).

Yes, this was all run with the player.

In the attached world I've added signs to help with how to run the tests and took your suggestion with bubble blocks too. I've also shaved the half block off of #3.

Can you not just have an actuated (half) block atop one of the auto-porters to stop you triggering it? (After a prescribed amount of time, or whatever.)

That sounds like it would work to stop the auto-porting and give a chance to teleport out of the chain. Thanks, good idea!
 

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Each time a trigger device (switch, plate, etc) triggers the wire under it, the impulse searches out through all the wire networks connected to it's tile(s). The search algorithm appears to be an implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm. Specifically, from each connected tile found, it then checks down, up, right, left, for adjacent tiles containing (connected) wire to spread to, then repeats the process from each new wire tile found, radiating out in all directions at once.
Dijkstras_progress_animation.gif
For teleporters, the first pad found is remembered for activation, then the last one found is activated too, after all the wire routes have finished being explored and any intermediate pads have been ignored.
1) Does anyone know if someone already tried to make a "huge"(potentially large world sized) wire grid(as in, every tile has a wire) and tested how well teleporter activation manages to find furthest teleporter? Especially if test was done after wire length limit for teleporters was removed.
2) Does TEdit(or whatever ether map editor there might be) allow to easily fill huge blocks with wires?
 
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