Teleporter chain infinite screen scrolling trick (bi-directional, using gates)

[ZeroGravitas]

So I answered a request for help from "SilverDeoxys563" on the Terraria sub-Reddit, trying to fix a "teleporter hoik buffer", but what they were after was a way to prevent the camera from blinking out when teleporting a distance a little beyond the edge of screen: have it just scroll instead by splitting the trip into 2, smaller teleportation steps.

I suggested using gates instead, like so:

Spoiler: Supplemental images (not to build scale).

◄ Original, broken. | My suggestion. ►

Taking advantage of the game's wire activation order, of doing gates in layers, all within a single wire 'trip' code call. So going either way, player (or whatever) is teleported to the middle plate, the next gate is triggered and thus teleportation out to the appropriate end gate ensues.

And now I was just wondering how far this could be taken, so I made a chain section, wired in such a way that it could easily be copy-pasted in TEdit (while still being 2-way). All the gates (bar the end ones) will smoke, since they get re-triggered by the gate after them in the sequence, every time.

Then I extended it half way across a world. It seemed to work fine, although the camera pans so fast that some sections of the map, in the middle of the scroll, never get rendered at all.

​

Not an especially technical trick. Just thought I'd share, for fun. Maybe useful for map makers looking to really polish those transitions. Perhaps the logic gate signal propagation chain could also come in handy for other projects... I'm not sure what. Note that anything stood at the opposite end to the one where the signal starts from (or mid-way) will be shuffled one pad closer to the signal source end (until they get to that end pad and are flung back the whole length. You might be able to shuffle liquids between pump troughs, a step at a time, just for giggles, or something. Maybe have a fiddle, if board...

 

[Beezwax&Nectar]

WAIT. If we can get a mob in there, with some pressure plates.. then theoretically...

Have we just made an even faster timer?

 

[ZeroGravitas]

Have we just made an even faster timer?

Nah. Don't think so; all the teleporter steps happen instantaneously. No regular pressure plates will be hit along the way (they take 1 tick each to trigger) while weighted pressure plates behave very strangely and break the teleportation chain, sometimes the step before you would have been teleported onto them... Not certain about wht would happen with player-above sensors.

 

[crawlr]

@ZeroGravitas This is interesting. I figured the camera position would just update at the end of all the other calculations. But it obviously is adjusted immediately when the player sprite is moved.

@Beezwax&Nectar If your looking for an engine that can generate something faster than 60 act/s please see this thead. We have discovered a way to generate inputs at 120,180,360,720,1080 or even 2,160 activations per second! Please note that generating inputs faster than 60 act/s has limited uses since most other objects (statues, traps, etc) will only activate once per tick anyway.