Unity Tutorial: Easy Teleport in JS

UnityGirl's Easy Teleportation

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Whether it's SciFi or Fantasy, many games make use of convenient teleportation. There are several ways to do this in Unity, and some of them are a lot bigger pains than others. Here's the quickest, easiest way I've found to get your character where it needs to be with no guessing at large world coordinates.

Teleporter Setup

This works along the same principle as the Building Instantiator, using an existing Game Object in the  scene to represent where we want to go.

Capsule Locator Sitting in a Chair

Locator

• Create a GameObject to represent where you want your character to be
• I use one I can see, then turn off the Mesh Renderer and Collider
• Put your Locator object wherever you want your player to teleport to
• make sure it's high enough you won't fall through the floor/ground
• TURN OFF the Mesh Renderer** and any Colliders***
• Name it something recognizable

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Setting Player Tag

Player

• Make sure your player has the "Player" tag
• And that nothing you don't want to teleport doesn't

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Script

• Establish your Locator
• Find your Player
• Tell the Player to be at the Locator based on some criteria
• We're using OnMouseDown so clicking the script-bearing object will trigger the 'port.

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The Script

#pragma strict

var locator : GameObject;

var player : Transform;

player = GameObject.FindGameObjectWithTag("Player").transform;

function OnMouseDown () {

player.position = locator.transform.position;

}

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Use

• Attach the script to a Game Object
• Assign the Locator in the Inspector or GameObject.Find() it's unique name
• Hit Play
• Click on the script-bearing Game Object
• Teleport!

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Alternative Teleport Triggers

• Other button based triggers
• ex: OnMouseUp, Input.GetMouseButton(), Input.GetKey(Up/Down) and so forth
• OnTrigger Enter or OnTriggerExit
• For this you will want to place the script on some kind of trigger object for the character to walk/fall into with the collider marked "Is Trigger"
• ex: simulated "trip wire" with low to the ground stretched GameObject with 'trigger' collider
• On a Timer
• There are many kinds of timer scripts, I'll cover some simple favorites in the near future
• Based on some other random game criteria
• ex: player solves puzzle, puzzle success bool triggered, player teleports based on boolean trigger

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See It In Action

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Tips

• ** If you haven't turned off your Mesh Renderer, you'll be able to see your Locator
• *** If you haven't turned off your Collider, you might get stuck inside your Locator

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All blog posts by UnityGirl are inspired by my work with Brunelleschi: Age of Architects on the Aesop Games team. Check out our Crowd Funding page(s)!