You've seen it. You've wondered about it. You have to have it. Here's the special trick to making your character dramatically appear and vanish in a puff of predesigned pose. Confused? Let me demonstrate using something you've all probably seen at least once before.
The shadows in the room abruptly shift as though the source of light was being stolen. Twisting and
convulsing the shadows merge into a singular point and then, without warning the entire view before your eyes
turns black. There's no noise. No feeling of magic. Just darkness. As suddenly as it begins it's over. The
light returns to normal. Only now, at the point where the shadows merged stands Johnny C.
The maniac has arrived.
Now some may think that's my nifty way of starting a scene, but it's not. That's an automatically appearing message that displays every time I have Johnny teleport into a room from another location, and you can do this too.
First you need to understand how to teleport properly. There are a few ways of doing this but the absolute simplest is to type tel [name] with "name" being the name of a character on the grid. Helpful tip: If they're logged in currently you don't have to use the full name, just the beginning of it! But do remember not to do so unless it's a public place or the person in question isn't in the middle of something already.
You can also teleport by typing tel [dbref number]. Remember those nifty #1234 numbers in the logs? Well those are dbref numbers, and those are being left there by your headwizzie to give you a guide to teleporting around the grid. For example, to teleport to the Usual Restaurant you'd type tel #1836.
Many people, especially former staff, have a habit of trying to teleport using @tel instead of tel. @tel forces an object or player to move from one room to another and isn't available to everyone. I point this out because even if you can teleport with it, no one will see your teleport message because you've forced the room change.
There are two ways to set your teleport messages. The first is the easiest, open up your Player Editor and look at the Messages menu. Since PE is a bit outdated and fickle, we'll be using the old standard way in this tutorial as it will work 100% of the time.
You have two messages you need to consider. Your arrival notice, and your departure notice. The arrival message is called the orrive and the departure is odepart. Using them is as simple as taking the example below and filling in your own text.
@set me=_teleport/oarrive:
@set me=_teleport/odepart:
Put whatever you like after the : and it will appear in text when you use the teleport command. There is a small catch though, and yes. We'll be the first to admit it's a bit backwards.
If you use your name in your teleport message, your name will appear before the text you want to display.
I've included a working example from our hyperactive friend Tenna so you get the idea.
| @set me=_teleport/oarrive:From somewhere in the distance a sound can be heard.Faint at first, but soon it's all too clear. SQUEEK! SQUEEK! SQUEEK! The Beast What Squeaks has arrived. | → | From somewhere in the distance a sound can be heard. Faint at first, but soon it's all too clear. SQUEEK! SQUEEK! SQUEEK! The Beast What Squeaks has arrived. |
| @set me=_teleport/odepart:raises her hands to the sky presenting Spooky to all who can see. With a fit of giggles and squeaking, Tenna vanishes. SQUEEK!! | → | Tenna raises her hands to the sky presenting Spooky to all who can see. With a fit of giggles and squeaking, Tenna vanishes. SQUEEK!! |
As always if you have any questions just ask the staff and we'll do our best to walk you through it.