In City of Heros, there's a Teleportation power. CoH is both 3rd and 1st person, and the Teleport works fine in both. The way it works in that game:
*You activate the power, and your mouse turns into a target cursor.
*The Teleport has a range of 100 yards. You'll go that distance if you click your cursor in the air (or at any target beyond 100 yards).
*If you click on a wall or floor within 100 yards, you'll go there (can travel short distances this way)
*After you come through a Teleportation, there's a brief moment of hovering. This is so that, if you TP high into the air, you can TP out again before you start falling.

In City of Heros, I use Shift+MouseClick to Teleport. I imagine something like that would work well in an FPS. Hold Shift to change your normal cursor to the Teleport Cursor...Fire to go where you're pointing. I'd keep the hovering out of it though...would only slow things down.

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Original post by makeshiftwings Quote: A capture-the-flag type of game would be brutal against teleporters who could run into a base, grab a flag, and teleport acrossed the map. Unreal solved this problem by just making you automatically drop the flag when you teleport. Simple, but elegant enough. Most superheroes and such that I've seen teleport can usually only grab small objects to take with them anyway, they can't just grab onto a table and teleport away with it. So it kind of makes sense that you can't teleport with a flag (or whatever important object your game might have).

Infantry solved this partly by the structure of the game and partly by a counter ability. In Infantry's CTF you dropped the flags at a defendable position and had to hold them for a period of time. You could also set up a sentry which would prevent enemy teleportation in a certain radius.

I also liked Infantry's teleportation scheme. All characters could teleport to the vicinity of one of their team mates or back to their dropship (a safe zone). This took a certain amount of energy, energy that also powered your shields. So, this could be used to get out of a tight spot if you saw you were going to be out-matched, but made it so it wasn't a sort of invincibility. Certain characters could summon other characters. This allowed a constant stream of fresh troops (i.e. with full energy) into your base for defense or into the enemy's base for offense. One character had a bookmark teleport where it cost energy to create the bookmark but they could freely teleport back to it. However, the bookmark decayed after a certain amount of time.

Granted, this doesn't allow you to get anywhere special (which is what you want), but it worked well even in the heat of action and didn't seem unbalancing. Just something to think about.

how about something like this. You activate the power, hold the mouse button while a distance meater charges up, when you let go you telaport how ever far is indicated on the meater.

Longer jumps take longer to charge up so your a sitting duck why charging.
You can jump through walls but you have to have a good of whats on the other side. Can players get stuck in walls, etc.
You have more control over how far you teleaport, you are not limited to just to the nearest object or your max range.
The less you carry the further you can telaport because it requires less energy.

I thought about that as well, but in a combat environment, it would be very difficult to attempt to accurately gauge a teleport with a "golf swing" indicator.

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originally posted by Kars You can jump through walls but you have to have a good of whats on the other side. Can players get stuck in walls, etc.

Players wont be able to get stuck in walls, objects, other players, etc. I'm thinking I'll restrict players to only teleporting to locations they can currently see.

There was a mod for UT called Unreal 4Ever, and it included a weapon called the Samurai's Katana. It was magical, and one of its properties was the ability to teleport its wielder. The way it worked, you put your crosshairs on your destination and hit the alt fire button, and a pink beam shot out of the sword. When the beam hit an obstacle or reached a maximum range, the character teleported to that spot. It's a good system for FP teleportation.

The problem that I see with these various "hookshot" techniques is that they give you very little advantage in a combat situation other than teleport far away and sneak back.

Being able to maneuver easily and quickly in combat would be a great use for the ability and those techniques just don't provide a very effective feature. I envisioned the ability somewhat along the lines of Nightstalker from the X-men. Rather than being useful in a long-distance (or a "reach this platform up here") situation, it would be a combat-supplement. Having an alt-fire (right mouse button) would still have a problem with orientation in close-quarters areas. If the teleport were to be mapped to the alt-fire button (right mouse) and the teleport could be used in a contextual manner (or some kind of manual switch key designed to switch between proxmity/distance types) and the close proximity type automatically re-targeted on the nearest enemy, it would be very useful.

Take this example. You are fighting in a fast-paced FPS and you have your teleport ability set to "close proximity". You run around a corner and an enemy begins firing at you. You point to the left of them and push the alt-fire button. Because your ability is on close proximity and you are equipped with a knife (or melee weapon), you teleport a little to their right (your left) and right next to them, automaticlaly re-centered to point to them. If you were carrying a gun, you may want to teleport a little farther away, so you click in the same spot in the same situation and you are now 15 feet to their right, but automatically re-centered on them.

I have an idea that I don't think has been suggested yet. When the player activates teleport give them control of a ghost of themselves. Make that ghost move incredibly fast, so that it is hard to get exactly where you want to stand or in the orientation you want without practice. Basically it should be like trying to steer a bullet.

While the player is in control of their ghost they are tied to the same physical boundaries a person usually is, meaning that they can't go through walls or underground. But they CAN go out of eyesight by going around a corner or such. When the person is where they want the de-activate teleport and appear where their ghost is.

Keep ghost movement unweildy. I would fix the velocity of the ghost so that it never stops moving and the player has to really stay with it to go where they want. You might make it so that colliding with an object will instantly teleport them to that location.

Also, while a person is ghosting their player should stay behind. Longer distances = more vulnerable to enemy fire while standing still. Also, tie in your energy idea to keep people from repeatidly using a long teleport. You might also consider setting a threshold energy level the player must have before they can teleport at all after a recent teleport, and base the threshold on how much energy the last teleport took. That way longer teleports disable all teleportation for longer periods of time, weakening their ability to just jump a target and run.

Well, those are the ideas. I actually like the word "ghosting"

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originally posted by dgaf I envisioned the ability somewhat along the lines of Nightstalker from the X-men.

Excellent, I was actually thinking of Nightstalker when I first came up with the ability. [smile] I'm aiming for players to be able to make interesting combinations of abilities to suit different styles though, so it should ideally be useful both in close combat, as well as for stealthy sniper type players to get into position/escape quickly.

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originally posted by interest86 I have an idea that I don't think has been suggested yet. When the player activates teleport give them control of a ghost of themselves. Make that ghost move incredibly fast, so that it is hard to get exactly where you want to stand or in the orientation you want without practice. Basically it should be like trying to steer a bullet. ... Well, those are the ideas. I actually like the word "ghosting"

That's actually a pretty good idea you've come up with, although I'd still prefer to restrict players to line of sight teleportation (in-game reasoning that if they tried to teleport somewhere they couldn't see they could teleport into something).


What do people think of the idea of being able to use 3 different modes with this ability?
1) Panic - Players can escape from a tricky situation by using a panic teleport. This will randomly teleport the player, and will leave them with some energy in reserve unless they are already below a certain threshold.

2) Targetted - This is 'precision' teleportation. It basically works like a weapon - the player 'fires', and a teleportation marker (visible only to the player) appears where thier destination will be. The 'projectile' will only fire in a straight line - no hookshots to get around corners, etc. Once the marker is placed, the player can either teleport to it, or fire another instead. Teleportation markers would expire after about 40seconds or so (time would be adjusted with play-testing of course).

3) Close Combat - 'Ghosting.' Use of the ghosting method would allow players to have some control over thier targetting, and the the character would automatically be re-orientated to face a nearby enemy upon teleportation in order to be combat ready.

I'm planning to allow players to map thier own keys, so the player should be able to just assign whichever of the options they most want, or even set up a method of having all three readily avaliable.

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Original post by intrest86 I have an idea that I don't think has been suggested yet. When the player activates teleport give them control of a ghost of themselves. Make that ghost move incredibly fast, so that it is hard to get exactly where you want to stand or in the orientation you want without practice. Basically it should be like trying to steer a bullet. .. snip ... Well, those are the ideas. I actually like the word "ghosting"

That's an excellent idea, however it wouldn't look that fantastic in first person mode.
Edit: Actually I've change my mind, it could look quite alright.

I reckon you could make it that you just face someone (maybe put a crosshair on them) and then you always teleport to right behind them (facing their back). Assuming of course they aren't just in front of a solid object. That way it's not a 'teleport away out of danger' tool, but an attack tool.

One thing's for sure you've got to have some kind of cooldown or energy usage thingy to stop unlimited abuse of the power.