Minor Request: Active Warp Gate Effects

[Edymnion]

I'm sure somebody has mentioned this before, probably quite often, but quick Search didn't bring it up, so here it is again.

Instead of having the warp gate computer constantly announce "Warp Gate Ready", could we please have a visual effect on the warp gate itself? You know, like the nether portals in Minecraft get the purple light in them when they're activated?

Maybe even let you link the warp computer to a light the way you do weapons, so that you can pick the color that your warp gate opens with?

After I spent a couple hours setting up a pair of gates on the server I'm on, there were many questions along the lines of "Is it working?" "I dunno, it looks the same...", followed by a couple hours of me linking the gates improperly and many, many, many shuttle trips the long way around trying to fix them. Some kind of visual whoosh or something from the gate that immediately says "Yeah, its working" would be much appreciated.

 

[jayman38]

I guess the gate field itself could remain invisible. Or maybe it could have a slight "ghost" (server configurable?) when on. I imagine it would be easy to implement a glow effect on the gate blocks themselves (similar to how power capacitors glow when exposed), so that when it is "on and ready", the gate blocks self-illuminate, to simulate the glow-y bits in the texture springing to life. It would be neat to be able to link to lights in order to change the hue of the glow to the builder's preference. (angry red glow, versus otherworldly green, versus sunny orange)

 

[Valiant70]

I'd like to see a transparent effect inside the gate frame. Nothing too flashy - just something that says "Hey, there's an energy field here." Maybe someone could just flatten out the pulse texture and display it within the portal frame. That would work well enough.

 

[Edymnion]

Well we already know that the system supports blocks that you can pass through (any activated door, for example), that it supports transparent glowing blocks (force fields), and that the warp gate has to be a 2 dimensional plane with solid boundries.

Should be relatively easy to simply have it automatically fill the inside of the gate with force field like blocks that don't block movement.

Or even just re-use the planet core effect.

 

[Sunkin351]

Along the lines of warp gates, This idea is awesome, but how about a way to turn it on and off? And be able to configure it within the game if it should shut off after you pass through it?

 

[Valiant70]

I would imagine the best way to do it would be to have the basic, calm animation on when the gate is ready, and have a flashy effect kind of like the EVE online gates when used. It would be off when the gate is inoperable.

how about a way to turn it on and off?

This gave me an idea. Perhaps the gate could be disabled/locked with logic. Time for another suggestion!

 

[NeonSturm]

Perhaps the output could be boolean to logic and string for display-blocks.

You could then setup a display showing destination coordinates.

 

[Sunkin351]

you know what? I would love to input the coords for the gate through a display block! That would be awesome!

 

[NeonSturm]

you know what? I would love to input the coords for the gate through a display block! That would be awesome!

I would love a display block act as a clipboard for the marker beam (and possibly other stuff) too, if it could send coordinates to other blocks.

 

[Edymnion]

you know what? I would love to input the coords for the gate through a display block! That would be awesome!

Hmmm... store coordinates in a display block linked to the computer, and then use some logic to be able to pick which display was active so you could store multiple gate locations, and then we could build...