Today I was thinking about death in Minecraft. Although it's supposed to be bad it's also a form of limited teleportation. And that can be useful.
I did some tests and discovered that if you build a solid pillar on your spawn point you'll always spawn on the top. If you create a hole in this pillar you'll spawn in that gap instead.
Basically, you can control the altitude you respawn at by determining what y coordinate isn't blocked at your spawn point.
If you made a tower of pistons, and retracted select ones two at a time, you basically can make an elevator that lets players teleport to a precise and changeable altitude at their spawn. By dying.
Here's a basic illustration. It doesn't have the circuitry to actually control it, but that's just a bunch of simple NOT gates. The piston heads are extended into the spawn points x & z coordinates. If all piston heads are extended you'll appear on top of the tower after respawning. If you retract any two of them, you'll appear in that gap instead.
Obviously dying isn't a very practical way to travel, since you lose your xp and items. But it could be an interesting part of a challenge map. You'd have to kill yourself to reach otherwise inaccessible areas.
It could be a way of forcing the player to give up any tools and materials they acquired in the last area, sort of like the emancipation fields in Portal. Or you could use the 5 minute despawn time of items to set up a race against the clock, forcing you to complete an objective with 5 minutes, die again, and return next to your items before they vanish.
And unlike a regular elevator you can reach it from anywhere in the game. A challenge map might have you battle and solve puzzles across a big dungeon, at the end have you flip a switch to activate the next level the elevator leads to (by retracting just the two pistons for that level), then jump into lava to instantly teleport there.
EDIT: I've made some interesting discoveries that might allow horizontal teleportation too. Read posts #17 & #18 below.
You don't need to make the entire tower retractable. Parts can be fixed in place.
Redstone stone signals can pass through bedrock. So you could make solid bedrock rooms, stacked on top of each other at spawn, but have systems in place to send signals to pistons inside other bedrock rooms. This makes actually inescapable chambers, where the only way to reach the next area is to solve a puzzle and then die. It wouldn't require the usual honor code that challenge maps are played by. Players would absolutely not be able to break the map. Dying early would just send them back to the beginning of their current challenge room, until they solve a puzzle that retracts the pistons in the next room.
And since they'd start each level with no items besides what you leave for them in chests, you could prevent tactics like pillaring and bridge building.
If anyone makes a challenge map with this I'd love to see what they create.
Another idea I had for the "tower o bedrock rooms" challenge map is leaving all the spawn spaces empty initially, except for the bedrock walls and floors. Players would have to solve puzzles and perform acrobatic feats to get blocks to stack up in their present room so death makes them spawn in the next room up. You could even require them to break up the pistons and other components used in the puzzles as the only source of blocks in the room.
If anyone makes a challenge map with this I'd love to see what they create.
Another idea I had for the "tower o bedrock rooms" challenge map is leaving all the spawn spaces empty initially, except for the bedrock walls and floors. Players would have to solve puzzles and perform acrobatic feats to get blocks to stack up in their present room so death makes them spawn in the next room up. You could even require them to break up the pistons and other components used in the puzzles as the only source of blocks in the room.
And exactly why I want to use it instead of placing beds everywhere to have the player save spawn position. :sad.gif:
Beds could still play a part as save points if each level is very large and very lethal. It might save them a trek from the real spawn point each time they die. You'd have to break the bed when you're ready to warp to the next level though.
Beds could also be used for the first level of the game, which might located nowhere near spawn.
For example, in level 1 you might see the bed on the other side of a deep chasm or on a floating platform. The puzzle would be how to die to teleport to the bed and break it, which wouldn't be easy since there would be nothing immediately obviously lethal nearby; no drops without water, no cacti, no lava, etc. After dying you'd break the bed, then figure out a 2nd way to die to get to the next level at your real spawn point.
I ran a few more tests today and discovered some weird things:
If you tower up from your sea level spawn point you will always appear in the lowest 2 block space available. If there are no gaps you will appear on top of this tower. If there are multiple gaps you will appear in the lowest gap above sea level. If you change where the gap is you can easily alter you spawn point back and forth.
If the lowest space available is below sea level it will ignore it if it is underground and instead send you to a spot at your spawn above sea level. If there are no spots above sea level at your x/z spawn site it will permanently change your spawn point.
If you dig down even just one block at your current spawn point, have no blocks above it, and die it will no longer be your spawn point. Instead a random spot very close nearby will become your new permanent x/z spawn coordinates. If this spot becomes invalid then your spawn point will change yet again to a new random spot.
There doesn't seem to be a way of going back to your original spawn point when this happens (other than maybe changing your spawn point over and over again until it randomly happens, which might be never). How are new spawn points determined? Completely randomly? Does the seed control it? Might be useful information.
Continuing my thoughts in the last post, here's an idea for how to create a horizontal death teleporter that lets you permanently change your spawn points x/z coords. I haven't tested it yet though, so it may not actually work.
What if you create a large piston floor centered around your natural spawn point. When not extended all the pistons are 1 level below sea level (not valid respawn points). When extended they're at sea level (all valid respawn points).
If you die, and the pistons are all extended, you'll spawn at whatever your current spawn point is since all of them are valid spawning sites.
If all of them are retracted except one, you should always teleport to that one spot since it's the only nearby valid spawn point. That also makes that your new permanent spawn point.
If some of them are extended but not your current spawn, you'll be assigned a new spawn point at random.
If all the pistons are retracted you'd instead respawn somewhere outside the piston floor area, so you'd want to make sure that never occurs.
This would be a way of permanently changing your spawn point's x/z coordinates, as many times as you want, to precisely where you want it to be.
I wonder if that "area of random respawn" is exactly 20x20, which is the respawn zone size for multiplayer.
In any case, that's really god damn clever. Using pistons to alter your spawn location.
Unfortunately for the horizontal version, there's no (easy?) way to independently control a grid of pistons.
Estimated size of a 20x20 area:
20x20x41. It takes 3 blocks of height to control a single piston, plus 2 blocks for an adjacent piston. So the first ring takes 5 blocks of height to individually control, all the blocks adjacent to that ring need to be offset by 2 from each piston in the outer ring as well as offset from each other, so +4 blocks.
Although, if we use sticky pistons and have blocks on top of every other piston in a checkerboard pattern, we can save 1 block of height on the offsets (due to the torch on those blocks being 1 block farther down, and as such do not need:
in order to offset.
So, at BEST, you're looking at 20x20x21.
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In addition to using sticky pistons in order to alternate what level the pistons in the floor are at, you can also use regular pistons hidden underground lifting up a tower of sand/gravel. That lets you alternate the altitude of the pistons quit a bit, which should make it easier to wire.
You only need 4 buffer for a room entrance (1 ceiling, 2 walk area, and 1 floor) So really, u only need 1 piston every floor or every 4th buffer. From there you have 4 directions to choose from to start a puzzle room to be the first level of that section. Unless you want a roomier space, I use a 6 buffer tall room for Bedrock Logic often just because it looks spacious, less cramped for the player, and more wiring room to play with. However, since y16 = dark point, and 63/64 = sea level (sea is actually the bottom buffer of the 2) you can only fit in so many levels.
And again, dying isn't very appealing when you're having the player collect stuff for something important at the end should they succeed without dying.
I did some tests and discovered that if you build a solid pillar on your spawn point you'll always spawn on the top. If you create a hole in this pillar you'll spawn in that gap instead.
Basically, you can control the altitude you respawn at by determining what y coordinate isn't blocked at your spawn point.
If you made a tower of pistons, and retracted select ones two at a time, you basically can make an elevator that lets players teleport to a precise and changeable altitude at their spawn. By dying.
Here's a basic illustration. It doesn't have the circuitry to actually control it, but that's just a bunch of simple NOT gates. The piston heads are extended into the spawn points x & z coordinates. If all piston heads are extended you'll appear on top of the tower after respawning. If you retract any two of them, you'll appear in that gap instead.
Obviously dying isn't a very practical way to travel, since you lose your xp and items. But it could be an interesting part of a challenge map. You'd have to kill yourself to reach otherwise inaccessible areas.
It could be a way of forcing the player to give up any tools and materials they acquired in the last area, sort of like the emancipation fields in Portal. Or you could use the 5 minute despawn time of items to set up a race against the clock, forcing you to complete an objective with 5 minutes, die again, and return next to your items before they vanish.
And unlike a regular elevator you can reach it from anywhere in the game. A challenge map might have you battle and solve puzzles across a big dungeon, at the end have you flip a switch to activate the next level the elevator leads to (by retracting just the two pistons for that level), then jump into lava to instantly teleport there.
EDIT: I've made some interesting discoveries that might allow horizontal teleportation too. Read posts #17 & #18 below.
Please do! That's why I'm posting it.
You don't need to make the entire tower retractable. Parts can be fixed in place.
Redstone stone signals can pass through bedrock. So you could make solid bedrock rooms, stacked on top of each other at spawn, but have systems in place to send signals to pistons inside other bedrock rooms. This makes actually inescapable chambers, where the only way to reach the next area is to solve a puzzle and then die. It wouldn't require the usual honor code that challenge maps are played by. Players would absolutely not be able to break the map. Dying early would just send them back to the beginning of their current challenge room, until they solve a puzzle that retracts the pistons in the next room.
And since they'd start each level with no items besides what you leave for them in chests, you could prevent tactics like pillaring and bridge building.
I have just been inspired to build a map centred around this concept.
Great work! :smile.gif:
Another idea I had for the "tower o bedrock rooms" challenge map is leaving all the spawn spaces empty initially, except for the bedrock walls and floors. Players would have to solve puzzles and perform acrobatic feats to get blocks to stack up in their present room so death makes them spawn in the next room up. You could even require them to break up the pistons and other components used in the puzzles as the only source of blocks in the room.
Exactly what this is:
Bedrock Logic Adventure Game
And exactly why I want to use it instead of placing beds everywhere to have the player save spawn position. :sad.gif:
Beds could still play a part as save points if each level is very large and very lethal. It might save them a trek from the real spawn point each time they die. You'd have to break the bed when you're ready to warp to the next level though.
Beds could also be used for the first level of the game, which might located nowhere near spawn.
For example, in level 1 you might see the bed on the other side of a deep chasm or on a floating platform. The puzzle would be how to die to teleport to the bed and break it, which wouldn't be easy since there would be nothing immediately obviously lethal nearby; no drops without water, no cacti, no lava, etc. After dying you'd break the bed, then figure out a 2nd way to die to get to the next level at your real spawn point.
It's sad, though, with the improved functioning of spawn points, my piston-based spawn point disabler may no longer work :/
If you tower up from your sea level spawn point you will always appear in the lowest 2 block space available. If there are no gaps you will appear on top of this tower. If there are multiple gaps you will appear in the lowest gap above sea level. If you change where the gap is you can easily alter you spawn point back and forth.
If the lowest space available is below sea level it will ignore it if it is underground and instead send you to a spot at your spawn above sea level. If there are no spots above sea level at your x/z spawn site it will permanently change your spawn point.
If you dig down even just one block at your current spawn point, have no blocks above it, and die it will no longer be your spawn point. Instead a random spot very close nearby will become your new permanent x/z spawn coordinates. If this spot becomes invalid then your spawn point will change yet again to a new random spot.
There doesn't seem to be a way of going back to your original spawn point when this happens (other than maybe changing your spawn point over and over again until it randomly happens, which might be never). How are new spawn points determined? Completely randomly? Does the seed control it? Might be useful information.
What if you create a large piston floor centered around your natural spawn point. When not extended all the pistons are 1 level below sea level (not valid respawn points). When extended they're at sea level (all valid respawn points).
If you die, and the pistons are all extended, you'll spawn at whatever your current spawn point is since all of them are valid spawning sites.
If all of them are retracted except one, you should always teleport to that one spot since it's the only nearby valid spawn point. That also makes that your new permanent spawn point.
If some of them are extended but not your current spawn, you'll be assigned a new spawn point at random.
If all the pistons are retracted you'd instead respawn somewhere outside the piston floor area, so you'd want to make sure that never occurs.
This would be a way of permanently changing your spawn point's x/z coordinates, as many times as you want, to precisely where you want it to be.
In any case, that's really god damn clever. Using pistons to alter your spawn location.
Unfortunately for the horizontal version, there's no (easy?) way to independently control a grid of pistons.
Estimated size of a 20x20 area:
20x20x41. It takes 3 blocks of height to control a single piston, plus 2 blocks for an adjacent piston. So the first ring takes 5 blocks of height to individually control, all the blocks adjacent to that ring need to be offset by 2 from each piston in the outer ring as well as offset from each other, so +4 blocks.
Although, if we use sticky pistons and have blocks on top of every other piston in a checkerboard pattern, we can save 1 block of height on the offsets (due to the torch on those blocks being 1 block farther down, and as such do not need:
in order to offset.
So, at BEST, you're looking at 20x20x21.
And again, dying isn't very appealing when you're having the player collect stuff for something important at the end should they succeed without dying.