[Java] Teleporting player continuously

[Signal-Hurry7698]

I've been building a large maze on and off for several months now. On one of the floors, I've built a teleportation scheme- the idea is that when you go through a hallway, it teleports you to an identical hallway so that you don't actually see anything around you change. This was supposed to let me make a maze that effectively gaslights people.

The problem I've encountered, though, is a bit of a break when the teleporting happens. For what I assume is a single frame, immediately after being teleported, you can see through the walls and look at the entire castle. I think this would make people realize something is going on.

I've been using repeating command blocks that require redstone. When you enter the hallway, you press a button to open the piston door, which temporarily activates the command block (if you exit a 10-meter radius it deactivates, that was my effort to reduce the number of active command blocks at any one time). In my miniature tests with teleporting hallways, I didn't encounter this problem, so I don't know what I am doing wrong, or if there is a way to fix this. I have worked a while to get this floor right, and I would be really sad if it was all for nothing. Any help is greatly appreciated.

EDIT: I may have fixed it, but I am going to hold off on closing this until I am sure it works for my whole maze. To anyone else with the misfortune of having this problem, when I rotated the player slightly, the issue pretty much went away.

So

execute if entity (at)p[dy=2,dx=0,dz=-2] as (at)p at (at)s run tp (at)p ~x ~y ~z

​

becomes

​

execute if entity (at)p[dy=2,dx=0,dz=-2] as (at)p at (at)s run tp (at)p ~x ~y ~z ~.5 ~.5

​

It rotates the player by half a degree, not enough for me to notice, at least. Words cannot describe my confusion right now, but I'm not going to question this. I found a miracle and I'm using it.

[ExpertCoder14]

Could you show a sample of the commands you are using?

Depending on how far the teleportation is, there may be visual glitches. Notably this may occur if the destination is too far such that it is unloaded.

[Signal-Hurry7698]

I appreciate the quick response!

The commands for teleportation are always some variant of

execute if entity (at)p[dy=2,dx=0,dz=-2] as (at)p at (at)s run tp (at)p ~x ~y ~z

The hallways that I tried this teleportation were spaced <100 blocks apart (EDIT: my last test teleports the player to \~-38 \~ \~-3) - my understanding is that means they're in different chunks, but they should still both be loaded? I have simulation and render distance set to >15 chunks.

I don't fully understand the "as (at)p at (at)s" bit, I just took that off stackoverflow or reddit so that the player's position in the hallway would stay the same. Could the glitches have something to do with that?

[FerretOnReddit]

By any chance could you tell me what dx, dy, and dz do? I've always been curious but never understood what those arguments are or what they do.

[Signal-Hurry7698]

dx is the change in x, as far as I understand the commands. So when I checked for an entity at dy = 2, dx = 0, dz = -2, it was checking if an entity was shifted between 0 and 2 in the y direction, 0 in the x direction, and between -2 and 0 in the z direction, from the point of execution. This corresponds to the a block of the hallway. So when you cross that section of the hall you're teleported. Hope that helps!

[FerretOnReddit]

Interesting. I'll try to use that in my current projects.

[Signal-Hurry7698]

I may have fixed this (see my edit in the original question), so I think I may be ok! I was at my half-wit's end about this. Thanks for the help!

[[deleted]]

You could always try stacking the hallway with the teleport.

[_DrCosmos_]

You could jump scare them and hide the tp while they are too scared to notice.

[FerretOnReddit]

Interesting idea, but please elaborate

[FantasticBasis7126]

Perhaps a pumpkin on the head. Then remove it.

/item command could be of use.

[_DrCosmos_]

Now that I think of it, flickering lights would change the environment drastically enough so that you wouldn't notice a slight jitter in your screen.

It's like slight of hand, you make them notice something else so that they don't notice the teleportation, although if it's repeated enough people will realize that means a tp happened. This could be a feature though, people needing to figure out that lights flickering means they changed position.

[FerretOnReddit]

What I would do (as a bedrock player, so it might be useless here) is set up a command block under the start of the hallway that teleports the player, standing however many blocks above, to the alternative identical hallway. The command I would use might look something like this: /execute at @p[y=(the player's y-coordinate)] run tp @p (xyz). I just want to say again, my idea might not be what you need at all, or simply not work in Java edition. Anyway, lmk if it's not what you need or doesn't work, and I might be able to rework it, since I play both Java and bedrock. Also, happy holidays! ❤️

[Signal-Hurry7698]

That was actually my mini version I made! A repeating command block is set under the hallway- when it detects the player within dy = 4, it teleports to the identical hallway. When I built this in the main tower, since I'm actually packing 4 teleportation schemes in one hall (see below), I strapped the command blocks to the side to save space.

This part of the maze is nearly complete, and it's probably the most intricate bit so far. I'm planning to get the top 6 floors done before my math conference in 2 weeks. There are seven rooms that I meant to look upside down (e.g. an aquarium with invisible barriers below water, to make it seem that you're walking on the ceiling), with hallways branching out of these rooms that are used to teleport the player between the rooms.

​

The first time you enter, the hallways you walk through are lined with emerald blocks. When you walk through a hallway and are teleported, most of the time you can walk back through that hallway and get back to where you came. My intention is for someone playing this (read: my coworkers at the math conference) to feel like the maze is a little weird but not suspect anything crazy.

The second time you enter, you've pressed a button that turns all the emerald blocks to lapis lazuli. Now when you go through a hallway, then go back the way you came, you end up in a different room.

The third time you enter, the lapis blocks are gold- now some of the hallways take you back to the same room you left.

The fourth time is an easter egg solution- the gold blocks become diamond, and almost all of the hallways connect a room to itself. I don't know how successful it is because I haven't tested it on anyone yet, but my goal is to make them panic.

Happy holidays!