Creating Portals
To create a gate, simply build portal that corresponds to a valid .gate format.
If you would like to use a custom activator material, place a button/coral on the corresponding control surface at this stage.
Next, place a sign (made of any material) on the remaining control surface. SG will not overwrite activators or signs!:
All stargates except for U gates (see this) are formatted in a manner that roughly corresponds to the following:
1. This Portal's Name
2. Destination Name
3. Network
4. Properties (Flags)
The first line of any stargate portal's sign is always what this gate will be called.
Gate names take the form of case agnostic strings, and support most unicode characters.
For example, if user1 wanted to make a portal at their spider farm, the first line of that portal might be:
spiderFarm
If a destination string is provided on the second line, the resulting portal will always connect directly to the specified portal.
For instance, if user1 wants to create a portal directly from their storage room to their spider farm, the first two lines of that portal might look like this:
storageRoom
spiderFarm
If the second line is left blank (no destination is provided), the portal will become a networked gate.
This means that, through a sign-based UI, the gate's users will be able to select any destination on the portal's network (see line three).
For example, if user1 wants to create a portal in their base that can connect to either their spider farm or their storage room,
the first two lines of that portal might look like this:
homeBase
Networks are groups of interconnected portals, with each group being assigned its own string as an identifier (network name).
Networks of portals are independent of each other, and therefore:
- Fixed portals can only be connected to destinations that are on the same network.
- Networked and random portals will only be able to connect to (scroll through) portals that are on the same network.
If no network was provided, or if a user lacks the necessary perms to create a portal on the network they specified, stargate will fallback to the default network and their personal network.
The default (central) network is generally used for server utilities, and is included in the sg.preset.builder node.
Personal (username) networks are generally used by players for any purposes they wish; the sg.preset.gatemaker node includes permissions to use one's personal network.
In the examples above, as a normal player, user1 would probably have defaulted to their personal network.
As such, the gates created above would have resulted in this:
| spiderFarm user1 |
storageRoom spiderFarm user1 |
homeBase user1 |
|---|
If a string is entered on line three, StarGate will attempt to create a portal on the specified network.
This action will be successful if the user has permissions to make portals on the specified network.
If we pretend that user1 had the permissions required to use the network 'example1' and created the following gate,
we would notice that it does not connect to any of the portals created above; this is because they are on separate networks.
otherBase
example1
If we create another portal on the example1 network, it would connect to otherBase, but not to homeBase
anotherPortal
otherBase
example1
Gates can be customised through the use of flags; groups of letters that can be appended to the end of a sign to induce specific behaviours. A full list of available flags can be found here.
For example, the A flag and the P flag can be used to create this portal:
miningOutpost
homeBase
user1
AP
The A flag means that the portal is always-on (it does not need to be activated with a button).
The P flag means that the portal is private (only user1 is able to use/enter it).
After the you have finished the sign (and therefore, the portal), you may recolour it;
SG allows signs to be modified through vanilla colouring mechanics (i.e. right-clicking with dyes and/or glow squid ink).