Thanks for this reply djaydino. I'm new to Unity and my limited knowledge is that presets are useful ways to apply / duplicate settings without manually typing in too much? In any event, I didn't use them here & I'm not sure how you would initiate (activate? instantiate?) a game object preset once/only when the player enters a trigger. I looked into Global Variables, but for some reason my player / target areas (in the version I tried with your recommended setup A) aren't showing up as an option in the Global Variables... (I've also tried tweening and Vector XYZ set/get in other practice iterations, so this trigger teleport has been a bit of a pain)... As far as raycasting, I'm pretty clueless there. I've watched your youtube video & tried to apply to my game. No such luck in my particular case. This raycasting tutorial seems very useful, however. Thanks!
I'm probably doing something problematic inside the FSMs currently in the game?--->
Unity Game Object #1: B_1 (Building 1 trigger sends up to the higher of the two underground areas)
PM BLOCK ONE:
*Trigger Event*
Use Owner
OnTriggerEnter
TagPlayer
Send Event B_1 Trigger (Ideally the story will change radically based on these decision points, so I'd like to register where player has been & to add an Int Var later in the making of this game...
Store Collider PLAYERMANAGER (a variable for a mostly empty parent game object with the player and camera as children).
TRANSITION--B_1Triggered
PM BLOCK TWO:
*Get Position PLAYERMANAGER (GAME OBJECT)
None x 4
World Space
Every Frame
*Set Position PLAYERMANAGER (VARIABLE)
Vector None
X None
Y 100
Z None
World Space
Every Frame
*Playmaker Execute Block
(Fungus) Block Name B_1 / Flowchart
Not every frame
Unity Game Object 2 (INACTIVE ON GAME START): B_1Return
Once activated, this object teleports player from one of the two underground areas back to the 3-d above-ground area... I use Fungus script to de-activate B_1 and to activate B_1Return (& all other similarly-made FSMobjects). I haven't decided whether to return the player to the original spot of B_1 or to shoot the player up through ground at the XZ corresponding to their underground position. Probably the latter...). Anyways... getting ahead of myself. B_1Return goes like this:
* Get Position PLAYERMANAGER (GAME OBJECT)
None x 4
World Space
Every frame
* Set Position PLAYERMANAGER (VARIABLE)
Vector None
X None
Y 1000
Z 0
Self Space
Every Frame
So, after two buildings/ triggers have been set off (B_1, B_1Return, B_2, and B_2Return) the player either won't zoom underground or won't resurface, making this game element pretty much useless (* or worse *). I think you are right that the player is getting stuck in terrain. If it helps any, there are two blended terrain objects—both of them have custom sprite textures (from a cell phone picture of my wife's 2-d pastel cartoons). Ok, hope this clarifies some & thanks djaydino & anyone else who has recommendations here.
There are 40 of these buildings, so perhaps presets would be the better way to go? These buildings are the way I'm communicating the overarching narrative / but they are also an entry into 2 large open underground areas (below main level) where the sound is consistent with above ground... this way they can be used for navigation to get around difficult areas above ground (a la "Marco Polo"-style game).