OttoBifrost
See where a portal leads before you step through. The destination loads while you walk up, so you arrive with the floors already built.
Screenshots 1 screenshots
About this mod Author’s original text
OttoBifrost
For Valheim 1.0.17
Version 1.4.1, built and Harmony-checked against Valheim 1.0.17.
Walk up to a portal and you see through it. The disc on the portal shows the far
end, as a picture or live, and while you look the mod loads that place.
By the time you step through, the floors and walls over there already exist. A
trip between two built bases becomes a walk instead of a loading screen.
Maintainer: Paul Otto
What it does
- A window in the portal. Within 12 m of a connected wood or stone portal, a
round preview shows the arrival side, and both faces of the portal show the same
place. The disc is sized for the wood arch, so it looks small on the stone portal.
The preview has three modes, set with PreviewMode:
- StaticView, the default. The mod takes a picture of the destination, facing the
way you face when you arrive, as soon as everything within 40 m in front of the
far portal exists. When the rest of the arrival area has loaded, it takes a second
picture to fill in distant buildings. The picture stays until you walk away, and
each new approach starts again. It shimmers and ripples, fades out at its rim, and
lets 30% of the portal behind it show through.
- LiveView. The preview renders continuously and follows your head, so the view
shifts as you move.
- None. No preview is drawn, which leaves the opening free for another mod's
portal visual. Destinations still preload and fast teleports still apply.
- Loading before you arrive. Within 15 m of a portal the zones around its
destination start to load. Past 10 m that is 3x3 zones, inside 10 m it is 5x5,
and inside 5 m it is 7x7. The area grows over a few seconds, and objects at the
far end are created in small batches, so walking up does not hitch.
- A room full of portals. The portal nearest to you loads first and at full
size. Every other destination loads 3x3, which is enough for its preview. A
different portal only takes over as nearest once it is 2 m closer, so pacing
around a hub room does not drag the load back and forth between bases.
- Faster teleports. When the destination is preloaded, the vanilla wait is
skipped. The trip ends as soon as every object within 40 m of the arrival point
exists and there is a floor under you. The far edges of a big base can finish
building after you land. If that is already true you walk straight
through. If it is not, the screen dims while the rest arrives, and at the vanilla
8 second mark vanilla takes over. Dungeon doors are left alone.
What it costs
StaticView renders at most twice per portal per approach, at most one portal per
frame, and nothing after that.
In LiveView only the closest preview renders live. The others keep their last
frame. The live one renders every frame inside 4 m, 10 times a second out to 8 m,
and 3 times a second beyond that. In my six-portal hub room a preview render
averaged 1.4 ms.
Both modes render without shadows and with a 300 m draw distance. None renders nothing.
The game writes BepInEx/config/potto007.OttoBifrost.cfg the first time it runs
with the mod loaded. When the server has the mod, the OttoBifrost section comes
from the server.
| Section | Key | Default | What it does |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| OttoBifrost | LockConfiguration | true | Only server admins can change the synced settings. |
| OttoBifrost | PreloadDestinations | true | Load the area around a portal's destination while you stand near the portal. Synced. |
| OttoBifrost | FastTeleport | true | Skip the vanilla wait when the destination is already loaded. Synced. |
| Preview | PreviewMode | StaticView | StaticView shows a picture of the destination, taken once the objects near the far portal exist and again once the whole arrival area has loaded. LiveView renders the destination continuously and follows your head. None draws no preview but still preloads destinations. Not synced. |
| Debug | LogPerformance | false | Write a timing summary to the log every 5 seconds. Not synced. |
Installatio
Install & use Install: BepInEx plugin
- The archive from playbuff is the mod itself — usually a BepInEx plugin (a .dll or a plugin folder once unzipped).
- Recommended: use a community mod manager (such as r2modman) — pick this game, import the mod, and the manager sets up BepInEx and its dependencies for you.
- Manual route: install the BepInEx loader in the game folder, then drop the unzipped .dll or plugin folder into BepInEx/plugins/.
- Launch the game — the BepInEx console logs every plugin it loads; seeing this mod in the log means it is installed.
Mods with listed dependencies need those installed too, or they will not load. Options are usually changed in-game or in the plugin's config file. In multiplayer, the host and every client need the same mods installed.
Install these first, or the mod will not work: