Systems · Flight · Build 0.9.4b
Flight in Ancient of Ruins is not a mount that plays a travel animation. It is a movement mode written into the client and mirrored by the realm. Here is what that means when you press the key, and where the edges are.
Flight, in numbers
I · The mode
Numpad 1 toggles flight. Numpad 2 and 3 climb and descend for as long as you hold them. Steering is your mouse, exactly as on the ground, and the camera stays yours — it does not swing behind you or lock to a rail while you climb.
Holding altitude
Flight does not switch the physics system off — it removes the fall force and leaves everything else running. That is why you still animate, still get knocked back, and still take a hit from a ground caster who has the range for it.
Coming down
At any height. There is no landing animation to sit through and no forced descent to a safe spot. Drop from 900 m and you will land, once, permanently.
Terrain
The engine likes to snap characters to the height of whatever is under them. While you are flying that check is skipped, so a cliff passing beneath you does not yank you upward.
Combat
Every skill you have on the ground works in the air. Anything that requires a target's feet — charges, leaps, ground-anchored zones — will not fire on a flying target. Rogues have opinions about this. We are listening.
II · Sync
The hard part of flight was never leaving the ground. It was making your climb look like a climb on someone else's screen instead of a stack of teleports.
| Problem | What we do about it |
|---|---|
| Position floods | Airborne positions send at 10 Hz, not every frame. Sending on every frame filled the movement channel and froze the client for everyone in the zone. |
| Snapping between packets | Receiving clients glide to the next height at constant velocity, timed to the send interval. You see a climb, not six teleports a second. |
| Ground snap on observers | Height correction is suppressed for any sprite the realm knows is flying, so watching someone fly over a hill no longer drags them into it. |
| The stuck-pilot bug | Flight state is carried on the movement packet itself and applied to the mount and the rider on every client — so no one is left hovering after you have landed. |
| Yaw jitter | Observed pilots no longer have their facing rewritten every frame; the shiver on distant flyers is gone as of 0.9.4b. |
III · Limits
Flight is a good verb and a terrible escape hatch. These limits exist so that fights stay fights.
Interiors are not built with ceilings that hold up to a 1,200 m cap, and a boss you can float above is not a boss. The key is inert inside.
Ranked and objective PvP stay on the ground for everyone. No exceptions, no consumables that get around it.
You can fight in the air, but you cannot toggle flight on while you are in combat. Get out first, the old-fashioned way.
Enough to cross Varanas without the stairs. Not enough to sit on the auction house roof.
IV · Mounts
Every flight mount seats two. It is the least necessary feature we have built and by some distance the most used.
Pilot
Right-click a mounted player to ask for a seat. The pilot approves. Either of you can end it at any time.
Passenger
Look wherever you want, chat, read your map, cast nothing. Passengers cannot use skills — that was a long argument and this is where it landed.
Dismount
Step off at 900 m if you like. Gravity is waiting, and it is not sentimental about it.
V · Elsewhere
Smaller, but you will notice all of them in the first hour.
Interface
An extra bar appears while you are airborne with climb, descend, and hover, and disappears the moment you land. Your ground bars are never rearranged.
Interface
One click parks you at your current altitude with no key held. For reading a map, or for standing still in a screenshot.
Progression
The Hollow Vault chain at level 15. Every class gets the same skills at the same point, because a movement mode is not a class perk.
Client
The numpad defaults suit a full keyboard. Laptop players rebind in Settings → Controls and never think about it again.
Realm
Movement validation checks the pilot when you are attached to one, instead of deciding you have teleported and killing you. It used to kill you.
Realm
Nothing ships without a line in the log. If we broke it, it is written down with the build number that broke it.