Rydian touched on flight here, but I wanted to go over it in a little more detail.
To fly, you need four things:
- An appropriate vehicle type
- A flight map that allows flight
- Collisions on props an other structures, so you can't fly through buildings
- The server's OK.
Vehicle Type:
Vehicle type is an attribute on races in Mabinogi that describes how they move. In order to fly, you need a race with a flight-capable vehicle type, such as a bird.
Flight Map:
Flight maps are grayscale images that tell the client where you can fly (white), fly but not land (gray) and not fly (black). They're essentially tri-color minimaps. Here's Abb Neagh's:
[Image: http://i.imgur.com/vGmc5HM.png]
Recognize it?
Colissions:
Flight maps alone aren't enough because they can't describe height. You can't fly through buildings, but you can fly over them. This is handled just like regular movement collisions, except it displays the you're-too-low-idiot message.
The server's okay:
After all the crap malicious players have pulled over the years, the server now tracks a lot more than it used to. Attempting to fly can still be thwarted by the server if it decides you're on the wrong vehicle type or not in a fly zone.
[SIZE="4"]So what's needed to power flight in currently flightless regions?[/SIZE]
All four items are needed. The real question is, how many does devCat already have? One? Two?
What if I told you that, on any given map, devCat already has 3.5 out of the 4 items it needs to enabled flight? Let's break it down:
- They already have flying vehicles
- They already have collisions on props
- The server reads the same data as the client, and the approval system already exists, so nothing special to do here
The last remaining item is the flight map. This might seem rather daunting, I mean you have to add EVERY solid prop and unwalkable terrain feature to the map. And it's not like this information already exists, right? Right??
[Image: http://i.imgur.com/FT2aJ8O.jpg]
Oh.
Let me introduce you to Mabi's region and area system. The red boxes are prop boundaries, and the blue ones are events. What is an event? You know the text and music that shows up when you walk into the Tir graveyard? See that big blue square event there? Guess what it does.
Now, although this map doesn't show it, there are actually multiple types of events. Some play music, some show text, and some... mark the boundaries of areas you can't walk into. You can see examples of this in the thin rectangular boxes north of Trefor and south of the wolves.
So, an enterprising devCat could write a small conversion tool to convert its own region format into flight maps, using the prop boundaries and terrain collision events. A little hand verification and touch up and you've got your flight map!
I estimate the total time to create a flight map with this method at about a half-hour to half-day. So within a week, a single devCat employee could make all of Uladh fly-able.
[SIZE="4"]Proof of concept:[/SIZE]
As some of you know, I enabled flight in Tir already, using an allow-all flight map and Aura (to get around the need for the server's OK). However, I took it to the (unfortunate) next level. I am so sorry.
[video=youtube;Anu662nbZh0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Anu662nbZh0[/video]