Flight API

Flight API

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A simple, zero-dependency API for flight controlling and detecting mods that break flight.

Flight API is a library for Minecraft (Fabric/NeoForge) that solves the issue of multiple mods conflicting over player flight control. With Flight API, you can avoid situations where players randomly drop to the ground or cannot fly at all because multiple mods keep toggling player.getAbilities().flying and player.getAbilities().allowFlying on and off.

Current Features

• Queue-based flight controlling system to allow to better management of vanilla flight system between mods by intercepting the callbacks of allowFlying and flying player abilities.
• Easy-to-understand logging for players to identify the issues with mods related to flight, allowing to detect conflicts easily and resolve them automatically. This system was introduced as a solution to find out why creative or spectator flight breaks itself for debugging purposes or when it comes to mod compatibility - find out the problematic mod in huge modpacks.

For Users

Put the .jar file into the mods folder and you're ready to go! If you experience any issues related to flight, you can provide the debug.log from your logs folder to a mod author, so the author could help you investigate the issue since the Flight API allows to identify problematic mods.

For Developers

Main Concept

In Vanilla Minecraft (and many mods), flight logic code may be looking like that:

player.getAbilities().flying = true;
player.getAbilities().allowFlying = true;

If two (or more) mods do this in an uncoordinated manner, the player’s flight state may toggle rapidly.

Flight API prevents this by using these concepts:

• Only one mod (one “owner”) can control the player’s flight at any moment. All other flight requests go into a queue. When the current owner releases flight, the next request in the queue becomes active, letting the player continue or stop flying predictably.

• Any direct modification to flying or allowFlying is intercepted or blocked if unauthorized by mixins.

• Mod developers should (and are strongly encouraged to) call:

  FlightAPI.requestFlight(String modId, ServerPlayerEntity player);
  // ...
  FlightAPI.releaseFlight(String modId, ServerPlayerEntity player);
  

  instead of directly accessing player.getAbilities().flying. This single control point ensures only one mod is in charge of flight at a time.

Dependency Setup (Fabric/NeoForge)

In your build.gradle you need to declare Flight API's maven (or CurseMaven, if you wish to) and use modImplementation dependency handler to load the library into your development environment.

Official maven is currently not available, so you can use CurseMaven to load the library into your development environment for now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Also you can jar-in-jar this API in your mod to make it easier to install your mod without much hassle with the Flight API. However, you can simply depend on it just like any other mod.

How to Use

Requesting Flight

Whenever you want to enable flight for a player (e.g., upon pressing a “Jetpack On” button, casting a levitation spell, etc.), do not call player.abilities.flying = true.

Instead call requestFlight(String modId, ServerPlayerEntity player) method:

    boolean gotControl = FlightAPI.requestFlight(modId, player);
    if (gotControl) {
        // You have immediately become the flight owner.
        // Under the hood, FlightManager sets allowFlying/flying = true for the player.
        // The player can now fly (if not in creative/spectator, etc.).
    } else {
        // Another mod is already in control of flight for this player.
        // Your request is queued. Once the current owner releases flight,
        // you'll get ownership automatically. You can handle this behaviour there.
    }

Note: modId is a unique string identifying your mod (e.g., "mymod").

Releasing Flight

When your mod is done controlling flight (the player turns off the jetpack, the spell ends, etc.) you should call the releaseFlight(String modId, ServerPlayerEntity player) method.

FlightAPI.releaseFlight("MyAwesomeMod", player);

If nobody else is waiting in the queue, the player’s flight is disabled. If there is another mod in the queue, that mod immediately takes over the queue. The player can continue flying under the new owner (or be forced to land, depending on the new mod’s logic).

Checking the Current Owner

You can check who currently owns the flight:

    Optional<String> currentOwner = FlightAPI.getCurrentOwner(player);

    if (currentOwner.isPresent()) {
        System.out.println("Flight is currently owned by: " + currentOwner.get());
    } else {
        System.out.println("No one owns flight right now");
    }

Example Cases

“Jetpack” and “Levitation Spell” Mods

JetpackMod grants flight if the player wears a jetpack item.

MagicSpellMod grants flight if the player casts a levitation spell.

Without Flight API, both mods might continually toggle flying = true/false, making the player jerk up and down if not handling this properly, like if two MCreator mods trying to do the same thing.

With Flight API, JetpackMod calls FlightAPI.requestFlight("JetpackMod", player). MagicSpellMod calls FlightAPI.requestFlight("MagicSpellMod", player), but JetpackMod already owns flight, so MagicSpellMod is queued. When JetpackMod’s fuel runs out and it calls FlightApi.releaseFlight("JetpackMod", player), ownership immediately moves to MagicSpellMod. The player does not abruptly lose flight and the spell will continue the flight if conditions are met for the spell flight, of course.

A “Buggy” Mod breaks my flight! What can I do?

Suppose a “BuggyMod” forcibly does player.getAbilities().flying = false; every tick. Thanks to the mixin intercepting that direct assignment, Flight API checks: “Is BuggyMod the current owner? No?”

The assignment is blocked, and the player does not fall.

The debug.log in your modpack can constantly show:

[MixinPlayerAbilities] Flight owned by JetpackMod, ignoring NBT flying=false

which helps you to find out the issue and report it to the mod author.

Priority Logic

Out of the box, FlightManager handles requests FIFO (first in, first out). Whoever requests first becomes the owner.

License

Flight API is licensed under the CC0-1.0 License. Do whatever you want to.