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Universal Winged Flight Tech

This is an actual physics-based flight tech. It allows you to fly around, completely unchained from the limitations you might've seen in other flight techs.
NOTE: The mod doesn't add any wings, you'll get those from vanilla or other mods.

It's also "Universal" for 2 reasons:

• It works completely independently from any other mod, meaning any character can use it (Even ones without wings)
  
• It uses only the "fall" and "fly" player states to animate flying and wing flaps. This means that any species or item with decent animations for those states will look nice with this mod. An exception is wings that "flutter" by just turning into a blur, those don't look good.

Since some people asked, the mod is indeed compatible with Frackin Universe and I don't see any reason it would be incopatible with other mods either.

The controls are simple: Jump into the air, tap up to engage flight mode, point your cursor in the direction you wanna go, and press space when you need a speed boost to flap your wings.

Of course, actually flying skillfully is a different matter entirely. There are many things to get used to, such as stalling and wind speed.

Something to keep a close eye on is the particle trail behind you. It'll give you a reference point for your airspeed and also turns red when you're about to stall.

I highly recommend first flying a bit with debug mode enabled. To do this, first use /admin, then /debug, and finally press G (Special2) while flying to toggle drawing debug lines. Doing so will hopefully help you make sense of the forces acting on you while you fly. In this image[i.imgur.com] you can find info on what all the lines and graph mean.

I've added two simple quests to the outpost tech NPC that give one tech variation each.

The first needs you to get 1 prism shard and gives you access to the Winged Glide tech. This is a lesser version of the flying tech that is just missing the boost functionality. You can still glide long distances with it, especially if you jump off a tall mountain.

The second needs you to get 10 solarium stars and gives you the fully functional flight tech with boost.

Note that these quests are only lightly tested. If there are any issues, please do let me know.

Of course, you can also just cheat them in, I know it's what I'd do >.>

Here are the commands you'll need (/admin first of course)

Here are some technical details on how it works for those interested.

The physics are as close to real-life calculations as I could make them. This includes a moddable lift coefficient graph, which essentially describes how much lift a wing produces at any given angle of attack. That, along with a drag coefficient graph, describes the overall flight characteristics of the wing. At least that's my simplified understanding of it.

Because everything relies on these 2 graphs, I spent a lot of time figuring out the right equations to approximate a graph that resembles its real-life counterparts and is configurable in a simple way. Eventually, I managed to create this graph[www.desmos.com], which I used as a blueprint for the coefficient calculations in-game.

After that, the physics were actually mostly complete. All that needs to be done then is to check the current angle of attack against this graph and multiply lift and drag with the values it returns.

If that didn't make any sense, just know that, in my opinion, flying simply makes sense with these physics. Everything behaves as you might expect, even if it's configured to be less like a plane and more like one that's made of paper.

YES! And I'd be very happy if you did.

Pretty much all the variables that decide how flying behaves can be changed via a mod patch or new tech variation.

To help with this, I've prepared a small template mod[drive.google.com] that will hopefully get you started. Once you're happy with the modifications, feel free to release it as a separate flight profile mod.

If there are still any questions, I'd be happy to answer them as best I can.

I've done pretty much all I can right now so, all I have planned for sure are small incremental adjustments to the physics variables based on feedback.

One thing I'd like to do, but don't have the skills for, is turning this mod into a kind of API that any item or species can call with their own flight parameters. Sadly I don't even know where to start with such a thing. If any expert modders want to take on such a task, I'd be happy to help by explaining any bits of unclear code and such.

There are also a couple of small and low-priority known issues that you can find in the discussion threads. I might get around to solving those at some point as well, but for now I don't think they bother anyone much.

I'd like to thank the helpful folks over in the Starbound Discord[discord.gg] for answering some questions I had trouble with on my own.

The species seen in the mod thumbnail are the following:

• Harpy
  
• Draconis
  
• Saturnian with CuteBound
  
• Kitsune with vanilla wings

I can definitely say that the first 3 work really great with this mod. Kitsune would work well too, if not for the vanilla wings, which actually don't look all that great in motion.

This is also a good place to mention that I'd be more than happy to see anyone make their own mods based on this one. Just leave this mod in the credits somewhere if you feel it deserves a mention.