Mechanics
How you move in Airtime. The base is the movement the jump community spent twenty years
mastering: Urban Terror's, kept bit for bit (checked over 26 million side-by-side moves with zero
differences), so jump skill carries straight over. Everything else builds on it.
Units: ups = units per second (1 unit ≈ 1 inch; the player is 30 wide and 69 tall). The
game runs 125 movement steps per second (8 ms each).
On your feet#
| Page | What |
|---|
| Running and jumping | Running, sprinting, jumping, strafe jumping, landing, overbounces |
| Crouching | Crouching, crouching in the air, the power slide |
| Stamina | What costs it, what refills it, tired jumps |
| Dash | A short burst of speed from the ground |
On walls and edges#
In the air#
| Page | What |
|---|
| Double jump | Jumping again in the air |
| Air control | Steering in the air with forward / back only, keeping your speed |
| Jetpack | Flying up on fuel |
| Grapple | A hook to swing on |
Surfaces and gravity#
| Page | What |
|---|
| Ice | Slick and icy surfaces: no friction, sliding on slopes, drop-ins |
| Bounce surfaces | Surfaces that bounce you off, keeping your speed |
| Gravity flip | Gravity in another direction: walls and ceilings become floors |
Zones and pickups#
| Page | What |
|---|
| Zones | Places that do something to you: boost, lift, brake, teleport you back when you're too slow, change gravity, refill stamina |
| Power-ups | Pickups: stamina, double jump, fuel, gravity flip, walljump refill, featherweight and more; any move can come as a power-up |
What every mechanic shares#
- One physics. Every move works inside the same movement: 125 steps per second, the same
collision, the same ice. A wall-run on ice still slides; a jetpack still fights gravity 800.
- Skill, not a speed button. Each move has a timing or an angle to master: when to jump on
landing, where to drop in, when to burn fuel, where to release the grapple.
- Readable. You see where a move works before you need it: ice glints, wall-run walls have
a strip of light, gravity zones tint the air, bounce pads glow, zone arrows flow, power-ups float and turn.
- Built for speed. Airtime runs at 600–2000 ups, and every move is tuned for that.
- Maps choose their moves. A jetpack needs fuel pickups, a wall-run needs wall-run walls, a
gravity flip needs a gravity zone. Each route's board follows the moves its map uses, and the
game files your run on the right one by itself.
- In every replay. Moves and pickups replay exactly, so every run is verified the same way.
Airtime