Separating Hard Landings From Fatal Falls in Halo PC

A custom Halo PC Race track can ask players to jump between ledges, be launched by flingers, or drop between floors.

Disabling all fall damage makes those routes forgiving. It also makes falling into the void strangely harmless.

The useful solution was not a single on-or-off switch.

Two relevant damage paths

Halo PC uses different damage tags for related falling behaviour.

The custom module watches OnDamageApplication and blocks damage from:

globals\distance

It leaves this tag alone:

globals\falling

That distinction allows ordinary hard landings to remain part of the game while removing the distance-based damage that made intended route transitions unreliable.

Keeping the void dangerous

Some tracks still need a real lower boundary.

Boarding Action uses an optional death-plane height. Above that Z value, distance damage can be blocked. Below it, the module allows lethal distance damage through again.

So, dropping between intended decks can be survivable while falling beneath the playable ship remains fatal.

The boundary is track configuration, not a global assumption.

The failed shortcut

An earlier Super Jump-style approach tried to prevent damage by clearing player movement offsets before impact.

That did not solve the problem consistently. Damage still occurred in some cases, and jumps beyond roughly 60 world units could desynchronise.

The method also modified player state for a secondary effect rather than handling the damage event directly.

Blocking the specific damage tag proved narrower and easier to reason about.

Different tracks, different rules

Boarding Action benefits from softened transitions plus a lethal lower death plane. Sidewinder currently blocks lethal distance damage without a death plane because the route expects long cliff movements.

Gephyrophobia deliberately keeps dangerous falls.

That variation is the point. Fall damage is part of track design, alongside checkpoints, vehicles, and lap counts.

Honest limits

The current module relies on damage-tag identification rather than reconstructing the complete Halo PC falling model.

It does not claim that every landing case is fully understood, and vehicle-related distance damage may need further filtering if future tracks expose it.

For now, the system answers the practical design question:

Can players survive the jumps the course expects without making every fall harmless?

Yes, provided the track defines where forgiveness should end.