Overdrive: a Sandevistan-style boost for a shared world

Reflex overdrive increases the owner's movement, attack and reload speeds through temporary stat modifiers. It does not slow other players, bullets or the simulation clock.

The effect uses stat modifiers, not global or per-entity time dilation.

• It does not slow other players. No packet in this feature can change anyone else's clock.
• It does not slow bullets. Hitscan stays instant at its firing time.
• It changes no clock at all — not the world's, not the owner's, not any entity's. It applies stat modifiers on the owner's own body and removes them again.

Do not use vanilla Sandevistan time dilation as a multiplayer speed boost. It changes the acting client's whole simulation while the server and other clients continue at normal speed.

Genuine shared slow motion, in an isolated arena bucket with an authoritative time domain, is a separate and separately gated experiment. Nothing in this page is a step toward it, and nothing here should be presented to players as "bullet time".

Turn it on first#

open77_reflex must be named in your server's resources.load. That array is an allowlist: a resource present on disk but absent from it is never started, never mentioned in the log, and produces no warning to grep for. Nothing on this page happens until the name is there.

"resources": {
  "load": [ "...", "open77_cyberware", "open77_reflex" ]
}

It depends on open77_effects, so list that too. A dependency your list does not resolve is worse than a silent omission: the automatic start aborts on the first unresolved name and no resource starts at all, which looks like a dead server rather than a configuration error. Grep the log for Automatic resource start failed before believing a list is complete.

Public server Lua API#

Mutations return {ok=true} or nil, reason. A successful grant means pending native work: check current(player).projection.status == "ready" before presenting it as usable. current(player).ownedByCaller is a server-derived boolean for the calling resource, accurate across projection restarts. Grants require the existing authenticated cyberware character binding and an alive, ready, unmounted body. They are session capabilities, not purchased equipment; server makers own persistence, jobs, progression, prices and zones.

-- Manifest permissions: players.reflex.define, players.reflex.manage, players.reflex.read
assert(Open77.reflex.define({
  id = "myserver.overdrive", version = 1, profile = "reflex_overdrive",
  config = {
    tier = "reflex", inputKey = "x", presentation = "native",
    durationMs = 6000, cooldownMs = 20000,
    maxCharges = 1, chargeRegenMs = 30000,
    staminaCost = 25, heatCost = 0,
  },
}))
-- Call only after your server's access/consent/payment checks:
local pending, reason = Open77.reflex.grant(player, "myserver.overdrive")
local activity = Open77.reflex.current(player)
-- Remove only this resource's capability. Paid implants remain installed:
local removed, error = Open77.reflex.revoke(player)

profile is exactly reflex_overdrive. Input accepts lowercase physical letters/digits, f1 through f12, and supported modifier/navigation names such as ctrl, shift, space. Use a deliberate binding that fits your server's other controls.

inputKey is the default of the reflex_overdrive action, not the key the player is stuck with: the client registers it through RegisterKeyMapping, so a player rebinds it under Pause › Settings › KEY BINDINGS and the rebind follows them across servers. A server that ships a different default never overrides a saved rebind.

Configuration and bounds#

A definition outside these bounds is refused, not trimmed: an operator should see the mistake rather than wonder why a 60-second overdrive lasts 15.

Two rules are worth calling out because they are deliberate:

• cooldownMs must be at least durationMs, and the cooldown starts when the boost ends, not when it starts. Chaining activations into a permanent overdrive is the failure this feature is bounded against.
• A definition cannot name a stat. It picks a tier; the client owns the two plans and their per-stat ceilings. Putting a stat plan on the wire would make the wire the place to invent a speed cheat.

The two tiers#

For scale: the weakest installed vanilla Sandevistan runs the world at 0.30 — about a 3.3× relative advantage — and the Apogee at 0.15, about 6.7×. Neither is a shared-world number. reflex_heavy is 1.55×.

The modifiers are applied through gameStatsSystem with tracked handles, the same mechanism the Cripple Movement lock uses in the opposite direction, and are removed by handle on every release path.

What it looks like, on other people's screens#

A faster body is not a readable ability. Without a presentation, the only thing an observer gets is a player who happens to be quick, and the player who just lost a fight has no idea what beat him. So the overdrive ships with one, and presentation in the definition selects it:

What native actually draws, correlated with the phases below:

The sound is positioned on the body, so a player standing next to the user hears which direction it came from. An activation the client refuses between accepted and active drops its burst and stays silent: the end cue only fires for a boost that really reached a body.

Be clear with your players about what this is. It is an Open77 presentation rather than single-player Sandevistan time dilation. The native preset uses the Open77 effect catalogue and does not slow the world or apply a full-screen observer effect. The owner sees the same body effects in first and third person.

Visual cues#

The body effects combine blue light, close-range sparks and motion-dependent trails. Visibility varies with movement, distance and lighting. Audio cues are emitted on the body; audibility depends on the game's mix and listener position.

At a distance, the plate does the work#

Body VFX may become difficult to see at a distance. Use the nameplate marker to communicate overdrive state beyond the effect's visible range.

So a boosted player's nameplate is marked for as long as the boost runs:

CyberwareA                 ->      CyberwareA // OVERDRIVE
(white, the usual plate)          (amber, while boosted)

It is raised with the sustained layers and lowered on every path that ends them, so a plate can never claim a boost that has already finished. Nothing marks the boosted player's own plate: he is not an observer of himself.

One thing to know if you drive nameplates yourself. A nameplate override belongs to whichever resource claims it first. If your own resource is setting plates, it keeps them and this marker simply does nothing -- the body effects still play, and the client says so once in its log rather than on every boost. If you want both, set the marker yourself from your own nameplate code: listen for onReflexChanged and mark the player on active, clear on completed and cancelled.

Everything is bounded and owned: at most four effect handles per activation and 24 across the resource, a lease that can never outlive the 15-second ceiling, and release on the end of the boost, on death, on disconnect, on a bucket or body change, and on a watchdog behind all of them.

The whole presentation lives in one replaceable file, resources/system/open77_reflex/server/presentation.lua. Server makers who want a different look can set presentation = "none" in their definition and author their own from Open77.effects — the events it listens to, onReflexChanged and its phases, are public.

Lifecycle, and every way it ends#

The server admits an activation, spends the charge, the cooldown and the costs, and hands the client a deadline. Phases reach a resource as onReflexChanged:

onReflexRejected carries a refused request with its reason: stale_grant, stale_action, body_unavailable, cyberware_suspended, crippled, already_active, motion_busy, cooldown, charges_exhausted, insufficient_stamina, heat_unavailable, insufficient_heat.

A refused request costs nothing: no charge, no cooldown, no stamina.

The boost is released by all of: the deadline; an explicit cancel; the owning resource stopping; death, hard or soft; mounting a vehicle; entering a workspot; losing the body; a session change (reconnect, disconnect, lab to session); and a watchdog that removes any overdrive modifier found on a body the client's own machine does not hold. That last rule is why a crash or a failed removal cannot leave a player permanently faster than everyone else.

An open menu is deliberately not a release: a player who opens the map mid-overdrive keeps the boost they paid for.

What it composes with#

Unlike Dash and Ground Slam, an overdrive is not a movement owner, so it does not take the movement envelope and is not mutually exclusive with them. The point of a reflex implant is to dash and fight under it. It is still:

• refused while a forced motion owns the body (a knockdown, a slam recovery);
• refused while a netrunner has suspended the player's cyberware (cyberware_suspended) — an implant that was just shut down must not answer;
• refused while the player is crippled (crippled) — the slow cannot be answered with a boost;
• refused in a vehicle, at grant time and at activation time.

Diagnostics#

reflex.overdrive.state is on the debug bridge's session allowlist. It is a pure read and carries the sampled MaxSpeed, which is the only way to see whether a granted boost actually reached the body:

.\scripts\debug-bridge.ps1 -ProcessId <pid> -Command 'reflex.overdrive.state'

The write forms (reflex.overdrive, reflex.overdrive.clear) are solo-lab only: a self-applied boost in a session would be a self-granted advantage.

Optional lab workflow#

open77_cyberware_lab exposes the whole flow through the same public APIs, with two replaceable presets — street (tier reflex, 6 s, 20 s cooldown, one charge) and combat (tier reflex_heavy, 4 s, 25 s cooldown, two charges):

/cyberlab reflex grant <player> <street|combat>
/cyberlab reflex inspect <player>
/cyberlab reflex cancel <player>
/cyberlab reflex revoke <player>
/cyberlab reflex grant street          -- grants to yourself

The presets, the access policy and the input key live in resources/gamemodes/open77_cyberware_lab/server/config.lua under CyberwareLab.reflex. Replace them, or remove the lab entirely and register definitions from your own resource.

In the lab panel#

/cyberlab has an Overdrive card beside Ground Slam: the grant's projection status and charges, the two presets with their duration, cooldown, charges and stamina cost, the default key and where to rebind it, and Grant / Revoke / Cancel boost. It rides the same request-and-action route as the slam card, rate-limited per issuer, with a data push after every action.

Behavior and limitations#

A MaxSpeed multiplier above 1 increases locomotion speed without changing the clock. Modifiers are removed on expiry, cancellation, death, vehicle entry, reconnect, resource stop or a suspended-cyberware refusal.

The nameplate marker supplements body effects for distant observers and in bright lighting.

Know what that means before you tune a preset: beyond about 10 m, and in daylight sooner, the particles are gone and the plate is the entire signal. The attached layers are a close-range affair. If you replace the plate with something of your own, you have replaced the only thing an observer can read at range.

The multiplayer time-dilation guard releases native dilation while a session is active. It is inactive in single-player. A zero dilationSetsRefused counter is normal: the guard releases dilation rather than rejecting the original call.

The weapon equipment API does not install cyberware operating systems: equipping Items.AdvancedSandevistanApogee through equipment.equip returns invalid_record. Use the supported cyberware APIs instead.

Still absent by design, so nobody goes looking: no shared slow motion, no dodgeable bullets, no zones. Other players are never slowed and no bullet is ever slowed — the advantage is entirely the boosted player's own stats.