agentX : Thruster Unlimited Pre-alpha

Arena combat with brakes.

A first-person arena shooter with five movement abilities: sprint, slide, directional thrust, clamber and airborne stabilize. They overlap rather than take turns, and each one also ends momentum.

Internal multiplayer pre-alpha.

Movement

Same power, different control.

Other games give you unlimited movement, but there are no brakes. It is almost like doing a power wheelie versus a controlled wheelie with a brake. Same power, different control.

Design decree, 2026-08-06

Sprint gives speed and caps it. Stabilize ends momentum. Crouch catches a fall.

Stopping makes the next thrust a new movement instead of a continuation. Jump one way, stabilize, thrust onto a ledge in another direction.

The sandbox

Five abilities. Five brakes.

No traversal state machine decides which one you are in. They stack, and the combinations fall out of the physics rather than being scripted.

  1. 01

    Sprint

    Governed top speed, ramped over about a second. Requires forward alignment to start and a tighter one to hold. Suspends during a slide or a thrust, then resumes.

    Brakes Caps speed. Entering a sprint pulls a body carrying extra momentum back to its baseline.

  2. 02

    Slide

    Inherits entry momentum and adds nothing. Direction locks at entry and cannot be steered. Releasing crouch ends it early.

    Brakes Bleeds off the speed you brought in. Nothing cancels it but a thrust.

  3. 03

    Directional thrust

    An impulse added above the governor, along movement input, decaying back down. Fires against current motion to subtract from it. Suspends ground friction for 0.3 s. Available in the air.

    Brakes Decays. A thrust is a distance, not a new cruising speed.

  4. 04

    Clamber

    Not a separate button. A jump pressed near a valid ledge pulls you onto it, through the same predicted movement path as everything else.

    Brakes Turns a missed jump into a recovery.

  5. 05

    Airborne stabilize

    Downward jets damping vertical velocity toward zero. Horizontal velocity is untouched and never clamped. Three seconds, once per airborne period, spent rather than toggled.

    Brakes Ends momentum. Jump, stabilize, thrust in a new direction.

Aim raises the sidearm on the ground and requests stabilization in the air. Crouch requests a slide only on a sprinting press edge. Everything is rebindable per device.

The numbers

One root number. Everything else derived.

Every number in a system comes from one measured root value.

The anchor

World unit
12cm
Standing opening16 units
192cm
Player capsulethe opening minus 4
188cm
Head clearancea jump bumps you
4cm

Every dimension in the game is downstream of this conversion.

Ground

Walk speed
500cm/s
Sprint speed
800cm/s
Ramp to top speed
1.0s
Alignment to start
0.4
Alignment to hold
0.7

Sprint is press-edge and alignment-gated, so it has two thresholds.

Air

Gravity scale
1.5
Jump velocity
833cm/s
Jump apex
236cm
Airtime
1.13s
Clamber ceiling from a jump
428cm
Air control
0.35

Ballistic arcs. No lateral air friction, no air braking. Landing is neutral.

Thrust

Cooldown
2.0s
Duration
0.35s
Friction suspended for
0.3s
No firing or melee for
0.35s

The fast route up the height ladder.

Slide and stabilize

Slide exits below
200cm/s
Slide decay
350cm/s²
Slide range from top sprint
8.6m
Stabilize duration
3.0s
Stabilizes per airborne period
1

The slide bleeds out. The stabilizer cuts at three seconds with no taper.

Marked values were measured on a real build. The rest are design targets.

Footage

Gameplay.

The build

Where it actually is.

Playable now

  • All five movement abilities, predicted and server authoritative
  • Sidearm, melee, grenades, shields, damage, death, ragdoll, respawn
  • Bots, free-for-all and team rules, scoring, clock and overtime
  • Scoreboard, match result, return to lobby
  • Main menu, host and join by direct IP, custom game options
  • Controller and mouse tuning, per-device rebinding, full HUD
  • Linux client and server packaging, Windows client tooling

In progress

  • Capture the flag: carry, throw, returns, capture scoring, team colours
  • Physical weapon pickups and dual wielding
  • Map import pipeline
  • First-person animation coverage and weapon breadth

Not there yet

  • King of the hill and oddball
  • Art, audio and maps above pre-production quality
  • Matchmaking, accounts, anything public facing
  • A release date