Is the "Aqua Acrobatics" Mod "Speedhacking"?

I love mods, and words cannot express how much I love the modmaker's godsend: Mixin. Mixin is a modding library that lets you inject code basically wherever you want in the Minecraft source code, allowing you to modify the game in virtually infinite ways. With enough effort, you could even turn 1.12 into 1.18 by taking the new versions' code and implementing it in 1.12 using Mixin, ending up with something that is completely indistinguishable from 1.18 even on a JVM bytecode level.

Anyway, someone did that with the new movement mechanics with a mod called Aqua Acrobatics. It's just a direct backport of the 1.13+ movement mechanics in 1.12, with the exact same values that later versions use. Not a single number changed. Entirely indistinguishable from 1.18's mechanics even down to how the server handles it, save for one thing that makes it kind of iffy:

...the animation doesn't play for others.

Even though the sprint-swim still consumes your sprint meter and is handled by the server identically to 1.13, the animation doesn't play for other players, meaning it looks like you're 1.12-swimming slightly faster than normal. This could easily be considered "speedhacking", even though it literally is no different from using 1.18 save for the rendering.

If it's at all possible, I would love if the plugin that handles sprint-swimming players on the server could be updated to expect and render this mod. The plugin likely just needs a modified check for "potential-sprint swimmers". That's the best-case scenario, as it would make it clear to other users that it's not a speedhack and is officially recognized as equivalent to 1.13+ gameplay.

Please look over the mod page to see how much attention to detail they put into faithfully porting the mechanics before making a decision. Thanks!

tl;dr I just want to be able to sprint-swim but also have Mo' Bends :(

 

As far as I could tell you, that's fine. As it is, players playing wynn in 1.18 appear to 1.12 users to be walking on water when swimming.