A whole pose from a dedicated server opened a stream under any of its
65,536 numbers, and each stream kept its last 32 poses. Streams were only
dropped once their player had left, so a sender that opened one under
every number for a player who was there (itself) made the receiver keep
millions of poses. Sound streams were open the same way.
- pose_batch::open_stream: a player's new stream ends their old one, and
no more than 512 streams are held (twice the player limit); both the
pose and sound receivers open streams only through it.
- A stream is opened only for a player in the session. A refused whole
pose is not acked, so a real server sends it again; sound is sent whole
every couple of seconds.
- Tests: the reported flood leaves one stream for one player and 512 for
65,535; the same for sound, and only admitted players open a stream.
- mesh_tests: HookBatch stubbed, which the session uses since the freeze
fixes; the test had stopped linking.
Each bone's scale was held to the limit (a server's bone-scale, 2x by
default; 8x on every client), but a bone shows at its own size times its
parents' and the whole skater's. A modified client resized each bone of
a chain to the limit: four neck bones at 2x showed a neck 16 times as
long, within every per-bone check.
- skater_bone_parents.h: the parent of each of the skater rig's 386 bones,
read from the game's data (animbase_default_renderskeleton), which the
pose's skater bones follow.
- limit_bone_scale then holds each bone to what its parents leave of the
limit: the size it shows stays within 1/limit to limit. A single resized
bone (a bigger head) is unchanged; bones past the rig's have no parent
and keep the per-bone limit.
- Servers and clients already hold every pose to their limit with it, so
the combined limit follows each server's bone-scale setting, and every
client's 8x where a server allows more.
- Tests: a neck chain at 2x each shows at 2x; a resized skater's bones are
held to what its own size leaves them.
Follow-up to #225. The session still waits 30 minutes in all for a map
(checking, the two-minute question, download, install, apply, join), and
servers and lobbies still let a player go at 30 minutes. But a download
that has begun is no longer cut off at 27 minutes: a large map on a slow
connection never came at all that way.
- Once the download has begun, the session's deadline is the session's
alone. The download goes on (up to its own four hours, as before #225),
installs and is applied, and the player is told to join again; no
rejoin is tried past the deadline, where the server would turn them
away. "Map still downloading" says so when the session stops waiting.
- Before the download, the deadline still ends the check and the question.
Declining or cancelling still stops it and removes the partial file.
- A download whose session has gone is not cancelled by joining another
session; a new map need is turned away until it is done.
- The 27-minute transfer budget and its completion reserve are gone from
map_fetch_policy.h, with their tests; the map download tests cover the
new behaviour.
- The HTTPS timeout test compiles with warnings as errors (a signed and
unsigned comparison), and get_text's stale-file removal is indented again.
- README: map downloads described as they now are.
2.0.8's dedicated server was released with a world-layers.json scanned from
a game Steam had updated: 263 layers, where every player's game has 261. A
server that shares its layers (world_layer_sync) sends one choice for each,
the player's game turned the message down as unreadable, and nobody could
join such a server ("Join code, sender identity, or multiplayer protocol
did not match", and "Disconnected." in the server's log).
- supported_build::world_layer_count (261): how many layers the supported
build's levels have.
- Server: a world-layers.json of another count is not used; the log says
why and layer sync stays off, where before every player was turned away.
- --export-world-layers refuses a game folder whose count differs, so a
release cannot be built from an updated game again.
- Player's game: a layer list of another length is left unread and every
layer stays as the player has it; the rest of the message is taken and
they join.
An FPV drone flown from the free camera: real quad physics (thrust,
gravity, drag, Betaflight "Actual" rates), collisions with the world, and
a goggle-style display. Open it with `dronemenu` (or the drone window's
Start flying).
Flying
- Keyboard and mouse, gamepads, or USB RC radios (EdgeTX etc. in Joystick
mode). "Set up controller" learns each stick and switch by asking for
one at a time, reversed axes and springing gamepad throttles included.
While a controller flies the drone, the game is kept off it, as
freecam's controller mode does.
- Presets (Tinywhoop, Toothpick, 5 inch), arm/disarm, back to takeoff,
and every setting live through `dronetune`, saved in the profile.
- Optional range: the picture breaks up and is lost with distance from
the takeoff point; past it, failsafe cuts the motors.
- OSD, on-screen sticks, an analogue video look, synthesised motor sound.
- Goggles: the pilot's skater wears eyewear from the game's catalog while
flying, and gets their own back on landing (Road Rash aware).
- Start flying hides the game UI, Stop flying brings it back.
Multiplayer
- New packet `drone` (36): where a player's drone is and which way it
faces, 15 times a second, unreliable, relayed like effects. Markers
glide between updates. Protocol version 52.
- FLYING DRONE above the name of a player who is flying.
- Players choose whether to share their drone and whether to see others'.
- Dedicated servers: `sync_drones` (players section) and `drones on|off`.
Off: no drone packets are relayed, and players are told in the roster.
Changes to existing code
- `flyspeed` takes any speed from 0.6 to 1500, not only the seven listed
(the drone's presets and top speed slider use speeds of their own).
- Overlay: begin/end_input_access, so the drone's controller read sees
the device while the game is kept off it.
- Profile: local_surface_hit, the park editor's ray from one point to
another, for the drone's collisions.
Tests: Skater/Test/drone_radio_tests (controller setup), and the drone
packet and roster rule in Multiplayer/Test/protocol_tests.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MArBL6UbYZPsp9rMnq2Ks5
Map updates
- A map the game already has, being replaced by the host's version,
could load as soon as the new files were in Mods, while the mods
were still being applied: it ended on "This map is not loading". The
session now holds the load while a map is downloading, installing or
applying, as it waits for one that is missing.
- A player whose version of a map is later than the host's keeps it and
loads. Only an older one is replaced by the host's. Versions are
compared number by number (1.10.0 is later than 1.9.2).
Dedicated servers
- maps.latest_versions (off by default): the server asks Thunderstore
for the newest version of each of its custom maps, at start and every
maps.latest_check_minutes (5-1440, default 60), and writes it into
the mod's manifest.json. Nothing is downloaded: the server reads only
a map's level list and version, and players, who are held to the
server's version, fetch it as they join. The map being played waits
until nobody is on it. A folder that is not a Thunderstore package is
not touched, and the level list is left as it is.
- Console: maps update, maps latest on|off, maps latest every <minutes>.
Overlay
- Vote card: the pass mark is always in the middle of the bar. Green
grows over the left half up to the yes votes needed and over the
right half past them, whatever share the vote needs.
- The "Staff" tag is "ReSkate Admin", shimmering from #2500FF to
#B2F9FF.
No protocol change. Tests cover the version comparison and the
manifest write; the Thunderstore lookup was checked against the site.
The map update flow, the vote bar and the tag were not seen in game,
and the server setting has not run on a live server.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A dedicated server that rotates its maps can now ask players where to
go next instead of taking the pool's next map.
Server
- maps.rotation_vote: when the timer runs out, a vote between three
maps drawn at random from the pool, "Random map" and "Stay here".
The most votes wins, a tie is drawn, and with no votes it is the
pool's next map. It ends early once everyone has voted.
- maps.rotation_vote_seconds (10-120, default 30) and
maps.rotation_extend_minutes (0-240, default 15; 0 leaves "Stay
here" out).
- maps.rotation_announce: a card when the map has 10, 5 and 1 minutes
left.
- The vote's maps are drawn a minute ahead and sent to games
(PacketKind::next_maps), so their pictures are ready when it opens.
- /vote extend: a built-in vote that gives the map in play
rotation_extend_minutes more. On by default (votes.extend_map), and
only runs while the maps are on a timer. "extend" is now a reserved
vote name.
- Console: rotation vote on|off, rotation announce on|off,
rotation stay <minutes>|off, rotation extend [minutes],
votes extend ..., vote extend.
Game
- The vote opens as a popup in the middle of the screen: a tile per
answer with its picture, name, share of the votes and count. It
holds input as the map download card does, and works with a
controller (D-pad, A, B), the keyboard and the mouse.
- Pictures: a mod map's icon from its folder, or from Thunderstore
when it is not installed; the game's own maps show their loading
screen picture, cut to its middle square. "Random map", "Stay here"
and a map without a picture are drawn as shapes.
- Older servers and polls are unchanged: the vote is a poll, so it can
still be answered with /1, /2... in chat.
Protocol 50: games and servers both need this build.
Votes: a vote is decided by the votes cast, not by everyone on the server. It
passes when yes is its percentage of them, at the end of its time, or sooner
once the players still to vote could not change it. A kick still needs two
yes. The card's bar is yes in green from the left and no in red from the
right, with a mark where yes has to reach. No protocol change.
Map versions: a map installed at another version than the host's is no longer
loaded as it is. The download card offers the host's version (MAP VERSION,
UPDATE), which replaces the installed one and is applied while the game runs.
For that the live merge keeps each mod's fingerprint with where its archives
were placed, and places a mod again when its files have changed since: before,
a mod replaced while the game ran was read where the old one lay. When the
host's version is gone from Thunderstore, or the old one's files are in use,
the player is told and leaves the session.
Dedicated server: "maps reload" reads the Mods folder again, so a map copied
in while the server runs can be switched to at once. The server window reads a
copy of the map list.
Map names: a custom map's level is dingolevel_reskate_<map>, and "reskate" was
left in its name ("/map reskate badlands"). The map's own name is shown and
typed now; the old spelling still finds it.
as a level unloads, the game takes each mesh variation out of its registry by the
entry's mesh and reads it unchecked, and this map's meshes unload before
their databases. A guard on that one function has the read of a mesh that is
gone go on with the next entry, and logs how many were passed over.
The chat filter matched short listed words anywhere inside a longer one, so
entries like "gger", "spik", "crip" and "coon" in the backend's lists blocked
"bigger", "spike", "script" and "raccoon".
- A listed word of four or five letters now matches inside a longer word only
when the rest of it is what goes around a swear word ("motherfuckers",
"bullshit", "shithead", "shitty", "xxfuckxx"). Words of six letters or more
still match anywhere.
- An ordinary word that equals a listed phrase without its spaces
("the rapist" / "therapist") no longer matches.
- bad_words.txt is gone: the filter has no words until the backend's lists
arrive.
Dedicated servers:
- "use_global_word_filter" (default true) turns the backend's lists off for a
server. Console: words global on|off.
- data/words_filtered.txt and data/words_blocked.txt hold a server's own
words, read at start and by "words reload". Blocked words follow
word_warnings. Filtered words are sent to players (new packet, kind 33),
whose games star them for players with the chat filter on and drop them on
leaving.
Multiplayer outfits: a player whose mods add or remove skater or board slots
no longer makes everyone look like the local player. A peer's items are put
in this game's slots by slot hash; slots the peer lacks stay empty and items
in slots this game lacks are left out.
Dedicated servers: roles, with their tags, commands and permissions
A dedicated server had one list of admins who could do everything, and
everyone else could do nothing. It now has roles, kept in
data/roles.json beside the bans: each a name, the tag its players wear
in the game, the server commands it may use, what it may do besides
commands, and a rank.
A server starts with five: player (everyone given no role: chat, votes,
parties, private messages), vip (a reserved slot), moderator (kick, ban,
messages, giving out lower roles), admin (everything) and muted. The
default role is whoever was given none; a role has what the default has
as well as its own unless it says it does not inherit. A reserved slot
is a permission, so a role's players have one without being listed.
Nobody kicks, bans or changes the role of a player whose rank is theirs
or higher, or gives out a role that is; the console is above every role.
"*" is every command but role and reserved, which a role has only when
it lists them.
New commands: role <player or SteamID64> <role>|none, roles, and roles
reload. "admin add|remove" and "admins" are gone: the admins an older
config lists are moved into the admin role the first time the server
starts, and leave the config.
In the game, a player's role tag and colour show in chat and on their
nametag, and each control in the Multiplayer menu, the map, time of
day, world layers and parks follows the command it needs rather than
one admin flag, as do the commands chat offers.
Protocol 48: the roster carries each player's tag, and a new
permissions packet tells a player what their role gives them. Older
games and servers do not connect to newer ones.
Also fixes a name clash that kept the server config tests from
compiling.
A hacked game was resizing its skateboard and reporting it at another
player's position, so everyone saw an oversized board riding on them,
and with player collision on it knocked them about.
A skateboard is now held to within 10% of its size, apart from the limit
on resized body parts: on a dedicated server when its scale limit is on,
and in every player's game whatever sent the pose. Another player's
board is solid only within 3 m of its own skater; one further off is
seen and not felt.
Dedicated servers also check for a board kept on another player
(Server/board_check.h): one away from its own skater that stays beside
one other player while that player travels 8 m over at least 3 seconds.
The board is then no longer passed on to the others until it has behaved
for half a minute, and the log and the admins in the game are told who.
New setting anti_cheat.pinned_board and command board-check:
off | warn (default) | kick.
Map downloader
- A host or dedicated server now tells joiners which Thunderstore package
its map comes from (the Mods folder name plus manifest.json).
- A player without the map gets a card: icon, name, author, version and
description, with DOWNLOAD and CANCEL. It works with mouse, keyboard and
controller.
- Only packages listed as Maps in the ReSkate community are offered, and
never deprecated, rejected or NSFW ones.
- On yes the package is downloaded, installed into Mods and applied as a
live mod, then the session loads the map. A small card on the right
shows the progress, so the player can keep skating.
- The player stays connected while it downloads: the host gives a player
who says they are fetching the map up to 45 minutes instead of the
usual load time.
- When the server changes map with the player in it, the card says so.
- Protocol version 47: map package on map_offer and world_state, and a
"fetching the map" flag on map_request and world_ready.
Joining
- The pause-menu server browser shows a CONNECTING card over the page
while a join is under way, and a COULDN'T CONNECT card with the reason
when it does not get in.
- The session and voice tabs no longer show before the player is in.
- Leaving without the map (declined or cancelled download) no longer
counts towards the failed-join limit, on servers and player hosts.
Input
- A card that asks something holds the game's input until the buttons
are released.
- Steam's overlay hooks XInput in front of ReSkate and answers the game
itself, so a controller reached the game behind menus. ReSkate now
hooks that hook as well.
Mod merging
- Mods are read on several threads, at launch and for live merges. A live
merge runs below the game's priority.
- The paid-cosmetics check reads the game's files and the mods on several
threads.
- A live merge reuses the paid-cosmetics verdicts it already has and
reports its progress and timings.
Launcher
- NSFW mods and their categories are not shown in the mod browser.
A hacked client could move its skater's bones anywhere and stretch the
skater across the map for everyone: the server limited a bone's scale
but not its place.
Server: new anti_cheat setting bone_reach_limit, default 1 metre (0.5
to 20, 0 for off; console bone-reach <0.5-20>|off). A body or board
bone further than that from its parent is pulled back before the pose
is passed on. On the game's rig these bones never move (the longest, a
thigh, is 0.44 m). The fourteen skater bones that do move by metres
(they follow the board and the body in a fall) are held to 100 m, and
the board's rig to 5 m from the board.
Client: every pose a game is shown is held to 2 m reach and 8x bone
scale, whoever sent it, which covers servers that have not updated and
sessions without a dedicated server. A client used to accept up to
100x scale.
The limits come from two recorded play sessions; the exempt bones are
picked by index for the current build's 395-bone rig. The pose codec
bench now prints each recording's bone reach, and reads recordings made
by earlier versions.
Builds on the 2.0.0 vote card. Protocol 46: a server's vote can now be a
poll, and the roster carries who may start polls, the owner's own votes
and the current announcement.
Custom votes (votes.custom): the server owner defines /vote <name> [choice]
in ReSkateServer.json. When one passes, the server runs its command as the
console; {map} is the current map and {arg} the player's choice, which must
be one of the vote's "choices", so players never put free text into a
command. They show in /help, /vote list and the "/" menu.
Polls: /poll <question> | <answer> | ... with 2 to 6 answers. A poll runs
nothing. Players answer by clicking a row on the vote card or with /1, /2...;
the card shows each answer's count, then the result for a few seconds.
votes.polls says who may start one (off, admins, everyone), poll_seconds how
long it runs, and /poll end ends it early (its starter or an admin).
More vote settings: each vote may have its own seconds, cooldown_seconds and
min_players; starter_votes_yes says whether starting a vote counts as a yes.
The "votes" admin command sets all of them.
Announcements: "announce <text>" posts a chat line and shows a card at the
top of every player's screen. The new "announcements" section holds messages
the server posts in turn every interval_minutes while players are on;
"card": false keeps them to chat. Managed with the "announcements" command.
Older configs gain the new settings with their defaults on first start.
Server/README.txt documents them.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01WbSRfNf5T9wX4XMMQ5kwia
Other players' skaters and skateboards showed none of the game's skater
effects: not the trail or fire a costume or deck comes with, and not the
sparks, dust and puffs of a skater touching the world.
Costume and skateboard effects. The game gives another player's skater and
skateboard the right effect sets by itself, but builds them before their
outfit is on, so nothing showed. They are now built again half a second after
the outfit is applied. An always-on effect that a skater's item puts on the
skateboard's wheel joints (the Ghost Skater trail) follows the skater's own
copy of those joints, which only this player's skater keeps up to date: for
other players it is taken out of the skater's sets and built on their
skateboard, which has the same joints.
Contact effects. They come from a skater touching the world, which only
happens in that player's own game. Each game now captures its skater's
contacts (position, velocity, surface normal, surface material) and sends up
to three a tick in a new unreliable packet, PacketKind::effects. Other games
play each through the game's own function, so the effect is still chosen from
the surface and the speed. A contact is shown as late as that player's poses
are, only within 30 m of their skater, and only for a material the level's
table has: the game reads that table without a bound.
Server. A dedicated server relays effects packets to players within 150 m of
the sender, at most one packet a tick from each player. New setting
players.sync_effects (default true), console and admin command
"effects on|off". Off: the server relays none, and the roster tells games
neither to send their contacts nor to build other players' costume and
skateboard effects. Player-hosted lobbies relay through the host and always
share them.
The roster carries one more byte for the setting. Still protocol 45, which
has not been released.
New console command "mp effects": what has been captured and played, and why
the last contact was refused if one was.
Server: object scaling can be turned off
A dedicated server can stop players resizing the objects they place.
- "allow_object_scaling" in the config's "players" section (default true),
and "object-scaling on|off" from the console or an admin. A change is
saved and applies at once.
- Off: the server shares every player's objects at their own size, whatever
that player's game sent. Admins can still resize theirs, as with the
object limit.
- The roster tells each game. In the park editor of a player on such a
server the SCALE mode is not offered, its Y shortcut does nothing, the
scale box is disabled with a note saying why, and what is placed or edited
is its own size.
- An object resized before the setting was turned off is its own size for
everyone else straight away; its owner sees it resized until they edit it.
Votes on a dedicated server show as a card above chat instead of being
followed through chat lines.
- The card has what is voted on, the Yes and No counts, how many are needed,
a bar of how far Yes has got, and the seconds left. When the vote ends it
shows Passed, Failed or Cancelled for four seconds.
- Yes and No are two buttons, labelled with the player's binds. The answer
given is highlighted and can be changed. They can be clicked whenever the
cursor is free (chat, menu or console open).
- Two new binds, "Vote yes" and "Vote no", in the binds list: F1 and F2
unless changed, to keys or controller combos like the others. They are
read only while a vote is running, and not while typing.
- /yes and /no still work and show on the card. The player a kick vote is
about sees the card and has no vote in it.
- Console: "mp vote yes|no", "bind voteyes <n>", "bind voteno <n>".
Server:
- The roster carries the running vote (id, kind, tally, seconds left,
starter, target, label) and the one just finished with how it ended.
- A chat line is no longer sent for each change of the tally; the lines for
a vote starting and ending stay.
Fix: a dedicated server's roster may list more players than its limit.
The extra slots for reserved players and admins (33 of 32) made a roster the
protocol refused to encode, so with one in use the server logged
"Server error" every pass and stopped part-way through each one until
somebody left. Lobbies hosted by a player are still held to their size.
Server: its chat lines in colours the owner chooses; protocol 45
A dedicated server's own lines in chat (its welcome, console messages and
answers) were made violet in #129. The owner can now pick the colours.
- "chat_color": the "Server" badge and name, as "#RRGGBB" (default
"#8E5CFF", violet).
- "chat_text_color": the text of those lines (default "#D9C8FF", lavender).
- Both are in the config's "server" section; a value that is not a colour
stops the server from starting and names the setting.
- Console: chat-color <#badge> [<#text>]. Saved, and sent to everyone on
the server, so the next line uses it.
- With the defaults, chat looks as it did.
The colours travel in the roster, so this is protocol 45: servers and
games must both update. Lobbies hosted by a player are unchanged.
Poses and skater sound between a dedicated server and its players use new
formats. Lobbies and the links between games are unchanged.
Poses (pose_codec.h, pose_batch.h):
- A pose is rounded once (rotations to 0.08 degrees, positions to a
millimetre) and sent as its differences from a pose of the same player
the receiver has acknowledged. Several players' poses share one message.
- The receiver acknowledges messages once a tick; the sender builds only on
acknowledged poses, or on the whole pose it sent reliably. Loss costs the
poses in that packet and nothing more.
- Fingers are not sent to players further than "finger_distance" (25 m).
- Games upload their own poses the same way, and the server acknowledges.
- About 300 B a pose at full rate against about 660 B before.
- The server no longer rounds rotations by distance: it saved little.
Sound (sound_codec.h):
- Each sample is sent as what changed since the one before, numbers rounded
to 1/1024. One reliable message a tick carries every skater a player can
hear. A stream is sent whole at its start and every two seconds.
- About 106 B a message against 368 B before, on a recording of real play.
Direct connections:
- "connection": "relay" (default) or "direct", with "direct_address" and
"direct_port". A direct server listens on UDP and is listed with its
address; players still sign in through Steam.
- Games connect straight to servers that offer it and fall back to the
relays after 5 s. Setting and "mp direct-connections" to turn it off.
Server:
- "bone_scale_limit" is 1 by default: resized body parts are off unless a
server allows them.
- Logs Steam's relay network status at start-up and in "net", and watches
the Steam sign-in.
- "pack_ms" (10): how long Steam may hold a message to pack it with others.
- "steam_debug": logs what Steam's networking says, for connection faults.
- "relay_everything": sends poses and sound through the server even between
games that have linked, for testing with few players.
- "net" shows pose sizes by rate, the share sent without fingers, and whole
poses sent.
Game:
- Only ReSkate's nametags are shown; the game's own are removed.
- "mp pose-dump <seconds>" records the local skater's poses and sound.
Tests: pose_codec_tests covers exact round trips, chains of differences,
held fingers, damaged input, the sender and receiver over a link that
delays, loses and reorders, and the sound format; with a recording as its
argument it prints sizes on real play.
Protocol 44: servers and games must both update.
- bone_scale_limit in ReSkateServer.json, and the bone-scale command:
the most a bone may be scaled in the poses the server passes on, 1 to
8, and its inverse the least. 1 shows every skater at the game's own
proportions; 0 (the default, "bone-scale off") is no limit
- A "big head" mod sets one joint's scale in the body's bind pose
(animation/dingo/cas_rsp_body_bind, the head from 1 to 4). The game
applies it to the bone, and the bone's scale travels in every pose,
which is how players without the mod see it. The game's own skeleton
has no scaled joint, so 1 changes nothing for anyone else
- The player with the mod still sees it on their own screen: the server
decides only what the others are sent
- Changing it sends whole states again, so nobody keeps a reference
with the old sizes in it
- Dedicated servers only; a lobby's host has no such setting
Game
- Player distance (Settings > Interface, "player-distance"): how far
away another player is still built as a skater, 50 to 1000 m, default
120. Past it they keep their nametag or dot. All the way up shows
everyone. A player already shown stays until 15% further out, so one
skating along the edge is not built and taken down over and over. The
game ran a full skater for every player on the server wherever they
were, which is most of a frame on a full one
- Nametags are always ReSkate's own. The "ReSkate nametags" toggle, the
"Nametag style" button and the nametag-style command are gone; the
game's own nametags are never shown
- Nametag distance ("nametag-distance"): how far away a name still
shows before it becomes a dot, 10 to 500 m. Default 120, was a fixed
150, so by default the name and the skater go at the same distance
- Nametag dots ("nametag-dots"): off hides the dots for far players and
the ones at the screen's edge for players off screen
- Friends' nametags only ("nametags-friends"): only Steam friends get a
name or dot; chat bubbles still show for everyone
Server
- A player out of sight of another (half as far again as the low rate
starts, 255 m by default) is sent to them once a second instead of
five times. On a full server most players are out of each other's
sight, and at five a second each they were most of what was sent
- Rotations are rounded before a pose is passed on, more coarsely the
further away the recipient is: 0.04 degrees within the full rate's
reach, 0.16 within the half rate's, a third of a degree past that,
about 5 degrees out of sight. The pose is still an ordinary one. A
bone that turned by less than a step is the same bytes as before, so
the difference from the reference leaves it out, and the low bits of
the ones that did turn pack away. By distance only: a player the
crowd limit slowed keeps the fine rotations
- A recipient crossing from one precision to another is sent a whole
state of that player, since a difference from a reference of another
precision would carry every bone again
- "net" shows the size of the poses sent at each precision
Profiler
- A function in ReSkate.dll is reported by its address when the DLL has
no symbols. A release build named every one of ours as the nearest of
three exports, so a report could not say which was slow; the
release's symbols name the address afterwards
No protocol change: a server built from this still takes 1.1.4 players.
Server: what each player is sent
- A crowd limit: each player is sent at most crowd_budget poses a second
(default 600, 0 for none; "crowd <n>|off"). Everyone at 5 a second at
least, the nearest at the full rate, the next nearest at 10. Before,
everyone within full-rate distance was sent at the full rate, which a
crowd of 40 turned into more than a connection carries
- A skater's sound goes only to players within the full-rate distance,
and in a crowd only from the nearest; it went to everyone
- A player who joins, or arrives after a map change, is shown the others
about seven a second, nearest first, and none while what they were
already sent is still on its way. Before, every outfit and every
stream went at once (and to everyone at once after a map change)
- Whole pose and sound states every 8 seconds instead of 2, on the
source's own clock, and slower pose rates sent on that clock too, so
recipients share one patch and compression (DeltaCache) instead of one
each. The settings survive a map change
- Object updates wait for a connection that is behind
Server: Steam connections
- send_rate (default 900 KB/s, "rate <KB/s>") is set as both Steam's
minimum and maximum, for open connections and each new one. With only
the maximum raised a connection stayed at Steam's 256 KB/s; set high,
what was lost was resent until the connection was full of resends
(about 1.1 MB/s reaches a player through the relays)
- A 4 MB send buffer, and a refused must-arrive message no longer ends
the player's session at once: 15 seconds of refusals do (30 for object
updates). A full queue used to drop everyone who was behind together
Server: seeing what is going on
- "net [player]": every connection's ping, delivery, queue and rate, the
traffic by kind (poses, sound, voice, outfits, objects), who uploads
most, and how busy the server's loop is
- A [network] line in the log every minute
- A leave or failed join says how it ended: closed by the player's game
with Steam's reason, connection lost, or closed by the server and why
- The queue time no longer prints Steam's "unknown" as a number
Server: other
- Reserved slots: reserved_slots and reserved in ReSkateServer.json, and
the "reserved" command; admins always have one
- The speed check flags a game at about 1.5x and over (was 1.06x), and
tells only that player; for the admins it is in the log
Game
- A remote skater with no pose for a second stays where it was for up to
eight seconds instead of being destroyed and rebuilt three seconds
later. On a busy server one slow frame did that to many players at
once, and the rebuilding made the next frames slower still
- Every waiting message is read each frame (at most 128 were)
- On an official server the role tags (Dev, Staff, Homie, Creator) show
for every player, not only the few the game is connected to directly;
community servers keep the old rule
- The server browser searches Steam at most every 15 seconds (45 after an
empty answer) and keeps the last list for 15 minutes when Steam returns
nothing, up from 2
- The game's own connections send at up to 900 KB/s
Limit how many objects each player can place (protocol 43)
- Servers and lobby hosts set how many objects each player may have
placed: object_limit in ReSkateServer.json and the "objects" command,
"Objects per player" in the host options. Default 100; 0 is no limit
- The host and a server's admins are not limited
- At the limit a player's game refuses another object, from the native
object tool and the park editor, and the menu shows how many they have
placed
- Enforced by the host or server, which shows everyone no more than the
limit of each player's layout; objects already shown keep their place
- The limit travels in the roster, which takes the protocol to version
43: builds before this cannot join sessions with builds after it
- The protocol tests link again (the server browser needs the identity
lists since the official servers change)
Server browser
- Official servers (the backend's "official_servers") sort first and are
drawn in ReSkate blue
- Servers Steam friends are skating in sort next, drawn in green with the
friends' names; searching a friend's name finds their server
- A player in a session they joined can join another server straight from
the list; hosts still end their session first, and a Steam friend's join
offer never replaces a session
- Joining a dedicated server from the list records it as the player's
public session, so friends see it and the row shows HERE
- Blocked servers (the backend's "blocked_servers") are hidden and cannot
be joined, by code either
- When the backend sets "server_tokens_required", dedicated servers that
signed in without a login token are hidden, except on the player's own
network
- A search that gets no internet list from Steam keeps the last list for
two minutes, and waits six seconds before treating it as empty
Roles
- New Staff tag from the backend's "staff" list: green name, badge and
item animation, ranked after Dev
- Staff can pick a rainbow for their items on the Special page; it is sent
as a solid colour older builds can show, so the protocol is unchanged
Dedicated server
- steam_token: sign in with a Steam game server login token and keep the
same Steam ID every start; empty signs in anonymously as before
- A listed server without a token says so at startup, and when the token
rule starts or stops hiding it
- Linux servers update themselves from the release's "server_linux"
tarball, with the machine's curl and tar, pinned by SHA-256, and carry
on in the same process
Launcher
- Only create the MiniDumpWriteDump API-set shim under Wine/Proton
- Split the single switch into "Show my tag" and "Show my items", and
show the tag as chat and nametags draw it.
- Color whatever is equipped instead of the one hoodie and pink board:
top, bottoms, shoes, socks, hat, glasses, outfit, costume, deck, grip
tape, trucks and wheels, each set on its own.
- Each item can use its list's animation (rainbow, red or gold), a
gradient between two picked colors, one solid color, or be off.
- The choices travel with the player's appearance so everyone sees them.
Protocol version 41.
- Read Dev / Creator / Homie Steam IDs from api.reskate.dev instead of the hardcoded list
- Creator (red) and Homie (gold) tags and hoodie/board colours; Admin tag is now pink
- Global bans: lobby hosts and dedicated servers turn banned players away
("global_bans": false in ReSkateServer.json opts a server out)
- SPECIAL menu page for listed players to hide their own tag and items
- Fix hoodie and board keeping the animated colour after the animation turns off
- Multiplayer protocol 39 -> 40
Follow-ups to the trainer (PR 37), and one multiplayer change.
Off until asked for (Extension/Trainer)
- The jump read-out and the LB+RB controller shortcuts start off. Jumps
are logged only while the read-out or telemetry recording is on, and
trick launches only when the trainer scaled them. A saved trainer.json
keeps what the player chose.
Memory search on demand (trainer.cpp, trainer_classes.cpp)
- The search for the game's tuning classes reads all writable memory.
It ran for every player after a level loaded, and up to seven times
when it found nothing. It now runs only when a class value or the flip
speed is not the game's own (the player's, or a host's they skate
with) or the EVERYTHING list is open, and at most three times a level.
- For those players it runs again on each level, which brings fresh
copies; a search from an earlier level used to count as done.
Guests under enforced physics
- A guest is locked by the session's enforce setting, from the moment
of joining (Engine/Game/Multiplayer/session_physics.h), not by whether
the enforcement status text was set yet.
- A guest's class values no longer come back after a map change.
The host's whole setup reaches its guests (protocol 39)
- Only Gameplay/SkatePhysicsTuning travelled, so a host could push,
sprint or jump further than the guests it held to the game's own.
- New packet physics_extras (30): the host's class values, trick
multipliers and auto push (trainer_session.h), sent when they change
and to players who join later, taken from the host only. A dedicated
server's are the game's own and it ignores the packet.
- Under enforcement a guest's own trick multipliers stand down for the
host's, whatever the boosts switch says. With enforcement off nothing
changes.
- A guest refuses bytes that are not an encoding, holds values to the
trainer's own ranges, and leaves out class values written for another
game build's table.
- protocol_version 38 -> 39: released versions disconnect from a peer
that sends a packet they cannot decode.
Out-of-view players are posed every frame again (Session/session.cpp)
- Players outside the camera's view and past 8 m were sampled at 20 Hz
(b763631). The game's replays record each skater as it stood every
frame and their camera looks anywhere, so those players moved at
20 Hz in replays. Removed; the distance rule (20 Hz past 200 m, 10 Hz
past 350 m) stays. This gives back the client-tick time it saved on
busy servers.
Cap outfit packets and stop dropping recipients when a relay cannot be
built. Add per-player relay limits for outfits, skater sound and voice,
and a back-off for Steam IDs that keep failing to join.
Throwdowns: only participants can write rows, turns and scores; a copy
that fails to spawn no longer blocks the others.
Throttle remote skater and skateboard re-creation, cap remote objects
per session, and show developer and friend marks only for identities
Steam vouches for. Route all connections through Steam's relays.
Dedicated server: validate map changes, clean player names, keep vote
cooldowns across reconnects, and cut ban labels on a character boundary.
Skater slot, menu and throwdown fixes; MY MODS rework; lobby parties
Saved skaters (Extension/Customization, Extension/Skater)
- The selected slot, and slots before it, came up as the standard
skater after a start or map change. The game asks for a slot's saved
outfit once per level, and that happened before the cosmetics catalog
could be read. The first selection now waits for the catalog (60 s at
most), and later map changes check against the catalog already read.
- The retry from abdda77 is removed: the record it wrote to is a
temporary on the game's stack, so it could never work.
Pause menu (Extension/UI/NativeMenu)
- ReSkate's entries stopped working after enough map changes: each
level change took new slots in a fixed table of 1024 for the same
buttons. A button now keeps its slot, and a full table hands out the
slot that has gone longest unused.
Throwdowns (Extension/Throwdowns, Runtime/runtime_init.cpp)
- Multiplayer crashed when someone placed a throwdown after a map
change. The event types are freed with the level but were cached for
the process. They are now cleared when a level is left, checked
before use, and looked for again in each level.
MY MODS (Launcher/gui_mods.cpp, gui.cpp)
- Search, a filter and an order; a switch per mod; a menu per row.
- Multi-select with tick boxes, Shift-click and Ctrl+A, and a bar to
enable, disable, move, update or uninstall everything ticked.
Lobby parties (Extension/Multiplayer/Session)
- A lobby is no longer one party. Its host keeps parties the way a
dedicated server does: invite, accept, join, leave, kick, promote,
open and close, with "/p" party chat. The "Lobby party" switch is
gone. Protocol version unchanged (38).
Mod merge (Engine/Vfs), follow-ups to e715b9b
- Files rewritten into the merged patch are tracked by position, so
another mod's added assets no longer shift the lookup.
- Two mods adding different assets under one name is now noted, with
whose copy the maps get.
- mod_merge_unshift_tests compiles with the launcher tests on.
Mesh streaming pool (fixes loading crashes on older GPUs)
- 1.0.0 forced MeshStreaming.PoolSize to 3.5 GiB on every card. An RX 580
crashed while loading with DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_RESET, and the oversized pool
is the likely cause. The pool is now a quarter of the largest hardware
adapter's dedicated video memory, capped at 3.5 GiB; cards of 6 GB or less
keep the game's own 520 MB. The card, its memory and the chosen size are
logged once at startup.
Remote players (busy servers)
- Transform interpolate is inline plain arithmetic: 22 -> 5.8 ns per joint.
It was 4% of a busy server's client frame, since every player within
200 m has the whole skeleton interpolated every frame.
- Players out of the camera's view and more than 8 m away are sampled at
20 Hz, like far players. Their position still updates every frame for
collision, sound and nametags, and a player coming into view is sampled
that frame.
Expression hooks (run for every expression the game executes)
- No profiler zones in the expression hooks: taking a sample switched them
on, inflating the very samples that measured the hooks.
- The throwdown lab pump does one sorted lookup of the running graph and
skips everything else for graphs it doesn't watch (graph_throttle gets
throttled_graph for this).
Settings and memory reads
- Script gameplay-setting and native-setting gets are served from small
per-thread caches, keyed on the asset/key address, its first 8 name
bytes and a new profile::Store::changes() counter, instead of a store
lookup each call.
- Per-frame reads in the client tick, native settings and population
controls use memory::peek instead of ReadProcessMemory.
- Script error logging probes each argument pointer once.
Launcher
- "Close the launcher when Skate starts" now hides the launcher and exits
when Skate.exe does, instead of exiting as the splash opens. Outside a
Steam library, Skate's protection closed the game (TerminateProcess 0x32)
when the launcher exited during startup; players confirmed turning the
setting off avoided it.
- STATUS tile warns when Steam isn't open or signed in that PLAY starts
offline as Unknown Player (hidden when Offline mode is chosen or while
launching).
- Setting description updated to match.
Startup interventions (20260929)
- exit_return 0x87755f2 -> 0x87fe7fb: the last LEA RSP,[RSP]; JMP stub
before the PUSHFQ / LOCK CMPXCHG routine, as 0x87367cf was in 20260908,
and the return address player logs show. Only enforced once a frame site
is armed; this build's protector has no equivalent rep stosb frame clear.
Client frame cost (profiled 2026-10-02)
- Transform interpolate is inline plain arithmetic (~1% of an MP frame).
- Script gameplay-setting and native-setting gets are served from small
per-thread caches keyed on asset/key address, name prefix and a new
profile::Store::changes() counter, instead of a store lookup each call.
- Hot-path reads in client tick, native settings and population controls
use memory::peek instead of ReadProcessMemory.
- Script error logging probes each argument pointer once.
AyeZeeBB