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.
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
AyeZeeBB