Players reported the game hanging for about a second while skating. A
profile showed the memory line in the log walking every heap
(HeapSummary) on the client thread, 0.5 to 2 s every two minutes. An
audit of everything that runs on the game's update and render threads
found more of the same, and Sentry's top crashes had causes of ours.
Freezes:
- Memory log line: no heap walk or thread snapshot; the GPU part and the
write happen on a thread of their own.
- Profile database: synchronous=NORMAL in WAL mode. A save is still kept
when the game crashes; every play event no longer waits for the disk
inside the game's hooks.
- ReSkate's own preferences and values (menu clicks, session sliders,
Discord) are saved by a background writer in order; reads see a value
until it is saved.
- Input: the foreground window and the keyboard are sampled on a thread
of their own (GetAncestor and GetAsyncKeyState stalled the client tick
40-50 ms when another program held Windows' lock); flight input uses
the sample; ClipCursor at most twice a second while a menu has the
pointer.
- Hooks installed while the game runs go in one transaction per place
(HookBatch): throwdowns, remote players, the party, Hall of Meat.
- Off the update thread: the host's map package lookup (one table read in
the background, not the Mods folder per offer), the trainer's map file
and settings save, Board Break's settings save, mod music playlists and
their covers, the Spotify station covers.
- Off the render thread: the Modding page's and the deck card's Mods
folder reads. The overlay's three startup waits share five seconds.
- Less work per frame: Steam names reused while one a frame is asked
again, 2 friends a tick, steam_api64.dll checked once per process,
cosmetic names read in place rather than a system call per character,
an outfit load no longer copies the inventory per slot, the throwdown
type scan runs at background priority over resident memory, the Board
Break deck label is kept a minute.
Crashes:
- Render-resource pool: the metadata fields are written to the state
owner only. The other renderer is 0x2daa00 bytes, and +0x11aae28 is far
past its end (store_field crash; heap corruption in every release).
- Other players' skateboard effects: a stale skateboard component is no
longer followed, and the joint lookup is walked with a bound first (an
endless loop in reused memory ended in GameStall).
- Launcher: Oodle decodes into the buffer it asks for with corrupt data
possible, and its assertions no longer stop the process (heap corruption
in the store-copy scan; a breakpoint in oo2core).
Timings (Send performance timings):
- A frame of half a second or more in a level is sent as game.freeze:
where the time went (ReSkate's tick, the game's frame, or outside it),
whether the renderer kept presenting, and ReSkate's busiest zones.
- Closing the game sends the level session it was in.
Music after a connection drop:
- Spotify device: an account Spotify could not be reached with is kept and
tried again (3 s doubling to a minute); a session that drops is taken
up again. Only an account Spotify refuses is asked for anew.
- YouTube playlist pictures that could not be fetched are tried again,
from 30 s to 10 minutes apart.
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
A player kicked or banned only found out why from the status line of the
multiplayer menu, if they opened it.
- What the host or server says as it puts a player out ("You were
kicked...", "You are banned...", away too long, a mod or cheat it does
not allow) is now shown in the middle of the screen with an OK button,
under YOU WERE KICKED, BANNED or REMOVED. The same when they are refused
on trying to join again early. A link that is simply lost shows nothing
new.
- Answered with A or B on a controller, Enter or Esc, or a click on OK. The
game's input is held while it is up, as for the vote for the next map, so
the button that answers is not also a press in the game.
- Console: "popup test" shows it with a sample message, to try it without
being kicked.
Server: a kick by a vote has a time of its own, votes.kick_minutes, 5 by
default (1-1440, or 0 for until the server restarts); it no longer goes by
players.kick_minutes, which is now an admin's kick only and is still until
the restart by default. Console: votes kick-minutes <minutes>|restart, and
"votes" shows it. A config without the key takes the 5 minutes.
Objects other players place are spawned locally, so the game took every one
for the local player's own: all were solid, and their card offered the
owner's buttons and named the wrong player.
- Other players' objects are ghosts the skater passes through, as in the
game's own sessions. Each player's row in the session menu has an
"Objects: solid / ghost" switch, remembered by Steam ID; a dedicated
server's own objects (its parks) are solid unless switched off.
`mp objects-solid <SteamID64|server> on|off` does the same.
- The card's own Disable and Enable on one object stand over that player's
setting until the setting is changed.
- The card on an object someone else placed no longer offers Edit or
Delete: the game's "is this mine" and "may this be edited" checks answer
for who really placed it. It offers Disable instead.
- The card names the owner of the object it is for, read from the card's
own script, instead of the owner of the object nearest the skater.
- A dedicated server has a player card of its own, "Server", shown on what
it placed.
Server: the Mods folder is kept when the configuration is reloaded. A park
mod was reported as not being in the Mods folder after a reload.
Crash dumps now go to the project's own Sentry server. The launcher's
out-of-process helper is unchanged; only where it posts and what it expects
back are:
- The default endpoint is the Sentry project's minidump URL. Report
attributes travel as Sentry tags, with the release as reskate@<version>.
- An upload counts as accepted when the server answers with an event ID.
- "backtrace" is "crash_report" throughout: the namespace, files, CMake
targets, DINGOSDK_CRASH_REPORT_URL, DINGOSDK_BUILD_CRASH_REPORT_TESTS and
the RESKATE_CRASH_REPORT_URL override.
Performance timings are new, and off unless "Send performance timings" is
ticked in the launcher's settings (RESKATE_TRACING=1). A small tracer
(Engine/Core/Debug/trace.h) posts each finished step to Sentry as a
transaction from a background thread; the launcher and the game it starts
share one trace. Timed: the update check, the Steam download, Thunderstore
installs, the mod merge, starting the game, the launch up to the first
playable level, each level load, joining a session, fetching the identity
lists, and the time spent in each level with its average frame rate and
long frames. Turning crash reports off turns timings off too.
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.
/tp refused anyone without a skater built here ("is not in the world
right now"). Since skaters are only built within the player distance
(120 m by default), that left only players already nearby: a player far
from everyone could teleport to nobody. The Social menu's teleport failed
for the same players, as the game was only told where a player was while
their skater was built.
- /tp goes to where the player was last heard to be, skater or not. Poses
keep arriving for far players (their name or dot is placed by them), so
distance no longer matters. Only a player no pose has placed yet is
refused.
- The game's party position is kept up to date for far players too, for
the Social menu's teleport.
No protocol or server change. /tp is not tested in game; the Social menu
path follows from the code and is not tested either. Spectate from the
Social menu may now accept far players and show the place without a
skater.
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 dedicated server's poll could only be answered by clicking a row on its card
or by typing /1, /2... in chat.
While a poll is running, the top-row number keys 1 to 6 give that answer (as
many keys as the poll has answers). They are read only while a poll is open,
so they stay the game's own the rest of the time, and not while the menu, the
console or the chat box has the keyboard, as with the Yes and No keys.
On the card each row's number is now a white keycap, blue for the player's own
answer, and the hint reads "Press 1 to N on the keyboard, or click an answer."
Clicking and /1, /2... still work.
Not covered: the numpad (the bind system does not read it), controller
buttons, and rebinding; these keys are fixed.
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.
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)
A player's recent chat lines show as speech bubbles above their skater: newest nearest the head, older lines stacking upward, each popping in with a slight overshoot before it fades. Emotes render as their images, a message that is nothing but a few emotes shows them jumbo, and a message longer than a handful of lines is cut with an ellipsis so one line can never wall the screen off.
Local display options live under Settings > Interface > Multiplayer (on/off, own messages, distance, duration and how many recent lines stack) and the console gains mp chat-bubbles, chat-bubbles-own, chat-bubbles-distance, chat-bubbles-duration and chat-bubbles-history.
The chat panel and the bubbles now share one rich-text module (chat_rich), and a filtered message keeps its emote names: the bad-word mask is applied, but emote tokens are put back from the original before they are parsed.
- 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.
AyeZeeBB