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
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.
In the skater's item grids (Apparel, Accessories, Board, Gestures) F favorites
the highlighted item, - (or Ctrl+F) opens a search box that filters as you
type, and X steps a filter (All, Favorites, Mods, Game items). Favorites sit
right after the worn item, carry the game's star where the tile shows its
rarity icon, and are kept in ReSkate.favorites.json beside Skate.exe.
The grids stay the game's own: their tile rows are reordered and filtered
through the native model functions, as the music screen's Mods shelf does.
Nothing is hooked for it and no file of the game or of a mod is changed.
See contrib/native-item-browser.md for how it works and what is not tried yet.
This is the Item Favorites mod done natively, so it no longer needs a DLL
loaded through a custom script.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Multiplayer and Custom Stuff pages of the game's pause menu were
built from the game's own menu widgets: a button, a text box and a line
of text, which cannot make a list with columns. The game now keeps only
the frame around each page (top bar, title, Back prompt) and ReSkate
draws everything in it, tabs included. The native page is one empty
body.
Multiplayer
- Server browser: a list with name, map and skaters columns that sort,
search, filters (all, servers, lobbies, friends, hide full, my map),
and a panel for the session pointed at. Pressing a row joins it; the
row says JOIN while pointed at. Join by code is in the panel, and its
own tab is gone.
- Host lobby, as before.
- Current session (only in one): who is here, leave, map, join code,
party.
- Voice chat (only in a session).
- Session settings (only for a lobby's host or a server's admin). They
are sent as explicit values, which a dedicated server needs.
Custom Stuff
- Official maps and Custom maps: pressing a map loads it.
- World: traffic, pedestrians, time of day.
- Parks: a card for each lot with its style, layout and load.
- Player: noclip, no bail, Hall of Meat, board wear, the camera views,
flight speed and the boosts.
- Online: player and nametag distances, nametags, chat, chat bubbles,
Discord status, and showing your tag and items.
- Visuals: camera effects, challenges, shuffle playlists.
- Binds: record or clear the button for each action.
- The player card name is no longer on the page (cardname in the
console still sets it).
Input: the game keeps the mouse and controller while its menu is up,
so the pages only watch them. They have their own focus, moved with
the D-pad or arrow keys and pressed with A or Enter, with LT/RT or Z/C
for tabs; lists remember the row the focus left. Typing in a text box
or recording a bind takes the keyboard and controller for that long,
as chat does. Nothing is taken while the game is not the window in
front, and the overlay's own menu draws on top.
Layout follows the game's menu at any window shape: scaled to fit
whole, 192 units clear at the sides, centred past 4704 units wide.
Sounds: the pages raise the game's own UI one-shot event for moving
the focus, pressing and changing tab.
Costume crash: the skater scripts' item:addEsShaderPreset uses the
preset it is handed without checking that it is loaded, and the game
crashed in the material's construction shortly after arriving on a
server's map while wearing a modded costume. The call is now checked
first: an item whose preset is not there is shown without it, and the
log says so.
Stuck close: once the player closes the game, a watch starts. If the
window has gone or stopped answering and the process is still there
8 seconds later, the process is ended. A window that still answers
(the close was turned down) is left alone, and the watch stands down
after two minutes.
Level unload guard: switched off. Skipping the entry that crashed left
its reference registered, so leaving the level never finished and the
game hung with the world unloaded. The crash it covered is back until
the reference is released properly.
AyeZeeBB