The update check reads GitHub's release list either way (one call, as before) and notes whether a
pre-release newer than the latest release is there; the setting is offered only then, or while it
is on so it can be turned off. Unreachable GitHub keeps what the last check found.
Flipping "Install ReSkate updates" or "Test pre-releases" saves and checks again straight away, so
PLAY or the update button changes to match: updates off while one is offered goes back to PLAY,
pre-releases on offers the pre-release, off the latest release. A flip while a check is running is
checked as soon as it ends (each frame asks; it only compares two settings).
Turning "Install ReSkate updates" or "Test pre-releases" on or off took
effect at the next start. Closing settings after changing either now runs
the update check again: a pre-release is offered as soon as it is wanted,
the latest release when it no longer is, and a pending update is dropped
when updates are turned off.
- Not while a download, an update or a launch is under way, while the game
runs, or while a merge waits on an answer about mods; nor as the launcher
closes. The next check or start picks the change up then.
- The "Test pre-releases" help says the check happens when settings close.
Settings > Launcher > "Test pre-releases" (off by default). On, the update
check takes the newest GitHub release that is not a draft and carries a
launcher.json, pre-release or not, in place of the latest full release:
a pre-release newer than the last release is installed, pinned by size
and SHA-256 as any release is. Turned off, the next check goes back to
the latest release, whose files then replace the pre-release's.
- The update notice says "Pre-release" for one, and the log names which
kind of release was taken.
- The changelog shows the release the setting picks, marked as a
pre-release, and is fetched again when the setting changes.
- --no-gui launches follow the same setting.
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.
Settings has five more pages, under "SKATE. SETTINGS" in the rail, for the
settings the game saves per PC:
- GRAPHICS: window mode, resolution, HDR, brightness, UI brightness, HUD
display, then the game's graphics options (frame rate limit, VSync,
dynamic resolution, upscaler and its quality, antialiasing, textures,
lighting, shadows, mesh, effects, post processing, global illumination,
ambient occlusion, depth of field, motion blur) with buttons that set
every low-to-ultra option at once.
- AUDIO: volumes, voice chat, text and voice language, subtitles, party
menu narration.
- CAMERA: sensitivity, and the on board, off board and climbing options.
- CONTROLS: vibration, trigger force feedback, show controller on HUD,
highlight indicator, the experimental toggles.
- REPLAY: editor speeds and sensitivity, effects, first-person keyframes.
They are written straight into the game's save containers under
%LOCALAPPDATA%\ReSkate\Game\Skate\data (game_settings.h): a DATA file of
sections and an INDEX naming them, the body one binary object of named
values. Only the values changed are rewritten, in both of the game's
copies; every other byte is kept. A container that cannot be walked whole
is left alone. The first change copies the untouched files to
%LOCALAPPDATA%\ReSkate\game-settings-backup.
Keys, kinds, ranges, steps and choices are the game's own
(DingoUISettingAsset in its data, build 20260929). The labels are ours.
Resolution is saved by the game as a place in the PC's list of display
sizes; the launcher lists Windows' sizes smallest first, which matches the
one PC it was checked on.
A change is stored once the control is let go. The pages are disabled while
a game this launcher started is running, and say so when the game has not
saved its settings on the PC yet.
Not offered: refresh rate, fullscreen monitor and audio devices (places in
lists the game builds at run time), the mobile-only settings, and settings
the game saves to the account rather than the PC.
The game shows on the player's Discord profile where they are skating.
It talks to the Discord app on the same PC over its local pipe, with no
SDK; without Discord running nothing happens.
- Solo: "On <map>", "Solo skating", and how long they have been in.
- In a session: "On <map>", "Server: <name>" or "Lobby: <name>", the
player count, and how long since they joined. A session with a
password shows "Private server" or "Private lobby" and no name.
Joining: a status carries the session's join code when anyone may walk
in (no password, not full, a dedicated server or a publicly listed
lobby). Discord shows that as "Ask to Join"; the game answers yes for
the player at once, and the other player's game is handed the code and
joins. If their game is not running, Discord starts the ReSkate
launcher, which the game registers for under the player's own
discord-<application id> URL scheme.
Switches: "Discord status" in the launcher's settings (off starts the
game with --no-discord, and the game never opens Discord's pipe), and
the same in the in-game Multiplayer settings, kept in the profile.
The model gains join_code: the code of the session a player is in as
host or guest (invite was a host's only).
- The focus starts on PLAY when the launcher opens with a pad connected, and
on the open tab (GAME, MY MODS) when the pad opens Settings or the Mod
manager.
- List rows act as one item: up and down go from row to row in one press,
and a row's buttons take the focus only from the row (D-pad right).
- D-pad left and right between the rail and a list: ImGui looks to the side
only along a thin band through the focus and missed items level with the
gap between two rows, so a side move that finds nothing looks again across
the focus's full height.
- The left stick scrolls the panel under the pointer directly instead of
through wheel events, which queued behind the pointer's moves.
- On a Steam Deck (SteamDeck=1) the right stick gets a trackpad's feel: small
swipes move the pointer, and the glide after the thumb lifts is cut.
- Settings' and Mods' rails, pages and lists are NavFlattened children, so
the D-pad crosses between them instead of treating each as one item that
only B could leave.
- The pad's pointer no longer moves the system cursor. Under Proton that
move came back late as a mouse move and dropped the pointer; now a mouse
move counts only when it lands somewhere new.
- The first R3 only shows the pointer, so a stray click does not press
whatever the mouse last rested on.
The mod browser was a 960x620 panel inside a 1180x680 window, reached from
a tile the same size as SETTINGS. People could not find it, and once they
did there was room for about six mods.
Window
- The design size is 1440x840. Everything is laid out in design units and
multiplied by g_scale, which now scales down when that would not fit the
screen's work area, so a small laptop or a high DPI no longer gets a
window running off under the taskbar.
- The MODS tile is MOD MANAGER: taller than SETTINGS, directly above PLAY,
with the pending update count as a pill on its subtitle line.
- background.jpg is 1920x1027, so the bigger window is not upscaling a
1280x720 photo.
Mod manager, a page rather than a panel
- begin_page fills the window and draws its own minimise and close, since
it covers the main screen's. BACK or Escape leaves it.
- A nav rail holds MY MODS and GET MODS (count badges, blue for the open
one), the install actions and BACK. Refresh sits with what it refreshes,
top right of the content.
- Every mod is a full-width row: icon, name, author, description, version
and downloads, with a blue INSTALL or UPDATE and a tick box on the right.
Ticking several installs them in one run.
- Clicking a row opens that mod's overview in a popup, replacing the
side-by-side details pane that halved the list's width.
- virtual_rows draws only the rows a scrolling child actually shows.
ImGuiListClipper cannot do this, as it assumes every row is a fixed
height.
- Installing is a centred panel over a dimmed page with the activity, a
striped bar and Cancel, instead of a progress bar in the footer.
Settings
- The same page and rail: GAME, DISPLAY, KEYS and ADVANCED are nav tiles
rather than a row of tab buttons, and the content keeps to a 760 px
column so the explanations stay a readable measure.
- The Steam sign-in, Steam Guard and QR dialogs stay centred panels. They
are prompts, not pages.
Status and failures
- The STATUS tile carries its state in a coloured edge and a pill (WORKING,
READY, ACTION NEEDED, PROBLEM), its headline is 22 pt over muted detail,
and the standing facts (game build, ReSkate version) sit under a rule
instead of competing with the live status as equal rows.
- Launcher::fail keeps the raw message for the log, and problem.h turns it
into a headline and the next thing to try. The injection and PE-identity
failures ("VirtualAllocEx failed", "Injected ReSkate.dll is not present
in the child module list") all become "ReSkate could not attach to
Skate", with the anti-virus and overlay advice that actually fixes it;
the Steam download, a missing or damaged ReSkate.dll, the content cache
and a shared menu/console key each get their own. Anything unmatched
keeps its raw text.
- A failed tile grows Open logs and Copy details. Copy details puts the raw
message and the versions on the clipboard, ready to paste into Discord.
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.