With several cosmetic mods installed the game crashed as soon as an
equipped custom item came into view, and so on every launch after it
was equipped.
Cosmetic presets (Engine/Resource/bundle_ref_table.*)
- The character bundle-reference table says which bundle holds each
preset, under the preset's full path and under its leaf name, one row
per hash. Mods number their presets alike in different folders
(cust_tops/1_ap, cust_bottoms/1_ap), so two mods can share a leaf
name. Adding the second preset threw "collides with an existing
lookup", the merge fell back to the highest-priority mod's copy of
the table, and every other cosmetic mod's presets were unregistered.
The game then built the skater with a preset it could not find and
called through a bad pointer.
- A preset whose leaf name is taken is now added under its full path
only; the leaf name stays with the preset that had it. Only a clash
of full paths still fails. MergedTable::shadowed lists each such
preset with the one that holds its name.
Merge log (Engine/Vfs/mod_merge_combine.cpp)
- Each mod with shadowed presets gets a line naming how many and an
example pair, so an item that shows the wrong preset can be traced to
the mods that clash.
Checked against 39 installed mods, 15 of them cosmetic: the table
combines 274 presets where it used to keep one mod's, all reachable by
full path and 267 by leaf name, with the game's own 6264 rows unchanged.
The seven left without a leaf row are a naming clash between the mods
themselves (two Carhartt packs, a Zero tee and deck); whether the game
finds those by full path is not known.
bundle_ref_table_tests takes an optional second mod and checks that two
mods' presets are all added, in either order, and that a shared leaf
name is reported with the preset that holds it.
Videos exported from the replay editor played two to three times too
fast unless the frame rate was capped, or the export was slow enough to
hold it down by itself (4K, WebM). The fault is in the game's own export
path.
Replay export (Extension/Rendering/replay_export.*)
- While exporting, the game steps the replay by one frame of video
(speed / fps) for every frame it renders. The engine's movie encoder
takes a frame only while a permit byte is set; a world update sets it
once, and a frame submitted without it is dropped. Rendering two or
three frames per update, most of a clip never reached the file, and an
MP4 is exactly as long as its frame count. One clip came out as 181
frames at 30 fps and 297 at 60, 6.0 s and 5.0 s.
- The encoder's frame submit is detoured and the permit set before the
original runs, for the replay editor's encoder only (matched by its
vtable). The frame is encoded on the render thread before the call
returns, so the renderer is held to the pace the encoder keeps and no
frame is lost. The replay still runs fast on screen during an export:
that is the encoder's speed, not the file's.
- The same clip afterwards, frame rate uncapped, MP4 1080p: 505 frames
at 30 fps and 1008 at 60, 16.8 s both, audio as long as the video.
WebM and 4K take the same path and were not run again.
- Addresses are in Engine/Game/Build/20260929/replay_export.h. The hook
starts with the others in runtime_init.cpp.
- Conflict in launcher_support.h: kept Linux guards, took upstream's
validated_remote_load_library(note) signature + comment.
- Upstream's path_utf8() helper is portable; merged cleanly into the
Linux closure. Build + 8/8 portable ctest green.
A blank launcher window (Launcher/gui_renderer.cpp, Launcher/gui.cpp)
Reported as a launcher that showed nothing, from someone with a GT 1030.
The log named the card it had used: Intel HD Graphics 4600, the onboard
chip beside it.
- D3D12CreateDevice(nullptr, ...) takes whichever adapter DXGI lists
first, which on a PC with onboard graphics beside a real card is the
onboard one. It now walks EnumAdapterByGpuPreference with
HIGH_PERFORMANCE, skips software adapters and takes the first that
gives a device, as a game would. The old default adapter and WARP
remain behind it, so no working setup loses its device.
- That chip's Direct3D 12 driver cannot build a pipeline, and the ImGui
backend creates one on the first frame while ignoring whether it
worked (imgui_impl_dx12.cpp:792). Every draw then does nothing and the
window shows only ClearRenderTargetView's colour, which is near black.
Untextured shapes sample the font atlas's white pixel, so a failed
atlas looks identical -- the drawn background disappears with the
text. The pipeline and font texture are built in init now and checked,
and a failure says to update the driver and that the card may be below
what ReSkate and skate. need.
- None of this was diagnosable, because the renderer logged nothing at
all. It now records the adapter, its memory and whether it is the
software fallback; the window size, scale, system DPI and work area;
the font atlas size and whether it built; and the first frame drawn.
Those four lines are what turned "blank window, healthy log" into the
two bugs above, and they separate a missing device from a missing
pipeline from a window that draws and is still black.
World layers (Engine/Vfs/world_layer_scan.cpp)
- CoreGameAssets had a row like any other, and switching it off took the
world away with no clue which row had done it. essential_layer keeps
its node, so its children are still found and still switchable, and
drops its row -- which removes it from the menu, from "world <key>
off" and from layer sync at once, rather than hiding it in one place
and leaving it reachable from another.
- Choices are stored by row key, not by index, so no saved setting
shifts, and an "off" already stored for it has no row to apply to: a
profile that turned it off fixes itself on the next launch.
- The cache stamp goes to 2, so a cache written before this is rebuilt
instead of keeping the row alive on existing installs.
- The scan test asserted one row per node, which this breaks on purpose.
It now checks the counts differ, that no row's key holds
"coregameassets", and that the node is still there. Against a real
install: 262 rows to 261, six maps, passing.
Mod archives (Engine/Vfs/mod_merge*)
- A free archive index no longer has to sit at or below the highest index
the layout already declares. The engine keeps archives in a table keyed
by layer, install chunk and a 16-bit index, with no range to stay
inside; what it cannot survive is a reference to an archive the layout
never declared. Indices are taken lowest first, per package directory.
- So a mod that collides takes an index of its own and its file is hard
linked rather than concatenated, and no two mods share one archive's
4 GB of addressable bytes. Sharing is left for a mod added while the
game runs, which has no declared index to take, and for a directory
with no index left.
- A placement addresses its payload with a 32-bit offset, so both append
paths now refuse to cross 4 GB instead of wrapping round and pointing
the game at some other payload: CasStore::write fails with the archive
that is full, and the live-apply path checks archive 1's size plus the
mod's before appending and asks for a restart, which gives the mod an
archive of its own anyway.
Injection through a hooked LoadLibraryW (Engine/Core/Platform)
- A player could not launch at all: "Child LoadLibraryW entry bytes match
neither Windows' kernel32 file nor this process". Anti-virus and
overlays hook the entry with a jump to a per-process trampoline, so the
bytes differ in the launcher and in the child and neither comparison
could match. The guard already allowed the same hook when both
processes carried it identically, so it refused on an accident of how
the hook was written rather than on intent.
- inline_jump_length recognises the forms a hooking engine writes (rel32
jmp or call, push/ret, jmp [rip], mov rax/jmp rax, short jmp). When one
is present and every byte after it still matches the clean kernel32
file, the launch goes ahead: the body is Windows' own, and the provider
image already matched on timestamp, checksum and size. A wholesale
replacement is still refused, and now says so.
- The failure names the modules loaded into Skate that came from neither
Windows nor the game folder, instead of guessing at "security
software". An accepted hook is logged as a warning with the same list.
Launching (Launcher/launch.cpp)
- Exporting loose scripts is a convenience, and a folder that would not
take it was failing the whole launch: fs::create_directories threw and
nothing caught it. The export is skipped, RESKATE_LOOSE_FILES goes to
0 so the runtime does not look for files that are not there, and Skate
starts. Someone whose install is under Program Files can play; only
editing loose scripts is lost.
Failures worth reading (Launcher/problem.h)
- A hooked LoadLibraryW, a refused write and ERROR_ELEVATION_REQUIRED
each explain themselves now. Windows reports the last two in the user's
own language -- "Zugriff verweigert", "La operación solicitada requiere
elevación" -- so the rules key on the operation names and the error
number, which are never translated.
Saved skaters (Extension/Customization, Extension/Profile)
- Outfits stopped saving and every slot showed the standard skater. The
load hook marks a preset blocked on entry and clears it only on a full
success, so a load refused for a catalog that was not ready yet left
the preset blocked for the session and every later save was refused as
previous_load_rejected. The game asks once per level load and does not
ask again, so one lost race cost a skater until a restart. Logs show
the catalog arriving three seconds after the refused load, at startup
and again on a map switch 17 minutes later.
- The record is remembered in CosmeticRuntime::pending_loads and applied
by retry_pending_cosmetic_loads from the customization pump, which
already waits for refresh_cosmetic_catalog. The preset stays blocked
until a load really succeeds, so nothing is written over the outfit on
disk.
- Those records belong to the loadout manager's array, which can be
replaced in between, so each pointer is checked against the live array
exactly as a save checks one -- manager current, begin/end sane, 0x48
stride, at most 10 records, in range and aligned. A record that no
longer belongs is dropped as retry_record_moved rather than written
through.
A player whose game sat under a folder named U+200E (left-to-right mark,
an invisible directory on their Desktop) could not launch: the status
tile read "No mapping for the Unicode character exists in the target
multi-byte code page". Nothing was wrong with their mods, and the merge
in their log had just succeeded.
fs::path::string() converts to the process's ANSI code page and throws
exactly that when a character has no mapping there. initfs.cpp called it
on the normal path, not in an error handler, so exporting loose files
threw on every launch. Their log stops right where that export begins.
Cyrillic, CJK or accented characters in an install path do the same on a
code page that cannot hold them.
- path_utf8() in Engine/Core/Platform/path_text.h: UTF-8 represents every
path Windows allows, so it never throws.
- Every path that becomes a narrow string uses it -- 35 of them across 13
files. Most are log lines and error messages, which were a second trap:
reporting a problem with a path threw this instead of the problem.
- The ~45 .string() calls on Json values are untouched; those are not
paths.
Nothing changes for an ASCII path, where both encodings agree, and a path
that is not ASCII had no working behaviour to preserve.
Reported with a log by a player on Discord. Moving the game to an ordinary
folder works around it on an unpatched build.
A mod the merge could not use was left out silently. The game started
without it, three minutes into a loading screen, and only ReSkate.log said
which one.
Merging before launch
- PLAY runs the merge the game would have run behind its splash, on the
launcher's worker, with the step and progress on the STATUS tile
(Phase::merging). The launcher links dingosdk_mods for it, which costs
about 600 KB of exe.
- When every mod merges, the launch goes ahead and the game's own
load_catalog finds the patch already built, so the splash is shorter
rather than the work being done twice.
- When mods were left out, the launch stops at Phase::mods_broken and a
dialog names each one and its first problem, with three ways on: switch
them off and play (which writes mods.json, so the next launch does not
rediscover it the hard way), open the mod manager, or play anyway.
- Mods built for another game version do not block. They already have
their own notice and message box, and blocking on them would stop play
after every Steam update.
- The launcher resolves -dataPath out of the extra-arguments setting, so
it merges against the root the game will read.
One SDK identity for both binaries
- Two places recorded "which ReSkate did this" as the module the code was
running in, which is ReSkate.dll in the game and ReSkateLauncher.exe in
the launcher now that both merge. merge_fingerprint hashes it, so the
game matched no stamp the launcher wrote and merged everything a second
time; sdk_identity keys the exclusions file, so each would have called
the other's exclusions stale.
- Both now name ReSkate.dll beside the running executable. Skate.exe and
ReSkateLauncher.exe sit beside it and launch.cpp enforces that, so the
two agree, and unlike the data root it does not move under -dataPath.
The value is unchanged from what the runtime computed before, so nothing
re-merges on upgrade.
Naming the mod
- In game, a mod left out of the merge altogether said nothing on screen:
only a mod that merged partially did, which is the lesser failure. Both
are named now.
- The MOD MANAGER tile says which mod did not load, in the detail line's
colour rather than a pill, clipped so a long name cannot run under the
tile's artwork.
- MY MODS carries a line naming them above the list, and NOT LOADED and
OUTDATED are badges on the row instead of words at the front of its
summary.
MY MODS reaches Thunderstore parity
- Rows carry the package's icon, the same one the store shows, through a
shared mod_icon(); a mod that never came from Thunderstore keeps the
placeholder.
- An update is a button on the row, not a badge you had to open the mod to
act on, and every row has Uninstall. Rows grew to fit, and "Remove" is
"Uninstall" throughout.
- No pill for a mod that is up to date: the absence of an update button
says it, and eight green pills said nothing eight times.
Fixes
- The install panel was drawn on the Mods page's own draw list after its
children, and ImGui renders a child after its parent, so it was painted
behind the mod rows along with its Cancel button: installs ran with no
sign of it. It is its own window over the page now.
- pump_icons, which uploads decoded icons, only ran on the store page, so
MY MODS showed placeholders until a visit to GET MODS uploaded them for
it. The page does it for both lists.
- The merge dialog's closing advice overlapped its buttons.
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.
ReGlitched