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.
A dedicated server's own chat lines (its console, welcome message and
answers to this player) get a violet "Server" badge and name and
lavender text, in the open chat and the fading lines.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MzTrhiZ2cNYyJgMHqTp1kf
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)
- The server browser opens sorted by most players, in the overlay and
the native menu; official and friends' servers still come first
- Dedicated server names may contain "/" (builds before this hide a
server whose name has one)
Server browser
- Official servers (the backend's "official_servers") sort first and are
drawn in ReSkate blue
- Servers Steam friends are skating in sort next, drawn in green with the
friends' names; searching a friend's name finds their server
- A player in a session they joined can join another server straight from
the list; hosts still end their session first, and a Steam friend's join
offer never replaces a session
- Joining a dedicated server from the list records it as the player's
public session, so friends see it and the row shows HERE
- Blocked servers (the backend's "blocked_servers") are hidden and cannot
be joined, by code either
- When the backend sets "server_tokens_required", dedicated servers that
signed in without a login token are hidden, except on the player's own
network
- A search that gets no internet list from Steam keeps the last list for
two minutes, and waits six seconds before treating it as empty
Roles
- New Staff tag from the backend's "staff" list: green name, badge and
item animation, ranked after Dev
- Staff can pick a rainbow for their items on the Special page; it is sent
as a solid colour older builds can show, so the protocol is unchanged
Dedicated server
- steam_token: sign in with a Steam game server login token and keep the
same Steam ID every start; empty signs in anonymously as before
- A listed server without a token says so at startup, and when the token
rule starts or stops hiding it
- Linux servers update themselves from the release's "server_linux"
tarball, with the machine's curl and tar, pinned by SHA-256, and carry
on in the same process
Launcher
- Only create the MiniDumpWriteDump API-set shim under Wine/Proton
Each built its text with path::string(), which throws for a character outside the ANSI code page, so the real error or message was replaced by a code-page error.
- Mod merge: rebuild a merged bundle's chunk metadata the way the game
writes it (one record per chunk, in chunk GUID order), so costumes
from different mods built on the same game costume keep their
textures and meshes
- Merge audit checks that layout, and there is a new unit test for it
- Server names: only letters, numbers, spaces and - _ [ ] ( ),
1 to 64 characters; the server browser hides servers with other names
- New Centrix tag from the backend's "centrix" list: blue and white
name, badge and item animation, ranked after Dev and before Creator
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.
Merge: carry added assets with a changed list, combine in-place values, list repeats once
Three merge bugs found by auditing 104 installed mods:
- A changed list (the music playlist) reached every bundle copy that holds
it, but the songs a mod added beside it only reached copies of the bundle
the mod added them to. The game keeps the playlist in eight bundles, so
the other seven named songs they did not hold. Added assets now follow
the change into whichever bundle copy takes it.
- An entry naming an asset that lost its name to another mod's asset is
now dropped from the list, both in the merged bundle and in the list
other mods' copies are given.
- Two mods changing values in place in one asset (lighting) kept one mod's
copy whole and silently dropped the other's. Plain values are now
combined, the higher-priority mod winning where both changed one. An
edit that also moved a reference or resized a list is taken whole or not
at all, and the merge notes whose changes are missing.
- A reference two mods both append to a list is listed once.
- Mods that add copies of store items under new names are no longer
loaded. The launcher, mod manager and game say why.
- A chat line passed on by the host only shows a Dev/Creator/Homie
badge when the player's own copy of it arrives too, so a host
can't put one on a line that player never wrote.
When several mods change the same game asset (the master music playlist,
for one), only the first mod's edit was read for the imports it names, so
only that mod's added songs, waves and chunks were carried into the other
mods' copies of the bundle (a map's level superbundle). Every later mod's
additions went missing on those levels while the game's own levels kept
them, which showed up as songs vanishing from the playlist on custom maps.
Read the imports of every changed asset, and merge a later mod's edit into
the stored change so the combined document's imports -- and the chunks
they lead to -- are followed too. Add a regression test with two music
mods whose songs must both reach a map's copy of the bundle.
The music player's playlist walk loads a song entry, masks it and reads a flag at [rcx+0x14] before it checks the entry's identity. An unresolved or NULL entry makes that read fault and takes the game down while a playlist is built or opened.
Install a 13-byte in-place guard at the reviewed RVA 0x14f80c7 when the music contracts pass. It keeps the original flag test, shrinks the leading mov eax,0 to xor eax,eax, and adds a jrcxz that skips the dereference when the entry is NULL, landing on the loop increment. The site is matched against its contract bytes before anything is written, so an unsupported image is left untouched, and the guard is applied with VirtualProtect and FlushInstructionCache and then made read-only again.
The contract and patch bytes live with the other music contracts in Engine/Game/Build/20260929/local_music.h; the installer is Extension/Music/local_music_safety.{h,cpp}; local_music_ui.cpp invokes it from initialize_music_functions; cmake/Runtime.cmake builds it. A new dingosdk_music_safety_tests (CTest music_safety) pins the contract length, the decoded instructions and the branch target arithmetic without needing the game.
- 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
"Cannot open file for SHA-256" was all a player saw when the launcher
could not read ReSkate.dll, at startup and again right after each
download. That is an antivirus holding or blocking the file.
- A sharing violation is waited out for up to five seconds: a file that
was just written is often held by the scanner for a moment.
- Otherwise the error names the file and its folder, says to add the
folder to the antivirus exclusions where that is the likely cause, and
carries the Windows error code.
Stock worlds allocate 8,200 bodies (+1 internal) from FBPhysicsWorldSize.
Studio maps give every collision part its own static body, so large maps
(e.g. a 41k-part GTA IV export) hit the FatalAssert
"bodyIndex < m_freeBodyList.capacity()" in FBPhysicsWorld::asyncAllocateBody
and crash on load.
Hook fb::FBPhysicsWorld creation (RVA 0x02606ff0) and raise the size
descriptor before it is copied into the job arguments, so every free list
and per-body array is sized consistently. BodyCount becomes 65,000 (kept
below 16 bits); the pools a static mesh body also draws from (geometry,
owner, hull/mesh, shape, aggregate/fixed shape, fixed partition,
persistent spatial index) scale by the same factor, capped at 2^20.
Contacts, joints, queries and culling tables keep their native sizes.
Both native callers build the descriptor on their own stack, so raising
it in place only affects that world. Contract bytes for the entry, the
descriptor copy, the internal-body increment and both call sites are
validated before the hook is enabled.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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.
zeex64