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
Server
- Dedicated servers run at 20 network updates a second, fixed for now:
whatever tps says in ReSkateServer.json is read as 20, and the tps
command no longer changes it. A busy server's traffic, in and out, is
its players' poses, and 20 a second is a third less than 30. Lobbies
keep their own choice
- A player who has not moved or turned for three seconds is sent on at
five poses a second; the full rate is back with their first movement
- "net" shows what a pose costs as sent, and what it would cost against
a reference renewed every second, every quarter second, and against
the pose before, measured on every fourth pose that arrives. It only
measures: a nearer reference packs smaller, and this says by how much
before the server is made to send them that way
Game
- The "/" menu on a dedicated server lists /w for everyone, and /msg,
/msg-party and /msg-admins for admins. The server already answered
them; the menu is the game's own list and never had them
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)
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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
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.
AyeZeeBB