The game's truck model has its hangers on the trucks' bones and its
baseplates on the deck's bone. A broken board hides the real deck by moving
that bone away, so its trucks lost their baseplates.
The decks inside a deck pack bring a truck model with the baseplates on the
trucks' effectors, bones under the trucks' own that no model uses. The render
pose hook writes each effector from its truck's bone, so that the baseplate
sits on the deck of a whole board however the truck steers, and goes with the
truck when a piece carries it off. With the game's own truck model nothing is
on those bones and nothing changes.
A slam can break the local skater's board at the nose, in the middle or at
the tail. Half the time the grip tape holds the pieces together and the board
folds or an end hangs; otherwise a piece comes off, flies and lies where it
lands. The board is whole again in hand, on riding and on a respawn.
The pieces are four stretches of the deck in a content mod's copy of the
game's one deck model, each on a spare bone of the board's rig. The boards'
render pose hook only moves bones, because the replay records where a bone is
and not its size: a broken board's deck goes away and its stretches go to
where the pieces lie, and a whole board's stretches go away.
The deck the player chose loads first and other mods that bring a deck model
are set aside for the run, without touching mods.json. Another deck is chosen
while the game runs, through a live apply of the mods.
contrib/board-break.md says how it works and how a deck pack is made.