After Steam updated skate., some installs had the supported Skate.exe over
the new build's data (a copied game, or a download that stopped part-way).
The launcher called that ready, every mod was left out as "made for game
build 29544144, not the installed 29663206; rebuild it with ReSkate Studio",
and the mods stayed out after the game files were put right.
Launcher
- Ready now also needs the game's data to be the supported build, read from
Data\layout.toc against supported_build::game_data_changelist (29544144).
Data of another build, or none, reads "Game files need verifying".
- DOWNLOAD in that state checks every file (-validate) instead of fetching
only what is missing. A download that fails part-way no longer ends on
ready because Skate.exe arrived.
- Data whose build cannot be read does not block.
Mods
- A mod left out because the game was of another build is no longer
remembered in .reskate-excluded.json: it is checked on every launch. One
already remembered for it is looked at again.
- When it is the game that is not the supported build, the mod's message
says to verify the game files in the launcher, not to rebuild the mod.
Objects other players place are spawned locally, so the game took every one
for the local player's own: all were solid, and their card offered the
owner's buttons and named the wrong player.
- Other players' objects are ghosts the skater passes through, as in the
game's own sessions. Each player's row in the session menu has an
"Objects: solid / ghost" switch, remembered by Steam ID; a dedicated
server's own objects (its parks) are solid unless switched off.
`mp objects-solid <SteamID64|server> on|off` does the same.
- The card's own Disable and Enable on one object stand over that player's
setting until the setting is changed.
- The card on an object someone else placed no longer offers Edit or
Delete: the game's "is this mine" and "may this be edited" checks answer
for who really placed it. It offers Disable instead.
- The card names the owner of the object it is for, read from the card's
own script, instead of the owner of the object nearest the skater.
- A dedicated server has a player card of its own, "Server", shown on what
it placed.
Server: the Mods folder is kept when the configuration is reloaded. A park
mod was reported as not being in the Mods folder after a reload.
A Jam Session takes the score of the line just landed from the score HUD's
text, with the script native ParseInt, which is the C library's atoi. atoi
stops at the first character that is not a digit, so a line shown as 5,432
was read as 5 and added 5 to the player's total. Reported for Jam Sessions
and Spot Battles: lines of 5,000 and more adding one or two points.
ParseInt now reads groups of three digits whole, set apart by a comma, a
full stop, an apostrophe or a space: "5,432" is 5432. Text that is not a
grouped number is read exactly as before. The first few grouped scores are
logged, to confirm the cause in play.
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.
Sources
- Local Files: add a folder of music from the setup page (MP3, M4A, AAC, Ogg,
FLAC, WAV; up to 200 songs a folder, 12 folders). Names and covers come from
the files' tags. Each folder is a tile in its own row.
- Online Radio: find stations by name (radio-browser.info) or add a stream's
address (MP3, AAC, .pls, .m3u; no HLS). Each station is a tile in its own
row; the track name follows what the station sends. Up to 24.
- Both are decoded by the library built into the DLL (SpotifyHelper), which
now plays files and HTTP streams as well as a program's output, reads tags
and embedded pictures, and accepts MPEG-2 ADTS from AAC stations.
Sound
- Five-band equaliser (60 Hz, 250 Hz, 1 kHz, 4 kHz, 12 kHz) and loudness
levelling, applied to every source on its way into the game.
- Loudness, the speakers option, the equaliser and levelling are now kept in
music-settings.json between sessions.
Setup page
- Remade in the mod's own colours and type, with numbered steps per source.
- Queue pinned to the right: now playing, the playlist's songs with covers,
find, and press to jump. Spotify's own queue shows once signed in.
- Cards for Local files and Online radio; equaliser and levelling under Sound.
In game
- MUSIC page in the menu: player and queue, sound settings, source status and
a button for the setup page.
- "Loading song..." notice in the corner for songs that take a moment, with a
switch to hide it. Presses made while a song is loading no longer restart it.
- The Spotify row is hidden when Spotify is not in use.
- Console: "spotify ..." is now "music ..." (music, music setup, music gain,
music through, music spotify client|login|logout).
Logs
- The music sources' working lines (traces, per-song and per-bind lines,
librespot's own) are debug only; stack captures are skipped unless debug
logging is on. Grind exits: the per-pop line is debug only too.
- A "Pace:" line when the game takes the sound faster or slower than real
time, to find why music sounds fast after tabbing back in.
Chat filter
- A run of digits is a number, not a word spelled with look-alikes: a race
time such as 2:55.0 is no longer masked.
LT / RT pressed during a grind pick the side the skater pops out to,
independently of the trick and the body's rotation (both come from the
left stick in skate.'s own controls). Only the sideways part of the
grind pop's launch is replaced, with the game's own sideways speed; the
trick, spin, pop height and along-rail speed are untouched.
- Input Mode: Toe / Heel (character relative, needs the stance) or
Left / Right of the direction of travel.
- Grab guard: a trigger used to pick the side is hidden from the game
until released, so it never starts a grab.
- Lean guard: while a claimed trigger is held in a grind, the left
stick's left/right reaches the game at the pop, so the game's lean
exit cannot drag the board into the rail.
- Off by default; switches in Mod Options > Player, the ReSkate skater
page, the tools menu and the console (grindexit ...). Kept between
sessions.
- Listener slots on existing hooks only: No Bail's physics step, the
trainer's set_trajectory detour, and the overlay's XInput capture.
No new detours. Build-locked to 20260929 through the trainer's byte
check.
Measured on build 25414733: 48 vanilla grind pops, 144 trigger-set
pops. See Extension/Skater/GRIND_EXITS.md.
Three outside sources can now be played through the game's own music
player. Each has its own row in the music screen, shown only when it is
set up, with tiles that behave like the game's playlists: track name,
cover, pause, next, and pressing a row to start that track.
How the sound gets in
- The game's song decoder is hooked. While one of these tiles is on, the
audio of the game song behind it (its "carrier") is replaced, block by
block, with the outside source's audio. The game's volume, fades and
pausing still apply.
- Rows are songs of our own registered with the game's music registry
(copies of a real song's asset with their own artist and title), so no
game song is borrowed or renamed to list a track.
Spotify
- The game is a Spotify Connect device ("ReSkate"), built on librespot
and linked into ReSkate.dll (SpotifyHelper/, Rust). Audio, track info
and controls come straight from Spotify. Needs Premium.
- Optional sign-in through the Web API lists the player's playlists and
Liked Songs as tiles with their tracks.
- librespot can no longer end the process (it does so on a free account
and on playback errors); only its thread is stopped.
YouTube Music
- Videos and playlists added by link. yt-dlp is fetched on request into
<Local AppData>\ReSkate\bin and checked against its published sums;
decoding is done in the DLL, so no ffmpeg.
- Private and age-restricted songs: cookies.txt or a browser's sign-in,
with QuickJS fetched as the JavaScript runtime yt-dlp then needs
(Node.js is used instead when installed).
External Audio
- Any app's sound, captured per process from Windows, with the app's own
output turned down while it plays through the game.
Setup page
- "spotify setup" opens http://127.0.0.1:8421/: device status, sign-ins,
YouTube links and tools, the external app, loudness. Loopback only;
changes are accepted from its own page only.
Also
- Speakers in the world play the tile's audio; grabbing one keeps the
player on their tile.
- Playlists added while the game runs are sent to the music screen live.
- MUSIC-SETUP.md: setup guide for players.
Building the Spotify device and the YouTube decoder needs cargo; without
it ReSkate.dll builds without them.
Map updates
- A map the game already has, being replaced by the host's version,
could load as soon as the new files were in Mods, while the mods
were still being applied: it ended on "This map is not loading". The
session now holds the load while a map is downloading, installing or
applying, as it waits for one that is missing.
- A player whose version of a map is later than the host's keeps it and
loads. Only an older one is replaced by the host's. Versions are
compared number by number (1.10.0 is later than 1.9.2).
Dedicated servers
- maps.latest_versions (off by default): the server asks Thunderstore
for the newest version of each of its custom maps, at start and every
maps.latest_check_minutes (5-1440, default 60), and writes it into
the mod's manifest.json. Nothing is downloaded: the server reads only
a map's level list and version, and players, who are held to the
server's version, fetch it as they join. The map being played waits
until nobody is on it. A folder that is not a Thunderstore package is
not touched, and the level list is left as it is.
- Console: maps update, maps latest on|off, maps latest every <minutes>.
Overlay
- Vote card: the pass mark is always in the middle of the bar. Green
grows over the left half up to the yes votes needed and over the
right half past them, whatever share the vote needs.
- The "Staff" tag is "ReSkate Admin", shimmering from #2500FF to
#B2F9FF.
No protocol change. Tests cover the version comparison and the
manifest write; the Thunderstore lookup was checked against the site.
The map update flow, the vote bar and the tag were not seen in game,
and the server setting has not run on a live server.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The entity and pending-update pages are twice the game's own size
(262,144 slots), down from four times. Every page set the game keeps
is that many times its normal size whether a map uses the room or not,
and the largest map load seen needs about 150,000 slots.
A page is a power of two entries, found by a shift, so the steps are
two, four and eight times; there is nothing between. The 434 patch
lines are the same instructions as before, each with the number for a
page of 0x800 entries. The render-instance pool and the spatial
buckets stay at eight times, which still covers the capacity.
The game can stream 20480 textures at once. When a map and its mods
need one more, it takes a slot past the end of its table and waits for
ever on a byte that is part of a counter: a hang, then a crash in the
hang's own report (crash reports of 2026-10-11).
The limit is raised to 32764, the most a texture's 16-bit handle can
index, before the game makes its texture streaming manager:
- The manager is allocated longer (6.0 MB, was 2.3 MB) and its slot
table and per-slot floats moved behind its end. Each of the 226
instructions that hold one of those offsets or sizes gets another
number; no code is added. Its four fixed lists are pointed at longer
storage once the constructor has run.
- The renderer keeps a block of floats per slot for each of four
layers. Its object grows to match (27 instructions), and the two
places that index a layer's block as layer * 20480 become a multiply
by the new count, in the same twelve bytes.
- Three functions keep 20480 entries on their own stack. Two list
filters go through a longer list a stretch at a time, and the sort
is given scratch room of its own past that many. Up to 20480 they
run as the game wrote them.
Every instruction is checked byte for byte first, and nothing is
changed if any differs or the manager already exists. An empty
texture_limit_stock.txt beside the game leaves the limit as it is.
Players are told when they come close: a notice at 90% of the limit
in force and an error at 100%, each once until use falls below 80%.
The log records each new high in steps of 5%.
Also: when a function of the game finds its stack written over, the
game ends itself with exit code 0xc0000409 and no crash report. The
log now names that function and its callers first.
The site table (texture_streaming_sites.inc) is generated from a sweep
of the supported build; texture_streaming.h describes the layout.
Tested in game below 20480 textures only. Nothing has run above the
old limit, where the three stack guards and the longer lists first
matter. At 32764 the game still hangs; the notice is the protection.
Guard a crash when the game describes a failed load
When a load fails, the game writes "load <address> failed with error:"
and describes each part of the load's error in turn. That list can
hold parts that were never set, and the game calls through them: six
crash reports from one player on 2.0.5 and 2.0.6 all end at
Skate.exe+0x2e3ab9c, after eight parts that read "no error".
The guard hooks that one function. Before the game describes the
list, every part that is not one of the game's own objects is emptied,
so it reads "no error" as an empty part does; the description also
runs under an exception handler. The failed load is then the game's to
deal with, as it meant to.
What the game wrote goes to the log as a warning ("The game described
the error of a load that failed"), with how many parts were emptied,
so content that does not load can be traced. The game's message names
no asset, only an address.
A dedicated server that rotates its maps can now ask players where to
go next instead of taking the pool's next map.
Server
- maps.rotation_vote: when the timer runs out, a vote between three
maps drawn at random from the pool, "Random map" and "Stay here".
The most votes wins, a tie is drawn, and with no votes it is the
pool's next map. It ends early once everyone has voted.
- maps.rotation_vote_seconds (10-120, default 30) and
maps.rotation_extend_minutes (0-240, default 15; 0 leaves "Stay
here" out).
- maps.rotation_announce: a card when the map has 10, 5 and 1 minutes
left.
- The vote's maps are drawn a minute ahead and sent to games
(PacketKind::next_maps), so their pictures are ready when it opens.
- /vote extend: a built-in vote that gives the map in play
rotation_extend_minutes more. On by default (votes.extend_map), and
only runs while the maps are on a timer. "extend" is now a reserved
vote name.
- Console: rotation vote on|off, rotation announce on|off,
rotation stay <minutes>|off, rotation extend [minutes],
votes extend ..., vote extend.
Game
- The vote opens as a popup in the middle of the screen: a tile per
answer with its picture, name, share of the votes and count. It
holds input as the map download card does, and works with a
controller (D-pad, A, B), the keyboard and the mouse.
- Pictures: a mod map's icon from its folder, or from Thunderstore
when it is not installed; the game's own maps show their loading
screen picture, cut to its middle square. "Random map", "Stay here"
and a map without a picture are drawn as shapes.
- Older servers and polls are unchanged: the vote is a poll, so it can
still be answered with /1, /2... in chat.
Protocol 50: games and servers both need this build.
Votes: a vote is decided by the votes cast, not by everyone on the server. It
passes when yes is its percentage of them, at the end of its time, or sooner
once the players still to vote could not change it. A kick still needs two
yes. The card's bar is yes in green from the left and no in red from the
right, with a mark where yes has to reach. No protocol change.
Map versions: a map installed at another version than the host's is no longer
loaded as it is. The download card offers the host's version (MAP VERSION,
UPDATE), which replaces the installed one and is applied while the game runs.
For that the live merge keeps each mod's fingerprint with where its archives
were placed, and places a mod again when its files have changed since: before,
a mod replaced while the game ran was read where the old one lay. When the
host's version is gone from Thunderstore, or the old one's files are in use,
the player is told and leaves the session.
Dedicated server: "maps reload" reads the Mods folder again, so a map copied
in while the server runs can be switched to at once. The server window reads a
copy of the map list.
Map names: a custom map's level is dingolevel_reskate_<map>, and "reskate" was
left in its name ("/map reskate badlands"). The map's own name is shown and
typed now; the old spelling still finds it.
as a level unloads, the game takes each mesh variation out of its registry by the
entry's mesh and reads it unchecked, and this map's meshes unload before
their databases. A guard on that one function has the read of a mesh that is
gone go on with the next entry, and logs how many were passed over.
The Favorites order fix gave Favorites to any channel that asked for
playlist 0. That is what the music player asks for when Favorites is
chosen, but nothing said another channel could not ask for 0 and mean
something else. The channels the music player's own queues pick songs
for are now remembered as they are seen, and only those are given
Favorites for 0; on any other channel the request goes through as it
came. The channel numbers are still the game's: none is written down.
A channel's binding was logged once per change, except for a channel
past the end of the table, which was logged on every call. Those are no
longer logged at all. The binding line now says whether the channel is
one of the music player's.
The hook on the game's candidate check is removed, with its address: it
changed nothing and only logged.
Dedicated servers: roles, with their tags, commands and permissions
A dedicated server had one list of admins who could do everything, and
everyone else could do nothing. It now has roles, kept in
data/roles.json beside the bans: each a name, the tag its players wear
in the game, the server commands it may use, what it may do besides
commands, and a rank.
A server starts with five: player (everyone given no role: chat, votes,
parties, private messages), vip (a reserved slot), moderator (kick, ban,
messages, giving out lower roles), admin (everything) and muted. The
default role is whoever was given none; a role has what the default has
as well as its own unless it says it does not inherit. A reserved slot
is a permission, so a role's players have one without being listed.
Nobody kicks, bans or changes the role of a player whose rank is theirs
or higher, or gives out a role that is; the console is above every role.
"*" is every command but role and reserved, which a role has only when
it lists them.
New commands: role <player or SteamID64> <role>|none, roles, and roles
reload. "admin add|remove" and "admins" are gone: the admins an older
config lists are moved into the admin role the first time the server
starts, and leave the config.
In the game, a player's role tag and colour show in chat and on their
nametag, and each control in the Multiplayer menu, the map, time of
day, world layers and parks follows the command it needs rather than
one admin flag, as do the commands chat offers.
Protocol 48: the roster carries each player's tag, and a new
permissions packet tells a player what their role gives them. Older
games and servers do not connect to newer ones.
Also fixes a name clash that kept the server config tests from
compiling.
Replay drafts: the replay editor saves a draft as a pin on the recording
and a thumbnail in the game's media catalogue, which the Drafts screen
lists from. The game only makes that catalogue for a user signed in to
its backend, so under ReSkate a saved draft had nowhere to be listed.
ReSkate now registers the catalogue service and signs in a local user,
both with the game's own functions, so the game's Drafts screen works as
it was built: save, list, open and delete within a session.
A draft's footage stays in the recorder's memory, as it does in the
game, and does not outlive the session. Thumbnails of earlier sessions'
drafts are removed from the catalogue folder at startup; only folders
whose manifest is a replay draft's are touched.
Profiler: `perf sample` on the client thread now reports the slowest
client frames ahead of the function table, each with what it spent its
time in. An average over thirty seconds hides a single long frame.
Memory
- The entity and pending-update pages are four times the game's own size
(524,288 slots), down from eight times. At eight, the game kept a
3.5 GB block for them that was fully in RAM on custom maps; the largest
map load seen needs about 150,000 slots. The render-instance pool and
spatial buckets stay at eight times.
- The log has a "Memory:" line when the game's memory, the players in the
session or the skaters built change: committed, in RAM, players, skaters
built, player distance and map.
- Console: `perf memory` lists the game's memory by block size.
`perf memory mark` remembers it, and the next `perf memory` says what
was added since. `perf memory trace` also records who asked for each
block until `perf memory stop`. `perf memory big` lists the largest
blocks with how much of each is in RAM and a sample of what is in them.
RESKATE_MEMORY_TRACE=<megabytes|all> starts the trace with the game.
Replay crash guard
- The game's replay recorder crashes when its stream has no room for the
next chunk: it writes to the chunk it was not given (Skate.exe+0x48efa34,
crash reports of 2026-10-10). The function now runs under a handler
that, for that one fault alone, returns as if no chunk was ended, and
says so in the log. Any other fault still goes to the crash reporter.
The skip path has not been triggered in testing.
Launcher
- `-map <name>` (also --map, -map=<name>) loads that map as soon as the
game is up, named as the console's `load` names one. With --no-gui and
no other options the launch still uses the saved launcher settings.
Pause menu
- The Multiplayer and Mod Options pages step aside while the game's side
menu, or a screen opened from it such as Settings, is over them. They
drew over both before.
- A button still held when a page comes back is not a press on it: the
Back that closed the side menu no longer dismissed the page as well.
Multiplayer cosmetics
- A player whose mods add or remove cosmetic slots (stickers, say) no
longer has the whole outfit refused. Their items go to this game's slots
by slot: a slot they lack stays empty, an item in a slot this game
lacks is left out, and the log says how many of each.
Map downloader
- A host or dedicated server now tells joiners which Thunderstore package
its map comes from (the Mods folder name plus manifest.json).
- A player without the map gets a card: icon, name, author, version and
description, with DOWNLOAD and CANCEL. It works with mouse, keyboard and
controller.
- Only packages listed as Maps in the ReSkate community are offered, and
never deprecated, rejected or NSFW ones.
- On yes the package is downloaded, installed into Mods and applied as a
live mod, then the session loads the map. A small card on the right
shows the progress, so the player can keep skating.
- The player stays connected while it downloads: the host gives a player
who says they are fetching the map up to 45 minutes instead of the
usual load time.
- When the server changes map with the player in it, the card says so.
- Protocol version 47: map package on map_offer and world_state, and a
"fetching the map" flag on map_request and world_ready.
Joining
- The pause-menu server browser shows a CONNECTING card over the page
while a join is under way, and a COULDN'T CONNECT card with the reason
when it does not get in.
- The session and voice tabs no longer show before the player is in.
- Leaving without the map (declined or cancelled download) no longer
counts towards the failed-join limit, on servers and player hosts.
Input
- A card that asks something holds the game's input until the buttons
are released.
- Steam's overlay hooks XInput in front of ReSkate and answers the game
itself, so a controller reached the game behind menus. ReSkate now
hooks that hook as well.
Mod merging
- Mods are read on several threads, at launch and for live merges. A live
merge runs below the game's priority.
- The paid-cosmetics check reads the game's files and the mods on several
threads.
- A live merge reuses the paid-cosmetics verdicts it already has and
reports its progress and timings.
Launcher
- NSFW mods and their categories are not shown in the mod browser.
Player list. A player on the developer, staff or homie list sees each
player's Steam ID in the overlay's PLAYERS list for the session they are
in, after "Host" / "Guest" and the distance, on their own row too. A click
copies it. The lists are the backend's, the same ones the tags come from;
every client in a session already knew the IDs, so this changes who is
shown them and nothing else.
Custom scripts. Nothing in scripts/Custom is read or run any more, whatever
the launcher's "Loose files" setting says: nothing used them, and a mod was
using the folder to load a DLL into the game (package.loadlib from its
init.lua). The loader is kept behind one switch (custom_scripts_enabled in
custom_script_loader.cpp) for the day they come back.
For that day, the loader now also takes Lua's ways of running native code
away before the first custom script runs: package.loadlib, require through
the two C searchers and package.cpath, os.execute and io.popen. If that
does not hold, no custom script runs.
The overlay's Mods page no longer has the INSTALLED / SCRIPTS tabs; it is
the installed mods. Editing the game's own Lua and config through loose
files is unchanged.
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).
With the game's Camera height control on (Gameplay > Advanced Camera),
R3 on the board switches between the high and the low camera by writing
the opposite of the UseHighCam option. A new switch in SKATER > CAMERA >
FIRST PERSON, "First person in the camera cycle" (off by default), makes
it high -> low -> first person -> high.
- The existing native option hook passes UseHighCam writes to a
listener, so the settings code does not depend on the skater code
- Low -> first person keeps the low camera and turns first person on;
first person -> high turns it off and keeps the high camera
- First person is switched through the menu toggle's own action on the
next client tick, so the player's first-person settings apply as
they are; it only starts on the board, outside Freecam, Noclip and
the Park Editor
- Saved as FirstPerson.CameraCycle; Reset arm settings keeps it
- Add a ctest (first_person_cycle) for the cycle's steps
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Costume crash: the skater scripts' item:addEsShaderPreset uses the
preset it is handed without checking that it is loaded, and the game
crashed in the material's construction shortly after arriving on a
server's map while wearing a modded costume. The call is now checked
first: an item whose preset is not there is shown without it, and the
log says so.
Stuck close: once the player closes the game, a watch starts. If the
window has gone or stopped answering and the process is still there
8 seconds later, the process is ended. A window that still answers
(the close was turned down) is left alone, and the watch stands down
after two minutes.
Level unload guard: switched off. Skipping the entry that crashed left
its reference registered, so leaving the level never finished and the
game hung with the world unloaded. The crash it covered is back until
the reference is released properly.
Builds on the 2.0.0 vote card. Protocol 46: a server's vote can now be a
poll, and the roster carries who may start polls, the owner's own votes
and the current announcement.
Custom votes (votes.custom): the server owner defines /vote <name> [choice]
in ReSkateServer.json. When one passes, the server runs its command as the
console; {map} is the current map and {arg} the player's choice, which must
be one of the vote's "choices", so players never put free text into a
command. They show in /help, /vote list and the "/" menu.
Polls: /poll <question> | <answer> | ... with 2 to 6 answers. A poll runs
nothing. Players answer by clicking a row on the vote card or with /1, /2...;
the card shows each answer's count, then the result for a few seconds.
votes.polls says who may start one (off, admins, everyone), poll_seconds how
long it runs, and /poll end ends it early (its starter or an admin).
More vote settings: each vote may have its own seconds, cooldown_seconds and
min_players; starter_votes_yes says whether starting a vote counts as a yes.
The "votes" admin command sets all of them.
Announcements: "announce <text>" posts a chat line and shows a card at the
top of every player's screen. The new "announcements" section holds messages
the server posts in turn every interval_minutes while players are on;
"card": false keeps them to chat. Managed with the "announcements" command.
Older configs gain the new settings with their defaults on first start.
Server/README.txt documents them.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01WbSRfNf5T9wX4XMMQ5kwia
Leaving a level could crash the game: an access violation in Skate.exe at
+0x3f5fc52, on one of its worker threads, with no ReSkate code on the stack.
Three reports from one PC show the same crash at the same address (two on
2.0.0, one on 1.1.8), each about half a second after leaving Skate3Improved on
a server of 81 to 101 players.
While a level unloads, a job walks each unloading object's table of 0x30-byte
entries and reads a number at +0xc8 of the asset each entry points to. An entry
whose asset never resolved holds null there, and the game reads it unchecked.
The loop is rewritten in place at startup so such an entry is skipped. The
2-byte nop before the loop makes room for a jz straight after the pointer is
masked, the two moves it displaced follow it, and the loop's jump back is
retargeted to the new start. Everything from the read on stays where it was;
nothing else in the function jumps into the rewritten bytes.
The patch is applied only when the game's 50 bytes are exactly what it was
written for. Otherwise the game runs as shipped and the log says why; startup
goes on either way. The log shows "Level unload crash guard: ready" when it is
in.
Not known: which asset is unresolved (the map's, or something another player
had equipped), and why it only happens some of the time. The reports hold
stacks only.
The badge a content creator gets before their name, in chat, on their nametag
and on their own tag in the menu, said "Creator". It now says
"Content Creator". Tests and comments that quoted the old text follow.
As in skate. 3: when the local skater bails, the bones it hurt show over
the world through the body, yellow where a hit bruised one and red where
one broke it, with the bail's Meat card in the bottom left corner in the
place of skate.'s own HUD there: its time, hits (head hits double,
vehicles half again), broken bones, road rash, airtime, fall, top speed
and rotations, each scoring, and the map's best. A bone breaking pulses
the screen's edges red and, in single player, slows the game down a
moment. Off until switched on, as in skate.: in skate.'s menu (Custom
Stuff > Player) or with `hallofmeat 0|1`, saved with the profile.
Everything it draws is skate.'s own, read from the installed game: its
skeleton mesh (the Dem Bones costume) posed with the renderer's own
skinning matrices, its scoring icons, the THRASHER wordmark and its UI
brush strokes. Nothing is shipped.
How it works: No Bail already hooks the skeleton response, which runs
once a physics step right after the body contacts; it now hands that step
on, with the local skater it follows, but only while Hall of Meat is on.
Each step reads what every ragdoll body hit and how hard, and whether the
skater is a ragdoll; the bail runs on the game's own clock so slow motion
measures what the body did. The feature's own hooks, on the renderer's
skinned draw packets and main view and on the UI model's write, are
prepared at startup and switched on only with the feature, and off again
once the HUD corner and the game's speed are given back: switched off, the
game never calls them and the physics step pays nothing. The skeleton mesh
is read the first time it is on; only the images are read at startup,
since the overlay builds its atlas once. The renderer's picture of the
skater is read only while a bail shows. The menu's switch reads the
overlay model like the others. Every address is in the build table with a
fingerprint checked before use. Extension/HallOfMeat/README.md describes
the parts; its tests build with DINGOSDK_BUILD_HALL_OF_MEAT_TESTS.
The slow motion changes SimulationTime's rate, frame cap and time scale as
a session override and steps the local skater along, since skate. sets a
skater's step only when it builds its core. It runs the same at every
break, but never faster than the game ran: with the trainer's game speed
below 1 it only takes the part that is slower still. Afterwards it writes
back what it found, each setting only while it still holds what the slow
motion wrote, so the trainer's speed comes back as it was; a setting
changed from elsewhere meanwhile is left as it is and ends that slow
motion. named_setting_value reads a setting's value for it.
Tuned in play: a bruise from 7 m/s and a break from 12 m/s along the
contact normal (raised twice: a hard fall on flat ground broke bones), a
break worth ten of the lightest hits (a heavy bail's hits and breaks
outweighed the rest of the card) and a fall half of skate. 3's rate.
Fix: the overlay now draws in the back buffer's pixels, not the window's,
so it lines up on displays Windows scales (1920x1080 borderless on 4K).
The skater's render hooks, its skeleton and its body maps were first
found by gBGYo's ReSkate fork (github.com/gBGYo/ReSkate).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Other players' skaters and skateboards showed none of the game's skater
effects: not the trail or fire a costume or deck comes with, and not the
sparks, dust and puffs of a skater touching the world.
Costume and skateboard effects. The game gives another player's skater and
skateboard the right effect sets by itself, but builds them before their
outfit is on, so nothing showed. They are now built again half a second after
the outfit is applied. An always-on effect that a skater's item puts on the
skateboard's wheel joints (the Ghost Skater trail) follows the skater's own
copy of those joints, which only this player's skater keeps up to date: for
other players it is taken out of the skater's sets and built on their
skateboard, which has the same joints.
Contact effects. They come from a skater touching the world, which only
happens in that player's own game. Each game now captures its skater's
contacts (position, velocity, surface normal, surface material) and sends up
to three a tick in a new unreliable packet, PacketKind::effects. Other games
play each through the game's own function, so the effect is still chosen from
the surface and the speed. A contact is shown as late as that player's poses
are, only within 30 m of their skater, and only for a material the level's
table has: the game reads that table without a bound.
Server. A dedicated server relays effects packets to players within 150 m of
the sender, at most one packet a tick from each player. New setting
players.sync_effects (default true), console and admin command
"effects on|off". Off: the server relays none, and the roster tells games
neither to send their contacts nor to build other players' costume and
skateboard effects. Player-hosted lobbies relay through the host and always
share them.
The roster carries one more byte for the setting. Still protocol 45, which
has not been released.
New console command "mp effects": what has been captured and played, and why
the last contact was refused if one was.
Binds for first person, the HUD, voice chat, time of day, No Bail, challenges, nametags and dots
Eight more actions can be put on a keyboard key, a chord or a controller
combo, in the binds list beside the others. None is bound until the player
binds it.
- First person, Hide HUD, Voice chat on / off, Next time of day, No Bail,
Show / hide challenges, Player nametags, Player dots.
- Each bind runs the console switch for it, so it follows the same rules as
typing it: No Bail still answers to a server that has it off, and the time
of day goes to the server for an admin where the server sets it.
- They are one table (action_binds): a bind is its name in the profile, the
name "bind <name>" takes, its label and its command.
- "bind firstperson|hidehud|voicechat|tod|nobail|challenges|nametags|
nametagdots <n>" sets one from the console; 0 clears it.
- They are not read while the menu, the console or the chat box is open.
Console, which the binds use and anyone can type:
- Every on/off switch takes "toggle" ("nobail toggle", "hideui toggle").
- "firstperson 0|1", which was only in the menu.
- "tod next": the time of day after the current one.
- "mp voice-chat on|off|toggle": the player's own voice chat, leaving the
rest of their voice settings; it says which way it went in their chat.
Server: object scaling can be turned off
A dedicated server can stop players resizing the objects they place.
- "allow_object_scaling" in the config's "players" section (default true),
and "object-scaling on|off" from the console or an admin. A change is
saved and applies at once.
- Off: the server shares every player's objects at their own size, whatever
that player's game sent. Admins can still resize theirs, as with the
object limit.
- The roster tells each game. In the park editor of a player on such a
server the SCALE mode is not offered, its Y shortcut does nothing, the
scale box is disabled with a note saying why, and what is placed or edited
is its own size.
- An object resized before the setting was turned off is its own size for
everyone else straight away; its owner sees it resized until they edit it.
Votes on a dedicated server show as a card above chat instead of being
followed through chat lines.
- The card has what is voted on, the Yes and No counts, how many are needed,
a bar of how far Yes has got, and the seconds left. When the vote ends it
shows Passed, Failed or Cancelled for four seconds.
- Yes and No are two buttons, labelled with the player's binds. The answer
given is highlighted and can be changed. They can be clicked whenever the
cursor is free (chat, menu or console open).
- Two new binds, "Vote yes" and "Vote no", in the binds list: F1 and F2
unless changed, to keys or controller combos like the others. They are
read only while a vote is running, and not while typing.
- /yes and /no still work and show on the card. The player a kick vote is
about sees the card and has no vote in it.
- Console: "mp vote yes|no", "bind voteyes <n>", "bind voteno <n>".
Server:
- The roster carries the running vote (id, kind, tally, seconds left,
starter, target, label) and the one just finished with how it ended.
- A chat line is no longer sent for each change of the tally; the lines for
a vote starting and ending stay.
Fix: a dedicated server's roster may list more players than its limit.
The extra slots for reserved players and admins (33 of 32) made a roster the
protocol refused to encode, so with one in use the server logged
"Server error" every pass and stopped part-way through each one until
somebody left. Lobbies hosted by a player are still held to their size.
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)