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.
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>
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.
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.