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
Overlay. Hall of Meat could only be switched from the game's own menu and the
console. The Insert overlay's skater page now has a "Hall of Meat" switch on
the Movement card, under No Bail. It runs the same "hallofmeat 0|1" command, so
both menus agree and the choice is saved with the profile. It is greyed out
when Hall of Meat did not start.
Server. A player who is not an admin and places more than twice the object
limit plus 100 in a minute (a modified game animating objects by respawning
them) had their objects held as they were for a minute. They are now deleted
for everyone, and nothing that player places is shared for the next minute:
without that their game would upload them again at once. The log names the
player once with their SteamID and how many objects went, and they are told in
chat. After the minute only what they place anew is shared.
The server cannot delete the objects in that one player's own game, so they
still see them there; nobody else does.
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.
Server: remove players who have been away too long
A dedicated server can remove players who are away from their game.
- "afk_kick_minutes" in the config's "players" section: 1 to 1440, or 0
(the default) for never. "afk-kick <minutes>|off" from the console or an
admin; a change is saved and applies at once.
- Away is doing nothing a player at their game does: not moving or turning,
not speaking, not sending chat, and not placing, moving or removing an
object.
- A minute before the limit the player is told in chat; at the limit they
are removed with a message saying why and that they can join again. The
log has an "[afk]" line.
- Admins are never removed for it. The time starts once a player's game has
loaded the map, and starts over after a map change and when the setting is
changed.
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.
Conflicts in Server/server_host.cpp: main changed the command code after this
branch moved it to Server/server_commands.cpp. The moved copy now has what
main added since: the "chat-color" command, "park random", and its line in
the help text.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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.
Fix players freezing on dedicated servers; reserved slots are extra slots; bone scale limit 2
Players stopping and jumping (1.1.6):
- The new sound messages begin with the same four bytes ("RMS1") as the
pose updates games send each other over their direct links. The game
took those pose updates for sound and discarded them, so a directly
linked player moved only when a whole state arrived.
- Game: only messages from the dedicated server are read as its sound,
pose or acknowledgement messages; anything from another player is
decoded as what it is.
- Server: poses and sound go through the server to every player, whether
or not two games have linked to each other. This fixes games still on
1.1.6 without an update, at the cost of more outbound on small servers.
Reserved slots:
- "reserved_players_slots" no longer holds slots back. Anyone joins until
max_players are on; the listed players and the admins can still join
after that, each adding one slot beyond the limit (33/32 and so on).
- An admin who is also listed counts once, and the total never exceeds
what a session can hold.
- The list holds up to 1024 players again. "reserved" in the console shows
how many extra slots there are.
Server:
- "bone_scale_limit" is 2 by default. The game's own skater height is a
bone scale, so 1 showed everyone at one height. A config that already
has 1 written in it keeps it until changed.
Server config:
- Written in sections, in reading order: server, access, maps, players,
anti_cheat, network, votes. A config from an older version, flat and
under older names, is read as it is and written back this way on first
start; only settings that are really new are reported as new.
- Renamed: no_bail, noclip, boosts, parties, voice_chat to allow_*;
global_bans to use_global_bans; welcome to welcome_message; speed_check
to speed_hack; score_check to modified_scoring; score_allow to
allowed_scoring_mods; map_pool and map_rotation_minutes to maps.pool and
maps.rotation_minutes. Console and admin commands are unchanged.
- Bans are kept in data/bans.json beside the config. A config that holds
them has them moved there; a bans file that cannot be read stops the
server from starting.
- Reserved slots are one list, "reserved_players_slots": a slot is kept
for each listed player who is not on. "reserved_slots" and the
"reserved slots <n>" command are gone; admins may take a kept slot but
none is kept for them.
- "tps" is no longer in the file: dedicated servers run at 20.
- "bone_scale_limit" is 1 by default: resized body parts are off unless a
server allows them.
- New: "pack_ms" (10), how long Steam may hold a message to pack it with
others; "finger_distance" (25); "steam_debug", which logs what Steam's
networking says, for connection faults.
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.
- bone_scale_limit in ReSkateServer.json, and the bone-scale command:
the most a bone may be scaled in the poses the server passes on, 1 to
8, and its inverse the least. 1 shows every skater at the game's own
proportions; 0 (the default, "bone-scale off") is no limit
- A "big head" mod sets one joint's scale in the body's bind pose
(animation/dingo/cas_rsp_body_bind, the head from 1 to 4). The game
applies it to the bone, and the bone's scale travels in every pose,
which is how players without the mod see it. The game's own skeleton
has no scaled joint, so 1 changes nothing for anyone else
- The player with the mod still sees it on their own screen: the server
decides only what the others are sent
- Changing it sends whole states again, so nobody keeps a reference
with the old sizes in it
- Dedicated servers only; a lobby's host has no such setting
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
- The crowd limit always sends a player the nearest 8 others at the
full rate and the next 12 at ten a second, whatever the budget. It
gave everyone the low rate first and the nearest what was left, and
with enough players on (about 120 at the default budget, fewer at a
lower one) nothing was left: nobody was at the full rate, and since a
skater's sound follows the full rate, nobody was heard either
- Whole pose and sound states are sent every minute instead of every 8
seconds. A whole pose measured 3.7 KB against 0.7 KB for a difference
from one, however old the reference, and at every 8 seconds they were
about a seventh of what a busy server sent
- "net" lists which of Steam's relay locations the connections go
through, and "net <player>" that player's: Steam reports pings of
several hundred ms on a server measured at 55-84 ms directly, and
this says which way the route went
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
- The map command, from the console or an admin, refuses a map the
server does not have: the game's own maps are always allowed, a
custom one only when its mod folder is in the server's Mods. It
accepted any level path before, so a server could move everyone to a
map it had no mod for
- A map setting in ReSkateServer.json that names a map the server does
not have now stops the server at start, saying to add the map's mod
or change the map
- The map change itself checks too, whatever asks for it. Votes,
rotation and the map pool were already limited to known maps
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)
- 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
- 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
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.
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.
Two follow-ups to the Linux server support in #6. Both are Linux-only, so
neither reached a Windows player.
Session codes
- nonce()'s fallback for a container with no /dev/urandom read
"i < 4 && !value", which ended the loop as soon as the first round
produced anything: one round of sixteen bits instead of four. Over
200k draws that is 62k distinct codes with a ceiling of 0xffff, rather
than 200k across the full range.
libsteam_api.so
- It was fetched from a mirror's main branch with no hash, by CI and by
the script every server operator runs, and it is loaded into the
server process. A branch name is whatever that branch holds on the day
it runs.
- Pinned to mirror commit df2baabf574a and checked against its SHA-256
(385840 bytes, eb2dd015...). The size and export checks already there
catch a wrong file; a hash is what catches a swapped one.
- --sdk-url still overrides the URL and drops the check, since a
different URL has a different hash; --sdk-sha256 keeps it.
