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.
Mesh streaming pool (fixes loading crashes on older GPUs)
- 1.0.0 forced MeshStreaming.PoolSize to 3.5 GiB on every card. An RX 580
crashed while loading with DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_RESET, and the oversized pool
is the likely cause. The pool is now a quarter of the largest hardware
adapter's dedicated video memory, capped at 3.5 GiB; cards of 6 GB or less
keep the game's own 520 MB. The card, its memory and the chosen size are
logged once at startup.
Remote players (busy servers)
- Transform interpolate is inline plain arithmetic: 22 -> 5.8 ns per joint.
It was 4% of a busy server's client frame, since every player within
200 m has the whole skeleton interpolated every frame.
- Players out of the camera's view and more than 8 m away are sampled at
20 Hz, like far players. Their position still updates every frame for
collision, sound and nametags, and a player coming into view is sampled
that frame.
Expression hooks (run for every expression the game executes)
- No profiler zones in the expression hooks: taking a sample switched them
on, inflating the very samples that measured the hooks.
- The throwdown lab pump does one sorted lookup of the running graph and
skips everything else for graphs it doesn't watch (graph_throttle gets
throttled_graph for this).
Settings and memory reads
- Script gameplay-setting and native-setting gets are served from small
per-thread caches, keyed on the asset/key address, its first 8 name
bytes and a new profile::Store::changes() counter, instead of a store
lookup each call.
- Per-frame reads in the client tick, native settings and population
controls use memory::peek instead of ReadProcessMemory.
- Script error logging probes each argument pointer once.
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.
ReGlitched