MY MODS: a table with an animated drag for the load order, a conflicts bar with Check conflicts, and a Resolve popup whose choices are kept. The check runs at startup and after changes; conflicts no longer show as problems, block Play, or hold mod files during an update.
Conflicts: only game EBX that cannot be combined, or Lua scripts with different versions; colourways and same-name additions are not conflicts.
Official mods: installed in Mods/<Namespace-Name> and turned on or off through mods.json, so they show in MY MODS; the old .reskate-official folder is moved over.
Merge: a scan cache (Mods/.reskate-scan.txt) keeps each unchanged mod's repair, mesh and texture scans, so big maps are not re-read every merge.
Launcher: an announcement from the backend shows under STATUS, with HIDE.
The ReSkate menu now has two styles, switched with View / F11 or the buttons in its top bar
and saved with the profile (`ui fullscreen`):
- Window: the mouse menu as before, with a side rail of pages in groups.
- Full screen: made for a controller, in the pause menu's look. Pages across the top (LB / RB),
each page's sections as the ONLINE page's tabs (LT / RT), button prompts at the bottom, the
pause menu's sounds, and the pause menu's own Multiplayer pages as ONLINE.
The pages are regrouped: HOME (quick switches and a tile for each page), MAP, BUILD, SKATER
(freecam, first person, cheats), SANDBOX (once Trainer), ADDONS (drone, Board Break, Road
Rash, Hall of Meat, grind exits, music), ONLINE, PROGRESS, MODS, SETTINGS, DEVELOPER.
Full screen, every shared control is drawn for a pad: switches and option rows changed with
left / right one step a press, sliders as steppers that repeat when held, rows of buttons,
and pages that scroll with the right stick. Search boxes and typed values stay in the window.
A pad press takes the menu's focus back and hides the pointer until the mouse moves.
Also: map pictures in the map picker (official loading screens, a mod's icon) with a search
box in the window, Splash and Tutorial Island left out of it; number boxes beside the
window's sliders; the binds in groups, with an action bind to open the menu (`menu`); a menu
size for each style (`ui scalefull`); the time of day stepping from the one last asked for.
They load from Mods/.reskate-official, outside the Mods folder's list, so
the page took the ones in effect for mods whose folder was gone: "Folder
deleted / APPLY TO UNLOAD", a change pending, and an Apply that reloaded
the level for nothing.
- Each official mod has a tile of its own after the installed mods:
OFFICIAL while in effect, SET ASIDE while Board Break has another deck
in the game, APPLY TO LOAD for one put in place since the game started.
No Enable/Disable: the launcher keeps them.
- live_mods::preview leaves built-in and official content out of what
applying would unload.
719cba1 stopped writing the metadata pointers into the other renderer
(0x2daa00 bytes, Skate.exe+0x30c64cc, kept at 0x75f2700), taking them for
the state owner's alone. They are not: the other renderer's own code reads
them through the patched view (0x030e6bff, called from 0x30a7e18) and
append (0x03e94fe6, called from 0x30d8ebb). Without the write, it read
whatever lay 18 MB past its end. With it, as in every release before, that
memory was overwritten, or the write faulted when nothing was mapped there
(the store_field crash).
- The other renderer's allocation is patched to the state owner's
0x11ab080 bytes (0x030c64cc, mov ecx), so +0x11aae28/+0x11aae30 are
inside it.
- Both renderers' metadata pointers are written again, before and after
the native constructor. The resource-state and relation-mask vectors stay
the state owner's alone: the other renderer keeps fields of its own at
+0x2da920.
- The contract's comment says which renderer reads what, and where.
Players reported the game hanging for about a second while skating. A
profile showed the memory line in the log walking every heap
(HeapSummary) on the client thread, 0.5 to 2 s every two minutes. An
audit of everything that runs on the game's update and render threads
found more of the same, and Sentry's top crashes had causes of ours.
Freezes:
- Memory log line: no heap walk or thread snapshot; the GPU part and the
write happen on a thread of their own.
- Profile database: synchronous=NORMAL in WAL mode. A save is still kept
when the game crashes; every play event no longer waits for the disk
inside the game's hooks.
- ReSkate's own preferences and values (menu clicks, session sliders,
Discord) are saved by a background writer in order; reads see a value
until it is saved.
- Input: the foreground window and the keyboard are sampled on a thread
of their own (GetAncestor and GetAsyncKeyState stalled the client tick
40-50 ms when another program held Windows' lock); flight input uses
the sample; ClipCursor at most twice a second while a menu has the
pointer.
- Hooks installed while the game runs go in one transaction per place
(HookBatch): throwdowns, remote players, the party, Hall of Meat.
- Off the update thread: the host's map package lookup (one table read in
the background, not the Mods folder per offer), the trainer's map file
and settings save, Board Break's settings save, mod music playlists and
their covers, the Spotify station covers.
- Off the render thread: the Modding page's and the deck card's Mods
folder reads. The overlay's three startup waits share five seconds.
- Less work per frame: Steam names reused while one a frame is asked
again, 2 friends a tick, steam_api64.dll checked once per process,
cosmetic names read in place rather than a system call per character,
an outfit load no longer copies the inventory per slot, the throwdown
type scan runs at background priority over resident memory, the Board
Break deck label is kept a minute.
Crashes:
- Render-resource pool: the metadata fields are written to the state
owner only. The other renderer is 0x2daa00 bytes, and +0x11aae28 is far
past its end (store_field crash; heap corruption in every release).
- Other players' skateboard effects: a stale skateboard component is no
longer followed, and the joint lookup is walked with a bound first (an
endless loop in reused memory ended in GameStall).
- Launcher: Oodle decodes into the buffer it asks for with corrupt data
possible, and its assertions no longer stop the process (heap corruption
in the store-copy scan; a breakpoint in oo2core).
Timings (Send performance timings):
- A frame of half a second or more in a level is sent as game.freeze:
where the time went (ReSkate's tick, the game's frame, or outside it),
whether the renderer kept presenting, and ReSkate's busiest zones.
- Closing the game sends the level session it was in.
Music after a connection drop:
- Spotify device: an account Spotify could not be reached with is kept and
tried again (3 s doubling to a minute); a session that drops is taken
up again. Only an account Spotify refuses is asked for anew.
- YouTube playlist pictures that could not be fetched are tried again,
from 30 s to 10 minutes apart.
Follow-up to #225. The session still waits 30 minutes in all for a map
(checking, the two-minute question, download, install, apply, join), and
servers and lobbies still let a player go at 30 minutes. But a download
that has begun is no longer cut off at 27 minutes: a large map on a slow
connection never came at all that way.
- Once the download has begun, the session's deadline is the session's
alone. The download goes on (up to its own four hours, as before #225),
installs and is applied, and the player is told to join again; no
rejoin is tried past the deadline, where the server would turn them
away. "Map still downloading" says so when the session stops waiting.
- Before the download, the deadline still ends the check and the question.
Declining or cancelling still stops it and removes the partial file.
- A download whose session has gone is not cancelled by joining another
session; a new map need is turned away until it is done.
- The 27-minute transfer budget and its completion reserve are gone from
map_fetch_policy.h, with their tests; the map download tests cover the
new behaviour.
- The HTTPS timeout test compiles with warnings as errors (a signed and
unsigned comparison), and get_text's stale-file removal is indented again.
- README: map downloads described as they now are.
The renderer gives each frame 131,072 shader-visible descriptors past a persistent 120,000, in
heaps of 333,333. Dense custom maps (the Los Santos City sublevels, San Andreas) draw more than
that in a frame, and the renderer wrote past the end of the heap: shaders read garbage
descriptors, which faulted or hung the GPU (page faults at nonsense addresses, in draws, texture
fetches and ray tracing alike). ReSkate now patches the device setup at boot so each heap is
D3D12's 1,000,000 and a frame may use 524,288; heaps are 644,288 descriptors. LS-B2, LS-B3 and
San Andreas (210,000 a frame at its peak) now hold.
Also in this change:
- Memory: perf memory owners/heap/gpu/report, a ledger of who commits the game's RAM; the
render-resource pool no longer allocates its 115 MB twice; the EadpErrorsData arena is
capped at 32 MiB (EA's error reporting is blocked anyway).
- Crash reports: tagged with the map, destination, graphics card and driver version (protocol
v3), so Sentry can group GPU hangs by map and card.
- GPU diagnostics (--gpu-diagnostics): a fuller DRED report, the device-removal and video
memory watches, a large-draw watch, a record of which game code made and freed each GPU heap
and resource, checks of every GPU address bound, and a meter of each descriptor heap's use.
- World pools: peak use of entity pages, render instances and spatial blocks in the log.
- dingosdk_mod_mesh_check: checks every MeshSet a mod ships against its geometry; the MeshSet
reader now knows static meshes' layout.
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 launcher installs one mod folder per package, and the game takes one
mod's deck at a time, so a package could only bring one deck. A mod folder
may now hold a deck in each decks/<name>/, laid out like a mod folder. When
the mods are put together each of them becomes a mod of its own for the run,
listed as <folder>#<name>: it is chosen, set aside and switched like a deck in
a folder of its own. mods.json and the mod list only know the pack, which
counts as loaded when one of its decks is.
A pack's own layout is not one of its decks, whatever the folder is named,
and is set aside like any other deck model. It is what an older ReSkate
loads from the pack: 2.0.6 knows a deck by its folder's name only, so a pack
in a folder named Board_Break_<Name> with a breakable deck as its own layout
breaks boards there with that one deck.
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.
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.
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.
Each built its text with path::string(), which throws for a character outside the ANSI code page, so the real error or message was replaced by a code-page error.
- Mods that add copies of store items under new names are no longer
loaded. The launcher, mod manager and game say why.
- A chat line passed on by the host only shows a Dev/Creator/Homie
badge when the player's own copy of it arrives too, so a host
can't put one on a line that player never wrote.
A mod the merge could not use was left out silently. The game started
without it, three minutes into a loading screen, and only ReSkate.log said
which one.
Merging before launch
- PLAY runs the merge the game would have run behind its splash, on the
launcher's worker, with the step and progress on the STATUS tile
(Phase::merging). The launcher links dingosdk_mods for it, which costs
about 600 KB of exe.
- When every mod merges, the launch goes ahead and the game's own
load_catalog finds the patch already built, so the splash is shorter
rather than the work being done twice.
- When mods were left out, the launch stops at Phase::mods_broken and a
dialog names each one and its first problem, with three ways on: switch
them off and play (which writes mods.json, so the next launch does not
rediscover it the hard way), open the mod manager, or play anyway.
- Mods built for another game version do not block. They already have
their own notice and message box, and blocking on them would stop play
after every Steam update.
- The launcher resolves -dataPath out of the extra-arguments setting, so
it merges against the root the game will read.
One SDK identity for both binaries
- Two places recorded "which ReSkate did this" as the module the code was
running in, which is ReSkate.dll in the game and ReSkateLauncher.exe in
the launcher now that both merge. merge_fingerprint hashes it, so the
game matched no stamp the launcher wrote and merged everything a second
time; sdk_identity keys the exclusions file, so each would have called
the other's exclusions stale.
- Both now name ReSkate.dll beside the running executable. Skate.exe and
ReSkateLauncher.exe sit beside it and launch.cpp enforces that, so the
two agree, and unlike the data root it does not move under -dataPath.
The value is unchanged from what the runtime computed before, so nothing
re-merges on upgrade.
Naming the mod
- In game, a mod left out of the merge altogether said nothing on screen:
only a mod that merged partially did, which is the lesser failure. Both
are named now.
- The MOD MANAGER tile says which mod did not load, in the detail line's
colour rather than a pill, clipped so a long name cannot run under the
tile's artwork.
- MY MODS carries a line naming them above the list, and NOT LOADED and
OUTDATED are badges on the row instead of words at the front of its
summary.
MY MODS reaches Thunderstore parity
- Rows carry the package's icon, the same one the store shows, through a
shared mod_icon(); a mod that never came from Thunderstore keeps the
placeholder.
- An update is a button on the row, not a badge you had to open the mod to
act on, and every row has Uninstall. Rows grew to fit, and "Remove" is
"Uninstall" throughout.
- No pill for a mod that is up to date: the absence of an update button
says it, and eight green pills said nothing eight times.
Fixes
- The install panel was drawn on the Mods page's own draw list after its
children, and ImGui renders a child after its parent, so it was painted
behind the mod rows along with its Cancel button: installs ran with no
sign of it. It is its own window over the page now.
- pump_icons, which uploads decoded icons, only ran on the store page, so
MY MODS showed placeholders until a visit to GET MODS uploaded them for
it. The page does it for both lists.
- The merge dialog's closing advice overlapped its buttons.
AyeZeeBB