What is up guys? Over the last few weeks of the Multiplayer Free Skate Open Beta on PC we have been tracking usage, speaking to players and investigating a few key things hindering the fun of the experience and have made the following adjustments to the Open Beta Branch on Steam. We will be testing these changes over the next couple weeks, while we simultaneously continue to prepare the console Multiplayer Free Skate releases.
If you are already in the Open Beta Branch on Steam, these updates should download immediately upon opening the game. If the branch does not update automatically, close your Steam client completely and reopen it.
If you have not accessed the Open Beta Branch, follow the steps at the bottom of this post.
Pin Markers
We have found that it's sometimes hard to find where the action is or where other skaters are sessioning, particularly in big maps. Pin mode will now put an easy to spot colored marker above any skater's head, regardless of if they are in pin mode themselves making it far easier to find other skaters across a map. The markers extend into the sky to help find other skaters over, or from outside of buildings.
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34055591/273be11de37c5574540b64a0c1aad3dfddbeedb6.png
Public Multiplayer
Often you will be playing in a public game and want to play on a different map. The current experience forces you to join, leave, join, leave and hope that you load into a new map, also triggering repeated notifications on other players screens.
With the new system you can now push yourself straight to the next available room with the ‘Join Next Map' option, removing the problem of joining/rejoining in the hope of finding a new map. Map variation has been prioritized. If a room is full, the next room created will be different to the first one. In the current state of the game, this should produce more variation in which maps are up and running.
There is now also ability for you to invite a friend to join public rooms in addition to private rooms via the ‘Join specific room’ option. Like going to a skate park or spot in real life it’s a great way to hang out with your friend while also skating with a full room of other skaters.
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34055591/7deb40138453b75b22998d29c73feb1b31464725.png
Some insights into the new room logic (It’s a little complex, but perhaps interesting to see how the flow works..)
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34055591/328f09942387ddafe86eddb51dae5a0b60bc4d82.png
Exiting the game
We realize the escape button has worked until now in an unusual way, closing the game immediately when pushed. Pushing escape on the keyboard now takes you to the menu system and there is an added ‘Exit Game’ option to choose within this menu. A tiny QOL change to mention here, but we realize this has been frustrating enough for some players that a mod with 12k downloads was even created to amend it (shout out to M4cs and TrizlyBear). This change brings SXL in line with almost every other game ever made!!
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34055591/ebdf9d9f1795f8536d31c90197e9b086f646866c.png
Bug fixes
- Significant across the board performance Improvements
- Replay jitter fixed
- Replay clip cutting bug fixed
- Other players no longer disappear when leaving a room whilst filming / watching a replay
- Other players are now hidden (if not in liveView) when joining a room whilst filming / watching a replay
- Infinite loading for Replay, Maps and Character Menus fixed
Gear Update
Added new New Balance and éS shoes for Tiago Lemos, Brandon Westgate and Tom Asta pro characters as well as Male/Female Standard options.
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34055591/929a87bce0d953b5b0b5c5bd8794d704cc7e0d78.png
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34055591/a604637c875e12b6dc6ee15221480669c13720d2.png
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34055591/3854ffed5f6a31a2a8b32e492542d562d4934d84.png
Thank you so much for your valuable feedback and suggestions on the Multiplayer Free Skate Open Beta. Please keep it coming!
To open the beta, follow these steps:
Right click ‘Skater XL’ and open Properties
Select the ‘beta - Open Beta’ branch.
Steam should start downloading this version of the game. Once it has finished, you will be able to try the update. The game name in your library should now show “Skater XL ”.
If you’d like to switch back to the regular commercial release branch of the game in future simply come back to this screen and select “NONE - opt out of all betas” in the drop down.