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Session: Skate Sim News

Development Update

Hey Sessioneers, it’s been a while, hasn’t it.
Thought we’d given up on you? Haha, you are probably new around here.

[h2]Gameplay[/h2]

We’ve recently reached a major milestone in our physics and gameplay surgery, and we are finally starting to come out the other side of the tunnel. What does the other side of the tunnel look like? Well, here’s a very sneaky peek of a before and after.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


With this new physics update, we’re clearly seeing a rebirth of the game and how much smoother it now feels and plays. The character and the board now work better together giving it a much more natural and reactive feel in the game. Simply put, night and day.


But, we still have some way to go before it’s ready for you guys. We’re now entering the bug-fixing stage to get Session in a more enjoyable state so we can start the feedback process with you guys again.

Obviously, all is not pink and sweet yet but many annoying issues have been fixed, for example; exploding the character off grinds, hitting the floor like a sack of potatoes every time you hit an obstacle and more. So bump into these ledges like never before! We hope you will enjoy it!

[h2]The world.[/h2]

Images speak for themselves.



The Pyramid ledges got bigger.

[h2]Customization[/h2]

With the new physics implementation, we’ve been able to get one step closer to our original vision. Now, customization isn’t just aesthetic anymore. Meaning if you change your wheel size you’ll let you go faster and help locking onto grinds.
Changing your truck size from 129 to 144 you’ll have more room to grind and more area to pinch those Crooked and Suski grinds.

Truck tightness is now very important in the game.
Do you like your trucks loose like a wizards sleeve, or so tight your bushing is screaming for help due to the pressure. Now you will be able to choose your ideal tightness. From super loose to super tight but careful, loose trucks might save lives but can also bite sometimes!

All of your support in the community has been great, seeing fresh new footage daily and your passion is above and beyond.

We would like to thank you and once again for your patience and your evergoing and ever-growing support and passion.

[h2]Last words[/h2]

Before wrapping this up, we’ve heard echoes that people think the price of Session will rise with the next update.
The short answer is: No, not at the moment.

The Longer answer is: Even though the experience has drastically enhanced, we believe our current price is a fair one. We also think this is part of the normal development process of an early access game: Share, progress, gather feedback, make it better.. This is just how things should work.

And! We are happy to give more for less for two simple reasons:

1. This is our way to thank you for your support.
2. Our main goal is simply to build the greatest, most authentic skateboarding sim game.

You are awesome!

We’ll see you again soon once we rise from the depths again.

The crea-ture Team.







Development Update

Gravity, momentum, velocity, speed. Some of the key elements of how the Board physics work, and this is why we're currently neck high in some major physics work.

We have now initiated the next stage of development which is for our physics to go to the next level. Our core skateboarding experience is currently getting a much needed overhaul. This is something that needed to be done to take Session from where it is currently and propel it into what it can be.

We have rolled with the current physics implementation for as long as we could. This major physics upgrade means we had to temporarily unhook most of our current skate mechanics, to further develop the physics system of the game before hooking them back in.

We want to thank you for your patience.

Once this momentous surgery has been completed we will be going back to our regular update pace.

We believe this will make the core skateboarding experience in Session feel a lot more authentic and responsive than it ever was, and we hope you’ll agree once it’s in your hands.

Big Thanks to all of you for your support.

The crea-ture Team

HOTFIX 0.0.0.5a

Good Monday everyone,

Engine upgrade is never fun and always come with scary unknowns... Especially for small studios who do not always have access to QA and QC powerhouse...

Regardless, we have been trying to find out the causes where many of you suffered from serious performance drops due to the new engine upgrade.

We rolled back some UE4.24 graphic features and deactivated other things, profiles and compared with UE4.22 version and so on...

Hopefully our first tests will help gaining back those performance drops.

We manage to get about +/- 10fps on a GTX 1060 videocard.
A gain of over 10fps from the 0.0.0.5 version.

Also, here are couple of elements that have been reworked/fixed as well:


[h3] ***PLEASE NOTE*** [/h3]
At the moment, our skate physics only support 60fps and below. please make sure to cap your FPS to 60 if you want to get the correct board and tricks behavior.

GAMEPLAY

  • Front Foot/Back Foot issue when skating switch or goofy has been fixed
  • Impossibles in manual have been fixed
  • Crash with the female character in customization has been fixed
  • Lighting has been slightly adjusted (should be less bright)
  • 4.24 Screen Space Global Illumination has been temporarily removed
  • Push and grind values have been slightly adjusted
  • Pressure 360 has been fixed
  • Additive rotations in board control mode for manual tricks have been removed (not ready for manual catch yet)
  • Additive rotations in board control mode have been removed for pressure flip tricks, now keeping them straight
  • + other more minor fixes

    Notes
  • We currently have issue with the Small inputs that requires more investigation. We suggest you use Normal for now.


Thanks, Hope you will enjoy this new update as much as we do!

Best,

The crea-ture Team

Update 4



Update 0.0.0.5 has landed and it’s time to go over what 0.0.0.5 has for all of y’all to enjoy!

A NEW LEVEL!

Following suit with past updates, we have a brand new area for y’all to shred!
People for the world we give you the LES Coleman park of NYC!

You may say: - But crea-ture! Ain’t session set in the 90s!? And we’ll reply: - Inspired by! ;) Nobody really knows when Session is set.. Even us!... Anyway, there is always room for evolution.





Ever skated this place IRL? No? well now you can skate it whenever you like with update 0.0.0.5 because that thing is pretty damn close to the real one!

GAMEPLAY

Board Control

We’ve cut more of the marionette strings that had you tied down.
By unifying the pressure flips with the regular tricks in solidarity. You now have more control over your body weight and have even more control over your foot positioning on your board which will determine what direction your flips and self will go.

Just like this…



By cranking your back foot stick to the left your flip will go to the left.

Or




By cranking your back foot stick to the right your flip will go to the right.

This has been added to all stances so you have more control over your style of skating.

Transitions & Weight Transfer

So we hope you like the new feature (the reason why it’s this update was late) the very first implementation of our first pass on the transition skating and weight transfer system. Here’s what we had…



And this is what we have NOW!



This is the very first pass on the transition and weight transfer system and this will evolve throughout development. We feel like this was a massive kickflip fs 180 in the right direction.

The weight transfer system will also affect grinding down and getting off handrails, you’ll keep all y’all momentum. This is also the same with landing into transitions.


SKATERS

We’ve added some new faces to Session.

Donovan Strain



Dane Burman



We have also given Ribsman a needed skull-lift



We’re all super stoked to have these guys on board and in Session, we hope you’re going to enjoy thrashing with Dane Burman and Ribs Man or becoming a wizard like Donovan Strain.

Welcome ZERO Skateboards

We are overly hyped to bring ZERO into the Session kingdom!
Having Dane Burman in Session without ZERO is like watching a skate video muted… it’s just not the same.

So now you have an awesome stock of ZERO products in your wardrobe!



You also got a healthy supply of new boards in that box that turned up at your apartment



There was a note in this hypothetical box we speak of, and it said: “These boards are for skating, NOT for your wall!”

Customization Brand Filter
You’ll now be able to filter your customization menu by brand, Only want a certain brand, from our ever-growing supply of companies? Simple fix, just push your RB button until you reach your desired brand. Gone too far? Another simple fix. Just push the LB to retrace your steps and select a different brand.

Fun things to do

We’ve added new challenges in the Brooklyn Banks and Pyramid Ledge areas

We have also tidied up the experimental, games of skate to be more tender and tasty when playing with people via Steams Remote play feature.

Art fixes

Some fixes to the environment, assets and characters, can you spot the difference with this board?





Level optimization
City lighting has had some love and some optimization and is now using the latest cool Screen Space Global Illumination Feature from Unreal 4.24 and more work has been done for that frame rate of yours.

Bug fixes & Misc
  • We’ve done even more trick polishing in auto and manual catch settings
  • Late Shuvs and flips are now faster
  • Customization toolbars are now working.
  • Our kickflip and Heelflip Speeds have been evened out
  • The skaters overall speed has been reduced to work normally and in par with the new transition physics
  • Lo pop from grinds has been reduced for extra steez
  • High pop out of grinds has been augmented
  • (dev-wise refered as catch orient) has changed, allowing you to get more lifelike angles and better lock-ins
  • The exit pop window has been shortened, meaning you will be more prompt to bail if you initiated your tricks AFTER you've left the ledge. (This helps reduce the late pop bug)


We’ve got a few nasty critters with this update, the biggest one is the “bank bounce bonk bug” where you would, (“would” being the main word here) bounce down a bank on your nose or tail. This has been caught and is now serving a life sentence.

Session now runs on unreal engine 4.24.3

The contact shadow was creating visual artifacts so it got removed
The in-game sun trajectory is closer to a real-life trajectory.

What’s up next?

As we're approaching our XBOX milestone, the upcoming months will be dedicated to polishing everything we built so far. Such as optimizing the city, working on the physics, polishing the tricks and so on. Meaning our effort will be put onto tightening up the whole experience and crushing those nasty bugs as much as possible for our next update.

From here at crea-ture studios, we want to thank everyone for the ongoing support, love and feedback and don’t forget to join us on our Discord server https://discord.gg/hrgBJPT! So that’s What’s up and what’s gone down since the last update.
keep shredding and stay rad!

The crea-ture Team.






HOTFIX 0.0.0.4a

Good Monday everyone,

Thanks for your patience! We decided to wait until Monday to drop a Hotfix so we could squeeze in more at once.

Here are couple of elements that have been reworked/fixed:


GAMEPLAY
  • Manual catch mode ollies are now behaving as designed
  • One foot ollies are now doable in manual catch mode
  • Pressure flips have been reworked
  • Pressure flips in manual catch mode have been fixed
  • Pressure flips in Goofy have been fixed
  • Front/Back Foot input mode with board control should now work as designed
  • Front/Back Foot input mode late tricks now work as designed
  • Front/Back Foot input mode flip speed now works as designed (input speed)
  • Local Filmer camera is now saved when saving replays
  • Local Filmer no longer makes the skater fall
  • Falling after re-spawn issue has been fixed



ART
  • Lighting should be brighter and colors more vivid



Cheers,
The crea-ture Team