Session: Skate Sim News

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 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.

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

Update 0.0.04 is here! We can read your minds... “Another update so soon?” yeah, for real, another update for y’all to sink your teeth into.

What have we done this time we hear you cry. Well…

A new level, but not just any old level. We’re giving you the legendary Pyramid Ledges of NYC! You may recognize it from such videos as “Mindfield”, “Fulfill the Dream” “Short Ends” “Verso” and The (L) Train. Who’s going to be the “King of New York”?

We’ve also added 14 new historical challenges to this new level as well… it’s time to do some research y’all.



A sight of beauty!

**New Flips Tricks**

Impossibles!

For Regular, Switch, Nollie and Fakie



Now, these aren’t impossible to do at all, they’re pretty damn easy.
Just scoop round with your back foot stick and flick down with your front foot stick!

Late Flips and Shuvs!

Now your skater has learned late flips! Go into the ‘Flip Tricks Settings’
And turn them on!


(Nollie Late Flip)


(Front foot Late Heel)


(Late Front Foot Shuvs)


(Late Back Foot Shuvs)

10 late tricks for each stance, both feet and all control settings!

WAIT, that’s not all!

We’ve unglued your front and back feet from your deck, so now you can do sexy Ollies One foot (or Ollie Norths, depending on the age) and Souths, as well… if that name even exists...

We don’t know anymore nowadays!


(Northern Ollies)


(Southern Ollies)

**Board Control**
We have now made Session even more unique for your play style by adding the Board Control feature which allows you to have more control (believe it or not) over the board! When Flicking the sticks the board can now be tweaked depending on the input on the stick.
(This is not supported with the Legacy input mode)

Flick the stick more vertically down and the board will rocket.



Flick the stick vertically up will cause the board to dip downwards.



That’s just the flips, we’ve done the same with pop shuvits, late flips and the age-old Ollie, so depending on where your stick input was made the board will tweak.





This isn’t just for pure style and aesthetics pleasure, it’s much more than that. It’s a great mechanic to achieve more control and precision when getting into your grinds and slides. But it does also look very damn steezy.

**Local Filmer Mode**
It's time to make friends and make some skate footage with the new Local Filmer Mode! With an additional controller or using Steam Remote-play-together, a second player can take control of a second camera and then watch what you've filmed in the replay editor!

You can try this out by going to the Experimental / Local Filmer Mode menu!



We'll be sharing more information about this new feature and its controls in a later post!

* The Local Filmer Mode is an experimental feature and early in development. It has not been optimized yet, so you'll need a pretty strong machine to keep that FPS up. ;)


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.


MODDING:

To anyone who modded pre-0.0.0.4 patch.
You'll most likely get FATAL ERROR when launching the new update.
Key is to unpatch the EZPZ patch, just like we did for patch 0.0.0.3. If that still fails, Backup/Delete the game files and install fresh.
If the EZPZ Patch is not working:
Uninstalling the game and also manually delete local files seems to be the solution (for those who don't have mods installed)
To do so, Hit Win+R, paste %userprofile%AppDataLocal and backup/delete the SessionGame folder.
Then, in the STEAM installation folder, backup/delete your Session folder under
...Steamsteamappscommon
Then reinstall the game.

Sup all!

We felt we needed an additional hotfix because of a few "annoying bugs" that were popping up too often and was diminishing the experience.

Here's an overview of the fixes / changes for this hotfix patch:

• Fatal Error crash when playing (related to audio) has been fixed
  
• 360 shuv input bug has been fixed
  
• Random stalls on grinds no longer happen
  
• Eternal flip loop of death (kickflip from manuals) has been fixed
  
• Graphic downgrade has been restored
  
• Moonwalk push has been vanquished!!!
  
• Goofy (switch) 50/50 / boardslide issue fixed
  
• Front / back foot input mode remaining broken grinds / slides are fixed
  
• All supported video resolutions can now be used in Video Settings
  

That's it for now! Hopefully these changes make things a little better for now :)


Cheers,
The crea-ture Team