Skater XL News

What is up guys! Since our last general development update we’ve had our heads down working on a lot of streams of development simultaneously. We’re at a stage in the project where a lot of things are happening, but visible results won’t be forthcoming until several of these things start to reach completion and come together.

We wanted to keep the community up to date, and let you in on a behind the scenes look at our motion capture session with our friend and pro skater, Walker Ryan.

We traveled to Vancouver to Sawmill Studios, where Walker was strapped into the famous ‘golf ball suit’ and rifled off tricks with an ease that was impressive, especially when considering that there were motion sensors taped to his shoes and board. The sensors on the suit, when paired with motion sensing cameras, capture the animated motions that will give the tricks in the game a lifelike fluidity and smoothness.

There are a lot of steps to the process after the shoot, first the data is ‘cleaned’ by both computer algorithms and then by hand by a mocap artist to remove any jitters or errors. The animations are then mapped to our new character model’s “skeleton” so they can be applied to the character and make him move in-game.

Our animators then go through a detailed process of editing and altering the animations for the specific needs of the animation system we created for Skater XL.

As mentioned in the last update, this is the first skating game to ever have complete, fluid control of your board and feet that is driven by natural physics movement rather than canned animations, so we have to slice up and tweak hundreds of animations into precise bits and pieces that can be mixed, matched and adapted on the fly to follow what the player is doing in the moment. This creates the completed movements of flips, grinds, manuals, etc.

It’s fiddly work and there are months of editing for our two animators yet to complete and polish, but we’re confident will result in gameplay with unmatched realism once all the details are in place.

The results of the animation implementation will be covered in a future update, but for now check out these images and video from the shoot.

Thanks for all your support and we’ll see you on the next update!

https://youtu.be/KekZQfVyCd4

https://youtu.be/VJvEHjvLyBM

https://youtu.be/bDcua2HMKWA

Congratulations to David Lestrade for being selected by The Nine Club crew as the winner of our video part contest! David put together a creative mix of trick selection, camera work, and editing to take home the honors. He'll be receiving a huge prize pack from GoPro, DC Shoes, Glassy Eyewear, The Nine Club and some cold, hard cash!

Here is David's winning entry:

https://youtu.be/SEhvuQV6inM

Watch the announcement on The Nine Club Experience with special guest judge Mikemo Capaldi HERE

In addition to The Nine Club winner, we've also added a 'Fan Favorite' award and voting is now open to the community. We've narrowed it down to the Top 12, and voting is open through May 8th. Be sure to check them out and help your favorite win a box of skate gear.

Voting Link: https://woobox.com/sgh2dt

We also sincerely want to thank everyone that participated in this contest and took the time to create and submit parts. We know the amount of time and effort that goes into creating these videos, and we were impressed with each and every submission. We've created a playlist on Youtube with all the submissions for your viewing pleasure.

Submission Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5m2PIXm1k01b2WdrV1vfSasYRj_N1sMA

Thanks, also, to the amazing community of players, mod makers, and map builders. You all rule!

See you on the next update!

What’s up guys! In this update, we thought we’d give you a look at what we’ve been working on over the past month as we head toward release of the full game. While we are not releasing any new playable features, we would like to share some of the more interesting things we’ve been working on.


Photogrammetry scans

In preparation for implementing character customization, last week we scanned multiple clothing and accessory items at a studio in Los Angeles. This process involves taking shots of items on a rig of over 100 DSLR cameras which are then processed into 3 dimensional digital objects for use in the game which will fit and bend with the character as it animates.

Once completed you will be able to mix and match to create different looks for your character. Now that the data has been scanned there are a series of steps to process the photos of the objects and turn them into game ready assets.

Check out the scanning rig we used with our friends Human Engine in West LA:




Here’s an example of what one scan looks like after the first step of processing to turn 100 hi-res images into a surface in 3D space:




Motion Capture Preparation

We’re in the planning stages of another motion capture session, to further improve and refine the gameplay animations to be smoother and more realistic. This process involves setting up a grid of motion-sensing cameras and recording skaters performing tricks so that we can capture parts of the movements for use in the game.

We are again partnering with Sawmill Studios in Vancouver who captured our assets for Early Access.

See some pictures from our original shoot here:


Skaters wear suits covered with the famous mocap "ping pong balls" to track movement:


Our famous Early Access character suiting up:


A challenge with motion capturing skateboarding is that it requires quite a large area and flooring that has the right hardness and amount of grip to pull off clean flat-ground tricks.

Our friends up at Sawmill have scouted a suitable space in Eastside Vancouver and we're looking to lock in a shoot in the coming weeks.

Once we have captured the animations we need we will begin the rebuild of the animation system. Skater XL is the first skating game ever where the board is driven by fine-grain player control and natural movement at all times as opposed to using pre-made animations for each move and trick.

While giving what we feel is responsive and satisfying gameplay, this presents a great challenge in creating our character animation system, as the game doesn't know what the player is going to do ahead of time.

We had to invent a very unique system to animate the character and there were a lot of challenges in building the first version of it. We learned a huge amount going through the process for Early Access and think we can make some significant improvements on this second run, especially now that we can incorporate our learnings into the next round of mocap.


Grabs

We have implemented an initial system for grabs that we have been testing internally. In the spirit of Skater XL our focus has been on giving the player a feeling of control and responsiveness and allowing them to style their moves any way they like.

We feel this early version of grabs achieves this goal and feels amazingly fun. We plan to have a testing round with our group of beta testers soon and hope to release the system in a future update.






Skater XL x The Nine Club Experience Video Part Contest

The contest is now closed for submissions, and the winner will be announced on the May 1st episode of The Nine Club Experience. We got over 100 entries, and we were blown away by the talent, creativity and hard work that everyone put into their parts. Thank you as always to the map makers, modders, and players for making this contest a huge success!

Hey players! While we are hard at work on development towards Skater XL’s full release, we wanted to create something fun for the community and reward all the great content creators, map builders, community members and modders that have contributed so much to the game in Early Access. So today, we are excited to announce the first ever Skater XL Video Part Contest with our friends at The Nine Club!

Check out the announcement video from Chris Roberts and The Nine Club:
https://youtu.be/9fLCjn2Mdvc



Film your part. Submit your edit. Win fame and fortune.

The Rules
We want you to get as creative as possible with your video edits, but there are a few rules to keep the lawyers off our backs. Trademarked character mods are NOT allowed. That means no brand logos, no company board graphics, no copyrighted songs, etc. Level and camera mods ARE allowed and encouraged, as long as there are not logos, trademarks, billboards, etc (i.e. MTN DEW park is a no-go).

Submitted video parts can be up to 3 minutes long and will be judged on trick selection, creativity, camerawork, edit, and overall impression. Parts will be compiled and viewed by the Skater XL team, but the winner will ultimately be decided by our guest judges: The Nine Club.

The Details
To access mods including the replay editor, join the Skater XL Modding Discord Group: https://discord.gg/WXENqq
Mods that include any trademarked brands on gear are NOT allowed. Color and/or style changes are OK as long as no logos are shown.
No copywritten music. Royalty free music can be found on sites like http://freemusicarchive.org/
Level and camera mods ARE allowed and encouraged
Videos can be submitted by entering a Youtube, Vimeo, Twitch, Instagram or Facebook link below
All entries must be received by April 24th, 2019 at 11:59PM PST

The Prize
One Winner will receive:
$250 USD Cash
GoPro Hero7 Camera
Skater XL Skateboard
DC Shoes package
Nine Club package
Glassy Gamer Glasses
Winning video will be uploaded to the Official Skater XL Youtube Channel
Top 5 Entries will each receive a pair of Glassy Gamer Glasses


CLICK HERE to submit your video part and for full rules and details. Let's see what you got!

Here's some inspiration from LucasLurks, featuring parks created by Theo

https://youtu.be/Q0BT2w4b89c

Thanks for your continued support!

Happy Monday SXL fans! We just released minor update 0.0.5. Here's a rundown of new features and bug fixes that are included.

For a walkthrough check out Nightspeeds' video here, with further description below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWYnBL4gD4g

One Foot Ollies/Nollies:  You can now take your front or back foot off the board during ollies and nollies. Simply ollie or nollie and click either the left or right stick to remove your foot.  For now, you can only remove one foot at a time and only after ollies/nollies, not after catching flip tricks. You still have tweaking control with both sticks after the foot is removed.





Mongo Pushing: You can now push mongo in regular and switch in both stances, if that's your thing.  Pressing the X button (xbox controller) will always push with your left foot.  Pressing the A button (xbox controller) will always push with your right foot.



Movement Correction with Rotation: In the previous update, we made skater rotate to match the surface he was jumping onto which helped with the flow of skating transition and banks.  

This would however cause the board to rotate out from under the skater, making it hard to judge landings. In this update, we make a correction to the jump so that the board lands where you intend it to.





Quarterpipe Landing Speed: We fixed a bug that caused the player to slow down at the bottom of transitions.





Impact Audio Bug: Removed loud excess landing noises on impact.

Grind Explosion Bug: Removed bug that would occasionally cause the player to fly away at great speeds upon making contact with a grindable.



Camera Rotation In Air: The camera no longer rotates in the air, this is helpful when skating ramps as the camera will wait until you land to turn around.





Catch Rotation Angle Limit:  We’ve limited the max angle the board can go when catching with both feet.  This should help prevent some of the strange catch poses.





Courthouse Updates:  Building and rail textures have been updated with more detail


Skater Pop Direction:  We’ve corrected the direction that the player jumps during the initial pop.  Previously, he would begin to pop away from the surface, now his pop is in alignment with his bodies orientation.





Mod Disclaimer:  As many of you have experienced, downloading game updates will override your custom mesh and texture mods.  To re-install these changes you'll need to open the Unity Asset Bundle Extractor and replace your textures and other graphical mods.  To re-activate scripted mods like the level importer you simply need to open the Unity Mod Manager and click “Install” once before running the game post update.

Thank you for your continued support.  We'll catch you on the next update!


UPDATE SINCE POSTING - Mod Disclaimer: If you are experiencing bugs, there is a chance it may be caused by conflict with one of the script mods. If you are unable to land in manuals, find yourself pushing very fast or have other strange rotation bugs occurring, please remove all mods and reinstall one by one to make sure it doesn't break the game after the newest update. You can remove your mods by:

1) Open Unity Mod Manager and click Uninstall.
2) Locate your SkaterXL directory found in by default: "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\SkaterXL"
3) Locate "Mod" folder in the SkaterXL directory, and delete it.
4) Reinstall mods carefully using Unity Mod Manager, one at a time to make sure they don't break compatibility.

Some users reported issues with vert mods specifically. It may also happen when combining several mods. Replay mod and map importer are safe to use at this time.