Skater XL has been designed with the smoothest, most responsive gameplay ever felt in a skateboarding game. Experience unparalleled board control and responsiveness while you skate legendary real-world skate spots. With an emphasis on physics-based board control and freedom of expression, the team has worked closely with the skateboarding community to capture the feel and experience of skateboarding to make it accessible for anyone with a passion for skateboarding culture and/or game genre. 

Incorporating extensive motion-capture, Easy Day built a custom animation system that composes real-time animations on the fly (versus canned animations), which are under the user’s control moment-to-moment, ensuring that no two tricks or sequences look alike. This gives the player freedom to be as creative as they like in putting together tricks and lines. A process known as photogrammetry was used to capture the new character model and a variety of gear, clothing and accessories for character customization.

Feel connected to your board like never before.

The ‘0.3.0.0B Update’ adds transition grinds that gives players a new way to hit the coping, a miniramp test map, and new board customizations to personalize their decks, trucks, wheels, and griptape.

Update features referred to in this post are located in the “public beta” branch of the game. This is a separate stream of development for us to test and get feedback on early features before committing them to the main product.

You MUST opt in to play this version of the game by following the steps at the bottom of this post.

As we prepare for the 1.0 game launch on July 7th, we wanted to start by saying thank you for all of your support and feedback throughout Early Access. Your comments and feedback have gotten us to where we are today, and where we will continue to go in the future.

Just to reiterate, anyone that has purchased Early Access on Steam will receive the 1.0 update automatically at no additional cost. This represents a 50% discount on the 1.0 price and is a small token of our gratitude.

We also want to make the note that while 1.0 is considered by most to be the ‘official release’ of the game and will be packed full of new content worthy of full launch, we look at it as just the beginning. We will not stop working on new features, new content, and new updates to Skater XL for the foreseeable future. We encourage you to keep sending us your feedback and feature requests as the game moves forward post 1.0 update.

Today we are releasing more of your requested features into the Public Beta, and giving you a chance to hone your skills before the 1.0 launch. These mechanic updates will give you even more control, more customization and make your skating look much smoother.

All features that were added in the 0.2.0.0B Update have been moved to the default Public branch, and will no longer require opt in.

NEW FEATURES

Transition grinds (roll-in / roll-out)

We want Skater XL to give people access to every style of skateboarding including transition and ramp skating. This update includes the ability to roll in and out of grinds on transitions and ramp coping using similar controls to grinds/slides on other objects.

• Moving either or both thumbsticks in any direction directly prior to hitting coping will initiate a roll-in coping grind.
• Position your board as you get on coping by using the sticks to tweak and angle your board similar to other states (when in air, when grinding etc).
• To exit the grind/slide click the thumbstick on the side you want to pop out/roll in on. If you wish to roll out the opposite side, click the thumbstick on that side to roll out

Mini Ramp Test Map
In order to properly give you the ability to test the new transition features, we have built a special warehouse test environment that houses a new miniramp for you to shred. While not a fully fleshed out map, it is super fun and will give you the chance to hone your ramp skills in preparation for the 1.0 update. You can access the map from the ‘Maps’ section in the main menu.

Transition Grinds in Mod Levels
We’ve added automatic detection for any grind objects that have shapes that look like they should have roll-in grind ability. Old mod levels with ramps and quarterpipes that have grind edges on the coping should work with the new transition grind mechanic without any changes, but we’ve also given level creators the ability to update their levels with tags to override our automated system if they wish.

Board Customization
We know that one of the best things about skateboarding is customizing your setup and picking each component. To that point, we have added the ability to customize your deck, trucks, wheels, and griptape with a few options for each to start with. We have a ton more (see Brands/Customization trailer) coming down the pipe, but this is just a starting point to test and get you familiar with the mechanism.

• Access this feature in the main menu and select ‘Gear’.
• Press A/X to make your gear selection in each category
• The RB/LB buttons can be used to advance to the next component category in the menu

Folder for Mod Board and Character Gear Textures
As with previous updates, we want to continue to facilitate mod inclusion and make it as easy as possible. As with the ‘Custom Maps’ menu that allows you to easily access your mod maps directly from the game, we have added the ability to easily access and implement your modded gear textures from all your favorite fakeskate brands.

• To add custom clothing and gear textures in the gear menu, take any texture which has been named according to the new naming convention, create a folder in your Windows drive’s Documents folder at DocumentsSkaterXLGear and place the texture files in there.
• Note that we have alerted mod creators how to correctly name files prior to this update and hopefully more and more content will become available on the modding Discord with the correct naming. A complete guide is in Mod Gear Naming Rules Guide.

For more on modding, visit the SXL Modding (https://discord.gg/4eMjGRG) or FakeSkateXL (https://discord.gg/E8kK5uZ) Discord Servers.

Animation Fixes
With the addition of new animations in the last update, there were a few that left something to be desired and needed a bit of tweaking to bring them to more realistic looking movements. Many of the fakie and switch animations have been adjusted.

Switch and fakie manual animations have also been improved

Bumping out of grinds
Another highly requested feature added in this update is the ability to exit grinds early by ‘bumping out’. This allows you to pop out of grinds with a small nudge rather than an exaggerated pop out.

• To exit a grind/slide early, click either thumbstick to pop out on the corresponding side. The left stick press makes you bump out to the left, right stick press makes you bump out to the right in this mode.

New Tutorial Structure
As an important onboarding tool for new players to get comfortable with the controls, we have improved our tutorial. The tutorial now first allows the player to move the feet and see the independent foot control of the game without the skateboard present, then walks them through the basic trick movements which they repeat themselves before moving onto the next. The game will recognize when a trick has been done successfully three times and allow the player to move on. This will give the player hands on experience with the game rather than just watching it be performed on video. To access this feature open the Main Menu and select ‘Tutorial’.

Replay Editor Moved to ‘Select’ Button
As one of the most used features, we have made the Replay Editor more accessible by taking it out of the menu, and moving it to the ‘Select’ button. Now you will have one touch access to the Replay Editor without having to scroll through the Main Menu.

Language Selection
The game menus have been translated and now support English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Portuguese. To select your language please visit ‘Settings’ in the menu.

Bail when landing sideways with speed
We have tweaked the system to trigger a bail when you land sideways with enough momentum, to more closely mimic real world scenarios.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed hoodie and shirt UV layouts
• Fixed board getting stuck sideways in certain states like pushing
• Fixed hover foot after exiting menu

Known Issues:

• Broken foliage textures in many mod maps related to Unity upgrade to 2018.4.17.

Mod Disclaimer:
While we make every effort to preserve existing mods with each update, we are not able to control exactly how updates to the official game code will interact with every one of them. If you are experiencing issues with the new update, please first try removing your mods and adding them back in one by one to see if the issue can be isolated.

StatsMenu, BabboSettings, XXLMod(version v1.3a not 1.5) and XLMapEditor have been tested and are working.

Jboogie’s SoundMod has an update scheduled for release today which will fix functionality with 0.3b. SilentBaws’s Multiplayer mod is also updating today with an awesome ground-up rebuild that’s 0.3b compatible. Check it out here https://github.com/silentbaws/XLMultiplayer/releases

Any other mods that access gear and player skins will likely experience issues, please check the Modding Discord for further info .

To open the beta, follow these steps:

Right click ‘Skater XL’ and open Properties

Select the ‘beta - public beta builds’ 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 [beta]”.

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.

Thanks again to everyone for you support and feedback throughout Early Access. We look forward to hearing your feedback on these new features and updates!

Key Features:

• FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Skater XL is unique in that it doesn’t have any tricks programmed into it, only control of the movement through the thumbsticks. Each thumbstick is connected to the corresponding foot of the skater and as the player moves the stick, the board instantly responds. Much like a musical instrument, the player has complete freedom, whether it be pushing to nail a line or skating free from.
• PLAY AS REAL-LIFE PRO SKATERS: The game is launching with highly renowned pros TIAGO LEMOS, BRANDON WESTGATE, EVAN SMITH, and TOM ASTA. Each skater will have their own gear that fits their style.
• REAL LIFE ICONIC SKATING LOCATIONS: In Skater XL, players can shred legendary real-world skate spots that are home to some of the most iconic skaters and tricks in the world.
• CUSTOMIZABLE CHARACTERS: The possibilities are endless for players to personalize their Skater XL experience. Players can customize their entire look, including their skater’s gear with different tees, hoodies, hats and shoes.
• COME PLAY IN THE SANDBOX: Each area is yours to explore. With the freedom of an open-environment, players will be able to push themselves, perfecting the subtle nuances of a highly technical trick or free form skate.
• THRIVING COMMUNITY: Dive into a passionate community with more than 50,000 members in Discord who create online zines, video parts, fakeskate brands, and hundreds of mods. Players can become part of a bigger ecosystem and join the digital skateboarding subculture where they can share their creativity

Currently available on Steam Early Access, Skater XL is coming to Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One and PC in July 7, 2020.