Skate 3 Rust Engine

A Rust and Bevy skating project built from Skate 3 reverse-engineering research. Includes skating, tricks, grinds, offboard movement, difficulty settings and .skate map support. Gameplay parity is still a work in progress.

Mods and agent authoring

Drop mod ZIPs into top-level mods/ and enable them in the Mods menu. Point your coding agent at sdk/AGENTS.md to make a mod. See package structure, Lua API, vehicle API, multiplayer mod SDK and Mixamo workflow. Editable examples live in sdk/examples/; tools/package_mod.py validates and packages them.

Play

This repository is private on Forgejo. Its CI checks Linux builds and tests but publishes no packages; build locally using the instructions below.

If you have an existing Windows release ZIP, extract it and run skate3rust.exe. Select your Skate 3 Xbox 360 ISO, or select default.xex in an extracted game folder. Keep its data folder alongside it. Setup prepares the skater, animations and all disc maps, then starts University. The original scoring and session-marker HUD assets are also exported automatically during setup. No Blender, Python or Rust installation is needed. ISO extraction needs internet access. The first conversion can take a while.

Use an XInput controller to play. Escape opens graphics, difficulty and map settings. Maps can be switched without restarting the game.

Skate 3 assets are not included. Your converted files stay in the data folder beside your executable. Each freshly unpacked copy runs its own setup; it does not adopt another installation. In-place updates refresh only changed asset groups.

Linux first run

Linux builds ship no skate3setup.exe. On first launch the game finds tools/setup.py above the executable and runs it with system python3; without Tk it asks in the terminal for your extracted Skate 3 default.xex (keep its data folder beside it). If you installed Python dependencies in the virtual environment below, run setup explicitly before the first launch:

.venv/bin/python tools/setup.py --base target/debug/data --game-exe target/debug/skate3rust --source /path/to/default.xex
./target/debug/skate3rust

--source selects the game and skips the prompt; a folder or default.xex is equivalent. Tk is optional. ISO extraction is Windows-only, so extract the ISO with a trusted tool and select default.xex; setup never downloads or runs an extractor on Linux. --assets DIRECTORY still selects a prepared asset set for development. Updating, the character importer and the Steam relay remain Windows-only.

Build

Linux

Install Rust stable (edition 2024), Python 3, and the Linux build libraries. On Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential pkg-config libasound2-dev libudev-dev libwayland-dev python3-venv
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -r tools/requirements-setup.txt
cargo build --locked -p skate-game --bin skate3rust --no-default-features

The binary is target/debug/skate3rust. Forgejo runs these Linux build and first-run tests on pushes and pull requests using a Docker runner labeled docker; it does not publish downloads or run game assets in CI.

Retail audio playback (Linux, experimental) needs ffmpeg and your own extracted data/audio archives. To test an actual University ambience stream:

sudo apt-get install -y ffmpeg
SKATE_AMBIENCE="$PWD/data/disc/data/audio/ambienceresident.big:$PWD/data/disc/data/audio/ambience.big:University" cargo run -p skate-game --bin skate3-audio-check -- 5

In the game, SKATE_AUDIO_PLAY="<absolute-path>/ambience.big:07_univ_mt_high.sns:5:48000:40" plays that entry at startup. This is a manual sound check, not yet gameplay-triggered skating audio; the imported fork does not implement player-event playback either. Playback currently decodes at most 128 archive blocks (roughly 14 seconds) into memory; this is not suitable for uninterrupted full-length ambience or music.

Windows

Requires Rust with the MSVC toolchain and LLVM installed in its default location. Run BUILD.bat to build, then PLAY.bat to launch the test world. PLAY.bat opens your saved map (University by default); use the in-game menu to switch maps, or drag a .skate file onto PLAY.bat. An XInput controller is required for gameplay; Escape opens difficulty and graphics settings.

Development builds use a prepared asset set in assets/private/ or the installed asset directory. scripts/Build-Release.ps1 still builds a portable Windows package with Python 3.13, but Forgejo CI no longer publishes it. The Windows updater still points at GitHub and is not configured for private Forgejo releases.

Custom animations and climbing support remain available, but no custom clips are shipped. The included format-demo map is original procedural content.

Implementation notes are in docs/. Patched Bevy dependencies and their licenses are in vendor/. This is an unofficial project, not affiliated with EA.

Advanced diagnostics

Windows builds support opt-in performance timeline capture through the --trace CLI option, including optional GPU pass diagnostics.