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Guide · Skate 3

.skate maps in the Rust engine

Load, convert and understand the .skate format used by the Skate 3 Rust and Bevy engine and the browser build.

The Skate 3 Rust engine reimplements skating in Rust and Bevy. Maps are single portable .skate files instead of DLC packs.

Load one

Drag a .skate file onto PLAY.bat, or use the command line:

.\scripts\Launch.ps1 -Map 'C:\path with spaces\park.skate'

In game, Escape opens the map menu so you can switch without restarting. In the browser build, add ?map=Name to the URL.

What’s inside

.skate files are versioned (SKATE01–15). The reader supports raw, zlib and Zstandard blocks. A file can carry:

  • Visual geometry: positions, normals, UV0/UV1, material groups, packed tangent frames
  • Materials: albedo, normal, ORM, emissive, alpha, and lightmaps decoded to half-float
  • Collision: a separate authored mesh, or an embedded retail RWCM cluster archive with native edge codes
  • Gameplay: spawn, grind-rail polylines, surface types, lights, sky metadata

Some records are parsed but have no runtime yet: doors stop a map from launching, and NPC routes and area lights only produce warnings. See the engine’s docs/SKATE-MAPS.md.

Convert Skate 3 maps to .skate

Any Xbox 360 DIST_* world converts with the engine’s own asset pipeline. A PS3 map goes through the PS3 transcoder first. The skatemods converter does both steps:

converter/convert.sh ~/Downloads/JumpCity.7z out/
# out/skate/JumpCity.skate

Community packs sometimes include an empty grind-spline table that the stock decoder rejects. The skatemods converter treats it as “no rails” instead of failing.

Updated 2026-10-01 · Improve this guide on GitHub