OpenTricky 0.1.5: Faster, and a round of fixes

Sixth public release of OpenTricky: faster when the processor is the limit, and a round of fixes for 0.1.4. On our test PC, without a frame rate limit, it shows 24 to 31% more frames per second than 0.1.4 on the scenes we measured. The sun's glare no longer drops out when the graphics card falls behind, the game's videos play at their own pace, split screen at Draw distance Max keeps its colours, the scene after the finish line fits screens wider than 16:9, and Find my disc image no longer crashes the launcher. Two new settings: Weather, for snowfall without the thick fog, and PlayStation controllers (experimental). Smoother legs in turns no longer jumps back above 60 FPS, and the Steam Deck preset now turns it off. Races play out exactly as in 0.1.4. Guides and help are on opentricky.com.

💿 No disc image, music or video from the game is distributed. You need your own copy of the game: a disc image (.iso or .xiso) of SSX Tricky for the original Xbox, USA release.

Download

OpenTricky-0.1.5-win64.zip runs on Windows 10/11 64-bit with Direct3D 11, and on Linux and the Steam Deck through Proton. For a new install, extract it into an empty folder, start OpenTricky.exe and pick your disc image: click the disc label at the top, or the drop area, then choose from the SSX Tricky (USA) disc images found on this computer (Find my disc image), or browse for it. To check the download, use SHA256SUMS.txt and its signature, SHA256SUMS.txt.sig.

• Coming from 0.1.2, 0.1.3 or 0.1.4: update from the launcher. Your saves, your settings and your disc image are kept.
  • Settings that match a preset (Recommended, Original Xbox or Steam Deck) follow that preset's current values. Settings you chose yourself stay, and each setting your version didn't have takes the value of the closest preset (from 0.1.4, that is Weather; PlayStation controllers starts Off).
  • From 0.1.2 or 0.1.3, you also get everything that came with 0.1.4: see the 0.1.4 release notes.
  • No update offered? The 0.1.4 launcher has Check now in Settings → Advanced → Updates. The 0.1.2 and 0.1.3 launchers look only once a day: close the launcher, delete update-cache.txt (next to settings.ini; deleting it is harmless), then start it again. With Skip launcher next time on, hold Shift (or Back / Select on a controller) while you start OpenTricky.exe to see the launcher.
• Coming from 0.1.1: the 0.1.1 launcher can't install 0.1.5, so install it fresh, in a new folder. Saves in Documents\My Games\SSX Tricky\Saves stay where they are; if yours were inside the old folder (a Saves folder with portable.txt, or an hdd folder), copy that folder, and portable.txt, across. Leave settings.ini behind: pick your disc image again (and your save folder, if you had chosen one), remake your shortcuts (the game is bin\SSX Tricky.exe), then delete the old folder.

Faster

When the processor is the limit, mostly above 60 FPS, the part of OpenTricky that turns the game's graphics commands into Direct3D 11 now does less work for the same picture. It no longer sets again what the graphics card already has, it keeps more of what it has built (shaders, samplers, and the work of Smoother terrain seams), and it reuses its vertex memory instead of asking the driver for new memory each time it fills up.

On our test PC (Core i7-12700, GeForce RTX 4070 Super, 3440 × 1440), with the same settings for both, 0.1.5 against 0.1.4:

• Without a frame rate limit: 24 to 31% more frames per second on average, and 9 to 29% higher 1% lows, on Garibaldi (Race), Pipedream in the sun (Freeride) and Pipedream (Showoff).
• On a 240 Hz screen: it holds 240 FPS on Garibaldi (Race), Snowdream and Elysium (Showoff); 0.1.4 fell just short on Elysium (237). Pipedream doesn't reach 240: about 230 in the sun and 224 in Showoff, against 221 and 203 with 0.1.4.

That is one PC. We haven't measured it on a Steam Deck.

Fixes

Closer to the original game. These fixes are always on, in every preset, Original Xbox included:

• The sun's glare when the graphics card falls behind. To know how much of the sun shows, the game asks the graphics card and waits for its answer. With a high frame rate limit and a heavy graphics load, OpenTricky stopped that wait too early, and the sun's glare and rays dropped out on some frames, on Pipedream for example. The card now gets as long to answer as in the original game. Where the sun is in view, that wait can cost frames per second when the graphics card is the limit (see Known issues).
• The game's videos. OpenTricky showed their frames on a timer of its own, about 40 times a second and unevenly, though they are made at about 30 frames per second. Each frame now goes to the screen when the game finishes it, as in the original game: on a 60 Hz screen, in our tests, almost every frame stays on screen for two refreshes, against about a third in 0.1.4.

Picture

• Split screen at Draw distance Max: with two players, the game could write new graphics commands over ones that hadn't been drawn yet: its own check for this never saw where the drawing had got to. The picture then lost one or two of its colours, race display included, and could turn to a single colour. The check now works.
• Camera cuts above 60 FPS: when the game cut from one shot to the next over a short distance (at the start of a Showoff, for example), the picture slid from one shot to the other for a few frames. It now cuts, as at 60 FPS.
• Screens wider than 16:9: the scene the game plays after the finish line is now shown as on a 16:9 screen, in a 16:9 frame in the middle. Before, the camera stepped back and narrowed its view for the wider screen: it could end up inside the scenery (seconds of a single colour), and the shots were cropped (heads cut off). The Top 5, the results and the replay stay wide, as in 0.1.4, and the race itself doesn't change. The game's 3D sounds are now placed from the game's own camera, as on a 16:9 screen, and above 60 FPS a race no longer starts with the rider looking bigger for a few frames.
• The first frame after a change of frame: when the picture switches between a frame in the middle of the screen and the full width (at the end of a race's intro, and after the finish line on screens wider than 16:9), that first frame is now drawn for its new shape, not stretched or squeezed.
• Smooth edges (SMAA) under Wine 9.0: its shader compiler refused SMAA, so the game ran without it. SMAA now builds there too; on Windows, its shaders haven't changed.
• A shader that fails to build (as can happen under Wine or Proton) is now tried once, not again at every draw, which could slow the game to a crawl.

Launcher

• Find my disc image: choosing a disc image from the list could crash the launcher. With many disc images found, the list now scrolls inside the window instead of running past its edge. In the launcher's lists, with a controller or the keyboard, the selected line always comes into view, and a press never acts on a line you can't see.
• It keeps files that aren't its own. Since 0.1.2, each start of the launcher tidied up after 0.1.1 by removing any SSX Tricky.exe, ui folder or THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.txt next to OpenTricky.exe, by name alone, and even through folder links (junctions): files of those names that belonged to something else could be deleted. It now removes only files that are exactly those of 0.1.1, never deletes anything through a link, and leaves everything else where it is.
• Program moved to another drive: when bin is a folder link, a failed update or Restore, or one undone at the next start, no longer removes that link. Before, the launcher then opened with an empty window.

Screenshots

• F12 in a read-only folder: when the folder of OpenTricky.exe can't be written (in Program Files, for example), screenshots go to Documents\My Games\SSX Tricky\Screenshots instead of failing.
• The .txt beside each screenshot shows your settings when the game's folder has accents in its name. It used to say that settings.ini wasn't found.

Smoothness

• No pause before the first race of a session: the game drew its button icons at the start line, on the thread that feeds the graphics card. It now draws them in the background when it starts.
• 60 FPS with VSync on: when the graphics card needs a few milliseconds per frame, the game sleeps while it waits for the card to finish. In our tests, most of these waits ended at once, on a signal left over from the previous frame, and then kept a processor core busy until the card was done. Each wait now waits for its own frame.

New

• Weather (Graphics, under Snow look): outside races and with one player, snow always falls on Snowdream, and on some visits to Merqury City. PS2 shows it without the thick fog that comes with it in the original game, a fog the PS2 version doesn't have: the night sky and the distant slopes stay in view, and shadows fall as in clear weather. Garibaldi, Elysium and Untracked, where the PS2 version never has weather, stay clear. The falling snow itself is the original game's. PS2 is the value of Recommended and Steam Deck; Original, the value of Original Xbox, keeps the original game's fog.
• PlayStation controllers (experimental) (Controls, Off by default): a DualShock 4 or DualSense works without any other tool, and with Button style at Auto the game shows PlayStation buttons. With it On, each controller keeps its player until it is unplugged; Off, controllers are read exactly as before. Leave it Off if you use Steam Input, DS4Windows, or Steam open with its PlayStation support: they already make the controller work, and it would be read twice. Tell us how it works with yours.

Better

• Steam Deck preset: Smoother terrain seams and Lightmap smoothing, two options that add work for the processor and the graphics chip, are now off, and so is Smoother legs in turns (below). Its Weather is PS2, and its other settings stay as they were. If your settings match the Steam Deck preset, the update moves them to its new values; settings you changed yourself stay.
• Smoother legs in turns catches up without a jump: the smoothing averages the legs and the board over a few game steps, so they show a little behind the game and, after each jump, landing or trick, have to catch up with it. Above 60 FPS, they now catch up over one game step, neither jumping back in a single frame nor sliding. It stays on in Recommended. At 60 FPS that catch-up is still a single frame, so the Steam Deck preset now turns it off, as Original Xbox does: the legs and the board show the game's own pose, as in the original game. If your settings match Steam Deck, the update turns it off; settings you chose yourself stay.

Known issues (short)

• Controls above 60 FPS: they respond one game step (about 17 ms) later than at 60. Frame rate limit at 60 (Xbox) gives the original game's exact timing.
• Controllers: Xbox-style (XInput) ones work natively, and the DualShock 4 and DualSense with PlayStation controllers (experimental). For others, use Steam Input or DS4Windows, and choose PlayStation modern or PS2 original in Button style.
• Proton Experimental (Linux, Steam Deck) may run slower: try Proton 10 or PortProton, and send us your logs.
• Screens that don't report their refresh timing (the Steam Deck, some laptops): at 60 FPS on 60 Hz, frames can queue up and reach the screen later than in 0.1.3.
• Pipedream on a 240 Hz screen: on our test PC, it doesn't reach 240 FPS: about 230 in the sun and 224 in Showoff (0.1.4: 221 and 203). Where the sun is in view, the game waits for the graphics card to know how much of the sun shows, as the original game does, so when the card is the limit the frame rate drops there.
• Smoother terrain seams leaves a few of the original game's seams visible, and gives the processor more to do on every frame.
• Steam Deck with a power limit: a player found that 0.1.4 needs more power than 0.1.3 for the same frame rate. We haven't measured 0.1.5 on a Steam Deck: if you play with a power limit, tell us what you see, with your logs.

All known issues: opentricky.com/known-issues.

Reporting bugs

Post in #bug-reports on the Discord, or open an issue, with your settings, your PC and SSX Tricky.log (or the zip from Settings → Advanced → Bug report → Prepare…, which the launcher also offers after a crash).

Thanks to everyone who reports bugs and shares ideas on Discord and GitHub, and to the Steam Deck player whose report started this release.

Build it yourself

From your own disc image, build.bat "<your .iso>" builds the game and the launcher. See Building from source.

Unofficial fan project, not affiliated with Electronic Arts or Microsoft. SSX and SSX Tricky are trademarks of Electronic Arts.