Last blog I showcased many of the big-hitters in the Rust Creative Arts community. This month they have literally combined forces to play together for an entire month and managed to make a giant amusement park on the water!
I present to you: Rustic Reef
From a life size DDR game, to a roller coaster. They even managed to mimic a ferris wheel.
Philieve breaks down who's doing what and how the whole project came about.
DaVinci gives us the scenic tour!
And pyromaniac Silverfox shows off his firework skills.
I'll try and do a better job of giving you all a heads up next time they do a project like this so people can experience it in real time! Absolute legends.
ROCK - BOXING CHAMPION
Who is the greatest rock fighter in Rust? Can a "nobody" defeat the Rock - Boxing World Champion?
COUNTING SARS
Balding Bus brings us a real toe-tapper Rust parody music video!
IRL RUST ELECTRICAL
Our friend over at Real & Game has outdone himself once again.
Made an entire Rust electrical setup IRL.
TWITCH DROPS
Soon™
SHOW ME THE STUFF!
If you made something cool or saw something cool, reach out! Tag me on X or u/ErrnieGerrn Reddit.
WAVES OF CHANGE
CARGO SHIP DOCKING
We’ve given both Harbors a fresh coat of paint this month, with a significant amount of visual and gameplay changes. These changes support the new Cargo Ship docking process, which allows the ship to adjust it's course and dock with the harbor.
Each harbor has a new island that can be reached by crossing a rotating bridge, floating containers or a daring set of jumps across cranes. This island becomes a stronghold once the Cargo Ship docks as it becomes sheltered from the rest of the harbor.
The ship will pick the first harbor it passes to dock and will only dock once. Once docked, the cranes in the Harbor will spring into life and move several containers from the docks onto the deck of the ship. These containers have openable doors and can be hidden in, so they present a new way to smuggle aboard the ship and another threat for players already on the ship to contend with. These containers will be deposited in locations that are generally above the deck, in some cases by several meters. This should present an interesting tactical situation when attacking the ship as well as defending it.
We’ve also added two ship doors above the water line that allow access to the lower interior level of the ship and provide additional ways to board or traverse the monument while the ship is docked.
By default the Cargo Ship replenishes it's loot every 10 minutes - up to 3 times. When the ship docks at the harbor it will attempt to trigger one of those loot refreshes, although if all three have already happened it will be unable to spawn any more loot.
The Cargo Ship horn will sound 60 seconds prior to it's departure - once you hear that horn it's time to get moving or you might end up back out at sea.
We think these changes combined will lead to Cargo Ship being a much more contested PvP environment for groups of all sizes. We're also interested to see how a traditionally lower intensity monument like the Harbors adjust to periodic bouts of high intensity action.
OILRIGS
The Oilrigs receive an upgrade this month, with an underwater access. This new way to get onto the Oilrig will add a path into both structures Level 3 floors.
This provides a different, and possibly safer way into the monument. It is also a way to counter the players on board by short circuiting the docks at the rigs water line.
The extra rooms inside see the addition of a CCTV desk that allows you to observe in place the camera feeds of the monument.
MINIGUN
The iconic minigun has been added to the game which is used by the Heavy Scientists. It takes a moment to spin up, but when it does, it unleashes a massive amount of ammunition, making targets much easier to hit.
It's a rare drop useable by players and you must be at a workbench level 2 to add ammunition to it as it cannot be reloaded in the field. It also takes 1.5 seconds to spin up and lowers your movement speed while the spin is engaged.
RETRO TOOL CUPBOARD
We're thrilled to announce Rust's first-ever tool cupboard DLC skin! The Retro Tool Cupboard can be crafted as usual using the skin picker or applied to an existing Tool Cupboard using the Spray can item.
The Retro Tool Cupboard monitors display live information such as upkeep time, resources, and the number of blocks used to calculate upkeep costs. However, the data is only visible on the monitors when authorized.
The Retro Tool cupboard doesn't require power, the lower half of the Retro Tool Cupboard behind the glass panel displays current inventory upkeep amounts and tools.
When approaching the Retro Tool cupboard design, we felt aesthetics were critical. The tool cupboard is the heart of any base and should be instantly recognizable.
You can purchase Retro Tool cupboard skin in-game or at Steam's item store.
MILITARY FLAMETHROWER
In addition to the minigun, the Heavy Scientists have had their arsenal upgraded with a new, military tier flamethrower. This weapon deals massive damage to targets up to 12 meters away and creates walls of fire - which can be used for area denial.
I've also modified how flamethrowers deal damage to players making them an extremely effective PvP weapon.
PATROL HELICOPTER IMPROVEMENTS
The patrol helicopter was one of the largest banks of 'older' code still in the game. It's stood up well, but there were a bunch of fixes and improvements that needed to happen. Let's start with the improvements.
Orbital Strafing/Strafing Changes
The regular helicopter attack strafe was getting pretty old. It followed a regular pattern and most of our values were fixed internally. This has been changed. During an attack run the helicopter will randomise a bunch of values, including: rocket amount, drop off distance, turn speed etc. These are relatively minor adjustments, but they should help make each new fight with the helicopter feel a little more fresh.
We also added a new attack phase in the strafing run. The helicopter will turn, begin orbiting your position and pummel you with rockets from all directions. This will randomly happen after each strafe. It's super fun to play, and helps bring back the excitement and danger of taking heli.
Aggro Improvements
A new 'zones' feature has been introduced. These are invisible to the player. When a player damages heli a zone is updated/created and the zone is assigned a score. This score is based on how much damage heli has taken from that specific zone.
Heli will now seek out targets based on zones and damage scores rather than the perceived randomness of before. When there are minimal players and by extension - minimal zones. Heli will work similarly to before, but when more zones are introduced heli will prioritise attacking the people that are attacking it, in a more controlled and deliberate manner.
You are still free pickings to the side gunners, but your house shouldn't be blasted anymore in the confusion.
No-Go Zones
When taking heli, the basic principle is to get, and keep aggro. No-Go zones make this a little more difficult, and now encourage some movement when taking heli. When a zone performs enough damage to heli too quickly, then that zone is marked as a no-go zone. Heli will flee the area, and attempt to avoid it as best as it can. This is to encourage heli to get out of areas that are going to kill it too quickly. Encouraging bigger groups to chase, build defenses as they go and bring more PVP to the whole map.
Bug Fixes/Changes
A bunch of legacy bugs that existed with heli are now patched. These include being stuck on targets, disappearing mid-fight, not exploding in the ocean, as well as a bunch of proxy issues that were fixed by the aggro adjustments. Other adjustments have also been made to how heli patrols work, and you should see it moving around a bit more now, rather than just sticking to the monuments.
Server Convars
patrolhelicopterai.use_danger_zones - this will enable/disable the no go and aggro zones. When turned off, the helicopter will largely behave the way it used to with target picking and aggression.
patrolhelicopterai.flee_damage_percentage - this sets the required percentage of damage done to heli in order for it to flee and create a no-go zone. A value of 1 or over will effectively disable no go zones and stop the flee mechanic.
It will no doubt need some further revisions and changes after this release. Keep us updated on how your heli takes go. Have fun!
ELECTRICITY
This month we are taking care of our fellow electricians! Bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and major changes are coming to electricity.
CHANGES
First of all, we removed any power requirements from all logic gates.
Being creative and adding logic to your circuits won't be at the expense of acquiring a linear or exponential amount of power any more. While being a great quality of life for master electricians, we also believe that removing this pain point will increase the use of electricity in general.
Therefore, the following components won't require power or drain batteries anymore:
Splitter
Electrical Branch
Blocker
Root Combiner
Memory Cell
RAND Switch
XOR Switch
AND Switch
OR Switch
Timer
Switch
Smart Switch
Counter
Pressure Pad
Button
Any other active components like turrets, sensors, lights, etc.. remain unchanged and will still need power to function.
BUG FIXES
These power limitations were also overly amplified by a multitude of power drain bugs and unintended behaviors that we worked on fixing.
Here are the most important ones:
Fixed AND, & OR gates draining batteries on both sides instead of only the side with the highest power input
Fixed auxiliary inputs/outputs draining power unnecessarily
Fixed memory cell draining battery on both sides instead of from the active output
Prevent electrical branch from draining power when nothing is connected to its branch out side
Fixed unpowered components draining batteries, much more common now that branches do not waste power anymore
QUALITY OF LIFE
Along these changes, we worked on improving how you deploy electrical components: Fixed the differences between the deploy guide and the actual position where your component is placed Components are now aligned to walls and won't rotate based on your view angle You can now align your components together when deploying them on walls by holding left shift
This applies to all electricity, industrial and fluid items. We're planning on extending it to any type of deployable in the future.
NEXT STEPS
There as more fixes and improvements that didn't make it into this patch. Expect more in the coming months, including plans to rework some components and extending their functionalities.
Many thanks to our electricians community for pointing out bugs and suggesting ideas.
FULL CHANGELOG
Splitter
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0 Active Usage: 1 -> 0
Now distributes power evenly across all outputs and add any remaining power to the earliest outputs, ensuring no power loss
Electrical Branch
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0 Active Usage: 1 -> 0
Won't drain any power when nothing is connected to its left side
Blocker
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0 Active Usage: 1 -> 0
Root Combiner
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0 Active Usage: 1 -> 0
Memory Cell
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0 Active Usage: 1 -> 0
Fixed draining battery on both sides instead of from the active output
Fixed power passthrough being shown on both outputs instead of on the active one
Side inputs won’t drain power any more
RAND Switch
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0 Active Usage: 1 -> 0
Now passes power when ON and blocks power when OFF
Now resets to OFF
XOR Switch
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0 Active Usage: 1 -> 0
AND Switch
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0 Active Usage: 1 -> 0
Fixed batteries getting drained when only one side is powered
OR Switch
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0 Active Usage: 1 -> 0
Fixed batteries getting drained on both sides instead of only the side with the highest power input (if both input have the same power, the first input is chosen by default)
Timer
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0 Active Usage: 1 -> 0
Side inputs won’t drain power any more
Now configurable when unpowered
Switch
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0 Active Usage: 1 -> 0
Fixed aux inputs draining power
Fixed aux inputs passing power through
Fixed red LED not showing up when receiving power but toggled off
Counter
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0 Active Usage: 1 -> 0 Max target number: 100 -> 999
Side inputs won’t drain power any more
Fixed power passing power through when under their target value
Pressure Pad
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0 Active Usage: 1 -> 0
Fixed blocking power passthrough for a bit when triggered
Button
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0 Active Usage: 1 -> 0
Laser Detector
Now deployable on any surface angle
Tweaked handles position to make it easier to wire
Ceiling Light
Fixed being powerable using only 1 power instead of 2
Flasher Light
Restored blue material emission when ON
Tweaked handles position to make it easier to wire
Reactive Target
Now resets itself automatically only after being knocked down
Won't generate and pulse 1 power when lowered manually
When both lower and reset inputs are powered, the one with the highest power takes over
Industrial Conveyor
Fixed aux output passing 1 power regardless of the current energy
Industrial Crafter
Now drains 1 power correctly when ON
Small Generator
Aux inputs won’t drain any power any more
ANTI-CHEAT UPDATE
At the beginning of the year, In the development blog Surviving a Decade, I mentioned, "This year we're dedicating more resources into anti-cheat than ever", this is a commitment we're dedicated to, and I want to share more information about what we've been up too.
Over the past couple of months, we have slowly eliminated or limiting information leaks which cheaters abuse to aid them in several ways. For example, players health, Tool Cupboards and turret authorization lists could be read in the network data, allowing cheaters to use and gain a further unfair advantage. These are now fixed.
In continuing efforts to battle cheaters and clean up many long-standing issues, especially around information leaks, buried stashes are no longer networked, meaning cheaters will no longer know where stashes are buried.
There is much more to be done in this area, and we are working on it.
Expanding the support team size over the past year has allowed us to get more support staff focusing on anti-cheat, which includes going in-game and dealing with and disrupting cheaters directly based on player reports. Some staff over the coming months will be dedicated solely to anti-cheat measures full-time. This isn't limited to Facepunch servers, but across the board.
In addition to the above, we've deployed some stricter measures surrounding anti-cheating, eliminated several priority exploits, and will deploy further measures soon.
In the last month:
26,954 bans have been applied
22,542 of which were permanent
4,412 of which were temporary
949,422 cheating reports received
90.8% of bans were applied automatically
Since the 1st January 2024:
84,753 bans have been applied
71,371 of which were permanent
13,382 of which were temporary
3,116,133 cheating reports received
92.9% of bans were applied automatically
Based on fiscal quarters:
72,849 bans applied in 2023 Q1
65,608 bans applied in 2023 Q2
81,682 bans applied in 2023 Q3
55,672 bans applied in 2023 Q4
81,084 bans applied in 2024 Q1
Notes
Bans are placed for multiple reasons, the numbers above do not strictly reflect only cheat-related bans, but cheat-related bans do make up the vast majority of bans.
A single player can receive multiple bans, for example, if a user is temporarily banned and then later switched to a permanent ban, this is counted as 2 bans in the above metrics.
BRADLEY SCIENTISTS
The Bradley has some new passengers this month!
Scientists can now deploy from the Bradley to help defend it with some extra firepower.
This applies to both the Launch Site Bradley and the Bradley that spawns along roads at the end of the month.
IMPROVEMENTS & FIXES HIGHLIGHTS
Seed Sack World Model
Added new seed world model
Mushroom World Model
Added mushroom world model
Monument CCTV Station
New dedicated CCTV station within monuments
SRV DNS SUPPORT
I added support for SRV DNS record to Rust. This means you can now create nice domain names for your servers without needing to specify the port (or be forced into the default port).
I also used this added information to improve the favorites list. Servers that have a working DNS record set up would save the domain name when favoriting so that favorites should never break as long as the domain name is pointing to the right place.
More information on how to set this up is on the wiki.
PING ESTIMATION
If you have searched for new servers in the browser you probably noticed the large amount of fake ping: it's impossible to have 30ms ping to both a US and EU server. This is a side effect of certain forms of DDOS protection and has forced us to create a custom system to estimate ping rather than use steam's ping value.
There is a new checkbox below "Use Cache" called "Estimate Ping". We will enable this by default in the future once we confirm the estimated values are more accurate than the existing ones.
For the next week, every 24-38 hours in-game hours an Easter egg hunt will begin. You'll have 3 minutes to collect as many eggs as you can. The top 3 players are given special eggs as a reward. These eggs can be cracked open for various types of loot ranging from scrap all the way up to an M249!
If you don't make the podium, that's okay. The painted eggs you collect can be upgraded to Bronze eggs once you collect 10. If you collect 10 bronze eggs then you can upgrade to a silver egg, eventually all the way to gold!
There are various items available to help you during your hunt. The Easter Basket will allow instant pickup of eggs and the Bunny Onesie and Ears will provide you with an advantage via Egg Vision.
Have fun!
CHICKEN COSTUME
This year we've added a new costume DLC attire, the chicken costume! The chicken costume is a lower body attire which can be crafted with cloth and wood.
A common story we hear from new players is that they have seen their friends/Twitch Streamer/YouTuber playing Rust, so they pick up the game and then bounce off it due to how harsh and unforgiving the new player experience can be. This month’s Tutorial Island is our attempt to provide new players with a safe environment to learn the basic controls and mechanics of Rust before being set loose in the main game with other players.
Everyone will be prompted to start the tutorial when they first spawn this month, if you’re a long term player feel free to decline the tutorial and we won’t ask you about it again. Once the player starts the Tutorial, they will be respawned on a dedicated island where an NPC will guide them through the first half hour of gameplay. This island is tightly controlled and cannot be reached by other players.
Throughout this process players will learn some key concepts:
Basic movement
Crafting
Building bases
Upgrading bases
Respawning
Basic combat
Resources
Looting containers
Cooking
Using Furnaces
Workbenches
Using a vehicle
This obviously isn’t an exhaustive list of everything there is to learn in Rust, but we feel like this is a good starting point for a new player. Our guiding principle when designing this sequence has been - if a player emulates exactly what they did on the Tutorial Island once they get into the main game, will they have a fighting chance?
The tutorial itself should take less than 30 minutes if you’re familiar with general FPS controls and concepts, likely around an hour if you are not a regular FPS player. Once complete you will be dropped off into the main game with the same resources as any other player - completing the Tutorial Island does not give you any advantages in regular gameplay.
For server owners running mods that change core gameplay features, you may find that parts of the tutorial don’t work or maybe showing the tutorial isn’t appropriate for your server (minigame servers for instance). You can control whether the tutorial is active via the “server.tutorialEnabled” convar - it's false by default. While false players won't be prompted to start the tutorial on your server and they will not be able to manually start the tutorial. We’ve added a server tag to help players find and filter servers by their tutorial compatibility, add “tut” to your server tags to advertise your tutorial compatibility. Brand new players will have this filter on when they first use the server browser.
VENDOR UI REFRESH
Our outdated tooltip popup for checking vendor stock urgently needed an upgrade. It felt out of place when compared with the marketplace UI. Thus, a plan was devised to merge both into a single unified system. This update will be rolled out in two parts, with this being part one. This first part fully replaces the old blue tooltip popup with an interface that's clearer, more user-friendly, and scalable. Now, it's easy to understand what you're purchasing and how much is costs. Overall, this first pass on the vendor UI provides a great foundation to expand on.
New Single Vendor Interface
Items are now displayed clearly with the cost and stock counts easily visible.
New Multi Vendor Interface
Accordions are used to hold vendors with large amounts of listings. This keeps everything easy to read, whilst still giving users flexibility to add a bunch of listings.
While working on this, we noticed some QOL issues with finding items before purchasing. The marketplace offers useful features like search and filtering that the standard map doesn't have. It would be great to have these abilities everywhere.
Part two will unify the marketplace UI with the new vendor UI. You will still have to travel to the marketplace to buy things via drone, but the actual underlying UI will be merged together. This will provide the same search/filtering functionalities as enjoyed at the marketplace to the regular map vendor UI, whilst bringing the improved style and ease of use of this new vendor UI to the marketplace.
NIGHTLIGHT
Today, I'm addressing an issue we often hear about from the Rust community. Navigating the game during nighttime. While the night cycle is a cruicial element of the rust gameplay loop, it can be a literal stumbling block not seeing what's directly ahead. The problem of "gamma hacking" (where players unfairly enhance their night vision by tweaking monitor settings), has been a thorn in our side, necessitating a pitch-black darkness (RGB 0,0,0) to counteract such exploits.
To that end I've come up with the "Nightlight" feature. Basically it's a shader that subtly illuminates a small radius around the player, mimicking the effect of natural moon light. This localized lighting ensures that while you can see just enough to navigate at night, the vast darkness beyond remains dark. Distant pixels are kept at absolute darkness (RGB 0,0,0), effectively rendering gamma hacking useless for spotting far-off threats or resources. ( beyond a few meters)
We believe this approach strikes a good balance, enhancing the night experience without compromising fair play. I hope it helps!
IMPROVEMENTS & FIXES HIGHLIGHTS
Rangefinder
Rangefinder added to binoculars
Attack Helicopter Flare
Attack helicopter flares now take 30 seconds to reload
Safe Metal Detecting
Metal detectors no longer able to find loot in safezones
Attire Conflict
Visual feedback when switching attire conflict
ITEM STORE UI UPDATE
This month, we’ve made improvements to the store interface. These changes are part of a UI overhaul for the menu screen that we’re currently working through. One of the main improvements is adding in a custom view for each of the general store items, giving a better look at what an item looks like or what is contained within a pack. For example, the Abyss pack, we now show a cut-down version of the trailer, the items contained within the pack in a 3D turntable, media and a bit of information about the pack.
These changes are aimed at improving the experience of using the store, more transparency in regards to what you’re potentially purchasing, and improving it from a visual point of view too.
Store Interface
Re-designed view, with improvements in regards to scaling and legibility of the items.
Store Item Model
We've improved the interface for the model that appears when you tap on an item. A new key addition being an animated 3D version of the skin.
General Store Model
We've added a new view for each general store item. Some of these include cut-down trailers, items contained within as a 3D turntable as well as media and general information about the item. These new views hopefully give a better understanding of what you're getting in the purchase.
HAPIS & OBSERVER ISLAND RETIREMENT
Hapis Island and Observer Island custom maps are being retired today from Facepunch servers. Observer Island was first released in November by community members CollapsedOrange and wheatleymf and Hapis Island was brought back to celebrate 10 years of Rust.
If you're a server owner and wish to host your own Hapis or Observer Island, you can check them out at the following links:
What's the future for custom maps? We're going to continue working with our amazing map-maker community and highlight and host custom maps.
If you would like to start making your own map, check out Rust's wiki.
RUST X DAYZ Bundle - Pioneer Survival sale
Rust and DayZ have teamed up for a bundle featuring both games at 40% off!
The Pioneer Survival Pack on Steam features both titles at 40% off from March 7th 6PM GMT to March 14th 6PM GMT.
Both DayZ and Rust celebrated their 10th anniversaries in December, with in-game events, limited items, and Twitch Rivals competitions, marking many years of updates, changes, and content to the games that have kept them thriving with old and new players alike.
DayZ, with its realistic post-apocalyptic world, has evolved far beyond its origins as a hardcore survival mod. It now stands as a deeply immersive experience that continually draws in players with its intricate blend of survival mechanics, open-world exploration, and player-driven narratives, all while fostering a strong and passionate community.
Rust has transformed from a mere survival game to a global phenomenon. There’s always something interesting or dangerous (or both) happening on the island, captivating all kinds of players with its unique blend of challenges, creativity, ways to play, and community spirit.
On March 21st at 19:00 GMT we'll be releasing an optional update to enable this years Easter events and releasing the Chicken costume.
During the Easter event every 24-38 hours in-game hours an Easter egg hunt will begin. You'll have 3 minutes to collect as many eggs as you can. The top 3 players are given special eggs as a reward. These eggs can be cracked open for various types of loot ranging from scrap all the way up to an M249!
LUNAR NEW YEAR 2024
LUNAR NEW YEAR
Happy Lunar New Year to everyone! This year, we celebrate the Year of the Dragon. In Chinese culture, the dragon is a symbol of courage, power, and majesty. And to help everyone get in the spirit, we have added both new and old Lunar New Year items to the Steam item store.
But don't forget to decorate your bases with trees (symbolizing wealth and good luck) and wearing this year's lucky colours (yellow and red)!
SPEAR
Prim locked? This magnificent Chinese spear is for the fearless primitive warriors of Rust. This spear is a skin replacement for the wooden spear. Crafted with precision and adorned with intricate engravings, this weapon is not just a tool for battle. It's a work of art that tells a story of power and elegance.
ROCKET LAUNCHER
To celebrate the Year of the Dragon, we have created a beautiful dragon themed rocket launcher with both unique visuals and sound effects.
Differing from Western culture, the Dragon in Chinese mythology is auspicious and supreme. Dragons have the great power to control weather elements, but most importantly, soar through the skies - much like your ejecting rockets.
The dragon rocket launcher is a reskin of the rocket launcher.
NEW YEAR STORE ITEMS
There's a variety of community-made Lunar New Year items on the Steam store as well!
BAGS TO RICHES
BACKPACKS
Backpacks have been one of Rust's most highly requested additions for several years, and what is a survival game without backpacks? This month, we're excited to bring you the small and large backpack, allowing players to carry more loot.
Inventory space has become more scarce as more items have been added to Rust over the years.
Small Backpack
The small handmade backpack provides 12 slots & can be crafted for 50 cloth and five sewing kits at a T1 workbench. It is a default blueprint and will take 30 seconds to craft.
Large Backback
The military-grade backpack carries a whopping 28 storage slots and is uncraftable, found in military loot.
How To Use
Both are worn in the backpack slot and drop off your character on death. They can be looted on the ground (be careful if dropping one in a safe zone!) or from inside your own inventory. They take 3 seconds to pickup off the ground and despawn slower when filled with valuable items (up to 2 hours).
Currently, there are no negative effects from using a backpack.
NEW PLAYER REMAINS BACKPACK
To help differentiate regular player remains from the new backpack models we’ve given the player remains a visual refresh. This new model has a new open and closed visual state so you can tell at a glance if a bag has been opened by anyone. There is also some visual debris around an opened bag if the bag has more than 3 items in it.
METAL DETECTOR
The new metal detector allows you to find metal objects hidden beneath the ground.
Use the green lights to find the general area of an object, then when the green lights are all fully lit, hold the right mouse button to start sweeping the ground more closely and illuminate the yellow lights.
When all the yellow lights are also lit up, a flag will be placed. Dig this flag up with any melee tool and grab your treasure!
Different areas of the world will yield different types of loot, for example, what you may find on the beach will be different than what you find at the roadside or fields.
WEAPON CHANGES
I've modified the animations for the SAP/SAR and they should feel a bit less floaty and more snappy when reloading and aiming. I've also reduced the additional recoil added while moving when using the SAP. Over the coming months I plan to take a look at each and every weapon and do another pass at balancing them. This means timings, handling, recoil, and aimcone. I'm not saying the changes will be drastic but I'm aware there are elements that need changing. Stay tuned.
IMPROVEMENTS & FIXES HIGHLIGHTS
Legacy Shelter Limit
Players can now only have one shelter placed at any one time
Safezone Warning
When attempting to log out in a safe zone a warning now appears
Compass Death Marker
Death marker now appears on the compass UI
Repair Cost Fix
Some deployables such as the autoturret were unintentionally expensive to repair, this is now fixed.
Rotate Doors
Doors, hatches and embrasures can now be rotated while being deployed using R
Ripe Ripeness
Increased all plants ripe stage duration from 4h to 14h
MILDER SCREEN POST PROCESSING
A recurring community comment is the on-screen hurt, cold, warm and radioactive post-processing is hash, it impacts the screen too much. To address the comments we have made the post-processing more mild.
As mentioned in our start of the year blog post, memory usage is a key area of concern this year. One aspect I’ve been looking at lately is entity counts. Anything that gets networked in a Rust server is an entity, so every tree, building block, player, vehicle, etc. What might seem counterintuitive is that many Items in your inventory are also entities, specifically an entity we call a Planner. This is the blue sheet your player visually equips when they are deploying something (eg. a sleeping bag). Any Item that can be deployed in your inventory will have a corresponding Planner entity. This entity is created when the item is created, and will exist on the server (typically in the players hands or at the world origin if they are in a container) until that item is used or destroyed. We need this entity as it handles all the logistics of spawning the deployed version of the item.
To illustrate how many entities this creates we looked a list of entities on Facepunch EU2 towards the end of the November wipe last year. Out of 362,299 entities, 32,455 of them were Planners and are the largest count of entity (the next largest was Walls at 26,015). Since Planners are technically only needed when the player has the item equipped on their belt, this is a big waste of memory and processing time as well as needlessly bloating server save files.
This month we’ve rolled out a change that will only spawn a Planner for these Items once the Item is in a players inventory, then delete the entity when it is moved back into an inventory. This should dramatically cut down on the number of entities taking up memory for no real reason.
We also applied this change to Syringes and Bandages, specifically because these item types also don’t need an Entity if they aren’t in the players inventory and are often stored in large quantities (5,769 and 1,206 respectively in the above EU2 sample). Syringes in particular have been a performance bottleneck for the Industrial system due to the need to create and destroy an Entity every time the item is moved, so this change should have flow on server performance improvements there as well.
We think this change should reduce entity counts on the server by roughly 6-9% but we’ll be monitoring the results over time.
INDUSTRIAL PERFORMANCE
We received reports from several servers this month with Industrial performance issues. After investigating we found some extremely complex conveyor systems moving large amounts of Syringes as the culprit. The above changes to Entity counts will largely solve the issue, but I’ve also added a new convar (Server.industrialTransferStrictTimeLimits) to better handle time budgeting in these situations. While the Industrial system is time budgeted per frame (eg. Only process three conveyors per frame) it struggled if one conveyor took an excessive amount of time (eg. One conveyor takes 15x the allocated budget).
This new convar will allow the conveyor system to stop half way through a transfer if it is taking too long. Crucially it will then resume the transfer from where it left off on the next tick, so the final results should be the same, they may just take longer in real time. From the players perspective, this may result in conveyors splitting things in unintuitive ways (eg. a conveyor splitting into three boxes might do 2 on the first tick, then the last one on the last tick) but it should eventually produce the same result. Therefore we’d recommend turning this on selectively if a server is experiencing Industrial performance issues.
As well as this new convar some general performance optimisations were made, so things should be a little faster across the board in the Industrial system.
MEMORY OPTIMIZATIONS
Despite having some guards in place, asset memory can easily run ouf of control. We keep adding awesome new content and, unfortunately, it keeps increasing our memory footprint. In order to be able to sustain this rate of content expansion, memory usage has to be low and stable, regardless of world complexity. Until we can implement more aggressive and effective streaming, every once in a while we have to sit down and look at what we missed and make the necessary corrections.
On this update we nuked almost 3 GB of memory usage in shader assets, plus a few hundred MB on textures and meshes. This is a bit of a soft start, in regards to textures and meshes, but we expect to reduce memory usge by a few more gigabytes in the coming months.
We do care about memory and performance, and we're actively working on it. This is just the first stage of many that will target not only improve memory usage but also frame rate.
IMPROVED TEXTURE QUALITY
Modern games universally depend on asset compression to maximize the efficient utilization of available system memory. To justify the efforts invested in compression, developers often turn to lossy techniques, which, particularly in the realm of textures, frequently lead to a compromise in image quality. Rust was long overdue for a texture quality review. Below is a before and after.
The improvement in detail and color fidelity can be striking in some cases (right). This is an ugly texture but it's a good example of how compression can ruin a high frequency image. Regions of pixels get merged together and color shifts slightly (left).
Texture compression was being used quite aggressively and, after tweaking some settings, we were able to significantly improve image quality without sacrificing memory. In the end, because a lot of textures had untapped potential for savings, we actually ended up saving runtime memory, at the cost of disk space, while still improving overall image quality.
TEAM MARKERS WITH NV GOGGLES
These were quite mis-aligned while wearing NV Goggles, especially near the screen edges, where they would sometimes float above seemingly nothing. This has now been fixed.
IMPROVED DOOR/GATE VEHICLE BEHAVIOR
Doors and Gates have been cancelling their open/close animation when hitting a vehicle since Modular Cars were introduced, however that would sometimes lead to cases where the animation cancelling would crush vehicles if they hit the Door/Gate from the opposite side. This has been improved this month and colliding with an animated Door/Gate in the direction that it is moving will no longer cause the animation to cancel. This should lead to less cars getting crushed.
SURVIVING A DECADE
10 YEARS OF RUST
Servers are now wiped and Santa is packing up and clearing out the bodies, but we hope you enjoyed the Holiday Season. We're getting back to work after a couple of weeks off, which is why this blog is lighter than usual, but we're looking forward to the journey ahead in 2024!
This year, we celebrated Rust's 10th Birthday, which has been an incredible journey. Rust is continuing to see year-on-year growth and for a 10 year old game, that's a rather impressive feat.
At a glance, here are some key gameplay features we added in 2023:
Industrial system
Drones
RF Detonated C4
Security Camera
Player controlled turrets
Pings
Double horse saddle
Missile silo monument
Wipe event
Building skins
Sleeping bag limits
Building upgrade effects
Water refresh
Tugboat
Ferry Terminal monument
Wounded info
Chat emoji
Attack helicopter
Homing missile launcher
Parachutes
Armored hot-air balloon
Above and below rail linking
Underground train signals
M4 shotgun
Alongside a metric ton of improvements.
Rust continues to be a labour of love from all of us at Facepunch, and we couldn't have done it without your passion and feedback. Rust has evolved around player feedback. It's not the game we initially set out to develop, but it's a game we're incredibly proud and passionate about to keep developing.
Thank you for being an integral part of this incredible journey, we look forward to delivering updates for the years to come.
What can you expect from us in 2024? More of the same! Guaranteed monthly updates every first Thursday of the month, along with frequent fixes, quality of life changes, improvements and holiday events.
Next Month
On February 1st, we'll release the backpack update. Backpacks will be a new craftable attire, allowing the player to carry more items.
Can't wait till February? Backpacks will be publicly playable on Staging next week, allowing everyone to test and give feedback.
Next month we'll also limit the number of shelters players can have placed at any one time.
Forwards
We have a ton of content currently in development, and if you're keeping an eye on our commits page, you'll already know some of them. This year, you can expect to see new and revamped monuments such as the compound, a tutorial system for new players, motorcycles, revamped server listings UI, new weapons.
A hot topic we see is improving the world and the environment. We have multiple patches lined up in 2024 to improve the world, creating unique buildable areas such as canyons and lakes and improving rivers. Procedurally generated caves, additionally, we'll be exploring and improving cliffs and rock formations.
We also plan to address the defender's advantage of sea-based monuments and events like the cargo ship. We are to rework the harbours, and the cargoship will soon dock with the harbours.
Outlined above is skimming the surface of only a few key features. We have a lot more planned.
But what about?
Performance?
Performance is always an ongoing process. We're constantly adding and improving new features monthly, often hidden in changelogs. There is no magic button to increase performance. Instead, it is a slow process of small gains.
Our immediate attention is on bringing memory usage down, which can provide a more stable and consistent FPS experience for some users. We've already got several improvements ready for internal testing and hopefully release in the coming month or two.
This year, we'll be bringing onboard new hires with a strong focus on performance.
We'll continue to share news on performance in our monthly development blogs.
Global Rendering?
We first announced Global networked bases in September. Global rendering aimed to reduce bases popping in, significantly increase the view distance of player structures and reduce some performance overhead when rendering bases. Immediately we ran into some issues, applied fixes, re-released, and ran into further problems, this process repeated a few times and then went into development limbo.
It was clear to us that we pushed this out too soon, with a lack of internal testing. We're making time over the next two months to thoroughly test and evaluate global rendering with the hope of releasing it publically again in March.
Pets?
If you follow our public commits page, you'll know we worked on pets for several months and suddenly stopped. For several reasons, we halted this project, and it will not be released this year.
Our goal is still to have pets in Rust, but we have several obstacles to overcome first.
We're currently hiring a game AI programmer to join the Rust team to help improve our AI and eventually assist in pets development.
Nexus?
Again, if you follow our public commits, you'll have seen the Nexus system. What is the Nexus system? In short, the Nexus system allows us to cluster servers together and enable players to travel from server to server to server using flight and boats, effectively linking an unlimited amount of servers, creating an environment where you can interact with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of players and explore multiple maps without the need to move servers permanently. Nexus opens many doors to us, for example, dedicated arctic maps and maps with advanced AI and high-yielding resource maps but with a dangerous environment.
We don't plan for Nexus to replace the current existing server format as you play currently, but rather an optional new way to play Rust if you wish if you choose to do so.
We plan to release Nexus in 2024 when ready, but much work is still ahead of us.
Night times?
Another hot topic within the community, for years between 2015-2019, we experimented with brighter nights. Whatever we tried, we saw many players using third-party tools to gamma boost to see at night and gain an unfair advantage over other players. It's a complex issue to address, if we increase light levels at night, we'll reopen old lessons which we know did not work in the past. Night time acts as a natural time for players to take a break, craft, build or use the cover of darkness to move loot or harvest resources, we want to retain this and allow players to use darkness to their advantage with the use of night vision and light sources.
We do agree that being unable to see entirely at night and unable to navigate around is not a good or fun experience, and we plan to revisit the subject early this year. The aim of the change is to allow players to navigate around at night more easily, if you want to PvP at night, then flashlights and night vision are still a must-have.
Anti-cheat?
A hugely complex topic. We work closely with Epic Games' Easy Anti-cheat, to aid in detecting and banning cheaters in Rust. We don't disclose what we do and don't do when it comes to anti-cheat for good reason. The more information we disclose publicly, the more it can assist cheaters and cheat developers to circumvent measures, it's a huge cat-and-mouse game.
One of the best anti-cheat measures is obscurity. The fewer people know what EAC and we are doing, the better. This comes with the drawback of not communicating enough, on the outside, it appears we're doing nothing. Almost every month, we're shipping improvements or fixing/restricting cheat features. We've fixed several high-priority exploits upon discovery or disclosure within hours through hotfixes we don't note publicly. EAC sometimes pushes several improvements weekly, which are applied when you start the game.
Our promise to you is we're actively monitoring and combating cheaters daily. Our internal systems keep improving, as do EAC. Last year, we overdoubled our support team to aid in player support issues, which included anti-cheat matters. This year we're dedicating more resources into anti cheat than ever and exploring some more radical measures.
Old Content?
We've set aside multiple months in our internal roadmap of light or no content. These gaps are deliberate to allow us to be versatile and adaptive to community feedback, time to focus and address old content, and improve recent content. We have a lot we can keep building upon, not all content we add to Rust is supposed to become meta, but rather adding yet another way of achieving a goal.
At a quick glance, here are just some of the changes ahead:
Older monument reworks and improvements
Continue experimenting and making meta changes to gunplay
Softcore game mode Improvements
Hardcore game mode experimenting
Experimenting with progression
Improvements to AI
Improvements to events such as the patrol helicopter, Launch site APC and Cargoship
World environment
Underwater exploration
Missions
Using our data analytics to identify less commonly used items and balancing
Experimenting with new ways/events to encourage players to engage with PvP
IMPROVEMENTS & FIXES HIGHLIGHTS
Ragdolls Improvements
Several server-side ragdolls improvements and fixes following last months changes
Map Focus Hotkey
Pressing F now focuses the players position when the map is open
Scrolling Item Descriptions
Long item descriptions now scroll
TRUST IN RUST - TWITCH DROPS
We're excited to announce that hJune has teamed up with Rustoria again for the next Trust in Rust tournament on Saturday, January 13th. Trust in Rust will be raising money for cancer research this year.
There will be Twitch drops!
Some exclusives for the event and general drops you can earn from your favourite creator channels.
This is a charity event!
Proceeds from exclusive store skins sales and event donations go to Cancer Research. Cancer Research is the world's leading independent cancer charity dedicated to saving lives through research, influence and information.
The Labor of Love Award - Final Voting
Thank you to everyone that nominated Rust into the final round of voting for the Steam Awards!
Voting is simple - you can vote for us above in the Labor of Love category. We need you to do it!
But it just so happens that over the last two weeks, we’ve been celebrating 10 years of Rust.
Here's a recap of the last 10 years of development, community, and more - it brought a tear to our eyes!
We’ve seen an unprecedented amount of new and returning players, and the community is now bigger and more engaged than ever before. With teams working around the clock, on almost every continent, we still continue to spend every day monitoring, maintaining, and nurturing the game. And we release monthly updates - without fail - delivering new content, lore, plus regular Twitch drops, and seasonal events.
We had many kind words about all the work we put into Rust and it was clear to many that over the past 10 years, the game has transformed from a mere survival game to a global phenomenon, captivating all kinds of players with its unique blend of challenges, creativity, ways to play, and community spirit. From groundbreaking procedural generation, to some of the most intense player interactions, Rust stands out as a testament to our creativity and we feel, the creativity within the wider gaming industry.
Recall those heart-pounding moments when survival meant outsmarting both the environment and other players. Rust's innovative gameplay has set the standard for emergent storytelling and PvP in the gaming world.
Rust's journey wouldn't be as remarkable without its vibrant and engaged community from all over the world. We, the developers at Facepunch Studios have continually embraced player feedback, ensuring that the game evolves with the input and creativity of its dedicated and growing player base. In the last 10 years, the game has undergone some huge changes, including graphic, physics, and engine updates and rebuilds, all because we’ve wanted to make Rust what it is, and what it could be.
Why vote for Rust? Let's take Rust to new heights! Winning the Labor of Love Steam Award would be the perfect way to honour Rust's incredible journey and the passionate community that has been an integral part of it.
How to Vote:
Make Your Voice Heard! Voting for Rust in the Steam Awards is quick and easy. Here's a step-by-step guide:
Visit the Steam Awards Page: Head over to the Steam Awards page on Steam.
Select the "Labor of Love" Category: Find the "Labor of Love" category, a perfect fit for Rust's emphasis on our commitment to the community and collaboration.
Cast Your Vote for Rust: Click on Rust to cast your vote and show your support for the game that has defined a decade of survival FPS.
As we celebrate Rust's 10th anniversary this month, let's unite and propel the game to new heights for many more years to come!
Vote for Rust! ːsteamthumbsupː
MERRY RUSTMAS!
MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
From everyone at Facepunch, we'd all like to wish you a Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone!
Rust and its DLC packs are currently on sale till the end of January with up to 50% off.
The Christmas Event is once again live! If you haven't been around for this before, here's what you can expect:
Every once in a while you will hear the sound of jingle bells. Run outside and look for a gift! Two gifts are spawned per player, in a radius of about 40m from where you are standing. Run up and bash it open to receive your Christmas presents. They come in three sizes: small, medium, and large. If you have enough small presents stashed, you can "trade up" to a medium or large. The contents of each present vary, but you'll find a mix of resources, weapons, and candy.
Once again, you will be able to find Santa hats and reindeer antlers, both of which can be worn and provide a decent amount of protection. There’s also a lickable candy cane club, and two types of stockings. If you hang a stocking inside your base when the jingle bells ring the stocking will fill up with loot. The larger stocking has a higher chance for better items and both last around 5-10 refills.
The advent calendar is a craftable deployable available to everyone during the Christmas event. Once placed you can claim an in-game surprise once every in-real-life day from the 16th of December.
The Christmas event ends on January 4th @ 19:00GMT
Have fun!
GINGERBREAD CAKE MINES
Run, run fast as you can, the gingerbread men are coming! Gingerbread houses have mysteriously started appearing throughout the world, leading to an underground dungeon, smelling a little like grandma's baking, but be careful, it's not going to be a cakewalk if you enter!
Server owners can adjust the portal count using the xmasdungeon.xmaspopulation convar.
RUSTMAS STORE ITEMS
We have brought some items from previous years, now purchasable from the Rust Item Store.
Since last year the festive garland pack now includes a double door garland. If you've already purchased this pack, you'll now be able to craft this item.
TWITCHMAS
This year, we've teamed up with Twitch to celebrate this festive season. To commemorate this landmark partnership, we're dropping winter-themed items, as seen below.
Learn more at twitch.facepunch.com
RUSTMAS BASE DECORATION CONTEST
We are excited to announce the annual Rustmas base decorating competition is back!
We're looking for the best festive base Rust has ever seen!
Winner
£120 worth of skins of their choosing and two Rust DLC/Items.
Runner up
£75 worth of skins of their choosing and one Rust DLC/Item.
How To Submit
Once you’ve completed decorating your base, take some screenshots or video and upload them to X/Twitter using the hashtag #Rustmas2023
Please also be following the Rust Twitter so we can DM you. If we do not get a response within 1 week of the winner announcement a new winner will be chosen.
Evaluation
Submissions will be judged based on the following:
Creativity
Design
Judging will be performed by Facepunch Staff.
Bonus points if you remove the UI and your graphics are set higher than 1 :)
Terms
This competition is run by Facepunch Studios Lt. The competition ends on January 4th 2024 23:59UTC. No more than three entries per person. The winner and runner-up will be selected based on which Facepunch thinks is the most original/creative and any decisions Facepunch makes will be final. The winner and runner up must claim their prizes within one month of the closing date (which Facepunch may exchange for an alternative of the same or greater value). Our terms of service apply to any content you make for the competition: https://facepunch.com/legal. Winning entries must pick items from the Rust marketplace with market value.
10 YEARS OF RUST
RUST 10TH ANNIVERSARY
This month marks Rust's 10th birthday. We’ll celebrate from today till the 16th of December with in-game birthday cake, hats, throwbacks and some new items.
Rust has undergone significant evolution since its launch in 2013. It initially began within the Unity Engine 4, playable in a web browser. Later, a standalone version launched on Steam early access, the beginning of which is now known to most as Rust Legacy. With rocky foundations, a complete overhaul was done to what we have today, known as Rust reboot, or just Rust nowadays.
Over the past ten years, Rust has sold over 16 million copies (not counting console).
Rust Legacy 2013
Rust exceeded everyone's expectations and has grown yearly for ten years. We have delivered monthly updates for ten years straight, as we continue to expand the Rust development team, we have no plans to stop providing you with guaranteed monthly updates.
Rust Reboot 2015
Below are some exciting metrics we've achieved over the past 10 years.
On behalf of everyone at Facepunch Studios, we'd like to wish you a Happy Holidays. In the January end-of-years blog, we'll discuss how 2023 has gone, what we've achieved, what we learned, and our upcoming plans for 2024.
PINATA
Take your best shot at the new Pinata deployable, available to be crafted for 500 wood. Destroying the Pinata will drop a random selection of goodies, remember to share with your teammates.
CONFETTI CANNON
Mark the occasion with the Confetti Cannon! Simply light the fuse and sit back while the confetti rains down.
LEGACY WOOD SHELTER
Remember those first few hours of Legacy Rust? Farming resources for your first big base, and needing a place to call home in the meantime? The shelter was the answer. Now it's back!
The shelter comes with an included door, key lock and even a small radius of building privilege! The perfect start to your Rust journey.
Shelters will decay naturally, provided the door isn't interacted with (by someone with a key or ownership of the shelter) at least once a day. Make sure you keep using your shelter in order to keep it! Shelters placed within a tool cupboard radius will use TC upkeep as normal. They can also be repaired with the hammer, the same as any other deployable.
Hello! I'm Ian, the new Gameplay Programmer! I remember cowering in my shelter back in 2013 Rust. It's incredible knowing I'm giving new players the same experience I had back in the day by bringing Vincent's awesome model to life.
I can't wait to bring you more in the future.
LEGACY BOW DLC
The legacy bow is a limited-time only store item which is only purchasable during the month of December. This bow skin pays homage to the first-ever bow model in Rust.
LEGACY WOOD BUILDING SKIN
Available now from the Rust store is the new Legacy Wood building skin, the first Wood building skin. Owning this skin will allow you to change the visuals of your wood tier base.
This skin is for sale at the Steam store. To use, simply equip your hammer tool, display the wheel, and enable building skins. This should reveal the skin's wheel on which you may choose Legacy Wood upgrade.
M4 SHOTGUN
The M4 shotgun was first introduced way back in Rust Legacy in 2013. To celebrate 10 years of Rust, we've decided to revive it. The M4 is an uncraftable military-grade shotgun; unlike other shotguns, the M4 has a much stronger range attack.
The M4 shotgun is a rare drop in high-end loot crates.
LEGACY FURNACE
The Legacy Furnace is a free skin for the furnace based on the original model from 2013.
To earn the Legacy Furnace, simply play for 3+ hours during the month of December. The furnace will be automatically issued to your Steam Inventory to use!
Fun Fact - The original furnace was made of starter rocks copied and pasted together in the shape of a furnace.
UPDATED PAINT UI
The paint UI has been in need of an overhaul for a while and that's what it got this patch! Not only does it look way better than before, it also has a lot of new features and improvements.
New features:
Eraser tool for all types of signs
Colour picker tool
Made the brush size and opacity options sliders (instead of buttons)
Added a brush spacing option as a slider
Added a more natural looking paint brush
Added two air brush types
Button to reset the camera to face the object straight on
Button to switch the preview lighting on or off (removes glare at some angles)
Allow chatting while in the painting UI, with a button to hide it
Bound Ctrl+S to the save button
Added a button to download the image currently being edited to your desktop
Now have bindable convars for controlling the tool and brush options while painting
paint.selectedtool lets you set the current tool (as a number starting from 0, wrapping around at the end)
paint.selectedbrush lets you set the current brush
paint.brushsize sets the brush size slider
paint.brushspacing sets the brush spacing slider
paint.brushopacity sets the brush opacity slider
Note: These function as convars so binds like "bind L meta.add paint.selectedtool 1" will switch to the next tool
Note: You may need to re-open the paint UI after adding a bind when the paint UI is open
Improvements:
Fixed ugly UI, made it easier for us to maintain the three different types of paint UIs
Added canvas scaler so UI isn't tiny at large resolutions
Fixed gap visible between preview and right UI at some resolutions
Clicks on top of UI will now never paint on the sign
Added tooltips to all buttons so it is clear what they do
The Contact Shadow option has been in the Experimental section for some years now. I believe the main reason for this is related to a very obvious over-darkening of Grass/Foliage shadows. Foliage materials have a shadow intensity option that allows artists to control penumbra darkness, making it a bit more realistic. Contact Shadows, basically, ignore that parameter.
Last month, I decided to go over it and fix the problem, while tweaking and optimizing the effect in the process.
It should now look a lot more seamless when toggling on/off, respecting shadow intensity while still grounding the grass.
HAPIS ISLAND
Continuing with the theme of throwbacks to celebrate Rust's 10th Birthday, you've asked, we've listened, Hapis Island is back.. again! This map version is community-made and based on the 2018 version. If there's one thing the Rust community doesn't lack, it is passion.
We plan to host Hapis Island until March 2024.
We're hosting two servers of Hapis Island across different regions. These can be found in the official server list by searching "Hapis"
US - 54.39.130.95:28015 EU - 51.210.222.218:28015
IMPROVED RAGDOLL BEHAVIOUR
Player ragdolls - the floppy state a player's body enters after being killed - have been revamped this month.
They can now collide with all vehicles in the game (trains, cars, boats, helicopters etc), where previously they simply fell through. Issues with ragdolls stretching out unnaturally have also been eliminated. If you ever saw a corpse where the interaction wasn't lined up with the visible ragdoll, that's fixed too.
Old Behaviour
When a player died, a corpse entity used to spawn that was basically just a pelvis-sized collider, which was physically simulated on the server. The position of that "corpse" would sync with every client.
On the client side, a separate "ragdoll" object would spawn, that was a whole visible person with a full set of physically simulated limbs. That ragdoll was attached to the server-side-simulated corpse basically by a tight spring.
The corpse object controlled the actual loot interaction.
Essentially the intention was:
Let the client do the work of simulating a whole body. We don't really care how their arms and legs are positioned, on the server. If it's different between clients, also don't care.
Keep the loot interaction consistent between clients by simulating just that part on the server.
Keep the (client-side) ragdoll and the (server-side) corpse together with the spring.
In reality, things were not perfect:
If a player died somewhere like the top of a wall, the corpse might fall down but not the ragdoll, or vice versa. Since the collision setup was quite different between (server-side) corpse and (client-side) ragdoll - only the pelvis area matched - this was relatively common. The result would be a mismatched position between corpse and ragdoll, sometimes putting the interaction in a strange place.
The client-side ragdoll joints really did not like working with the pelvis position data that was coming from the server. If movement was sudden, rather than just ending up in the wrong place, the ragdoll would sometimes stretch out unnaturally.
If a ragdoll was on a moving vehicle, things were especially bad, to the point that we couldn't enable ragdoll collision with vehicles at all. Things would happen like a ragdoll dangling under a scrap heli because it had fallen out but the "corpse" hadn't.
This was exacerbated by the fact that the client-side ragdoll physics simulation didn't work well with the fact that the vehicle was being moved on the server, rather than simulating on the client like the ragdoll was. Although the physics did work, they acted like the surface had zero friction, so the ragdoll would tend to slide around while the server-side corpse wanted to stay put - and the spring kept trying keep them together.
New Behaviour
My first instinct for the simplest fix was to try just locking the ragdoll to the corpse, rather than using a spring. That would force them to stay together.
Unfortunately locking the pelvis to a position that was coming from the server, whilst simulating all the connected joints on the client, made the physics system very unhappy. Trying Unity tricks like using 'rigidbody.MovePosition' versus '.position', projection on or off, more solver iterations etc didn't really help. The limbs would really want to stay where they were while the pelvis pulled them around, and you'd just end up with a horrifying stretched-out ragdoll instead of one that was simply in the wrong place. Plus the limbs still had some of the old problems, like the zero-friction-on-vehicles issue.
The pelvis also didn't always simulate well for a full body, since it didn't have any of the connected torso/legs/arms/head, so it'd try to go places the full body didn't want to go. The spring allowed for that kind of leeway, but a fixed connection didn't.
So ragdoll-on-vehicle support was going to require either writing a custom physics solution for simulating the limbs on the client plus making something better for the pelvis simulation on the server side, or moving the whole ragdoll simulation to the server.
Ultimately the custom physics solution was going to require most of the same work that a fully server-simulated ragdoll was, on top of being difficult to code on my own in a way that came out superior to what Unity has already managed with 7,700 employees. So server-side ragdolls was the winner.
The new ragdolls work like this:
A corpse spawns on the server, and that corpse is a fully simulated ragdoll with limbs etc.
The base position of that corpse syncs to the client like it did before, but now the limbs also sync, in an efficient way that's packed into a couple of 32-bit integers.
The client no longer has a ragdoll object that's separate from the corpse. The corpse is the ragdoll, and it's simulated only on the server.
That basically eliminates all the problems at once, apart from the performance cost on the server of simulating more than it did before. To handle that, I've made sure that ragdolls stop simulating as soon as they've settled down, including when they're on a moving vehicle. Overall the performance cost on the server is low, and behaviour is much improved.
Reverting
If anything does go wrong, there is a new 'serversideragdolls` console command that can be set true or false. It's now true by default, but setting it to false will immediately revert to the old system.
IMPROVEMENTS & FIXES HIGHLIGHTS
Industrial Pipe Colors
Added teal, orange, pink & purple
Sprinkler Water Fix
Fix sprinklers wasting up to 40% of water (4 or 9 planters)
Fixed Tugboat FPS
Tugboats were rarely causing a large FPS drop when coming into range
Car Lift Pickup
The car lift can now be picked up when not in use
Hot Air Balloon
Fixed Players falling out of the hot air balloon
Heli Crate Remodel
Updated patrol heli crate
Fixed Explosive Ammo Splash
In some situations, explosive ammo was not correctly applying splash damage
Square Sun
Did you ever notice the sun was square sometimes? No? Well, it's fixed
Controls Search
Added a search box to the binds sections of the options menu
Drone ID
Drones now show their ID inside the player's inventory
Ore Harvesting
Ore collection tools now have a slightly further attack, no longer have to duck/crouch to harvest
Bandage Revive
You can now revive players by using a bandage on them, restoring a small amount of health
OIL RIG RADIATION
Exactly 1 year ago we increased the respawn delay of oil rigs from 30min -> 1 hour.
We noticed something strange though... the monument was sometimes taking hours (plural!) to refresh. After looking into it we realized some players were staying on Oil Rig & blocking the respawn for a number of reasons; ranging from farming resources to siting afk in vents to grief the monument.
Radiation will now appear on oil rig 30 minutes after the hacked crate unlocks. It will apply low but consistent radiation (regardless of what armor you are wearing) forcing players to leave oil rig after the event is over.
We also resolved the issue of players leaving a single item inside the hacked crate to keep the crate's map marker on the map when it was "empty".
To communicate this new change with radiation there are multiple danger indicators when it starts:
Note: that the alarm sound has changed what danger is signifies: it has changed from "heavy scientists incoming" to "radiation starting".
These changes should ensure the Oil Rig event keeps refreshing & you always have loot to fight over.
END OF YEAR RETIREMENTS
As the year ends, we look back at what has and hasn't worked well, we have decided to make the following changes:
Hardcore
Hardcore was released in August 2022, a game mode aimed towards veteran players, with creature comforts such as safe zones, team systems and maps disabled. Since its release, hardcore has seen a declining player base, and we feel now is the right time to retire Hardcore from official servers.
It was an exciting game mode for us to experiment with, but we missed the mark on its implementation.
We have collected a lot of community feedback for if and when we choose to revamp this gamemode in 2024.
Hardcore can still be enabled on community servers.
Barren
Barren was introduced as a map to cater for the low-end system and before the introduction of custom maps. We've made some advancements in performance since, regular community use of custom maps, and declined user base on Barren servers, we feel now is the right time to retire Barren.
We also think Barren looks ugly and not a good representation of Rust.
CHRISTMAS UPDATE
On December 16th at 19:00GMT / 14:00 EST, we'll be releasing an optional server and client update to enable the Xmas event and some festive features!
During this period anyone that purchases 2 (two) subscriptions from any participating Rust Streamer will earn an exclusive Creator Computer Station to use in game! Participation is open to any Partner or Affiliate on Twitch, streaming Rust.
There are some qualifications and steps involved to redeem the Creator Computer station please inquire the FAQs on our website for more info!
On December 11th at 8:00 pm GMT a team of 150 well-known Twitch creators from around the world will compete in this massive global Rust competition, taking place over 5 days with a prize pool worth $100k.
During the Twitch Rivals event, Rust Twitch drops will be enabled for 5 days from selected participating channels, and well-known streamers such as hJune, Welyn, Willjum, Panpots, Buddha, DisguisedToast, Mendo and many more.
We'd like to thank Rustoria for working with us and Twitch to make this event possible.
Another monthly round-up of data that we've captured in the last 30 days. We've got a lot of data at hand but we're trying to pick out the more interesting bits to share.
The data shown below is only from Facepunch official servers, we eliminate data from community-run servers to ensure accuracy within the data we share.
