A major part of Rust is its brutal nature and ruthless PvP, when we added the softcore gamemode last year we saw and have continued to see feedback that many of you want a game mode which takes away the standard Vanilla comforts we've added throughout the years and gives a more ruthless, hardcore experience, so we've done just that.
Introducing Hardcore mode - a new game mode in Rust aimed towards veteran players, gone are the comforts such as safezones, team system and maps but don't worry, the vast majority of our servers will still be regular vanilla Rust.
During this first pass, you will find the following changes on Hardcore servers:
Added:
Local chat (100m range)
Limit of 5 sleeping bags & beds
In-game changelog (top left of inventory)
Removed:
Contact system
Compass
Crawling when wounded
Global chat
Rust+
Team system
Map
MLRS
Safe zones
Changed:
Blueprints wipe monthly
We believe this is a good starting place for a less forgiving game mode of Rust and we will continue to iterate and improve on it moving forward. If you're a server owner and wish to enable hardcore use the following var in your server startup config "-gamemode hardcore"
10 new official servers will be launching today with this new game mode.
Furnaces & cooking interfaces were cumbersome and not intuitive for newer players to use, requiring precise splitting of stacks to smelt efficiently, online calculators and guides to manage efficiently. We disliked this and felt we could do better, so we revamped the UI and some functionality.
They smelt and cook at the same speed & capacity (or better!) as before while being quick and easy to use.
With this update, you'll no longer be able to store non cooking/smelting-related items inside your cooking deployables (furnace/campfire), to address this see storage buff below.
Over the past couple of years, we've quadrupled the number of in-game items and switched over to the component system, all of which require large amounts of additional storage. Now with the cooking and smelting UI revamp and removing the ability to store items within these deployables (campfire, furance etc) it was overdue we took a look at storage.
Today we've increased the small wooden storage capacity to 18 from 12 and the large wooden box to 48 from 30.
In the future expect to see new types of storage solutions.
I made some simple improvements to the coaling tower that aired in our last update inside the Trainyard monument.
These changes include a new way to access the tower from the top where the suspended bridge is located. This will make retreat from the building easier when the area is contested.
Community Update 245
Rivals Recap
Settle in, we've got a lot to cover.
Rust x Twitch Rivals 2 was a huge success! First we'll cover some of the Twitch stats surrounding the event.
This is only our second event and we feel it was much better than the first. With time we'll perfect it and turn it into one of the best events on Twitch!
Full list of player awards, stats, and top 5 Twitch clips can be found here.
Raid Cam
Been a while since we've seen a raid cam! Ser Winter brought us a massive one from one of the Reddit servers. Let him know if you want to see more!
Creator Spotlight
This month we have Albin! Somehow he got the most kills AND the most deaths in the recent Rival's event. This guy seeks out danger.
"In 2016 (I was 15 at the time), I was playing too much CSGO and was starting getting to get bored of it. Was really good timing that my friends could show me Rust as a another first person shooter game.
Fell in love with the game in my first few hours of playing and been playing ever since.
What I love about this game is that you can do sooooo many different things. Everyday is different! Of course, just the pure chaos that can occur. Its not like CSGO when you load in to a match on same map everyday. The people I was watching the most was hJune, Frost, Ramsey. But hJune was the one I watch the most I was like 'how is this guy so hecking good at this game?'. Made me wanna get as good as him."
I'm always in awe at the crazy amount of talented players we have in Rust. The things they can do with in game signs warms my heart. Even the meme ones!
The above-ground rail network is now connected up to the Trainyard area, and the Trainyard has a new tower that can unload certain types of train wagons.
Railway sidings will now sometimes spawn unloadable wagons in several varieties
Ore wagons filled with sulfur, iron, or charcoal
Fuel tank wagons filled with low grade fuel
Loot wagons that can be unloaded to reveal loot crates
All of these can be hooked up to a train and taken to the unloading tower at Trainyard for unloading. You'll need a green keycard and a fuse to get full access, after which you can unload as many wagons as you like. Ore and fuel go into an output hopper and fuel tank respectively inside the tower. Loot wagons activate their crates when emptied so you can then go out and loot them.
The above-ground Work Cart train engine has been reduced in power, and is now only able to pull a small amount of train cars at a time. The large new Locomotive provides superior pulling power instead.
Two new throwable items have been added to the game.
The Molotov Cocktail is a powerful area denial weapon which slows movement and deals damage over time. It can also be used to damage and destroy wooden structures.
The Flashbang is a short fuse, low damage explosive which will blind and disorient anyone unfortunate enough to be in the blast radius and looking in it's general direction. We're hoping the addition of this tool reduces the benefit of corner camping and shakes up how room clearing is approached
Both are available in the tech tree of the T2 workbench.
The lighting in Rust has been quite outdated for a long time. The primary reason for this have been our highly dynamic environments that prevent us from using any sort of statically baked lighting data. This resulted in flat and boring looking environments, particularly in areas that weren't receiving any direct light. To combat this, I finally implemented our own ambient lighting model that uses a blurred version of our existing reflection data, which is already completely dynamic.
The new lighting model is of course enabled for everybody, but it comes with a few customization options. The previous "World Reflections" quality setting has been replaced with two toggles in the "Experimental" graphics options: Advanced interior lighting, which when enabled includes player bases in the new lighting model, and advanced forest lighting, does the same for trees.
I spent a good part of the month looking for client performance optimisations with varying levels of success.
I removed a variety of unnecessary components from all humanoid NPCs (Scientist, dwellers, shopkeepers, etc). This should reduce the performance hit when entering network range of an NPC.
I removed unnecessary components from various static entities that are placed in monuments (think vending machines, chairs, etc). This should make them spawn faster when entering network range.
I made some changes to our LOD system to more aggressively disable shadows in places where it will make no visual difference. This includes any static prop that is considered "small" and parts of the player body (clothing, eyebrows, teeth, etc). These changes should reduce the number of shadow casting meshes when more than a couple of meters away from a prop or player. Both of these changes can be disabled by the graphics.AggressiveShadowLod and graphics.AggressiveShadowLodWearable convars but they will be enabled by default this month.
Underground props that are part of the train tunnels are now more aggressively culled if you aren't in a train tunnel.
Made more potential optimisations to the performance drop when hitting a tree/resource node. This is mostly due to the UI animating in the bottom right of the screen and a lot of the performance cost is happening outside of our control. I've still made a few improvements that should hopefully improve it but there is still a mild performance drop.
I spent some time over the past few weeks adding new lights to a bunch of our older monuments. Now nearly all of them should be covered this pass, aside from a few monuments that are meant to be completely abandoned and should remain dark. This includes monuments such as Harbors, Power Plant and the Trainyard.
In addition, you will find that the monuments covered by the lighting pass will now feature light switches that you can use to toggle the lights on and off. You can now decide whether you want the comfort of seeing clearly in the dark at a risk of being seen by other players, turn the lights off for your safety while exploring, or use them to ambush unsuspecting players.
We recently saw a video from hJune which helped us identify a long standing issue with the aiming code. Basically, if you when into ADS mode shortly after running, the weapon bob was not immediately disabled, and instead took far too long to gradually dissipate.
This resulted in a disparity between the weapon sight and the true aim direction, meaning you were not actually aiming at your target for the first several shots. This has been fixed and aiming down the sight should feel a lot more responsive and snappy.
Thanks to everyone for taking the time to report offensive content last month, we were able to clear a lot of content on official servers as a result.
To help us quickly act on your reports, I made a Slack tool this month that allows us to remove any reported content directly from Slack, without having to load the game up. If server owners are looking for similar functionality we can recommend the Discord Sign Logger plugin by MJSU.
On August 9th at 8:00 pm GMT a team of 160 well-known Twitch creators world 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, well-known streamers such as hJune, Mendo, Welyn, Bchillz, Willjum, Panpots and of course the team captains Thegrefg, dhalucard, xqc and Disguised Toast.
Over the course of the 5 days, teams will build up their bases and supplies. Eliminating each other from day 3 onwards with the last man standing on day 5.
We'd like to thank Rustoria for working with us and Twitch to make this event possible.
We updated our legal documents, to comply with recent consumer protection and data protection law changes since we last visited the documents in 2019. We re-added an IP infringement notice form that had disappeared somehow. You can see all historic versions at https://github.com/Facepunch/Legal.
The changes will take effect in the next 30 days and you can email any questions to legal@facepunch.com.
I touched on this last summer in a Update 235 but we felt being able to mute other players was a little convoluted and could use a facelift.
We've now added some options to the contact card system. Here you will now have both a mute button and a report button. This could be incredibly useful to someone not wanting to hear close proximity mic spam.
Here you can Mute, Report, and put notes about the player. You can set them as friendly or enemy.
Reporting players for bad behavior is always good as it leave a "papertrail" and many community servers scrub for these reports. Using in-game reporting options will capture all the relevant information required to check into them.
Always good to check with your favorite server of choice on their preferred way to report.
Kusha showing off their monument making skills. These are part of a 3 monument bundle and come from a 3 story Bank/Vault (with puzzles) and the other is part of a Cafe.
This month we have Real&Game! He specializes in recreating life-size Rust items in the real world.
"I've known the game for about six years. And one day I just wanted to make a real thing from the game, so that it would always be with me. Making a real things from the game and holding it in my hands is a fantastic feeling. Words cannot say it. I love being a part of the game, I enjoy my hobby and I will do cooler stuff whenever possible."
I'm a little late on discovering this gem but omar 8-BIT redid Bandit in Unreal Engine 5. It's pretty great and gets bonus point for using Anno1800 soundtrack for it! One of my personal faves.
Since the release of the Combat Update, we've monitored player feedback and overall we're happy with the state of the gunplay in Rust. We will continue to listen, and make adjustments when needed.
The fuse time on the F1 grenade has been decreased by 0.5 to 2.5s. During combat testing we felt that grenades were a bit too easy to evade under most circumstances. Maybe some day we will allow players to cook grenades but right now that seems like it would be a bit too cheap of a tactic.
The M39 has had it's role changed so it feels more like a superior SAR. Its fire rate has been increased and recoil modified.
We've also noticed that shotgun slugs were very underused so we have reduced the damage falloff so that shotgun users can opt to utilize them in mid range combat and stand a chance.
Lastly, we've fixed a long standing issue with viewmodels where the first shot shortly after ADSing would play the non-ADS animation and obscure the screen with the view model. All weapons should feel much more snappy now.
Following the release of the combat update last month we addressed the following issues earlier this month, here is a recap:
Improved hide blood option
Added hurt flash disable option
m249 is slightly more aggressive
HMLMG recoil is more aggressive
Lowered HMLMG durability
Increased HMLMG crafting cost
Using scopes on weapons now increases their recoil
Reduced blur/blood effects
Accuracy bonus removed from the silencer
Loading Optimization
We worked on reducing the time it takes to load into servers this month. It will now queue up the loading of assets so they can continue being read from disk while the main thread spawns all of the world prefabs, which means better utilization of hardware. This also applies to the dedicated server so server owners may see some improvement with boot times.
The long "Asset Warmup" phase of loading will now start running in the background as soon as the game reaches the main menu. Connecting to a server will not wait for it to complete -- it will keep running in the background until it finishes.
The game will no longer unload monument assets when running on a computer with 16GB or more of RAM. This allows for much faster server switching because the monument assets would already be loaded. Setting the global.forceUnloadBundles convar to true will override that behavior so it always unloads the monument assets.
Gunshot sounds
Alex finished up the remaining new gunshot sounds this month, including new silent shots for every gun. We'll likely do another round of tuning on these in the next month or so to address some feedback we've gotten but we'd like to allow time for folk's ears to adjust and the dust to settle before we dig too deep into that.
General QOL
Spray Can crosshair - Added a crosshair when free spraying
Mute and report contacts - Can now mute/unmute and report players from the contacts screen
Placement Rotation - Mailbox, BBQ, Medium Battery and Windmill now face toward the player by default
Return To Sender - Can now insert photos into mailbox
Inventory idle animation - Updated player inventory idle animation
Jackhammer Tapping - Jackhammer will hit hotspot every time without tap firing
UGC Admin Panel
To better help server admins moderate the content on a server, I've implemented a new section in the Server Admin tab that allows admins to easily see all of the User Generated Content on a server. This includes all painted signs, audio content on cassettes, carvable pumpkins, neon signs and pattern boomers.
As well as being able to see/hear the content, admins can now see who was responsible for the content and delete the content from the UI without having to travel to that entity. There is also a search field so all content created by a specific player can be found quickly.
Offensive Content Reporting
We've improved the process of reporting problematic content this month by implementing a new Offensive Content report type. When reporting offensive content a screenshot will now be included to better help admins act on the issue.
For server admins, there are new convars to better access these reports: reportsServerEndpoint - if set, player reports on your server will be sent to this http address (as JSON) printReportsToConsole - if set, player reports will be logged to the server log
For more information on using these new convars, please see the wiki.
Hapis Island updates
Along with numerous small bugfixes, we've added 3 new monuments to Hapis Island. Two of them in the desert, and one in the northern arctic.
We also fixed most of the mountain goat ore nodes, berry bushes not spawning, roadside spawns being overly sparse, and updated some existing monuments to be more in line with where they now stand on Procedural Map.
Some bugs still remain, but we're ironing it out. Thanks for all the bug reports!
Harmony QOL
You can now load/reload harmony mods onto the server at runtime with:
`harmony.load `
and unload with:
`harmony.unload `
This will allow all server owners (vanilla or modded) to deploy fixes onto their servers without needing to restart them, as well as ease development of harmony mods.
Chat Filtering
We're now using Steam's chat filtering functionality to obscure strong language and slurs in chat and other text players can share in the game.
The filtering is applied on the client and can be customized in your Steam account preferences. If you haven't changed these settings before then filtering would already be enabled.
DEBUG CAMERA ADDITIONS
A few new debug camera commands have been added this month for content creators to use. As with existing camera tools, these can only be used by server admins or in demo playback.
Physical Camera Properties
We've added the ability for the debug camera to use physical camera properties - in other words, you can choose from common camera sensor types and specify a focal length to mimic real world photography measurements.
Below are the newly added commands for using physical camera settings: client.camphysical (1/0) - Enable/disable physical camera properties on debug camera client.camphysicalsensortypes - Prints camera sensor types with corresponding number client.camphysicalsensor - Select physical sensor for debug camera (use sensor ID number from the above 'sensortypes' convar) client.camphysicalfocallength - Set focal length of the debug camera (Measured in mm)
Camera Info UI
Along with the above physical camera commands, we've also added camera information UI which can be enabled/disabled using the command client.showcaminfo 1/0
When enabled, this overlay will display the following information at the top of the screen: Camera FOV Depth of field aperture and blur values Camera lock status (debugcamera_lock) Sensor type (if using physical camera mode) Focal length (if using physical camera mode)
MAP MAKER PREFABS
This month we've added some useful assets for community map makers - the most notable being the introduction of tiled cube prefabs. The current collection features over 60 cubes with materials including brick, wood, metal, concrete, plaster, metal, cloth and more.
Each cube can be scaled, rotated and positioned in custom map scenes whilst maintaining the local tiling of the individual prefab's texture.
We look forward to seeing the many creative ways map makers will utilize these assets and we hope to continue expanding this collection in the future.
Acknowledgements
We're currently aware and investigating certain performance issues affecting a large number of users, this is also known to be affecting third-party applications such as Discord, we believe this is possibly fixed today via an update by EAC.
We are also actively investigating a number of other areas with poor performance.
Changelist
Added tiled cube prefabs for community map makers
Added chat filtering
Improved M39 DPS and recoil
Lowered F1 grenade fuse time to 2.5s (was 3.0s)
Shotgun slugs have reduced damage falloff
Achievement todo list is now disabled if game tips are turned off in the game options
Added a crosshair while free spraying with a Spray Can
Increased the default number of sprays per player (25 -> 40)
Can now Mute and Report players from the Contacts screen
Z/C/Y keys no longer control zoom when in free camera (replaced with debugcamera_zoomin and debugcamera_zoomout binds)
Added debugcamera_raise and debugcamera_lower binds instead of hardcoding to Q/E
Added physical camera convars for the debug camera
Added camera info overlay command for the debug camera
Kayak now faces away from the player deploying by default
Mailbox, BBQ, Medium Battery and Windmill now face toward the player by default
(CUI) Add support for vertical overflow on Text components
Updated player inventory idle animation
Added interaction sounds for small loot containers (food, medical, tech, ammunition, etc)
Updated generic loot crates with existing interaction sounds
Hapis Island: Added 3 new monuments
Jackhammer will hit hotspot every time without tap firing
Torch despawns after 30 seconds
Dropped backpacks will despawn after 30 seconds for rocks + torches
Streamer mode will hide map name in server browser
Can insert photos into mailbox
`benchmark_demo {demo}` command to run the benchmark on different demos
Can connect 'domain.com' without a port on the end
Servers will no longer show the name of the custom map, only "Custom Map" if they are running one
Optimized bulk loading assets from bundles
Improved hide blood option
Added hurt flash disable option
m249 is slightly more aggressive
HMLMG recoil is more aggressive
Lowered HMLMG durability
Increased HMLMG crafting cost
Using scopes on weapons now increases their recoil
Reduced blur/blood effects
Accuracy bonus removed from the silencer
Fixed first shot while ADSing sometimes playing the non-ADS fire animation
Fixed missing deploy sound for combat knife
Fixed missing sounds for smoke grenades and supply signals
Fixed missing crosshairs and camera movement while first person spectating
Fixed smoke grenade effects not working correctly with first person spectating
Fixed horses not properly moving with elevators
Fixed error with a particular configuration of items when making Low Grade at a Mixing Table
Fixed missing localization on progress bar when Hold to dismount is enabled
Fixed some deployable entities changing rotation every time they are selected on the belt
(CUI) Fixed some skin id's not loading correctly (PR#37)
Fixed some missing sfx on the Spray Can
Fixed an exploit when changing water quality
Fixed flashlights & laser needing to be turned on every time you equip them
Fixed exploit to steal attachments out of shop fronts
Fixed nodes & animals taking extra hits
Hapis Island: Fixed berries not spawning
Hapis Island: Fixed roadside spawns being overly scarce
Hapis Island: Fixed numerous other reported issues.
Fixed flashlights & laser needing to be turned on every time you equip them
Fixed exploit to steal attachments out of shop fronts
Fixed nodes & animals taking extra hits
Fixed animal headshots not playing hitmarker
Fixed exploit to let you keep last item in softcore
Fixed ability to shoot through armored window collider
Fixed exploit to keep shopfront standing when breaking wall frame
Fixed debris not created for walls on triangle foundations
Fixed research tables getting stuck researching
Community Update 243
Custom Rust Deskmats
Last week we announced our exciting partnership with EpicDesk! They are a custom desk/mouse pad producer that specialize in limited edition campaigns for content creators!
They have a few campaigns live right now you can check out for pre-order. With more creators being signed up regularly.
If you are a dedicated Rust content creator be sure to reach out and see what magic can be made!
Beautiful Rust Poetry
As some of you may know we had one of our most controversial updates last patch. It caused quite a stir in the community!
Here's Roman Fever with a festive, poetic recap in the tone of snarky.
Creator Spotlight
This month we have the ever-so-graceful Blazed!
"Hi, I'm Blazed, I have been playing rust for over 6 years and streaming on twitch for 2 years. My friend originally introduced me to rust and I haven’t stopped playing rust since.
I began gaming on original ps2, and moved to PC games playing Arma 3 and counter strike, and eventually Rust. I love that rust has no set way to play, it keeps it fresh and fun to play for long amounts of time, and I look forward to playing for many years to come!"
They just released their latest monument, the Robotics Lab, for the Mars map! This monument is comparable to Airfield on Earth. High/Mid-Tier Loot, Blue Card Puzzle, and Red Card Spawn.
Details on how you can check it out on their website!
Speedpaints
I'm a sucker for a good in-game Rust art and speedpainting! Pronwan knocked it out of the park.
Today, we're releasing an update to the gunplay in Rust. The initial implementation of the weapons in Rust was done nearly 7 years ago and hasn't been significantly modified since it's inception. While these changes will be controversial, We believe these changes are necessary for the health of the game.
Recoil
The old recoil system in rust had some issues. It was loved by some, and hated by others.
If you didn't have hundreds if not thousands of hours practicing the recoil in rust, Firing at people in the game would often feel like attempting to align two like poled magnets. Frustrating would be an understatement.
Ultimately, being good at first person shooters and having the drop on someone wasn't good enough. If the other person had thousands of hours of training their aim you stood very little chance.
This was fun for people who could spend thousands of hours training their aim, or morally bankrupt individuals who would choose to use scripts to gain an advantage. This was not fun for 99% of the population, and it's time for a change.
Instead of pattern based recoil, we now implement a gradient based aim drift and inaccuracy for automatic weapons. That is to say, the longer you hold down the trigger, the more inaccurate the weapon becomes. It still takes skill to try and keep it centered on the target, but it is not the same with each burst. We've also updated aimcone (inaccuracy of bullets relative to where you are aiming )to use a weighted system, so that roughly 20% of the shots will land in the center. This means that automatic fire at a long range effectively decreases DPS. This encourages players to use the right weapons in the right situations and to improve their tactics and burst discipline. There should be less 200m beaming going on. What this has done is compressed the skill ceiling, and we think this is a good thing.
Perfectly replicated recoil also meant that mouse scripts could be abused to put 30 rounds on target at 200m, every time.
In addition to the aforementioned recoil changes, we went through and modernized some other elements of the 'first person shooter' experience.
Sounds
The most immediately noticeable change is the sound effects of most of the guns have been updated. This might take some getting used to but the quality has improved significantly.
View models
The View Models have had their dynamic animations updated. You'll notice the walking bob is much improved, as is the sway when looking left/right/up/down. It's a small change but helps to bring things into this decade.
View Models also have a crisper punch back when firing, and they animate the main camera during reloads to emphasize the hand actions.
We've added head bob which is active when sprinting, it's a small touch but adds to the experience. You can turn this off in the options.
All of these elements combined gives the weapons in rust a much cleaner and modern feeling.
Hit punch & directional markers
We also felt that there were some issues knowing where you were taking damage from, with large splotches of blood covering most of the screen during high damage encounters.
We've changed this so that you now receive a smaller semicircle blood splat indicating the direction you took damage from, and a small amount of Screen Shake. Please note that silenced shots will not produce a damage indicator on the victims HUD.
Hit cross
We've added a visual hit indicator to accompany the sound you're all familiar with. Upon landing a successful hit onto another player or AI you'll now notice a hit marker cross briefly appearing.
Crosshair
10 years ago in legacy rust, people would tie dental floss to the top and sides of their monitor to create a crosshair in the center. Now everyone can simply enable one on their monitor or using third party software. Because of this we decided to add a crosshair to the game natively.
The crosshair will give you a rough idea of your accuracy based on the weapon you are holding and your stance. We'll be looking at crosshair customization options in the future, as well as specific crosshairs for different weapon types (melee/throwing, etc.) The crosshair can be disabled within the options menu if you hate it and third party crosshairs are allowed to be used.
As always, this is a work in progress, We're going to review all the feedback and continue to make adjustments until we get this right. Everything is subject to change.
Handmade LMG
The handmade light machine gun is a new tier 3 craftable weapon, with high damage, a high rate of fire, and low accuracy but great at suppressing fire.
Crafting cost: 30 HQM, 1 rifle body, 2 metal springs and 3 gears.
Extended magazine
The extended magazine is a new tier 2 weapon attachment which can be attached to most guns, providing an additional 25% ammo capacity.
Crafting cost: 10 high quality metal.
Mixing Table Ammo
Hate standing around crafting ammo? You can now craft basic ammo types from the mixing table. Players are still required to have the ammo blueprint unlocked.
General QOL
Rail Speed Boost - Horses on train tracks receive the same speed boost as on roads
Coupled Car Display - The train's screen now shows the number of connected cars
Land Mine - The Landmine is now scaled down
Projectile Invalid - We've resolved a number of invalid projectiles whilst shooting under low ceiling
Vehicle Sensitivity - Vehicles will now grab all mouse input leading to smoother control
Compound Bow - Now loses less durability while held back
An artifact of fixing vehicle sensitivity is players are used to the incorrect sensitivity. If your vehicle still feels difficult to control, please use the in-game options menu "Vehicle sensitivity" slider or the console command 'vehicle_sensitivity 0.8' (whatever value you want) to adjust to your liking.
Launch Site AI
Scientists have been added to the main building at the Launch Site monument. You can expect to see them patrolling the various floors as well as the rooftop area.
As with some of the other recently added Scientists, these ones can use healing items, too.
Covered Work cart
There's a new Work Cart train variant that will sometimes spawn on the above-ground rails, which has some more cover at the back. It's marginally slower than the other one, but otherwise behaves the same.
In the near future, we have a proper new locomotive and more rail system updates on the way.
Rail Sidings
Expanding upon last month's rail network changes, this month we added closer rail sidings to sections of the rail network. Train spawns have been moved to those sidings in order to free up the main rail for traffic.
Graffiti Pack
The spray can has received an upgrade with the Graffiti Pack available in the Item store. Once purchased, you can choose from a variety of decals to spray in the world, as well as a free paint mode letting your creativity run wild.
Once purchased, hold Reload (R) to browse the decal options or to switch to free spray mode. While in free spray mode you can press Interact (E) to change spray size and Reload to change colour or switch back to decal mode.
Found some graffiti on your base? Simply interact with the spray while holding something filled with water (Bota bag, bucket, bottle, etc) to clear the spray off.
By default sprays should last three hours. There is a cap on how many sprays can be sprayed by a given player (25 at the moment) that we'll keep an eye on and raise if possible in future updates. Streamers should note that sprays sprayed by other players won't be visible when "Hide Signs" is active, although your own signs will still be visible.
The reskin ability remains unchanged and is still available to everyone.
Hapis Island
For those of you who prefer more familiar surroundings, we're releasing the updated Hapis Island today, which has been AWOL ever since our last graphical update broke it. It should all be pretty familiar, with the exception that we decided to expand the desert in the south, and make it a proper desert this time.
We've also added a few more secondary islands, along with some other small additions that I'll leave you to discover. Later on I expect we will add the new railroads to it as well, but for now we just wanted to get it out there.
All blueprints on Facepunch Hapis Island servers will be wiped today.
Steam Point Store
We're finally releasing the updated Rust Steam Point store today, Lewis and Paddy have been working hard on improving the quality and quantity of the store assets.
We'll be expanding the collection over the coming months. Visit the store now by clicking the image above.
Changelog
Updated recoil
Added Hit cross
Added directional hit markers
Added hit punch
Added Crosshair
Added Handmade LMG
Added extended Magazine
Added Spray Can Decal Pack
New covered work cart train
Added invisible spawnable loot prefabs for map makers
Added Scientists to the Launch Site monument
Added sidings to rail network
Parenting to an entity in a demo shot will now properly be recorded in the shot
Compound bow now loses less durability while held back
Reduced landmine size
Add "autofocus" option to input fields for Community UI
Improved performance when picking up resources
Jittery magnet crane rotation is smoother
Added SedanRail entity for admins. Spawnable only on rails
Horses now get the same speed boost on rail as they do on road
WorkCart monitor now shows the number of connected train cars, beeps when a new one is connected, and the whole monitor display is 40% brighter
Added FPS counter configs to the options menu
Improved loading screen on ultra widescreen
Basic ammo types can now be crafted from the mixing table
Fixed some UI layout issues on the answering machine UI
Fixed helicopters being visible when idle at long distances (also applied same behaviour to Hot Air Balloons)
Fixed Spear Gun not appearing in players hands correctly when equipped (affected players and NPC's)
Fixed auto turret missing open/close UI sounds
Fixed footstep sounds always being barefoot sounds after changing to other footwear
Fixed cargo ship RHIB being unusable after server restart (RPC error)
Fixed cargo ship RHIB leaking fuel and storage entity after server restart
Fixed solar panels pointing to the sun's location in the server's central sky dome instead of the sun's true direction. Light angle on solar panels now always matches visible sun position
Fixed floating wooden barricade cover
Fixed invalid projectiles when shooting under low ceilings
recoilproperties.version will be removed within the next 2 weeks while we evaluate feedback
Above-ground Trains Update
Above-Ground Trains
We wanted to get some trains onto the above-ground rails this month.
We have some more train content in the works, but for this initial release we're mostly reusing existing assets in order to provide something to try out until that content is ready.
The above-ground Work Cart closely resembles the underground one, but now has coupling points at each end that can connect to other train cars. The bogies (also known as trucks - the wheel assemblies) have also been updated to rotate with the track more realistically.
We've taken some static train wagon models that we had and made them functional. These don't actually do anything special yet, but they spawn along with Work Carts on the new rail sidings and they can be shunted around.
The Work Cart train engines take low grade fuel as usual. Their target speeds at low/medium/high throttle are constant, but their acceleration and pulling ability are affected by gravity and how many couples wagons they're pulling as you'd expect. If your long train can't make it up a hill, it's possible to use multiple Work Carts in a multi-engine coupled setup for more power.
Coupling happens automatically when wagons collide at a low to moderate speed. High speed collisions will not couple, and may take damage instead. Uncoupling is manual - simply interact with the coupling point.
Rail Network Branch Lines
The rail network has received secondary lines that branch off the main line and merge back onto it. This all happens entirely procedurally with no need for predetermined prefabs aside from the rail mesh itself, which results in a very flexible system that can cover a wide range of use cases as we expand the rail network in the future. For now, these branch lines are just where the trains are spawning. We will see how things work out and go from there.
Rail and road foliage improvements
The foliage / bushes spawning next to rails and roads have received some optimizations to eliminate their overhead as you move around the world. They now also spawn in larger clusters with varying coverage, resulting in some dense areas and some open areas, which allowed us to also reduce their total count as a performance improvement without having it affect the visuals too much.
Zipline Improvements
Ziplines seemed to be well used last month, but there were too many cases of ziplines failing to connect, leading to zipline platforms with no connections. I've improved the procedural generation process this month in a few different ways.
Ziplines are now better at routing around obstacles, allowing ziplines to go via 2 separate mid-points before arriving at their destination. I also added zipline arrival points at Sewer Branch, Stables, Lighthouse and Dome.
All of these changes combined have improved the number of ziplines on procedural maps by about 40%.
Death screen Improvements
The death screen has been improved this month with many NPC's getting custom icons and proper translations. We've also improved how we show your death information if you suicide while downed. Previously doing this would result in the death screen showing your death as a suicide, preventing you from seeing the name and weapon of your attacker. This is now fixed and you will see the last attack details even if you suicide while downed.
Client Performance
Client performance was identified as a growing issue last month so we all put some time aside to try and improve performance this month. We've made good progress in some key areas:
Fixed a regression introduced last month that was generating a lot of garbage and causing stutters. This was deemed high enough priority that we released it in a hotfix early in the month.
Identified a bug that was preventing lasers and some other heavy systems from budgeting their performance correctly (This was also affecting server performance).
Significantly reduced network traffic from planters and plants getting watered by sprinklers.
Performance is always a high priority for us and we've got more improvements being worked on for future updates.
General QOL
SAM Site Damage - SAM Site can no longer be damaged by bullet type damage
Junkpile scientists - NPCs have returned to junkpile spawns
Community UI Improvements
We've integrated several pull requests from the Community UI Github project this month, bringing improvements like blocking keyboard input while in text boxes, better item and skin rendering as well as fixing a handful of bugs. Thank you to Ailtop, Jake-Rich, shooter46 and Mughisi for the contributions.
We have some more improvements to this system in the works, specifically to improve rendering and network performance on rapidly updated UI displays.
Hapis Island
Some of you have been waiting for Hapis Island to return after last year's graphical overhaul broke it. This is just a little heads-up to tell you that we are aiming for it to finally go live again in next month's patch.
Twitch Drops
Starting from today till May 12th 23:59UTC Twitch drops are enabled for Rust Twitch streamers. You can earn special and unique skins simply by watching your favourite Rust Twitch streamers.
During the final 24 hours of the Rust Twitch drop campaign, all drops will be moved to general.
Learn more at twitch.facepunch.com.
Changelist
Added rail network branch lines
Added above-ground trains
Added 4 type of train wagons
Improved client performance
Improved zipline placement and monument integration
Reduced network traffic of sprinklers watering large amounts of filled planters
(Community UI) Added support for natively showing item icons (thanks Mughisi)
(Community UI) Added support for read only and multi line InputFields (thanks shooter46)
(Community UI) Added support for the NeedsKeyboard component
(Community UI) Adding "needsKeyboard" to an InputField will block keyboard input only while that input field is focused
Improved and fixed several issues in collection of official server analytics
Improved rail and road foliage performance and visuals
SAM Site can no longer be damaged by bullet type damage
Reduce the chance of vehicle parts from junkpile_j
Fixed grenade launcher reload error when first person spectating
Fixed long ziplines disappearing when the player is at the end of the line
Fixed a bug that was disabling the performance budget of budgeted systems (lasers, walk animations, etc)
Fixed incorrect prevent building bounds when building around zipline wires
Fixed very long ziplines disappearing when a player was near the end of the line
Fixed several overly strict antihack configs resulting in unable to damage construction
(Community UI) Fix countdown not working (thanks Ailtop)
(Community UI) Fix RectTransform only being added when a graphic component is added (thanks Jake-Rich)
Fixed junkyard keycard not respawning
Happy Easter
Easter Hunt
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!
Easter Store Returns
A number of items are hopping back into the store this year:
Egg Hat
Bunny Hat
Easter Wreath
Zipline & Rail Update
[previewyoutube="tJhh661hJaw;full"]
Procedural Rail Network
The first iteration of the procedural rail network is now live! Any map size 4250 or larger should have a single railway in the shape a ring going around the entire island.
This is just a tech test / proof of concept for now, so there's no official gameplay element to it yet. Please report any weird looking areas you might encounter.
In the near future, you can expect driveable above-ground trains.
Powerline Ziplines
Powerlines have had an upgrade this month, with new platforms and ziplines now appearing across procedurally generated maps. To access the zipline you'll need to climb to the top of the new platforms that are attached to some powerlines. Once at the top, you can use the zipline to travel to another platform further along the chain of powerlines or to nearby monuments.
You can speed up on the line by holding forward and jump off at anytime with the jump key (just be careful of the drop!). Colliding with anything solid while on the line will also knock you off the line, this includes trees, players and vehicles, so use with care.
We'll be improving the generation of these over time to connect more monuments, as well as exploring ways for players to place their own ziplines in the future.
Achievements
Since launching out of early access in 2018 Rust's achievements have served as a way for new players to learn the basics of the game. Unfortunately they haven't kept up with the amount of new content added to the game every month so we've made a set of 18 new achievements to earn. As usual, achievements can only be earned on official servers.
Monument Lighting Continued
We have continued improving the lighting setup for our monuments. This month we have focused mainly on the monuments such as; Lighthouse, Fishing Villages, Stables, Excavator, Arctic Research Base and Airfield.
The degree of improvements varies depending on the monument. Some of the newer monuments like Fishing Villages, Stables and Excavator received only minor updates. This includes changes such as adding darkening volumes to interiors, adding new ambient lights and enabling interior lights during the daytime.
Other monuments like Lighthouse and Arctic Research base received more extensive upgrades, which includes a whole lot of new lights, that will make the monuments significantly brighter during nighttime and more atmospheric during daytime.
The monument that received the biggest upgrade this month is the Airfield. Here we have added not only new lights and darkening volumes, but also tweaked some materials and added a lot of new prop dressing to bring it to the same level of quality of our newer monuments.
General QOL
Landmine Update - The landmine has received a visual refresh
Loading Background - Loading screen image will now alternate between images
Magnet Crane - Further improvements to the junkyard magnet crane handling
Steam Networking
We have updated Steam Networking to the latest version, which comes with a number of important performance improvements. It's still disabled by default, but we will run some tests on various official servers to provide feedback to Valve regarding any potential issues. In the medium term, we hope to switch all servers to Steam Networking by default.
Official server analytics
Balancing Rust can be a daunting prospect given the wide variety of play styles and content. With that in mind, this month we're releasing our first pass of server analytics for official servers so we can start to gather some data about how you play Rust. While this will be invisible to you, we're hoping to use this data to better allocate resources to parts of the game that need work as well as identifying balance issues.
If you're playing on an official server, thanks in advance for helping us out. We'll be sure to share any interesting stats that pop up.
Twitch Rivals
On April 14th at 8:00 pm GMT a team of 80 well known Twitch creators with 40 players from North America (team Disguised Toast) will face off against a team of 40 players from Europe and Latin America (team Alexby11) in this massive global Rust competition, taking place over 48 hours with a prize pool worth $100k.
During the Twitch Rivals event, Rust Twitch drops will be enabled for 3 days from selected participating channels, well-known streamers such as hJune, xQcOW, Welyn, Silithur, BaboAbe, sykkuno, Ray__C, LakshartNia and of course the team captains Alexby11 and Disguised Toast.
Over the course of the 48 hours, teams will build up their bases and supplies. During this time, teams can gain access to additional resources by getting kills, completing objectives, and claiming crate drops. The final hour of the competition will be an all-out battle, as both teams try to raid the opposing base. The team that collects the most dog tags will win.
We'd like to thank Rustoria for working with us and Twitch to make this event possible.
Learn more at twitch.facepunch.com
Easter Event
On April 14th at 19:00 BST / 18:00 UTC / 14:00 EST we'll be releasing an optional update to enable this year's Easter egg hunt event, more details to follow in an upcoming blog on the 14th.
Changelog
Powerline ziplines
18 new achievements
Server analytics on official servers
Added dog tags (for event use only)
Generic snowmobile model updated to include visible lights
Updated landmine model
Magnet crane pedals now animate and have IK for the driver's feet
Added a blue light to the Magnet Crane cockpit. When the magnet crane cabin is within 10 degrees of facing straight forward, it lights up
Holding the crouch key while in the Magnet Crane now automatically rotates the cabin back to zero
Debug camera controls while spectating or in demos now uses the players movement bindings instead of WASD
Made lighting improvements to Airfield, Arctic Research Base, Excavator, Fishing Villages, Lighthouse and Stables monuments
Loading screen now alternates between a selection of images
Hopeful fix to prevent certain crashes when switching servers
Fixed missing passthrough name on DLC industrial wall lights
Fixed camper module rear lights not working correctly
Fixed magnet crane physics behaving strangely when the magnet arm was extended far out in front
Magnet crane is now much less prone to 'digging in' its magnet arm, getting it stuck in the ground without being able to easily back out
Fixed players being able to grip on to the sides of the train tunnel elevator shaft while falling down it
Fixed not being able to kick passengers from the taxi module
Fixed not being able to hear notes played from deployed instruments while mounted to something
Fixed the helmet slit overlay blocking the status effect UI, and fixed the scope overlay being in front of the helmet slit overlay
Fixed the autoturret idle animation moving more slowly at higher server framerates
Fixed Rust's graphics Quality setting defaulting to 0/6 ("Super Potato") on first install. Set the default to 4/6 ("Good")
Fixed loading screen text overflow
Fixed Ice AK showing an extra particle effect in first person
