A huge week for Rust!
2:30pm EST - It is a big week for Rust. With the forced wipe just two days away, we're seeing some large shifts enter the game. Before we get into that, I have some sad news...
RIP @RustUpdates
If you track the development of Rust religiously like I do, you'll probably have noticed the update feed has been silent for the past several days. No, the team isn't on a collective hiatus, nor is this some April fools joke. I have confirmed with Garry that the feed has been turned off intentionally.
This is very concerning. Insight to the developer commits is one of the things that makes Rust so special. These commits raise hype, and more importantly, allow players to know what changes need to be tested.
Granted, sometimes players will see a commit they don’t understand, jump to a conclusion, then start bitching about something which isn’t even going to happen. Sure, that’s a pain in the ass, but if Facepunch wants to continue to count on the player base to test new functionality, we need to know what that functionality is prior to the devblog.
Thankfully, Garry told me, "we'll have to find another way". Which hopefully means another form of commit tracking is around the corner. Ideally sooner rather than later, because right now we are flying blind - which is a shit place to be on such an important week for testing.
Help test on staging!
Speaking of testing, in preparation for the forced wipe this Thursday, the prerelease branch has been merged into main. That means the new animal AI, an updated version of Unity, and many other things are now playable.
Garry posted a request on the Rust website to have players opt into staging to help test all these changes. If you have the chance, I highly recommend you take the time to opt into staging and give it a whirl. Remeber to use F7 to report any bugs.
New Animal AI is in
One of the biggest changes coming in this week is the new animal AI. After weeks in development, this functionality is at the point where players can test it out. I’ve been running around on the staging branch, and I’m happy to say, I have not been able to get one animal to run up a sharp cliff or through a large rock. That's a good start! More on this in our Thursday post, after we’ve had some more time to test.
Unity 5.6
This update includes a new version of Unity which features a ton fixes and improvements - best of all: Fullscreen exclusive mode should work again! For more on what’s new in this version, check out Unity’s site.
Server performance
Andre continues his work on server performance. He’s been doing a bang up job as performance has gotten better over the past 2 weeks. Unfortunately, performance on the staging branch seems to have taken a hit with the latest merge from prerelease. Hopefully we’ll see some improvements before the update goes live on Thursday.
Deer meat added
With the new AI comes new meat! Deer no longer simply drops chicken as Helk has added in the deer meat item. Along with this, he’s tweaked it so animals now drop proper amounts of food like they used to.
View model tweaks
Minh has done a bunch of tweaks on various weapons and items in the game with the intention of fixing clipping and improving animations. Although it might not be instantly obvious, items like the LR-300, rocket launcher, Thompson, P250, MP5, pickaxe, and binoculars should look better after this update.
Other stuff
- Searchlight fixes, balance, and visual improvements
- We might be seeing some changes to farming this week
April Community Building Event!
This time around we're asking players to build the best "Place of Business" that they can.
Shops, Hotels, Bars, Casinos, if it's a place of business, it's acceptable. The winner has a chance at some nice prizes too!
Check out the full details and rules on our forums, and good luck!
Skin Pix
There are a ton of great skin submissions this week. Check out the top 10 picks by the guys over at Xtab studios.