5:15pm EST - The server has been up and running smooth for almost 8 hours now. Lets see how the next few hours play out. Also, the team has been doing some cool stuff today. Here's some highlights:

• Maurino added stone and metal floors
• Garry is rocking out on the weapon refactor
• Zon is working on the animal AI. Wolves search when hungry and die if they don't find food.

11:11am EST - Just added the initial notes below. Working on more now. Please comment if you've noticed something I haven't mentioned yet :)

10:30am EST - A 178mb client update just launched. This update includes a bunch of stuff highlighted in my post yesterday along with some awesome fixes done in the last 24 hours. I'm working on a write up of everything now, so check back throughout the day for updates. I'll post on @Rustafied as things update.

Everyone spawns on the beach

The beach is officially a bloodbath. I see several people in my line of sight immediately after I spawn! This is really a big game changer. Your first several minutes as a fresh spawn are much more intense and dangerous now. This will also make up north a much more peaceful place, especially after fresh wipes.

Melee damage changes

The damage dealt by rocks and spears has shifted a lot. Spears no longer kill in one hit, and rocks take upwards of 10 hits to kill a naked. This is a very welcome change, especially with the new beach hunger games scenario we have going on. Also, a bunch of the ranges of attacks have been changed. I'll be updating our damage guide later today. In the mean time, see the stats for these changes here.

Note to devs: seeing a lot of "Missing Bone Property 935136153/pelvis/3303074729" lines in my server console.

Cupboard exploit is fixed!

You can no longer place building items within a cupboards blocked range by backing up 30m and aiming the foundation. Awesome! Building on bases was a real shitty problem which was only getting worse as more people found out about the exploit.

Edit: Have gotten a report of this still happening. Running some tests tonight.

Chickens are no longer a superior being

Chickens can be killed. This is very good news because, as of yesterday, all servers were ending up with just invincible chickens after enough animals were killed.

Floating locks are fixed

In the past, if you placed a lock on a wood door then upgraded it to metal, the lock would be stuck floating in the door frame (as opposed to sticking to the door itself). This appears to be fixed.

Crafting changes

Many crafting quantities have changed. Here's a summary:

• Stone spear now cost 300 wood and 100 stones (instead of just 200 wood)
• Bandages now cost 3 cloth (as opposed to 100)
• Craft 4 pistol and 3 rifle bullets per session (instead of 1). Note: This does not include shotgun shells or arrows
• Skulls actually do something! Right click to crush into 13 bone fragments

Large wood storage is in

We now have another option for storage: Large wood storage. It holds 24 items, locks, and can be destroyed by others if they gain access (time stats on this coming later today). Around 50% of the items spew out when destroyed. The other items disappear.

Edit: Nevermind, looks like this one hasn't made it in yet.

The bow doesn't suck as much

Arrows no longer fire as if you're a 5 year old with a bow that has a draw weight of 10lbs. They now go significantly further, have a cool little noise and leave a bit of a tracer trail.

Spectate not working

Spectate is no longer an option. Fortunately, they intend to make it available to admins. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be available to admins at the moment. I'm sure this will be fixed soon.

Edit: Maurino has fixed this for the next update.

Light illuminates on lower settings

Light from torches, campfires and lanterns has not been actually illuminating the surroundings if you've been on the fastest or fast graphics settings. This is now fixed.

Client FPS improvement

The client end appears to be running very smooth. People are reporting increased FPS across the board. Great work Facepunch team!

Debug speedhacking removed

Apparently, most of the hacks we've seen in this version have been due to people modifying their client code to utilize a developer ability to speed and super jump. This has been taken out completely as of this update so we should see less hackers (not that we saw a ton before anyway).

New sounds

Furnace sounds awesome and rock hits are better too. Footsteps are a lot louder also.

More to come!

I'm still testing out a bunch of stuff, I'll keep updating this as the day progresses. If you notice anything I didn't mention yet, please comment below!

Rad towns concept

In other news, Howie just added this concept to the new Rad Towns trello card.