A new week of Rust development is underway and - as we approach the middle point of the month (bi-weekly wipe time, bitches!) - we’re very happy to see a familiar face appearing once again next to commit messages...

Welcome back, Garry!

It looks like Garry is back from paternity leave! Working on the prerelease branch, he’s updated to the newest version of Unity beta (5.4.0b21), shifted the health UI back to the old style (the one currently on main), and fixed UI scaling. He’s also added a new map...

New map: Barren

Added to the prerelease branch, Barren is a procedurally generated map aimed at maximizing game performance while not sacrificing game balance. As Garry described on twitter:

"it's procmap without bushes, grass, rocks etc - should be better for lower spec pc's - while keeping it fair" - Garry

So does it actually work? I’m happy to report: It looks like it. My initial tests between the normal procgen map and Baron show an improvement of roughly 10fps. This opens up a whole new realm of servers catered towards maximized performance. Here are some screens:

If you'd like to try it out for yourself, join the prerelease branch and look for a server running the 'Barren' level.

Edit: The name was originally "Baron" but has now been changed to "Barren"

Radiation coming next month

Dungeons will be an even more hostile place after the forced wipe in July as Vince has made  certain areas of each dungeon radioactive. In addition to this, he’s switched radiation to be turned on by default (it’s been off by default for some time now). Expect more on this as we get closer to July.

A new way to view commits

Our friends at rustmonitor.com have introduced a new way to view code commits to Rust. Featuring a clean design, live search, and sorting, I think this view is much easier than scrolling through twitter. So, if you love tracking commit messages throughout the day like I do, go check it out!