With a week to go till the June update, commits are heating up on several fronts. This week we’re seeing more work on the apartment complex monument, new ballistic armor, continued player model polish, and what looks to be the next DLC pack coming together on staging.

Industrial Decor DLC

The next DLC appears to be just about ready, with the Industrial Decor pack now showing up on the staging main branch. Based on the current staging build, this pack includes industrial versions of several existing deployables, including the auto turret, electric furnace, large furnace, garage door, torch, storage barrels, wall shelves, and a bowless crossbow skin. There are also factory-style floor markings / wallpapers and a couple of warning sign sprays, rounding out the whole gritty warehouse vibe.

Most of these appear to be cosmetic remodels rather than new functional items, although there are some nice practical additions in the mix. The industrial storage barrels can now be reskinned and appear to share identical hitboxes, meaning the barrel choice should be purely visual going forward. The electric furnace also has new indicator lights for when it is actively smelting, and the industrial garage door has a see-through design with “private property” / “authorized personnel only” styling. Given how complete the pack looks on staging, this seems likely to go live with the June update.

Game Room DLC

The Game Room DLC continues to take shape, with the darts game now getting some deeper functionality behind the scenes. Recent commits show work on multiplayer support, including updated protobufs and a refactor of the darts controller so singleplayer and multiplayer versions can share the same base setup. There’s also been progress on the actual feel of the game, with darts now moving ballistically when they miss the board, along with animation subsystem work tied into the third-person animator and dartboard.

This is still looking like more of a DLC polish and systems pass than a major gameplay shakeup, but it’s good to see the individual pieces coming together. Assuming the current pace continues, darts should be one of the more interactive additions in the upcoming Game Room pack, giving players another proper base activity beyond the usual deployable decor.

Apartment complex

Work continues on the apartment complex monument, and this week the focus appears to be shifting more toward polish, performance, and the actual rental systems which will make the place tick. Recent commits show more progress on communal areas, large apartment set dressing, exterior cleanup, LOD testing, and general optimization work around shadows and proxies to help the monument perform better once it’s fully loaded up with rooms.

The more interesting bit is the continued work on apartment functionality. Rooms are getting upkeep fixes, rental chat messages have been restored, and apartment phones are now being set up so rented rooms can receive random numbers and appear in the apartment phone directory. There’s also work on letting rooms call each other, checking out NPC rooms, and making sure phones don’t require power. Still very much a work in progress, but the apartment complex is looking more and more like a proper player-rentable monument rather than just another building to loot.

M16A2

The M16A2 continues to move along in development this week, with recent commits focused on textures, animations, and attachment setup. Work includes updated textures, AO texture passes, third-person animation exports, and better holster / backpack positioning for the weapon. There’s also setup for a sight rail, along with a new visibility component which can show or hide parts of the viewmodel and world model depending on which mods are attached.

That last bit is especially interesting, as it suggests the M16A2 is being built with attachment handling in mind rather than just being dropped in as a static weapon model. No clear merge to main yet from the latest commits, so this still looks like something actively in progress rather than a guaranteed June addition, but it’s one of the more notable weapon projects currently being worked on.

Ballistic armor

Another interesting feature in the works is the new ballistic armor set, along with related BDU attire. This looks to still be a work in progress, but commits this week show a pretty substantial setup pass, including protection values, loot generation, and initial balance work. Right now, the new gear appears to be planned as loot rather than something you craft outright, with commits noting ballistic armor can show up in elite crates, supply drops, and hackable crates, while both the ballistic and BDU attire are currently set as uncraftable. Recycle values and general loot placement are also being worked on, which suggests Facepunch is still dialing in how rare and valuable these pieces should be.

Given all this, it looks like Rust could be getting another higher-end armor option with its own distinct progression path. It’s still too early to say exactly how strong it’ll be or whether it’s locked for the June update, but the fact that it’s already getting loot, protection, and itemization passes makes it one of the more notable weapon-and-combat related additions in development right now.

Player model update

The player model update continues to get a lot of work this week, with the latest commits focusing more on polish, animation, and making the new models behave properly across different states. Recent work includes updated crouch animations, jump animation adjustments, improved third-person movement, better ragdoll limits, and fixes for neck and downed ragdoll behavior. There’s also ongoing work around clothing compatibility, including fixes for BDU shirt clipping with vests and more conditional mesh setup for hair, masks, and wearables.

There are also some more visible character model tweaks in the mix, including male and female body hair work, improved player model exports, and continued skinning updates. This all points to the new player models still being actively refined rather than fully finished, but it’s clear the system is moving through a pretty broad cleanup pass. Given that these models are already showing up on staging, expect some mixed visual feedback while Facepunch keeps tightening up the animations, clothing fit, and general presentation.

Other stuff

The fullscreen skin viewer continues to get improvements, including better “view in hands” support, fixes for several skins and costumes, lighting fixes, and updates so it can load viewmodel prefabs and bundled skin textures without needing to be connected to a server.
Mountable rollback work has merged to main, aimed at helping with “projectile invalid” issues when attacking players on minicopters, ziplines, and other mounted situations.
Satellite crash work continues, with more targeting logic, calculation refactors, and setup for an initial offset range so thruster effects are visible from the start.
50 cal / PT boat turret animation fixes are in, including idle animation fixes for ammo states, rear turret animator timing fixes, and work to stop the PT boat turret reload animation from drifting away from the player reload animation.
The smoke grenade refresh has started getting viewmodel rig work, along with a supply signal rig.
Rain grace fixes have merged, including a fix for grace after restart and an increased grace period check tick rate.
Wanted Posters 1, 2, and 3 had their deploy guide scale adjusted to better match their deployed size.
Player model benchmark work continues, with new tracking for bone counts, CPU frame time, Camera.Render, baseline runs, and selectable recorder categories for more targeted performance testing.
Render pipeline testing continues, including RRP particle / billboard lighting work and a blitter shader fix for missing MSAA-related shader keywords.
Kick Off 2 wallpapers merged into main.
Steam icon upload refactor work merged into main.
The mortar received more animation updates.

Uterust charity stream

Starting today, Uterust is hosting a charity stream in support of Cancer Research UK. The event runs from May 28th through May 31st, with every #CRUK #Uterust stream watched and every dollar contributed helping fund life-saving cancer research.

100% of proceeds from the event go to Cancer Research UK, with giveaways also lined up throughout the stream, including more than 120 VIPs and DLCs. You can learn more about the initiative or donate directly over at uterust.com.