2/21 @ 1:13 am EST - Seeing sporadic hitches in server performance (things lagging out for 2 - 4 seconds at a time)... Possibly some RakNet stuff which needs to be worked out.

7:45pm EST - This latest build seems to be running better. No crashes in almost 2 hours, server side FPS is holding around 30 with 200 people. Good stuff.

6:03pm EST - Server patch just hit. Updated and brought our main server back online. Let's see how we do...

5:38pm EST - Shots in the dark fired. Let's see if they help anything... Waiting for the builds to finish, will put servers back up then.

4:43pm EST - Shit is fucked. Several server crashes within half an hour of running the latest update. I'm in touch with Garry about it and will keep you up to date as I know more. Given we're crashing every several fucking minutes, I'm leaving us down for the time being.

4:15pm EST - An update just came out which should help the abysmal server performance we've been seeing the past couple of hours. I also wiped the server to ensure optimal performance going into this weekend.

3:07pm EST - Added sections below for server performance and client lock ups.

1:35pm EST - Friday is now the day to put out all the fires from Thursday’s update. And that is exactly what the team is doing today, fixing shit before the weekend. Yesterday's update, although not the worst in history, did have some hiccups.

People dying of thirst in 20 minutes was the immediate problem, and a patch was released quickly to resolve that. Bigger than that, many servers couldn’t accept connections. This was caused by some changes brought on with RakNet. This issue appears to have been fixed in the latest updates. But these weren't the only issues…

Server performance

The update which just came out has killed server side FPS. We were seeing around 30 - 40 prior to the update and are now seeing 5 consistently. I just spoke with Garry about the issue and he is working on a fix now. Depending on how this progresses over the course of the day, I may consider wiping to help improve performance for the weekend.

Lock up issues

Many reports are coming in about the game locking up completely, requiring the process to be killed manually before restarting. Garry is aware of the issue and this will hopefully be fixed in one of the next client updates.

One potential fix which Garry just shared with me: Try adding effects.ambient 0 before joining a server.

Furnaces not working

Many people are having issues with their furnaces. The main symptom is wood burning but doing nothing to the ore. A client / server update literally just came out which should fix this issue.

Disappearing walls

A familiar bug reappeared yesterday: Walls and other building parts going invisible for certain players. This issue appears to be fixed as of a couple hours ago but please report it if you still notice invisible parts.

Admin abilities

Yesterday’s update featured a bunch of changes for admins. Not only did we get some new functionality, some old functionality has been fixed. Here’s a rundown:

Admin names are green in chat
Admins can speed run (right shift L to activate) - watch out for fall damage if you speed too high.
Freecam is also in (right shift P to activate)
Freecam is very limited. Not only is it slow, you can only see people and objects within direct vicinity of your character. It does not render things based on the camera position, just your characters position.
Instacraft via the crafting menu is back. Admins can click any item in the crafting menu to craft it instantly, no resources required.
Spectate is still pretty fucked. It works ok, however, coming out of spectate causes you to spawn on the person you were spectating half the time.

I love me some new admin abilities as much as the next bloke, but I haven’t talked to one admin who isn’t irked out by the speed cheat ability. Given this, no Rustafied admins will be using it in our main server.

Performance recording

One huge issue with the game right now is performance. Clients and servers are using a shit-ton of ram. Garry has added some performance recording stuff which will hopefully help him track down the source of these slow downs.

Torch brightness reduced

The torch has been pretty fucking bright as of late. Garry has toned this down a bit and it looks like the shadows are behaving a bit better too.

Question? Comments? Join the conversation at Rustaforum.com