3:38pm EST - Happy St. Patricks day Rust! Today, every Newman is a little bit Irish (especially those with the green tinted hair). The big launch is still set for Thursday, however, you can check out the latest build on our freshly wiped Dev Branch server (find it on the official tab). Watch out though, the players models are something straight out of a horror movie at the moment…

Rust freak show

The character models on the latest dev build are quite a sight (especially if you’re not looking to sleep tonight). Not only are the hands and feet missing, but it seems the colored hair syndrome has been replaced by double face syndrome. I wouldn’t fret, this will surely be fixed prior to the update on Thursday. In the mean time, if you’re playing on the dev branch, you’ve been warned.

Arrows nerfed

Helk just nerfed arrows. Not only has the damage dealt by them lower (from 70 to 60) but they no longer have a 100% retrieval rate (now 70%). Overall, not a humongous shift in stats, however, it should be enough to make the bow slightly less OP.

Deploy to socket

Since yesterday, Garry has been working on a new branch, deploytosocket. Given the ambiguity of the commits, I asked him what this was all about. He answered, “just cleaning up some stuff that we need to work for some other stuff.” Ok, got it, prerequisite work to get into some new shit. What is that new shit? We’ll just have to wait to see. The most comprehensible commit to this branch so far was, “Pie menu sorting” so your guess is as good as mine.

Clothing standardization

Xavier is working on standardizing all the clothing. This body of work is aimed at getting all clothing to fit standard dimensions so that, regardless of what combination you are wearing, it all works together gracefully. For more details, check out the trello card.

Building LODs

Vincent is working this week on the building LOD’s. The end goal is to maximize framerates by rendering lower quality versions of building parts when farther away. As of today, it appears he has completed all tiers of building. Additionally, it looks like he fixed the bug where certain parts don't show at certain distances (a glitch which is currently allowing raiders to see elements of the inside of buildings).

Crystals

Andre has committed the prefabs for crystals. I talked to him briefly about it and he confirmed these will be crystals which appear on the map (likely in the snow biome). Don’t expect to see them this Thursday, however, they are slated to launch in conjunction with the procgen7 stuff (which is probably 2 weeks from now).

Update: Just got clarification from Andre, these will be harvestable, dropping ore at first but will probably drop a new resource eventually.

Bear trap sounds

Alex has taken a pass on the bear trap sounds. I tested it out briefly and, although similar sounding, the new audio does seem louder and sharper, giving the bear trap a much heavier feel.

Repair bench

Paul posted a concept for the repair bench yesterday. I'd say this is quite an improvement over the current large wood storage labeled "Repair bench."

Question? Comments? Join the conversation at Rustaforum.com