6:25pm EST - As we head into the weekend, the team bangs out some fixes for issues arising from yesterday’s update. Expect the changes being worked on today to go live in a small update tomorrow morning. Before we get into the specifics, I want to say a couple things about our loudest new raiding companion...

A word on rockets

Received with excitement and joy by most, the rocket launcher is officially in the game. There is, however, a subset of people who say it ruins the game, several of whom commented on a video I posted the other day. I want to clarify something to the rocket haters out there:

If gangs of people actually were going to be walking around the map with unlimited rockets, destroying every base they saw, yes, that would ruin the game. The fact of the matter, however, is that rockets are fucking expensive and it takes a ton of them to do any real damage against stone or armored buildings. This is simply another weapon (an awesome one at that) which, as needed, will be balanced by the development team, just like everything else. So, before you get your panties in a bunch, see how this plays out over the next couple weeks. Or, go play some GTA, I don't think they have rockets there...

Phantom footsteps

Whether you’re high or just naturally paranoid, walking around since the update has been a bit freaky. This has mainly been due to the footstep sounds being all fucked, adding phantom steps when you slow down and turn, making it sound like someone has snuck up right behind you. Thankfully, Mihn committed a fix for this which will go live with the small update tomorrow.

Signs disappearing

Hand painted signs are in and the artwork is flowing at a tremendous pace. Unfortunately, some up and coming Van Gogh's are losing their masterpieces, canvases disappearing (and sometimes appearing again). It’s not yet clear how widespread this is at the moment, but issues like this are to be expected with such a large, new piece of functionality. And, let’s face it, this is far better than the constant crashes of the text based signs of old.

Edit: Looks like a relog fixes disappearing signs.

Decor quality slider

Andre has added a ‘decor quality’ slider. They should really call it the flower slider because it basically just adjusts the amount of flowers on the ground. Like the grass slider, turning it all the way to zero removes all flowers.

AssetGallery scene

While the rest of the team works on fixes, Garry is working on something to help the rest of the team. He's created an AssetGallery scene which is basically a map with every single item in the game. Accessible only by developers, this tool enables the artists to get a real, in game look at each texture they create (and compare with others). I chatted with Garry briefly on this and he told me this is part of one of the main focuses of the next week: texture scaling. This will not only make the game install much smaller (by a matter of half), but it could also potentially improve FPS for less powerful computers.

Window bars askew

One weird thing you'll notice if the server you play on didn't wipe yesterday is window bars are skewed 90 degrees, now perpendicular with the window sill. This makes for some funny looking houses and is kinda a pain in the ass. According to Garry, this is caused by windows being bugged on old saves. He says it's not worth fucking with right now, might as well deal with it till the forced wipe next week. 

Animal animation improvements

Along with fixing the footsteps, Minh has tweaked some animal animations. Making their leg movement more inline with their actual speed and adding intermediary animations for walking and running, animals will hopefully look less like they are ice skating.

The definition of overkill

Here's some new raid footage I took last night (let's just say, it wasn't close to a fair fight).

Rustaforum is back!

For the past several days, our community site has been down for maintenance. What was originally a simple update became a full on debacle which no one saw coming. Thankfully, it is now upgraded with a new (plain) design and some improved functionality. Also, mobile browsing is a crapload better. I’ll be tweaking the design and adding the old theme over the next few days. In the mean time, all the functionality and data is intact.