1:38pm EST - We are just one day away from the best day of the week. The team continues cranking as they prep this update for launch. No signs of it forcing a wipe on procedural maps, however, certain servers may be wiping at the owners discretion (more on that below). Let’s get into it...

Map drawing is in

Garry has finished implementing the drawing system for paper maps. Similar to the signs, this interface allows players to label and draw on their maps. Be careful what you label, however, as these maps can be looted and seen by anyone holding it. Here’s a summary of how the paper maps / drawing works:

• Find / craft a map (10 paper, not a default blueprint)
• Drag it to your toolbelt and hold “G” to view
• You can then click and draw with the left mouse button (must keep holding "G")
• Right click and drag to pan around
• Scroll the mouse wheel to zoom in and out

Research table is almost complete

Helk is almost finished with the research table. Although it has not been merged into main yet, I expect it to be on the dev branch within the next several hours. Specifics on the research table are still hazy, however, the overall functionality is clear: It’ll allow you to research an item and subsequently be able to craft it.

There have been many questions about whether or not this will force a blueprint wipe. I haven’t heard anything either way on this, although given it’s been a couple months since the last BP wipe, part of me hopes one is forced.

UI enhancements

Garry has made some changes resulting in a huge performance increase on the UI. I tested it out on the development branch briefly and, I’m happy to say, it is noticeably snappier. The biggest difference is items now snap to the closest drop point, making it much easier to quickly move things around without having to worry if they are literally slipping through the cracks of your inventory.

At the moment, the ability to drag and drop items out of your inventory is disabled (you must use the drop button again). Although I like the ability to drop items quickly, I can’t count how many times I've accidentally dropped an item when I was just trying to move it. 

Edit: Drag to drop is back in now and it's working well.

Unsuck hapis

Petur continues trucking along on the unsuck Hapis branch. We did see some fixes to the spawn tables so hopefully stone nodes and barrels will be more prevalent when this branch goes live (probably tomorrow). Expect a wipe to be forced on our Hapis server when the update drops.

Clothing collider fixes

Garry tweaked the collision scaling for some clothing items. The biggest fix being the blue shirt collisions being scaled by 100x (which has made it pretty much impenetrable). He’s also added warnings to catch other collision scale wonkiness like this in the future.

New items?

Over the past two weeks we’ve seen progress on two new items: The beancan grenade and the submachine gun. Although they have not been implemented into the game yet, many of the models, textures and animations are complete. Given everyone loves new items (especially those which go bang), I’m really hoping one or both of these squeaks into tomorrow’s update. That said, the team has a bunch on their plate already, so only time will tell.

Will there be a wipe tomorrow?

Depends. There will not be a forced wipe like last week, but as Garry acknowledged yesterday, performance has been very shitty as of late. This caused me to wipe our main 200 slot server yesterday. I’m continuing to monitor performance on each one of our servers, and am playing each one by ear. Here’s a summary of the situation on our servers:

• Main (200 slot) - Wiped yesterday so I’m not planning on wiping with the update tomorrow. That said, depending on performance after the update, we may have to wipe again Friday afternoon to ensure smooth gameplay through the weekend.
• Low pop - Not planning on wiping anytime soon. The priority of low pop, more than smooth gameplay, is wiping as little as possible. That means I’ll only wipe this if it’s forced or shit is severely broken.
• Dev branch - Getting reports of performance drops here, will probably wipe with the update tomorrow.
• Hapis - The unsuck Hapis branch will likely go live tomorrow and force a wipe.

FOV tip

One of the people tuning into my stream the other day shared an awesome tip with regards to FOV. Long and short, you can drastically increase the zoom while looking down the sight of weapons by lowering your FOV (in the F2 menu). Dragging FOV to the lowest possible practically doubles the zoom of the bolt action.

Question? Comments? Join the conversation at Rustaforum.com