6/29 @ 1:25pm EST - The ownership functionality is now on the prerelease branch! I also added a picture below of the new quick craft screen on the inventory view.

6/28 @ 9:05am EST - With the launch of the XP system just over a week away, the team is rocking out commits. As mentioned in last week's devblog, don’t expect much of (if any) update launching to main this week. That said, there are some exciting things happening on the prerelease branch…

Bullet hitscan

Garry has made bullets hitscan for the first X meters of travel (exact distance unknown at this point, but it's probably small). If you're not familiar, hitscan means the bullet travels in the straight line immediately instead of having a speed / arc over time (a.k.a. projectile - which is what the game currently has). This could have a huge impact on close range combat, hopefully improving hit registry.

Aim throwing is in!

After several weeks in the works, Alex has completed the first implementation of the new aim throwing system. Throwing weapons and tools now behaves similar to the bow: hold right click to aim, left click to fire. Not only will this make it much easier to time your shots, it’ll drastically cut down the accidental throwing of items.

UI additions

Garry has been tinkering with the user interface, cleaning up several things with the crafting menu and adding notifications for when you increase levels. Now, when you increase a level, a big star pops up followed by the items which just became available. Watch your ears, however, the 8 bit placeholder sound effects which accompany these notices can take you by surprise.

Edit: A quick craft screen has also been added to the right side of the inventory that shows the items which you currently have the resources to craft.

Ownership progress

Helk is still trucking along on the XP ownership functionality - exploring new ways of gaining XP by adding gains from cooking and eating other people's food. Although this branch is not yet merged into the prerelease branch (meaning you can’t play it), I think it’s likely we’ll be playing with ownership by later in the week.

Edit: The ownership functionality has been merged in along with a small indicator bar underneath the item name, telling you who owns what part of the item you're using.

New admin commands

Andre has added a couple of handy new commands for admins to determine location and teleport to a specific location. Here they are:

• teleportpos - teleport to a specific location
• printpos - print a specific location
• printrot - print rotation (not confirmed)

Dungeon art

Vince has been cranking on some more dungeon art. Along with continuing to skin out existing dungeon parts, he’s also started work on a couple new dungeon elements including an airfield carpark and industrial ruins. It’s not clear at the moment how much of this will make it in by the next forced wipe, but stay tuned as we get closer to July 7th.

Horse riding re-confirmed

Holmzy tweeted an interesting image earlier today. Although horse riding has been confirmed by the devs in the past, we’ve never seen as much as an icon. Well, now we have... Don’t get your hopes up too much, there is absolutely no word on when this will be added.

Graphical overhaul

Petur is continuing his work on graphical overhaul. First introduced in last week's devblog, this body of work aims at improving the overall outdoor environments (trees, biomes, weather, etc.). Although none of this is in the game yet - and probably won’t be for some time now - Petur did post a couple teaser videos in response to a reddit post calling for thicker forests. Here are some of the video links:

• http://files.facepunch.com/petur/2016/June/23/2016-06-23_08-52-20.mp4 Blurred because I had the UI "open"
• http://files.facepunch.com/petur/2016/June/23/2016-06-23_08-45-23.mp4 Night lighting test. This is another big polarizing can of worms, and it makes me wonder whether we should just make individual servers choose either pitch black nights, or nights that are bright enough to make gamma unnecessary. Or perhaps tie it into the moon cycle and simply not have any in-betweens -- because that's where people tend to gamma crank.
• http://files.facepunch.com/petur/2016/June/23/2016-06-23_08-00-29.mp4 More of the same
• http://files.facepunch.com/petur/2016/June/22/2016-06-22_20-12-40.mp4 Five minute fantasy fireflies I added mostly to troll Helk. I don't think we'll have these, but maybe if we do a medieval sword & sorcery spinoff sequel some day?!
• http://files.facepunch.com/petur/2016/June/21/2016-06-21_11-12-42.mp4 Also, because somebody mentioned rain in the thread. It doesn't clip as badly into the ground anymore, nor does it simply follow the camera.

Misc fixes

• Fixed XP bar covering screen after client stall
• Fixed mushroom prefabs

Rustafied Bi-weekly servers wiping

The wipe cycle for our bi-weekly servers is a bit wonky this month because there are 5 weeks between forced wipes instead of the normal 4. Given the current entity counts of our servers, I’m choosing to wipe all Rustafied servers (except Low Pop) when the update hits. This does mean the normal 2 week wipe cycle servers will only have 1 week this time. If there is no update to main on Thursday, we will wipe at 5pm EST.

6/29 @ 2:00pm EST Update - The prerelease branch just had a save++ meaning the map was forcibly wiped. Given this, we will not wipe the prerelease servers again tomorrow.