2:50pm EST - It’s a fresh week for Rust development and we’re seeing some tweaks and bug fixes, along with the addition of scientist NPC’s in the near future...

Scientists on the way

The long awaited scientist NPC’s are getting a bunch of love in the form of tweaks, fixes, and behavioral improvements. Although this new PvE element will not be in game this week, Alistair told me we may be seeing them go live as soon as next week. Stay tuned for more information once they get merged in.

Tidying up and optimization

Andre is doing a bunch of miscellaneous tasks so far this week ranging from fixes to build warnings to deleting unused prefabs. He’s also optimized a couple of things in the interest of server performance. Although you won’t necessarily notice these things post update, optimization and cleanup commits are always good to see.

Atmospheric fixes

In addition to the above, Andre is also tweaking some things with the atmosphere and weather. First, you should be seeing stars in the night sky better as they will no longer be occluded by fog. Also, weather (only fog at the moment) is now randomized every 18 hours, and fades over 6 hours. The sky will also now be slightly darker at midnight, while the sky shouldn’t be as washed out around noon in the temperate and arid biomes.

Building blocks damage

Vince is working on a new branch called ‘building_blocks_damage.’ This does not encompass any changes to how buildings calculate damage, rather, it is a new set of visuals to display the current state of damage on a given building block. This will make it a lot easier to size up the health of a structure, as you will no longer need to go up to each block to see the health.

Given this is on a separate branch, we’re unable to grab any screens quite yet. Also, this stands to be a sizable body of work, so don’t hold your breath to see it in this week.