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The Name of the Game: QoL

2:00pm EST - The update and devblog are live! Game on!

12:00am EST - Oh wait… nah, the name of the game is Rust. Nevertheless, it’s been a solid month for development and we’re about to see the fruits of Facepunch’s labor come to light. Not a huge patch content-wise as time was spent getting the Halloween event live, some team members were on vacation, and most of all, much of the work being done is on longer term projects.

That said, there are a slew of amazing quality of life changes along with several solid shifts and additions to batteries. Also, we say goodbye to the Halloween event today.

This update - as with all first Thursday updates - will cause a forced map wipe across all servers (there is no forced blueprint wipe planned). The patch itself is expected to hit at 2pm EST (7pm GMT) and our update stream will go live at 1pm EST. As always, follow @Rustafied for news throughout the day. But, before we get into it…


Charitable Rust starts next week!

Our yearly charity event, Charitable Rust, starts next week and runs from November 14th to the 21st! All proceeds this year go towards building schools for underprivileged kids through Pencils of Promise. Check out charitablerust.com for more info and take a look above at the epic trailer Puddy put together for the event!


Update summary video

Here’s our update summary video, also from Puddy!

… and if you’re in the mood for an update video which is a bit more epic, check out the official video from Facepunch.


Battery changes

Let’s start off with the most recent round of changes to show up on the staging branch. Over the past two weeks, a bunch of fixes and improvements have occurred in the realm of batteries. The main take-aways are:

  • The holy trinity of Rust batteries is complete with the addition of the Medium Battery

  • Batteries charge faster and drain slower (along with drainage fixes)

  • A new unit of measurement, rustWattMinutes (rWm), is now in play

  • An information panel has been added

Let’s expand on this...


Battery information added

Much of the mystery of battery usage has been removed with the addition of a battery information panel. Now, when looking at a battery with the wire tool out, you’ll see various tidbits of useful information including:

  • Charge left (in minutes and seconds)

  • Active usage

  • Max output

  • Capacity (shown in rWm)

Here are some basic stats for each of the three battery types:

Small battery

Max output
10

Starting charge
20 rWm

Max charge
150 rWm

Medium battery

Max output
50

Starting charge
100 rWm

Max charge
900 rWm

Large battery

Max output
100

Starting charge
200 rWm

Max charge
24000 rWm


Medium Rechargeable Battery added

In the late nights of Rust, you’ll find yourself getting lost in the mesmerizing glow of this new item… oh and it stores power too. The middle ground between large and small, the Medium Battery can be researched / crafted or purchased at Bandit Camp for 75 scrap. From a statistics standpoint, it fits pretty well right between its siblings - a nice way to round out the battery minajatwa.

Cost
25 High Quality Metal

Workbench
Level 2 required

Research cost
75 scrap

Max output
50

Starting charge
100 rWm

Max charge
900 rWm


Other energy changes

Along with all this battery hubbub, two shifts the electricity economy have occurred:

  • Generator now costs 125 scrap (instead of 175)

  • Solar Panel is now available at compound for 75 scrap


Tree mini-game fixed

If you’ve ever been chopping wood in the desert biome, you’ve definitely run into the issue where that fucking red x of the tree minigame simply won’t mother fucking get hit… fucker (you can tell this has never bothered me at all).

Thank Christ (actually Jarryd) this is now fixed. Hell yeah!


Group chat + improvements

Some significant QoL improvements have occurred in the realm of in game chat this month. Mainly, team chat has been added. Toggled with the TAB key while the chat UI is open, chatting with just members of your team is now possible. All messages still show up in the same area on the screen, just with different tags.

Also, content controlling the clusterfuck that is Rust text chat just became feasible - along with some other things - through the addition of a context menu. By simply clicking on a player name in the chat window, you can now view the players steam profile, mute them, report them, and even clear their chat.


Hover quick loot added

A new way to move loot from one place to another is here. Basically, you now hold a key (‘H’ by default), and hover over the loot you want moved. Upon doing so, the items queue up and start heading to the appropriate place.

This isn’t just a one-way street either. You can use it to put items into your box or take them out. You also have the ability to change which key you use to make this happen. Just look for the ‘hover loot’ line item in the controls section of your options menu.


Locker improvements

Swapping out your Rust apparel on the fly just became a lot easier with a seemingly small yet very significant change to Lockers. Previously, to change the loadout in a locker you’d need to swap the entire set. Now, you can simply drag and drop individual items, making it much easier to modify your wardrobe.


Vending machine density

In other quality of life news, inventories of vending machines which are close together can now be accessed on the map without the need to move your mouse pixel by pixel. Multiple machines in close proximity now appear as one icon. Clicking said icon allows you to see all the machines and subsequent inventories. Cool, right?


Messages added

A new layer of communication between players the Rust developers has been added this month. Now, when you load the game, you’ll notice a new icon on the right of the main menu called messages. At the moment the main purpose of this is to get notified when a player you reported gets banned - a thing we love to do at Rustafied as it shows the effectiveness of the reporting system and encourages future reports through acknowledgement. 

Although Garry told me there are no current specific plans for it, this functionality could be deployed for more uses in the future.


Placement improvements

Ever get frustrated trying to place some object that should be to be placed, but just can’t? That should occur less after this update as the team has resolved several of said instances. Here is the lowdown:

  • Large furnace can be placed on world layer (rocks) again

  • Fixed small refinery placement on ice, rocks and uneven surfaces (like steep hills)

  • Small water catchers can now be placed on construction but cannot be built over (similar behavior as large furnace)


Manual depth of field

Tossing a little bone to content creators, Helk added the ability to control dept of field manually. Here’s how:

  • dof_mode ( 0 = auto, 1 = manual )

  • dof_focus_dist ( distance from camera to focus )

  • dof_nudge (distance to nudge focus by) - will modify focus by this amount like a focal wheel e.g. "dof_nudge 0.5" or "dof_nudge -0.5"

  • dof_focus_time 0.2 - time it takes to reach new focus setting for smooth lerping, set to 0 for instant change

So if you do:

  • bind mousewheelup "dof_nudge 0.5"

  • bind mousewheeldown "dof_nudge -0.5"

You can use your mouse wheel to adjust focus to be farther or closer, here's what it looks like.


Hero’s incoming

No, I’m not referring to capes and shit, I’m talking in your face, beautiful women, walking towards you when you load the game. At least, that’s what it was on staging, but it’s just a test. In the end, this is a new way for Facepunch to blast communications to players of the game, when they load the game, on the fly (as in, it can be updated without a client / server patch). 

At the moment, it does not appear to be active when you load the game on staging. That said, Garry confirmed it will be in the background and able to be turned on throughout the month as needed.


Ongoing work

As mentioned above, much of the work this month is on larger, ongoing projects. This includes HDRP (basically a performance and graphics overhaul), modular vehicles, instruments, and much more behind the scenes stuff which will be made clear in time. So if you’re sitting here like, “Man, slow update month” - which, with all the QoL changes, if you are saying that, you’re an ass - know that much the overall development progress made this month simply hasn’t made it in yet. 

When will it all be in? Who knows. Apparently HDRP isn’t going make it in the December patch (or Garry’s just trolling, one can never really tell). Long and short of it is: there’s a ton of amazing stuff on the horizon for Rust. As always, we’ll provide the full low-down as it hits staging.

Big shout out to the entire team at Facepunch for their tireless efforts towards making this one of the most thrilling and dynamic games ever created.


Other stuff

  • Entity pop in fix

  • Helicopter fire balls no longer damage building parts

  • admin.banid also kicks player if on server and bans owner steamID if available

  • Added teleportlos console command. This allows admins to look anywhere, run this command, and instantly be teleported there… awesome!)

  • Added buttons to open the log file + folder to console screen

  • Switch team UI coloring to always show offline players in grey, even if they're dead