3:00pm EST - Our update preview stream is live! twitch.tv/rustafied

7:15am EST - The optional server update just hit.

12:00am EST - With one week since the update, we’re seeing fixes and forward progress on various items. There will be an optional update coming out today (see below).

Our update preview stream goes live at 3pm EST. Follow @Rustafied for news throughout the day.

Optional patch incoming

The team will be releasing a client and server patch this morning (BST). Patch notes (from Alistair) include:

Fixed scope overlay being extremely small on larger screen resolutions
Fixed team member map font being unreadable
Better text overflow on team dock when players have long names
Horses now regain stamina as well as max stamina when eating (fixes troughs requiring too much food)
Player foot IK fix
Fixed copilot able to access minicopter fuel
Sam site server error fix
Limit name length to 32 characters
Love and happiness

Server performance

A quick note on server performance… Holy shit, it’s great! The team did a killer job last month with optimizations across the board, especially on the server end. Performance after wipe was literally 15 times better than last month, and that has held over the past week. A huge shout out to the entire team at Facepunch for their incredible work on this!

Horse fixes

In the wake of the new Hitch and Trough from last week, Helk has done a couple of fixes. First, he resolved an issue where horses were blasting through too much food in some instances (this fix was released with a patch over the weekend). Also, he’s made it so horses regain stamina as well as max stamina when eating. This fixes troughs requiring too much food (going live with the patch today).

Team font fixes

Alistair has resolved some issues with fonts related to the team system. First, he made it so the team member font is now actually readable on the map. He’s also added better text overflow on the team dock when players have long names. Like the horse fixes, these will go live with the optional patch today.

HDRP goodness

Garry and crew continue to plow along on HDRP and new environmental shaders. As you may recall, this body of work not only stands to drastically improve the overall look and ambiance of the game, it also aims at drastically improving performance through using more optimized and less costly rendering techniques.

Garry tweeted a teaser video of the new night sky shader the other day and reiterated the performance improvements expected with such a change. The sky isn’t the only thing being worked on, however, as the team is touching a wide variety of things in the game, from weather effects to rock formations.

Given this is a such an all encompassing project, it is unclear if it’ll go live with the next update in August. As always, we’ll keep you posted as work progresses on this exciting set of changes.

Other stuff

More work on the Giant Excavator monument
Don't allow large furnace placement under terrain
Faster and more reliable "Tools/Steam Inventory/Download Skins"
Gesture animations sounds coming