8/16 @ 8:00pm EST - The Scrap Transport Helicopter is now on staging. More info added below.

8/15 @ 12:00am EST - We’re at the halfway point in the month for Rust development and the team is trucking along on various upcoming features and content. With 6 new team members working on Rust, there is some incredible stuff on the horizon!

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

Welcome new team members!

Over the past few weeks, you may have noticed some new names showing up on the Rust commit feed. In total, there have been 6 new members added to the Rust team recently. Working on everything from new content to optimization, this influx of team members stands to drastically increase the velocity of development for the game.

It might be a bit slow going at first, as it’ll take new team members a bit of time to get up to speed with the development environment. That said, this is nothing but phenomenal news for Rust overall.

A warm welcome to the new members of the Rust development team - some old timers of Facepunch, some fresh spawns: Bill Ford, Bill Borman, Thai Leo, Rohan Singh, Jarryd Camp, Adam Woolridge.

Scrap Transport Helicopter is in!

The first iteration of the next vehicle to take flight in Rust has been added to staging. The Scrap Transport Helicopter has 2500 health and can be spawned in on the latest staging build with ‘spawn scraptransport’ (if you have moderatorid). It runs on Low Grade Fuel, has 2 seats up front, and can fit a bunch of people in the open back area.

It doesn’t appear to be spawning automatically around the map like other vehicles quite yet, but word is it will be coming in the next patch. Stay tuned for more info.

Horse armor

A new branch for horse armor is underway. Built with road signs, this armor will provide much needed protection for your trusty steed as you ride them into battle. The art is still a bit in the concept faze, but it provides a strong sense for what this will look like once it makes it in the game.

Alistair let me know this won’t make it in for the next update, but it is being planned for release sometime in the future.

Modular vehicles

Bill Borman is trucking (get it) along on modular vehicles. As we can surmise from the concept art and commits, this body of work will allow players to build vehicles using interchangeable parts, each likely having their own advantages and disadvantages.

This week he’s completed work on the initial code for modular entities along with the mass and center of mass adjustments for each module. He’s also tweaked some properties of mountable objects to account for this new modular system.

All in all this is a large body of work and likely won’t be seen for another month or so. Once implemented, however, these new vehicles stand to forever change the way players navigate the landscape of Rust.

Optimization branch

Bill Ford continues his work on the optimization branch this week. With a focus on wires, he’s been tweaking some materials and mesh relating to this fundamental aspect of electricity. No word on when we’ll see this branch go live, but anything in the realm of performance improvement is definitely welcomed!

Instruments

Thai Leo and Alex Rehberg are making progress on the new instruments branch. As you may recall from last week, this branch will include the addition of many new musical instruments including Cowbell, Tenor Drums, Trombone, Trumpet, Tuba, Piano, and Violin.

This week's focus has been on the Trumpet along with sounds for Drums and Piano. No word on when this will go live in the game, but it does seem a much more musical future is in store for Rust.

A sneak peek of the HDRP branch posted by Garry on Twitter the other day.

HDRP progress

Progress continues on the giant undertaking of overhauling graphics and improving performance. Working on the HDRP branch, the team has done a slew of work in the realm of water, rock formations, forests, UI fixes, and even a new, better terrain generation.

As mentioned previously, this is an enormous body of work which will take months to complete. Once it is in game though, it stands to not only completely shift the overall look and feel of the game, but also drastically improve client side performance through the use of Unity’s high definition render pipeline. Stay tuned for more news as work progresses.

So long, Linux!

Late last week, Garry posted plans with regards to discontinuing updates to Linux versions of the game, citing poor support, cheaters, and more. After some outcry from the community, Garry posted updated plans to stop shipping Linux clients all together. Thankfully, they will be offering refunds to anyone who played the Linux version before.

Other stuff

Some interesting things on the ‘comp’ branch regarding seismic detection and a Potentiometer
Fixed traps and horses clipping through bus stops
New shadow quality - quality 2 reduced overhead by 25%, new higher quality 3 added
Comment fixes - now always saving text entered
Skin bundle update (crunch texture compression)
Some more water optimizations / fixes
Garbage collection fixes / additions
Added neck bone to ragdoll layer - removed head bone
Benchmark command added to staging (just shows a demo at the moment)