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

12:00am EST- It’s a fresh month of Rust development and the team is trucking along on some exciting new features.

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

Optional server update

An optional server update yesterday hit yesterday. Nothing major to note, but it did include an EAC backend update along with a fix for keycards not respawning at abandoned cabins.

Scrap Helicopter

Some fresh artwork has been released by Thomas for a new type of vehicle. The Scrap Helicopter, modeled using the corrugated metal textures for building, will seat a handful of people. No word on exactly how this will work, but it’ll likely be similar to the Minicopter in that it’ll run off Low Grade Fuel and be found randomly around the map. More information on this exciting new vehicle as it gets added to the game.

Modular Vehicles

Along the same lines, work continues on a new vehicles branch. Although it’s not completely clear what the result of this will be, it does appear as though a modular vehicle is in the works. Here’s some really old concept are which may or may not be relevant.

Instruments

Jarryd, a new member of the Rust team, continues his work on the Instrument's branch. As mentioned last week, this branch will consist of the addition of several new musical instruments including Cowbell, Tenor Drums, Trombone, Trumpet, Tuba, Piano, and Violin. 

Unity 2019.2.0 update

Integration to a new version of Unity has begun. As you may know, Unity is the underlying engine which Rust runs on. As new versions come out, additional features and bug fixes become available.

Optimizations

Much to the elation of players, a new optimizations branch is in progress. Although the specifics are a bit elusive, it’s pretty clear this branch aims at improving performance through optimizing code. This, coupled with the HDRP branch, is great news for those struggling to get good performance.

Benchmarking

Garry is working on a benchmarking tool. Commiting to the ‘benchmark2019’ branch, it appears as though he’s creating a new type of benchmarking. As you may know, benchmarking allows for the performance comparison of various hardware and software elements. With all the focus on optimization as of late, benchmarking stands to be a valuable tool for showing the team where to focus.

HDRP progress

Work continues on the graphics overhaul on the HDRP branch. We’re seeing a lot of commits this week around terrain shaders, biome tinting, texture files, and various other elements which factor into this revamp. As you may recall, this body of work will not only improve various graphical elements of game play, but it stands to drastically improve client performance as well. Given it is such a massive project, it’ll likely be another month or so before we see this in action on the staging branch.