12:00am EST - The new year is off to a great start with midi support, vehicle progress, fixes, and more being worked on.

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

Update coming on the 23rd

That’s right, a mandatory update has been announced for later in the month. There is speculation this could be in part to commemorate the lunar (or Chinese) new year which takes place on Jan. 25th this year. Could this be what the fireworks branch is all about? I’m thinking yes...

Native support for .mid files coming

It appears as though it’ll soon be a lot easier to play midi files with instruments in game as native support for .mid files was merged in. We were unable to figure it out on staging so it might not be totally ready to go (or we just missed it) but we’ll make sure to give you the full low down as we get closer to the update on the 23rd.

Edit: Just heard a bit more from Jarryd on this:

The mid file support is in the instruments.playrecording command - basically if you use "instruments.playrecording sevennationarmy" it will first look for "sevennationarmy.rec" (our file type) and will then look for "sevennationarmy.mid" (the general file type that people are using)

SAM pickup fix

A small but impactful fix has made its way in for SAM Sites this week. Previously, players could pickup a SAM Turret with ammo inside. If they did so, the ammo would be lost. Now, however, players must remove the ammo from SAM Turrets prior to being able to pick them up.

Temporary ban ability now baked in

Admins are now able to ban people from the game for a temporary period of time if they choose. Added as an optional parameter to the end of the ban and banid commands, relative time (5m, 2w, 3d, etc.) or a Unix timestamp is now accepted and saved in the bans.cfg file.

New admin commands

Several new commands made their way in this week. Two admin commands of note are, ‘sleepingusers’ and ‘sleepingusersinrange’. These will show previously unaccessible or information about users who have previously joined the server but are not currently connected.

Modular vehicle progress

A majority of the commits to the code base over the past week have been related to the upcoming modular vehicles. With Bill, Thai, and Petur all working on various aspects, it appears as though these new vehicles are getting closer than ever to entering the game. Although they are not quite merged into staging yet, vehicles are receiving work which appears to be more in the finishing touches realms than what we’ve seen in the past.

Does this mean we’ll see modular vehicles come the February update? That remains to be seen, but we’ll keep you posted as always.

Other stuff

• Skeleton optimization

• Friend grouping (not sure what this is yet, stay tuned)

• Ring road progress

• Farming updates started

• Life stats UI in progress