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

12:00am EST - There is just one week till the next Rust update and the team is trucking along on various projects.

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

Ocean level

Last week, a new cvar was added on a separate branch which allows server admins to change the water level on the map. This week, that was added to staging along with some shifts to AI were added to make sure they don’t run around under water and changes to rivers.

The command, ‘env.oceanlevel’ is by default set to 0. Putting the value up raises the ocean level, turning it to a negative number lowers the level. The functionality is currently on staging but it still needs some tweaks and fixes. This could provide some interesting modded and custom map experiences for community builders, but likely won’t have much to do with vanilla game play.

Farming progress

Shifts to agriculture continue to take place on the farming2 branch. This week we’ve seen the addition of a fluid switch (perhaps to work with the new sprinklers), a new sensor for planters, potato progress (icons and the like), UI works, and most important of all, models and materials for horse dung.

All this shit is still on a separate branch, but based on commits we can see this next iteration of farming includes sprinklers, advanced genetics, new plants, compost, fertilizer, and more. No word on when this will make it in the game - chances of that being for the update next week is slim.

Faster server starts

Andre is working on some updates to navmesh on a new branch. He’s already implemented some great improvements, most notably, having navmesh bake 4 times faster at server start up than before. Navmesh currently accounts for a significant portion of the startup time for a server, so this improvement stands to make server restarts much quicker than before.

Cinematic tools

An exciting new set of tools for content creators is in the works on a new branch. So far it appears to feature a demo browser along with framing guides (rule of thirds, golden ratio, etc). It’s not exactly clear what the entire feature set for this tool will be, but it seems the goal might be to give content creators more control over demos, allowing them to achieve effects which were previously difficult or impossible.

We’ll keep you posted on how this progresses over the coming weeks.

Modular vehicles

Work on modular vehicles continues this week. With a focus on engine storage and internal items, the team checks off another important functionality. There’s also been some progress on vehicle sounds.

Overall it looks like vehicles are really taking shape, it’s only a matter of time till they are merged into main for testing on staging. That likely won’t be till after the update at this point given large functionality isn’t normally merged in at the last minute. As always, we’ll keep you posted.

New monument?

A preview image of what may be a new monument was posted on the Facepunch instagram the other day.

Other stuff

• Garry is working on some improvements to Steamworks integration and networking

• A new background for the EAC window on start of the game

• More foliage optimization

• Ring road updates from last week merged in

• Fix aim jumping when stopping shooting when mounted on something

• Add meta.add console command to add a value to a convar (useful in binds)