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

12:00am EST - A fresh week of Rust development and we’ve seen hotfixes, forward progress, and some exciting new things on the horizon. 

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

Hotfix patches

With monthly updates, things like small exploits, bugs, and other issues can sneak their way in, requiring hotfixes to remedy in the days that follow. That was the case this week as you may have noticed two updates to Rust. 

On Monday, a small patch was released which fixed some NRE’s, PlayerState getting lost, and potentially resolved an issue with excessive server save times. On Tuesday, another optional update was released which resolved Mac startup issues, fixed players being able to turn off the recycler while in use, and fixed players getting stuck in the CCTV UI.

With all of the highest priority issues resolved, it looks like that will be the last hotfix for the month.

3/13 Edit: Never mind, a small client patch was released this morning to upgrade Unity (the game engine) to the latest stable version.

Unfortunately, some people we experiencing issues, so it is being rolled back shortly. Expect this update to go back out once said issues have been resolved.

Spiral stairs?

Some new branches have appeared in the last week related to shifts and additions to building blocks. First, some changes to thatch walls, making them thicker and more optimized. Most eye-catching of all, however, a spiral stairs block branch was merged into the new ‘building_blocks_2020’ branch on Monday. 

Does this mean we’ll soon have a new way to traverse between levels of our bases? Might there be other new building blocks in the works? It all seems possible. We’ll keep you posted as more comes to light on these additions.

Edit: A Triangle Floor Frame is being worked on. Triangle Floor Laddar Hatch anyone?! (not confirmed of course, but that’d be awesome!)

Cinematic tools

An exciting set of new tools for content creators is in progress on a branch aptly called, ‘cinematic_tools.’ With what looks to be a focus on giving content creators more control over the demos they record, Jarryd has added a number of commands which allow players to do things like spectate in first person other players in a demo, swap players seats, and even list nearby entities within a certain radius. 

Overall this suite of new tools stands to make content creators jobs easier while allowing them to produce effects and outcomes which were previously impossible - very exciting!

Farming2

Shifts to agriculture continue to take place on the ‘farming2’ branch. Along with a whole slew of small miscellaneous changes throughout the week, the team has added more genetic and health information to the UI which will allow players to more easily see the status of the plant and if it is actively dying. They’ve also done work towards making certain plants compostable along with fixing some various bugs. 

No word on when all of this will see the light of day, but one thing is for sure: Some big changes to farming are in our near future.

Vehicles

Work on the vehicles branch continued this week with a bunch of progress being made. With a focus seemingly on visual FX and sounds, the team has added trails and tire spins along with skid / tire surface sounds and pushing / tipping for vehicles (similar to how you can push boats). The team has also done some more work on the armored module.

All in all, it seems this branch is really taking shape. When will we be able to see it for ourselves on staging? That remains to be seen, but we’ll keep you posted as always.

Unity 2019.3

This week a new version of Unity (the underlying engine which runs Rust) was merged in. After adding this in last month before removing it again, the team seems to have resolved most issues with 2019.3 and have successfully merged it into staging as of yesterday.

That’s not to say there won’t still be issues and fixes needed, but thankfully the team has a couple weeks to troubleshoot prior to another update going live. For more details on this new version, check out the Unity changelog here.

Other stuff

• HDRP progress

• New branch to clean up UI