12:00am EST - It’s a fresh month in Rust development and the team at Facepunch is forging forward on new functionality and features. 

Our update preview stream goes live at 1pm EST. Follow @Rustafied for news throughout the day.

Submarines incoming

A new form of water-based transportation is on the way. Submarines - of which the art was completed earlier this year - are now being implemented on their aptly named branch ‘submarines’. 

If you don’t recall, there are two submarines making their way into the game - a solo and duo model. It’s not yet clear exactly how these subs will be obtained or what they’ll cost, but it does look like they will run on low grade fuel and allow for more extended exploration of the underwater areas of Rust. No visuals yet as it’s still on a separate branch, but it does seem work is moving forward at a pace on track for a June launch. We’ll keep you posted as work progresses. 

Contacts

With the magnetic crane and car scrapping under his belt, Helk is back to work on the contacts branch. Still unclear exactly what this body of work entails, we’ve seen commits in the past couple months that point to mugshots, notes, and acquaintance gathering. Could this new functionality be linked to the upcoming NPC missions? Might it be something else? We’ll keep you posted as more comes to light.

Hapis HDRP conversion

Our favorite static map is some steps closer to re-entering the official rotation as work progresses on the Hapis HDRP conversion branch. With the world revamp going live last week, Hapis wasn’t quite ready for the prime time. Thankfully it’s on the way back as the team works at dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s of all that post HDRP work. No word on exactly when it’ll be ready for the big leagues again, but my hope is on the June update. 

Workcart fixes

The premier method of underground travel is getting some love this week. Workcarts have had a number of tweaks and improvements, many of which dealing with backwards movement. Here are some specifics straight from the commits:

• Fix train brake FX not showing when travelling in reverse and throttling forward

• Increase the minimum threshold for train collision damage so the train definitely doesn't take any damage when hitting barriers at low speed

• Fix front track section selection bug

• If the train is travelling in reverse and the rear wheels have already gone across to a new spline section, force the front wheels to "select" that track piece instead of letting the player choose left/right, which previously could snap the rear wheels to the wrong piece if the front wheels aren't across yet.

Colored wires

Electricitions of Rust rejoiced as the addition of colored wires appears to be making an entrance. Shortly after a request on the /r/playrust subreddit, the team responded by implementing some fancy new facets of wires in the color realm. Along with the quintessential black wire, it appears as though we’ll soon be able to implement additional wire colors in the form of red, yellow, and blue. These will be applied to the wire tool in the near future, stay tuned for visuals. 

Other stuff

• A voiceprops DLC is in the works

• censorplayerlist now enabled by default

• Fixed watercatcher UI drinking

• Lots of work on AI

• New countryside bunker entrance coming to train tunnels

• Add nexus.redirect - a client command that makes the client switch to a different server, runnable from the server